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Reporting Etiquette

LurkingInTheDeceit

LurkingInTheDeceit

“Brave” explorer treading “New” land
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Scenario here: When you've come across potential rule breaking and there's more than one post involved, but someone uninvolved with the rule breaking has handily compiled some of the rule breaking posts in one message, should you report the uninvolved parties compilation post so moderators can get a quick overview or individually report all the problematic posts?
 
LurkingInTheDeceit said:
Scenario here: When you've come across potential rule breaking and there's more than one post involved, but someone uninvolved with the rule breaking has handily compiled some of the rule breaking posts in one message, should you report the uninvolved parties compilation post so moderators can get a quick overview or individually report all the problematic posts?
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For me, I usually just report the most egregious, then make a note there are more in the thread.
 
LurkingInTheDeceit said:
Scenario here: When you've come across potential rule breaking and there's more than one post involved, but someone uninvolved with the rule breaking has handily compiled some of the rule breaking posts in one message, should you report the uninvolved parties compilation post so moderators can get a quick overview or individually report all the problematic posts?
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The staff don't care if you report multiple rule-breaking posts, just don't be an asshole about reporting.

IE; don't brag about or outright threaten to report someone in threads on the forum in an attempt to use the moderation staff as your personal cudgel, don't report literally every post in the thread, that sort of thing. Just use your best judgement.
 
Generic_Generica said:
The staff don't care if you report multiple rule-breaking posts, just don't be an asshole about reporting.

IE; don't brag about or outright threaten to report someone in threads on the forum in an attempt to use the moderation staff as your personal cudgel, don't report literally every post in the thread, that sort of thing. Just use your best judgement.
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I guess it's a case by case thing, if someone has gone to the trouble of quoting a load of people to tell them to knock it off then there's generally not much point of reporting unless they continue. If they continue, I can just report that continuation with some context included. Totally with you on the bragging or threatening thing btw, reporting someone and telling people about it feels way too confrontational for me to ever do.
 
LurkingInTheDeceit said:
Scenario here: When you've come across potential rule breaking and there's more than one post involved, but someone uninvolved with the rule breaking has handily compiled some of the rule breaking posts in one message, should you report the uninvolved parties compilation post so moderators can get a quick overview or individually report all the problematic posts?
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I've been told that reports on Xenforo are kind of like posts in a thread. So you can include quotes, urls, and lots of details. I've also been told that it's always better to include too much information than not enough info, as the more details you give the mods, the easier it is for them to figure out what is going on. Reports also show what was in the post as it was reported, so if a user deletes or edits the post, the mods can still see what was reported at the time the report was made.
 
GLH said:
I've been told that reports on Xenforo are kind of like posts in a thread. So you can include quotes, urls, and lots of details. I've also been told that it's always better to include too much information than not enough info, as the more details you give the mods, the easier it is for them to figure out what is going on. Reports also show what was in the post as it was reported, so if a user deletes or edits the post, the mods can still see what was reported at the time the report was made.
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Pretty much this, aside from that you can't really use bbcode (tabs, etc) in them.
One reported post, with a ton of detail / links to other rule-breaking posts, is a cleaner experience than a bunch of separate reports- as each reported post is like its own thread.


Rathmun said:
Maybe not most of them, but at least one will yell at you over PM for it.
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Feel free to make reports if you think the person is breaking the rules.
If we feel a user is trying to use the report system in bad faith, we will open a discussion with said user, and maybe ask them to take things a bit more seriously.
 
ultima333 said:
Feel free to make reports if you think the person is breaking the rules.
If we feel a user is trying to use the report system in bad faith, we will open a discussion with said user, and maybe ask them to take things a bit more seriously.
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So, going down the page and reporting a half dozen people all participating in the same derail, which has already been declared a derail by the OP, is explicitly ok?
 
Rathmun said:
So, going down the page and reporting a half dozen people all participating in the same derail, which has already been declared a derail by the OP, is explicitly ok?
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Reporting each and every post is like making twenty to thirty 'threads' in the report queue. If a thread is derailing, make one report where the derail starts and then give extra details from there in that report. For example, if there's a twenty page thread, and every post after page fifteen is a derail, you can say "A major derail started from this reported post here, and has gone on from here to page 20 in the thread". That tells staff where it started and where it ended.

If there's other details, you can add in more though to let staff deal with it quickly, as well as check to make sure the report is accurate. For example, a post like this tells staff everything they need to know quickly. "A major derail started from this reported post here, and has gone on from the post here on page 15 all the way to page 20 in the thread. That said, Jimbob has been the biggest spammer, the author Alice has been trying to get people to stop shitting up the thread, and page 18 the users Bob and Aerith tried to get things back on topic before the users Jimbob and PrettyPrincess came back and messed everything up again".

See the difference?
 
GLH said:
Reporting each and every post is like making twenty to thirty 'threads' in the report queue. If a thread is derailing, make one report where the derail starts and then give extra details from there in that report. For example, if there's a twenty page thread, and every post after page fifteen is a derail, you can say "A major derail started from this reported post here, and has gone on from here to page 20 in the thread". That tells staff where it started and where it ended.

If there's other details, you can add in more though to let staff deal with it quickly, as well as check to make sure the report is accurate. For example, a post like this tells staff everything they need to know quickly. "A major derail started from this reported post here, and has gone on from the post here on page 15 all the way to page 20 in the thread. That said, Jimbob has been the biggest spammer, the author Alice has been trying to get people to stop shitting up the thread, and page 18 the users Bob and Aerith tried to get things back on topic before the users Jimbob and PrettyPrincess came back and messed everything up again".

See the difference?
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I do.

Perhaps the official rules post regarding reports ought to have the detail about starting a thread each time included in it? Because to the average user the button is rather opaque. Press button, write complaint, hit ok. There's no obvious way in the reporting tool to link multiple posts to the report, and the rather small reporting text box doesn't tell the user that there's room for an entire post in said box. Rather, it gives the impression that it's supposed to be kept short and sweet, like a tweet. The knowledge that it's a full post with the ability to do something like say, linking all the offending posts in one go, would be extremely useful in many situations. Yes, it might result in something of a spaghetti post showing up as the first post for a thread in the reports forum, but at least it's all organized in one place, with convenient links to the (allegedly) guilty posts likewise all in one place.

For that matter, when yelling at a user for making multiple reports it might be a good idea to explain why. Because otherwise it comes across as "Screw you, stop reporting people spamming up your thread."


Edit: Heck, have a "help" link on the report box that links to some of the information in this thread. I'm not certain how much work it would be to add that link, but if it's easy then it would be a good way to improve life for the mods.
 
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There's gotta be a character limit to the report system, right? Even if it's very high like 10,000 characters. Put a Twitter-style character counter on the report box; that will help make it clear that you can write reports much bigger than a tweet.
 
MissileTeatime said:
There's gotta be a character limit to the report system, right? Even if it's very high like 10,000 characters. Put a Twitter-style character counter on the report box; that will help make it clear that you can write reports much bigger than a tweet.
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It would be easier to just make the box larger I think. It does have a handle in the corner to drag it larger, assuming you notice it there, so the default height and width shouldn't be too hard to change. If the report box looked larger, it would encourage more explanation of the report reason (if it even needs one). Just make it default to the same size as the text field for a new post, and people will adjust accordingly.
 
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