Feedback on reported posts.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Hi all,

Just a quick idea: is it possible to get feedback on reported posts? I reported a post a few days ago about an abuseive (and previously warned) poster and nothign seems to have happened other than him getting worse. Other people claim to have reported posts as well.

It would just be nice to know it has been looked at and the outcome (even if the outcome was the mod disagreeing and taking no action).

Many thanks,

P.

Taltos

Not sure about the forum you reported in but in my case responding to each and every reported post would actually stop me doing much else.
Sometimes the result of a reported post might just be a note "lets keep an eye on them" - sometimes it might be a PM or an in thread comment, however once you hit the report button in my mind the communication then moves across to the mods or the cat mods with the reportee.

If that makes sense?
Cannot speak for the other mods mind, just speaking from my own experience here.

steddyeddy

I would also think this is a good idea. Previously I reported a post implying "all travelers were "£$%" and nothing was done about it. The post was quite offensive to be honest and I know the mod did see it. I was going to pm the mod in question but I didn't want to make a fuss.

P_1

Would replying to each and every reported post be a massive drain on the mods time though?

Unless there is some way of automating a reply to reported posts similar to a read receipt that you get with emails in Outlook?

anncoates

There must be thousands of reported posts surely.?

Not only a drain on moderator time but also likely to get bogged down with stupid prison forum-tyoe gripes about posts reported because of dislike or grudges between posters.

Zaph

P_1 wrote: »

Would replying to each and every reported post be a massive drain on the mods time though?

Yes it would.

P_1 wrote: »

Unless there is some way of automating a reply to reported posts similar to a read receipt that you get with emails in Outlook?

That wouldn't really achieve much though other than X mod has seen the report. From what I understand the OP wants to know what action, if any has been taken. As Taltos said, there are many different courses of action, so replying to each individual report to advise of the outcome just isn't feasible. We simply don't have the resources for that.

steddyeddy

Zaph wrote: »

Yes it would.



That wouldn't really achieve much though other than X mod has seen the report. From what I understand the OP wants to know what action, if any has been taken. As Taltos said, there are many different courses of action, so replying to each individual report to advise of the outcome just isn't feasible. We simply don't have the resources for that.

I know Mods are busy and don't want to bother them unless necessary but is it acceptable to pm a mod to ask them to address racist posts? I appreciate that different mods might have differing views on what is acceptable and what's not.

Zaph

If you've reported a post and are concerned that no action has been taken where you feel it absolutely should have, then there's no harm in reporting it again in case the mods missed it for some reason.

Kenjataimu

Slight bit off topic but If I reported a post but then realised I misread the post & it didn't warrant a report, is it ok to report it a 2nd time to state my mistake?

Just not sure how the reports appear for the mods to view if ya get me. Just wanna know for again.

P_1

Zaph wrote: »

That wouldn't really achieve much though other than X mod has seen the report. From what I understand the OP wants to know what action, if any has been taken. As Taltos said, there are many different courses of action, so replying to each individual report to advise of the outcome just isn't feasible. We simply don't have the resources for that.

Fair point, maybe adding some feature to it on the mods side of things that enable the reporting user know what happened to their reported post might work though. Say when a reported post comes in the mod has one of 2 boxes to check.

Box A says, thanks for reporting the post, action has been taken against the offending post.
Box B says, thanks for reporting the post, I don't think it needs any action.

Whatever box is ticked generates a PM to the reporting user to let them know that something has happened.

Would something like that work?

steddyeddy

Zaph wrote: »

If you've reported a post and are concerned that no action has been taken where you feel it absolutely should have, then there's no harm in reporting it again in case the mods missed it for some reason.

Thank you!

Zaph

Proco Jr. wrote: »

If I reported a post but then realised I misread the post & it didn't warrant a report, is it ok to report it a 2nd time to state my mistake?

Just not sure how the reports appear for the mods to view if ya get me. Just wanna know for again.

Yeah, that's probably the easiest thing to do. When a post is reported two things happen - 1) it feeds into a Reported Posts forum, with each thread representing a single reported post. If a post is reported several times the reports all go to the same thread.; and 2) An e-mail is sent to each mod of the forum alerting them to the thread in the Reported posts forum. So in this case your initial report and then comment that you were mistaken would appear in consecutive posts on the thread, which makes it easier for the mods.

P_1 wrote: »

Fair point, maybe adding some feature to it on the mods side of things that enable the reporting user know what happened to their reported post might work though. Say when a reported post comes in the mod has one of 2 boxes to check.

Box A says, thanks for reporting the post, action has been taken against the offending post.
Box B says, thanks for reporting the post, I don't think it needs any action.

Whatever box is ticked generates a PM to the reporting user to let them know that something has happened.

Would something like that work?

That's getting into the realms of Site Development rather than Feedback tbh, and it's not something that I'm qualified to answer.

P_1

Zaph wrote: »

That's getting into the realms of Site Development rather than Feedback tbh, and it's not something that I'm qualified to answer.

Fair point. I'm guessing the lads work a Mon-Fri 9-5 kinda gig so I might pop that up there on Monday

Wibbs

*aside*

P_1 wrote: »

Fair point. I'm guessing the lads work a Mon-Fri 9-5 kinda gig

From what I gather only in their wildest dreams. They work damned hard.

The Hill Billy

Just to add to Zaph's explanation - the reported post email is also sent to the Category Mods. While we generally leave matters to the local mods - if there are many RPs on a single post we would keep an eye on it to ensure it was dealt with appropriately.

Also, if the RP was particularly serious & required urgent attention, we may take direct action ourselves.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

Fair enough and thanks for the explanatinos. Didn't know you had quiet so many to deal with!

hullaballoo

It really is a site dev issue but it would be great to see some sort of automatically generated message at least acknowledging that the RP has been noted by a relevant mod.


It doesn't necessarily have to say whether action has been taken or not: my view is that modding a forum is up to the mods and users ought not be concerned with that other than simply reporting posts.

Micky Dolenz

If you feel something is particularly nasty. Pm mod/s of the forum to outline your concerns if you feel a RP wasn't actioned or, as said, report it again.

El Guapo!

I don't see any benefit to giving users feedback on a post they reported.
It would only make more of a work-load for mods. Even an automated reply wouldn't be beneficial other than for the "reportee" to feel good about themselves for getting a user banned/infracted or a post deleted. It has no benefit to the running of the site.
If a user feels a post is inappropriate then they report the post. They will get feedback, in a way, if they check back on the post to see if it's still there or if the poster got an infraction. If no action has been taken, then either the local mods didn't see a reason to take action or they haven't gotten around to it yet. Remember, mods are volunteers and can't be around 24/7 to monitor their forums. Give them a chance and if it's still bothering you, then drop the mod a pm and I'm sure they'll be more than willing to explain why no action has been taken.
The way I see it, a user can report a post, but after that it's out of their hands and up to the mods to deal with it. They shouldn't feel they have a right to know what went on behind the scenes and if another poster got reprimanded or not.

C.K Dexter Haven

I reported a what i felt was racist comment in AH earlier today. It didn't get taken down. Obviously my idea of what is racist and what the mods think is different. Fair enough, but it doesn't encourage you to continue to use the report post if you hear nothing back and the comment remains.

Edit. There still there.

C.K Dexter Haven

Micky Dolenz wrote: »

If you feel something is particularly nasty. Pm mod/s of the forum to outline your concerns if you feel a RP wasn't actioned or, as said, report it again.

What does reporting something a 2nd time do? I'd imagine many mods would consider this a nuisance to be honest. I've no problem in making my voice heard but I'm not going to repeat myself. If I get no feedback I'm not going to keep harping on about the issue but it certainly won't motivate me to report things again.

Micky Dolenz

C.K Dexter Haven wrote: »

What does reporting something a 2nd time do? I'd imagine many mods would consider this a nuisance to be honest. I've no problem in making my voice heard but I'm not going to repeat myself. If I get no feedback I'm not going to keep harping on about the issue but it certainly won't motivate me to report things again.

It pushes it to the top of the list. I can't give you a number of the average RP's from AH in a day but it is high. Sometimes things get over looked or we may be low on active mods on a particular day.

There is no bother reporting a post twice if you feel strongly about it. Report that post again and I will have a look at it.

C.K Dexter Haven

Micky Dolenz wrote: »

It pushes it to the top of the list. I can't give you a number of the average RP's from AH in a day but it is high. Sometimes things get over looked or we may be low on active mods on a particular day.

There is no bother reporting a post twice if you feel strongly about it. Report that post again and I will have a look at it.

Thanks. That information does help. While you're prevented from reporting a 2nd post within 1 minute of each other, it's useful information to know.

Penn

I think an addition problem might be; would the poster who reports a post be put off doing so in future if they knew they'd get a boilerplate PM (and therefore, a boilerplate email telling them they have a PM) every time they reported a post in future? Especially with stuff like reporting a sports stream spammer where they might have to report several posts in the space of a few minutes.

Some posters might be put off because they know they'd get a PM once the mod has looked at the reported post, and get an email about, when by that point, the poster probably doesn't care. While a lot of posts that are reported are ones the reporter might be interested in the outcome of, there are still a lot which are just simple spam/trolling posts. Sending automated PMs to the people who report those too could make them not want to report them.

Unless a mod could select not to send out PMs for some reported posts, but send them out for others, in which case the whole implementation of such an idea simply becomes not worth the time and effort for so little benefit.

OldGoat

An AutoReply on reading a report won't necessarly work.
I read all the reports from all the Music forums mostly without actioning them. Thats the forum mods place. It's only when the post is clearly in need of immadiate action that I step in.
I frequently read reports from other catagories too if I'm following up on something.
What I'm saying is that just because the report is read does not mean it's been read by the person who will take any necessary action on it.

seamus

There are technical solutions to this which I've proposed before, but whether it adds any value is debatable.

Simple overview;
Each post has a little greyed-out flag icon on it. You click on this icon, a pop-over box prompts for a reason for the report, you fill it in and send it away. Little flag goes red, email to mods, new thread in reported posts forum.

Mod comes along, sees the red flag, clicks it, sees a list of the reports on this post, and clicks "confirm" or something. Flag goes green to indicate that this report has been seen/actioned.

That's fairly straightforward. Trickier is the visibility of the flag. Obviously a user should see a little red flag when they've reported a post, and the little green flag when a mod has "confirmed" their report.

Other mods should also see the red flag and green flag.

Where a post has been reported multiple times, the mods see a little number above the red flag indicating the no. of reports on it. The users themselves only see their own reports, not anyone else's.

The only tricky one is multiple reports - a mod has already "greened" a reported post, and someone comes along and reports it again. You could turn the flag red, and then have a red and a green number above it to show that there are "new" reports on it.

That seems like the most obvious technical solution to me but it's not a 30 minute hack to do it and as I mention at the top of my post, I don't know if this is big enough of an issue to warrant much effort on it.

Asking the mods to PM every report is a non-runner. A certain percentage of those PMs will come back as, "But wwhhhyyyy aren't you doing anything about it". Basically causing the mods to make time wasting work for themselves. Fnck that.

Boards.ie: Danny

P_1 wrote: »

Fair point. I'm guessing the lads work a Mon-Fri 9-5 kinda gig so I might pop that up there on Monday

If I'm honest there'd be no point cross posting this one for a few reasons - the main one being that this is something that the community (including mods and HQ) should discuss before it lands in Site Development; we'd just end up moving it out here to the wider domain for discussion anyway. The other reasons include things like being short on development staff and having a full schedule for the next few months

Danny

P_1

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

If I'm honest there'd be no point cross posting this one for a few reasons - the main one being that this is something that the community (including mods and HQ) should discuss before it lands in Site Development; we'd just end up moving it out here to the wider domain for discussion anyway. The other reasons include things like being short on development staff and having a full schedule for the next few months

Danny

Fair enough. Sure at least I can say that I've done my bit by making the suggestion

Super-Rush

Two things.

First off I saw the reported post mentioned by the op and didn't deem it to be actionable. You can pm me if you'd like to discuss it further.

Secondly, for people using mobile boards, a lot of you are hitting the report post button instead of the reply button and posting their reply into the reason for reporting.

El Guapo!

Super-Rush wrote: »

Two things.

Secondly, for people using mobile boards, a lot of you are hitting the report post button instead of the reply button and posting their reply into the reason for reporting.

I've almost done this a few times by mistake and only copped it just before I submitted it.

Would it be possible that when you press the little flag, a box pops up to say "Are you sure you want to report this post?" And the user will have to press "Yes" to continue.
It might save the mods a lot of wasted time checking false reports and also save users from wasting a post.

P_1

El Guapo! wrote: »

I've almost done this a few times by mistake and only copped it just before I submitted it.

Would it be possible that when you press the little flag, a box pops up to say "Are you sure you want to report this post?" And the user will have to press "Yes" to continue.
It might save the mods a lot of wasted time checking false reports and also save users from wasting a post.

Good idea that, it has happened to me a few times when posting on a mobile (damn my clumsy fingers :pac: )

Boards.ie: Danny

This has cropped up before but I've never made that mistake. How does that confusion even happen? The buttons look completely different, they are as far apart as you can get on a mobile device and there has never been a switch in location on touch

LizT

The post new reply button is right under the report button of the last post. Easy enough to hit it if you have fat fingers like me

Zaph

You would think it's impossible, but if you look through the Reported Posts on any given day you'll find several posts reported instead of being replied to.

Dravokivich

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

This has cropped up before but I've never made that mistake. How does that confusion even happen? The buttons look completely different, they are as far apart as you can get on a mobile device and there has never been a switch in location on touch

https://us.v-cdn.net/6034073/uploads/attachments/489713/246357.png

Its probably because in the browser, its the first button on the right, and people could be looking for a button there, without looking at what the button is for.

Boards.ie: Danny

Zaph wrote: »

You would think it's impossible, but if you look through the Reported Posts on any given day you'll find several posts reported instead of being replied to.

Ah yes, but you'll always get a few who just can't grasp it. Should the design or usability suffer for it? I recall uproar on here when we were hiding aspects of the UI behind a hover over, I shudder to think about the posts we'll get with an archaic popup confirming you want to report a post.

Dravokivich wrote: »

Its probably because in the browser, its the first button on the right, and people could be looking for a button there, without looking at what the button is for.

They are completely different sites. If you're looking for some uniformity in buttons that look different, on a site that looks different you're sure to be in for some disappointment

Zaph

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

Ah yes, but you'll always get a few who just can't grasp it. Should the design or usability suffer for it? I recall uproar on here when we were hiding aspects of the UI behind a hover over, I shudder to think about the posts we'll get with an archaic popup confirming you want to report a post.

I agree, but at least that's your department. I was merely commenting on the fact that it's more common than it should be for some reason.

Dravokivich

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

They are completely different sites. If you're looking for some uniformity in buttons that look different, on a site that looks different you're sure to be in for some disappointment

I get that. But you've also got to consider those who don't regular post through touch, but predominantly more so through the full web version. It's like trying to remember to drive on the other side of the road while in France.

Tar.Aldarion

Where the report button is on that screenshot is the default area I would look for somewhere to reply. Not surprised that some people hit it.

P_1

Ah to be fair you can never satisfy everyone :pac:

TBH I's day its people being used to the web version of the site and being unsure of what button does what on the touch version. Bit of practice for the people involved and t'will all iron itself out.

thesandeman

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

This has cropped up before but I've never made that mistake. How does that confusion even happen? The buttons look completely different, they are as far apart as you can get on a mobile device and there has never been a switch in location on touch

I think you and others are missing the point on this
LizT is the exception.
If I want to quote a post in my reply as I am doing now the 'reply' button is on my bottom left and the 'flag' is on my bottom right.
However if I am adding a post to the thread at the end without quoting another post the 'flag' is just above the 'pencil' icon and it is easily tapped with a fat(ish) thumb. I have hit it a few times myself by accident but have spotted my mistake before hitting send.
I think that may be some of the problem anyway.

As for the original question how about the flag gets greyed out when a Mod reads the report somewhat similar to the way a poster can't thank their own post?

Raphael

I read reported posts in my email. How is boards supposed to know that I've done that?

Edit: Skimming through the thread, seamus' idea seems like it could work. Don't really see any other way it could, or a need for the fgeature in general, but I tend to take a fire and forget approach to reporting posts myself. *shrug*