Another echo. As nice as those PMs are (just received another one), they really aren't necessary - I'd sooner the time was spent maintaining those hammers.
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Another echo. As nice as those PMs are (just received another one), they really aren't necessary - I'd sooner the time was spent maintaining those hammers.
Yeah, that's fair enough. Don't get me wrong, I fully appreciate the work you all do, and I can well imagine that PMing after every single report would get incredibly tedious... and that's given the amount of spam I see. I suspect it's a bit of an iceberg situation in that regard.Quote:
Originally Posted by Saracen
Going back to the original paragraph I quoted, what is the ideal scenario?
Suppose I saw a post in which fng123 called friendlychap456 something I deem offensive, reported it, and several days later down the line (whatever you deem a reasonable timeframe) it's still there exactly as it was, user does not have banned as a tagline, what would you want?
Would you prefer people to avoid wasting any more of your time and just accept that it has been missed, moderated in a behind the scenes manner, or deemed acceptable, or would you want people to report it again and say "Should I not have reported this in the first place?"
Well while that situation can occur, in practice it is rare because most of the longer established members know what is acceptable and reports that don't require action are rare. But in that event, even if I reply to you, someone else might report it (in which case it probably does need action) or another member of the team might take action. So in that case I would probably let the rest of the team know and/or post something the thread.
It is difficult to generalise, because each report is different, but we would rather have too many reports than too few!
Understood. I just want people to know reports are appreciated, even if it doesn't always seem that way.Quote:
Originally Posted by snootyjim
I guess, as Peter said, it's hard to generalise.Quote:
Originally Posted by snootyjim
For instance ... a bit offensive, or quite a lot offensive?
Offence is a hard one to call. We don't want to curtail and honest exchange of views, but I've certainly made the point again and again and again that I like to see the issue played, not the poster. And it's inevitably a bit of a judgement thing, and even involves regional and/or cultural variations - there are some phrases that I suspect would be shrugged off in some places that'll get you a punch on the nose in others. And then, there's sometimes instances where my call is that someone has gone out of their way to say something that I feel sure is intended to be taken as being offensive without overtly being so.
And, not all changes of status that we can apply will make any difference to tagline. A spammer being banned does, but some don't, and they may be applied to 'proper' members. The absence of a "banned", therefore, might be an indication that a spammer has been missed, but might not mean that no action has been taken, be it just a snotty email from a mod (which is sometimes all it requires), if it's a real member.
So it's hard to give you a categoric answer.
No no, it's not a waste. Never a waste. Don't think that.Quote:
Originally Posted by snootyjim
I guess the best I can say is that it puts a bit of a judgement call on you .... is it a serious matter that really ought to be dealt with, or is it a bit borderline? And you can only go by what you think. If you think it's been missed, the best bet is to bring it directly to someone's attention .... as long as it's not always me. ;) (Note 1)
I guess if I were in your situation, I'd probably send a mod a PM saying something like ...
"I reported this a few days ago, and no action appears to have been taken. If it's been dealt with, sorry to pester you, but if it's been missed, you may want to look at it."
I don't see how any mod can object too that, and it just may be that we really have missed something.
We don't really coordinate action on most things, unless it requires discussion before (or after) action. It would just be too cumbersome to do it. So .... it may be that a report gets made and I ignore it because I was away/busy etc, and assumed someone else dealt with it,. and everyone else did the same thing. :embarrassed:
As for timeline, again, I guess it varies a bit. We've had discussions among the mods on occasion about how to deal with various things, and my recommendation has been, broadly ....
1) if it's serious and urgent, deal with it, then raise a mod discussion
2) if it's serious but not urgent, note it and raise a mod discussion
3) if it's not serious enough to need discussing, just deal with it.
An example of 1) would be something, for instance, that raises legal issues, like defamation. If I see anything I put in that class, I'd delete it, at least from public view, right there and then, and then discuss it. Usually, it can always be undeleted if need be. But you'd see action as soon as I saw it, and the same will apply if other mods see it. There have been occasions where I've ended up on the phone to DR because something needed sorting right away. I remember once making him late for a business meeting in Taiwan 'cos I caught him on MSN and we had a chat about a problem and, bless him, he didn't tell me where he was until we'd been on the phone for about 20 minutes. I'm glad I didn't get his cellphone bill that month. :D
So if you report something in that category .... well, to be honest, use the report button by all means (because it gets widespread attention), but PM'ing a couple of mods/admins as well is a good idea.
As for 2) .... well if it's going to get discussed before action's taken, you may see nothing happen for a few days, because obviously, most such discussions aren't real-time. I may ask a question, and it may be a day or so before everyone's had a chance to see it and comment, and then I reply and the process starts again. A detailed discussion can take a week .... or more. Or people may be online available, and we have it in an hour. It's very hard to generalise.
I wish I could be more formulaic and give you a detailed answer, but due to the way we generally work, I just can't. It's part of a relatively laid back (whatever some people, including some now banned, may think) style, where moderating decisions are made on the basis of a combination of guidelines for us to use, exercise of judgement and fairly widespread individual discretion. For instance, that call to DR in Taiwan involved just how far my authority as admin goes. Someone had told me I couldn't participate in a thread as a poster, and exercise authority as an admin at the same time. It turns out I can. ;) The answer, more or less, was that if I wasn't trusted to make decisions, I wouldn't be given the ability to make them, and if trust in that judgement disappears, it's time to stop being an admin. Fair enough. It's the principle of a general staff .... people are trusted to make the decision the person giving them the authority would be likely to have made, or is at least happy with. And that means a fair degree of judgement, which means I, and all the other mods, pretty much have to call each situation as we see it.
In the case of "offence" therefore, my reaction may depend on several things. Catching me in a really bad mood isn't a good idea. :embarrassed: ;) But other factors will be just how offensive something was, or appears to have been intended to be (and that is certainly a judgement call), and it will also include whether it's a one-off or part of a pattern in a given thread, whether we've had cause to warn people before, and whether we've just issued a general warning, and even whether we've already asked people to knock of the sniping in that thread.
It's possible, for instance, that one offensive remark would cause me to suspend someone on the spot, but another might cause me to open a discussion to see if others take it how I did. One member caught a suspension from me recently, but I asked if I'd misread it and the general view was, probably yes. The member, who I won't embarrass by naming, was very gracious about getting unsuspended about 2 days into a 7 day holiday.
So, as you can see, there's no hard and fast answer either to what action might happen, or how fast it'll happen. I know this doesn't help you much with what you asked, but hopefully, it'll aid in understanding what's going on, sometimes at least, behind the scenes here.
Note (1) If it's in a forum with named mods, start with them. Failing that, one of the mods or admins most often online, or that you think are currently online.
Sorry it's taken me a while to get round to reading your post, didn't want to do it last night when I was half asleep.
It is all very helpful, thanks for taking the time to give such a comprehensive response. In a way, every time we make the decision to report a post, we are engaging in the moderation process, so understanding more about how it works is very helpful when deciding how and when to deal with posts/reports/follow-ups.
I sometimes feel like I'm treading a fine line between actually saving time and effort for moderators, and undoing all of that, for instance through flagging up things that I believe may have been missed. Even just saying that you don't see how moderators could object to a PM along the lines of the one you suggested is extremely useful in that regard, since it's something I've always refrained from - perhaps in one or two situations, to the detriment of the forums.
Ultimately, I just enjoy posting on the Hexus boards, and feel much more at home here than I have on any of the (many) fora I've been a member of in the past, so I'm keen to keep it in the sort of condition in which I enjoy posting. To that extent, it always gets under my skin a bit when it's abused and I'm cautious of going overboard, trying to get things "fixed" when they're already in the process of being fixed, or never needed fixing in the first place. Knowing what processes are going on behind the scenes, and roughly what the mod team considers to be the boundaries is all extremely useful in that regard.
That's cleared up all of my queries really, so if anybody has any particular desire to lock the thread that's fine by me. Thanks again to everyone who responded, it has been a very useful thread.
The biggest issue I have is time currently, and the current system doesn't lend itself well to the 'take a 5 minute look at the forums' every hour or so I get on busy days.
An integrated solution like linked is much better. Currently I have to log into my email, click a link to the post, often login to view it, decide on course and action it, and then email the user back (which a lot of the time I avoid due to it being my personal email address)....it's just not a good system.
I've used a dedicated email address for the above previously, but the problem is that it becomes another account to check, which adds more overhead / time to the entire process.
VBB really needs a PM link system for system reports.
I didn't realise the current system was so restrictive. I figured, obviously incorrectly, that reports went into a collective pool, a section visible only to mods/admins. That really explains the bewildering delay I sometimes see - I report a spammer, see there's a mod/admin online, yet it could be a good while before action is taken. (Note: That's not a dig!)
Considering the work created by the current system, is it not feasible to rework the script in-house? I suppose if it was that simple it would have been done already though.
Thanks very much for the clarification. As snootyjim said, this has been a very enlightening thread :)
I guess I shouldn't speak for the others, but my view is that intention goes a long way, and I can't object to someone who's intention was to help. I certainly don't want to get bombarded with dozens of PMs a day, if everyone starts doing that as the first step, but that's not what you're talking about, and a PM if you think something's been missed clearly has the right intention. And, of course, I get PMs for specific purposes, and that's fine too, even if it sometimes takes a reminder nudge. :embarrassed:Quote:
Originally Posted by snootyjim
All I can say is, I've not yet felt anyone, and I mean anyone was PMing unnecessarily, or being a nuisance. I guess it could happen, but it hasn't yet.
Sadly, no common pool. A support ticket-type system, might well be a good idea, depending on the effort involved in setting it up, and in running it. But right now, it's email-based and when each mod can or can't pick up emails varies a lot.Quote:
Originally Posted by pauldarkside
I certainly welcome making the moderation process more transparent, and yes, we regard every member of the community as a moderator, just that those with the title have a few more privileges to do something about it. Admins have a few more again (although that varies between admins).Quote:
Originally Posted by snootyjim
In way, think of the structure as similar to cabinet government. DR is at the top, his paid staff are the civil service, Admins are the cabinet, and moderators are the executive. OK. a bit simplistic, because there is actually little difference between mods and admins, but you get the idea!...
No objection, in fact the number of reports indicates to an extent, the urgency a problem :) There used to be a habit of adding "reported" to the bottom of a diodgy post, but that really just created more work. Although it reduced the number of reports, it created more work as that post had to be removed manually after the offending post had been dealt with.Quote:
Originally Posted by snootyjim
Good! We think we keep the tone about right. We do sometimes get accused of over-moderating, but I hope the boundaries are fairly clear. We don't want the forums to become a clique of old established members, so we want to encourage new members, and if they sometimes get things wrong, a gentle prod is much better than a flame, but tbh, that is fairly rare.Quote:
Originally Posted by snootyjim
Good!Quote:
Originally Posted by snootyjim
I keep a computer or two online most of the time, and there is usually a web page open on HEXUS (well, why wouldn't there be ? :) ) so I may be showing as online, even though I am doing something else. Like Saracen, I have a dedicated mailbox for receiving post reports (IMAP so it is replicated across various machines, smartphone etc) but it can be a while before I see a report, but the current system does allow any mod/admin on the dist list for a given forum to get the report.Quote:
Originally Posted by pauldarkside
And thank you, and snootyjim, and all the other spam watchers who help us to keep the forums the way we think you want them to be.