Urgent report function

Stabshauptmann

First off, all moderators on this site do a great job. I dont have unrealistic response expectations from unpaid volunteers.

However, are there not some problems on boards where you require more immediate response that others?
e.g. Ticket Touts?

A tout only needs to be online for a few minutes with a post with his contact details and all the good intentions and policy of this site are undermined.

Therefore may I suggest an option within the reported posts tool to report urgent items (I leave it for better minds to define what is urgent) that would be escalated to more people

Orion

Report it in this thread. They get dealt with pretty quickly.

Steve

The idea has merit, on adverts.ie a thread / post is put into quarantine if certain conditions are met - including, amongst other things, the report history. This means a mod / admin has to look at it, when they are next online, and decide if a problem actually exists etc.
The exact conditions can't be disclosed for obvious reasons but the system works.

Dades

Orion wrote: »

Report it in this thread. They get dealt with pretty quickly.

There's several people subscribed to this thread so it's definitely the best place to drop something urgent.

MugMugs

An "urgent" option would just become default as I'm sure everybody would deem their report urgent.

seamus

The spirit of the idea is sound, the problem is implementation. People's idea of "urgent" differs, just ask someone who works on a helpdesk. For one person, "Urgent" is "I forgot my password and I can't log in to play Angry Birds", another person may not log an urgent ticket unless their machine is literally on fire.

What occurs then is that the amount of noise generated by non-urgent issues causes those to disregard the priority of all "urgent" requests. Like that person who flags every email as urgent, and after 2 emails you ignore anything she sends which is marked as urgent.

The idea of a post quarantine also has merit, but could become a headache on busy forums as troublemakers use it to hide posts by people they don't like. Abusing it would get you sitebanned, but it still means that mods have to keep an eye on the quarantine list on basically a constant basis. If someone's post gets hidden for two hours and the thread moves on, they'll be rightly very irritated.

Dades

The only real idea here would be an urgent notification to admins and maybe cmods. Certainly having a regular user able to affect another post in any way isn't an option. And seamus is right about what constitutes "urgent".

But again, the thread mentioned above already alerts enough people that stuff is dealt with swiftly.

Stabshauptmann

The spammers thread is the solution I'm looking for I think. Maybe its not as well known as it should be, but now I know of it at least :-)

Eoin

Here's a simple idea - the contents of the reported post could be sent in the email to the mods, not just the reason someone gave for reporting it. Modding on a smartphone is a PITA, but it is doable if something needs to be dealt with urgently.

Orion

Stabshauptmann wrote: »

The spammers thread is the solution I'm looking for I think. Maybe its not as well known as it should be, but now I know of it at least :-)

It's a sticky in the forum that you asked how to report spammers in ... just sayin'

Overheal

couple options, one of which has been discussed before, but the other not so much

a) make a quarantine post function only apply to users with 25 or fewer posts

b) automatically premoderate posts from users with 10 or fewer posts

c) limit new users to posting 1 new thread every hour, one new post every 10 minutes

28064212

Overheal wrote: »

couple options, one of which has been discussed before, but the other not so much

a) make a quarantine post function only apply to users with 25 or fewer posts

b) automatically premoderate posts from users with 10 or fewer posts

c) limit new users to posting 1 new thread every hour, one new post every 10 minutes

a) Who would be quarantining posts?
b) and c) would only annoy new users, while doing nothing to annoy automated spammers

Ken.

If Overheal doesn't mind I'd like to take his idea and tweak it.
If possible give some trusted members (non-mods) the power to infract or ban people but they can only do it to people with less than X number of posts. That would stop people being tempted to mess around with other long standing users.

Further I'd only give these powers to the people from 6pm in the evening till 8am the following morning.

Quixoticelixer

ken wrote: »

If Overheal doesn't mind I'd like to take his idea and tweak it.
If possible give some trusted members (non-mods) the power to infract or ban people but they can only do it to people with less than X number of posts. That would stop people being tempted to mess around with other long standing users.

Further I'd only give these powers to the people from 6pm in the evening till 8am the following morning.

I don't like the sound of that to be honest, only actual moderators should have the ability to give out bans/infractions. I'd imagine it there would be restrictions with the site software (vBulletin?) that would make this a non runner.

Not really liking some of the suggestions on restrictions on new accounts, has a bit of a "prove yourself worthy of us" / "guilty until proven innocent" vibe which may seem off-putting to new users who sign up in good faith, the spammers get banned fairly quickly as it is anyway so I don't think there is a pressing need for change.

MadsL

Could you not give established users over 1000 posts the power to hide posts of those who have under 25 posts and move them to a moderator only forum. They could be deleted/banned etc by a mod at leisure but hidden from view of ordinary users.

So established users report the post if the poster less than 25 posts then hide/move post to spam forum. Mods can then take action or reverse the decision.

Remove that power from anyone abusing it.

It should be obvious to all when to use the function and it will prevent spammers from getting traffic almost instantly.

Overheal

ken wrote: »

If Overheal doesn't mind I'd like to take his idea and tweak it.

patented sorry

hullaballoo

I think the main point is that any changes to the system are unnecessary at present.

The admins and mods are well able to cope with urgent issues as they arise. Ordinary mods have the power to site-ban in limited circumstances to prevent damage (although this does not remove posts, which might be a feature worth considering) and the admins respond incredibly efficiently to urgent issues.