Suggested Change to the "Report A Post" Function

Dav

OK, I've avoided posting in this conversation because I was genuinely interested in seeing what was being suggested. This issue seems to come up every now and again and I'm really not sure why people seem to think they should have some sort of report on these things.

So to address some of the suggestions.

Initially a suggestion of a PM being sent with the reported information to the person who's made the report. I can think of no good reason for this other than to satisfy some sort of personal curiosity. It doesn't help mods and if anything, it gives the numpties who like to try and troll mods another stick to try and beat them with. It is also a technically non-trivial task and given it doesn't fulfil an essential and obvious need, it's not going to happen.

Someone else suggest that as a means to keeping tabs on when/if mods are inactive - that's extremely useful to know, so we already have some tools that generate a report on "inactive " mods. It's not 100% foolproof though, so we do appreciate help from the community if/when they think a Mod may be AFK - the easiest and quickest way to get this looked at is by PMing the CMods of that category.

I've had a couple of ideas about this issue for site redesign purposes and so now's as good a time as any to share them. Keep in mind, these are ideas only, not and sort of definite plan.

1) there will be a "PM Mods" button on every forum that sends to all Mods to try to make sure that nothing "official" gets missed. I think reported posts can probably be made to use this system too. Whether or not that system includes "read receipts" or not, I'm not sure. If it was the sort of thing that could be added in without a huge amount of stress to the dev team, then I'd call it a useful extra but not an essential feature.

2) Visibility of action - it's never obvious that an action has been taken which is a big part of why this issue comes up again and again, but everyone needs to realise that it's not always necessary to take action on every report - it's very much a deliberate decision. If you show trolls that they're causing "work" or that there's an obvious trail of their mess across our site, that only encourages them. Remember that we're dealing with morons that think nothing of signing up dozens of new email accounts and then Boards accounts only to continue their streak of stupidity. It's not our fault these people have a mental health issue or a tiny penis or whatever multitude of reasons it is that compels them into this sort of action but we damned if we're going to put up with them here. You don't feed trolls. It's why you'll see cards issued to actual valuable members who will see a card on their profile and hopefully remember not to let whatever it was that caused them to cross the line and get carded for something get the better of them again. We don't bother issuing cards to obvious trolls, we just ban and delete their posts (which takes 3 clicks of a mouse and takes about 10 seconds).

I think mathepac, you're genuinely interested in trying to make an improvement and that's great, and I thank you for it, but we have differing opinions on this particular matter so we are not going to make the changes you've requested in the short to medium term (and probably long term) as there is simply too much other technical work that has a higher priority.

Delirium

mathepac wrote: »

You'll have to explain to me in detail how sending me a copy of a post I report from the "Report a Post" function increases the workload of a mod in any respect by even one iota. As I've already said several times it will over time reduce the volume of reports and improve the quality as users learn when/what it is appropriate to report.

Volunteering - no relevance
Child safety issues- no relevance
Increase in mod workload - Urban myth

The only thing likely to increase in the short term is the volume of "Report a Post" messages flying around. Through dint of the application of mathematics I've worked out this will exactly double but I believe this will ultimately reduce.

The functionality is simple as already described and everything needed already exists, the only change is to the backend to format a PM to the user from the existing data as well as whatever it does now:

my user-name: known
mod name:known
url of the post: known
text I typed: known
the PM function: known

6 or 7 lines of pre-existing code combined in a new routine called from within the "Report a Post" function.

What purpose would the PM serve? It adds nothing to the existing system as it doesn't provide any additional information to the user reporting a post.

If an additional function is to be added to the site, it has to serve some purpose. If you had the data, how would your (or any other users) boards.ie experience be enhanced by having this data?

Spear

Dav wrote: »

1) there will be a "PM Mods" button on every forum that sends to all Mods to try to make sure that nothing "official" gets missed. I think reported posts can probably be made to use this system too. Whether or not that system includes "read receipts" or not, I'm not sure. If it was the sort of thing that could be added in without a huge amount of stress to the dev team, then I'd call it a useful extra but not an essential feature.

I've also been perplexed that the report post function is decoupled from boards.ie by sending the alerts by external email, when by PM ensures greater visiblity, especially given that new PMs generate an email alert anyway.

Zaph

Spear wrote: »

I've also been perplexed that the report post function is decoupled from boards.ie by sending the alerts by external email, when by PM ensures greater visiblity, especially given that new PMs generate an email alert anyway.

There are PM inbox limits and it's probably more likely that a person would hit that limit before they would any limit on their e-mail inbox. I've often spoken to people who said they didn't receive a PM because their inbox was full. By sending it to an external e-mail address it at least ensures that the report is delivered.

Dades

Spear wrote: »

I've also been perplexed that the report post function is decoupled from boards.ie by sending the alerts by external email, when by PM ensures greater visiblity, especially given that new PMs generate an email alert anyway.

As, say, a Soc CMod, you get reported posts from 100+ forums. Via email (in a dedicated folder, for example) they can be scrolled through fairly easily when you need to. Throw a few dozen PMs into your inbox since the last time you logged in and you'll spend an age sorting out regular PMs and individual reports, and marking the rest as read.

Though as a mod, I thought it would be a good feature if it could be turned on or off.

Penn

Dades wrote: »

As, say, a Soc CMod, you get reported posts from 100+ forums. Via email (in a dedicated folder, for example) they can be scrolled through fairly easily when you need to. Throw a few dozen PMs into your inbox since the last time you logged in and you'll spend an age sorting out regular PMs and individual reports, and marking the rest as read.

Not to mention that even if the reported posts did go to your PM rather than email, you'd still get an email telling you you have a new PM.

mathepac

Dav wrote: »

... we are not going to make the changes you've requested in the short to medium term (and probably long term) as there is simply too much other technical work that has a higher priority.

Sound, thanks.

Steve

Dades wrote: »

As, say, a Soc CMod, you get reported posts from 100+ forums. Via email (in a dedicated folder, for example) they can be scrolled through fairly easily when you need to. Throw a few dozen PMs into your inbox since the last time you logged in and you'll spend an age sorting out regular PMs and individual reports, and marking the rest as read.

Though as a mod, I thought it would be a good feature if it could be turned on or off.

I agree that pm report notifications would be unworkable.

On beta skin, there's a great feature that flashes icons to say you have unread pm's and / or unread posts in followed threads. As a compromise, if there were a similar icon for mods to indicate unread reports with a link to modutils it might work.

Spear

Zaph wrote: »

There are PM inbox limits and it's probably more likely that a person would hit that limit before they would any limit on their e-mail inbox. I've often spoken to people who said they didn't receive a PM because their inbox was full. By sending it to an external e-mail address it at least ensures that the report is delivered.

And mods get larger PM inboxes to accommodate mod functions.

Alternately, make report post notifications a separate category from PMs, so they don't count towards the limit.

coffee_cake

I really wouldn't like a new PM thing for reported posts. We have modutils (that one is really handy), the reported posts forum, and emails already.