Determining proper uses of the report button

[Sokwe]

After closing a large number of reports, in many cases taking no action, I think it might be reasonable to discuss what constitutes proper and improper use of the report button. I Hope that through this discussion we can get some clearer guidelines on when and how to use the report button.

Here are two statements by other moderators that I tend to agree with:

The report button... should only be used to alert moderators to actual spam, or offensive content, or other things that are severely inappropriate.

Please, everyone, make a habit of communicating directly with anyone who is making minor "newbie" mistakes -- and skip the post reports. Direct communication works; post reports often just end up being another kind of pointless mess that moderators have to clean up.

When considering the forum rules, I think it's obvious that all violations of rule 1 should be reported immediately. I think violations of rule 2 can also be reported in all cases, although they are lower priority than rule 1 violations.

If you encounter violations of rules 3, 4, and 5, I think you should simply inform the user of the violation in the nicest way possible (seriously, be nice). If the user continues to violate the rules after that, then you can report any further violations.

I think it's fine to use the report button to suggest that off-topic posts be moved to the correct thread. If you do so, please include in the report a link to the thread you think the post should be moved to. However, posts or topics that you think are not notable or interesting should generally not be reported. If they are truly not notable or interesting, then they will likely get few replies and will eventually sink off page 1. I'm reluctant to delete such posts, and I also do not want to move them to the big catch-all threads where they cause clutter.


Feel free to add your thoughts on the use of the report feature, but remember that the moderators who actually have to deal with the reports will have the final say on how the report feature should be used. Also keep in mind that too many reports for trivial matters will make it harder to see reports for important matters.

[confocaloid]

[...] At the moment there seems to be a consensus among moderators that it would be a mis-use of the post reporting system to bother moderators about moving response posts out of a hypothetical "stamp collections only" thread. [...]

[citation needed]
To be clear, I believe the link you provided doesn't support the claim you made. So far, it is nothing more than your stated opinion on the matter.

The post you are linking to just says
"[...] it's fine to use the report button to suggest that off-topic posts be moved to the correct thread. If you do so, please include in the report a link to the thread you think the post should be moved to [...]"
with a clarification regarding topics that are considered not notable or interesting.

As far as I can tell so far, if a "stamp collections only" thread is created, and extended discussion is considered offtopic for that thread, then such off-topic posts can be reported with a link to another thread where such extended discussion could make sense.

[...] I'd strongly suggest that it would be better to keep the rules much more relaxed -- so that that kind of maintenance work is unnecessary, just as it generally is for any other standard forum thread.

I understand the general idea of keeping the rules sufficiently relaxed to avoid unnecessary maintenance.
However, without any ground rules at all or with too relaxed rules, any forum thread will devolve into a variation on "random posts" and die. Some maintenance is necessary (including dealing with offtopic posts).

EDIT after this was moved to another thread: for reference, below is a quoted copy of the preceding discussion:

[...] How about a new thread called "Annual oscillator stamp collections", where only one new post has to get made every year? Then when an update happens, the Oscillator Discussion Thread could just get a link posted to the stamp collection for the current year, whenever it's updated.

If it's supposed to get only one post per year, and it's otherwise ontopic in the Oscillator Discussion Thread, then it could just as well go into Oscillator Discussion Thread. As far as I can tell, there's no need for a separate thread for annual oscillator stamp collections specifically.

There could be a separate thread for any unmaintained or semi-maintained stamp collections (not limited to oscillator stamp collections, and not limited to annually updated stamp collections). There's no need for a "moderator shenanigans post" in it, and there would be no need to maintain additional lists of links or anything to the same effect. The thread itself would serve as a list/collection of stamp collections.

viewtopic.php?p=189101#p189101
viewtopic.php?p=189098#p189098

[...] There should be a meaningful way to contribute some one-time effort that you did once and would like to share now, but are not planning to maintain/keep updated.
There is a need for middle ground, between the two extremes "not contribute anything at all" and "commit to a big project".

It would be overkill to create a separate thread for every one-time effort. (Too many unnecessary threads with a couple of posts in each.)
It would be waste to post a nontrivial one-time effort in "Unsure discoveries". ("Collect-and-share" posts will be quickly scattered and lost in a stream of "discover-and-share" posts.)
Some, but not all, one-time efforts in principle belong to more specific existing threads. (E.g. an oscillator collection may get posted in the oscillator discussion thread.) Even then, I think having a single dedicated place to (cross)post such one-time efforts would be helpful.

I think creating a "half-maintained collection thread" for "collect-and-share" posts has a chance to work well. It would be "half-maintained".
On one hand, there would be no single dedicated maintainer person (hence, people would simply post their one-time effort collections, without any further "structured integration" of those posts).
On the other hand, there would still be specific scope and thread-specific guidelines/rules to be followed (hence, off-topic posts would get reported and should be moved). Without scope/rules/guidelines, any such thread will die prematurely, by becoming "random posts".

There could be a separate thread for any unmaintained or semi-maintained stamp collections (not limited to oscillator stamp collections, and not limited to annually updated stamp collections).

Please go ahead and create this thread, if you would like it to exist. It's much simpler to just try it and see what happens, than to try to keep on discussing whether or not it's a good idea.

However, when you describe the rules for the new thread in its first post, please think carefully about what will happen when people want to respond to a new stamp-collection post -- saying, e.g., that something is incorrect or something should be added. At the moment there seems to be a consensus among moderators that it would be a mis-use of the post reporting system to bother moderators about moving response posts out of a hypothetical "stamp collections only" thread.

If you make a thread that has ground rules that are likely to be broken frequently, just due to people making casual responses to new posts, then you won't be able to rely on current forum moderators to do endless maintenance work to keep the thread "clean" according to those arbitrary rules. I'd strongly suggest that it would be better to keep the rules much more relaxed -- so that that kind of maintenance work is unnecessary, just as it generally is for any other standard forum thread.

Re: a separate "annual oscillator stamp collections" thread -- certainly if Entity Valkyrie 2 doesn't want to create a thread like that, there's no particular need to do it. I think it might be better to have a separate dedicated thread, than to keep re-posting incremental changes to a large collection in the Oscillator Discussion Thread, for reasons that you've pointed out recently. Entity Valkyrie 2 has done plenty enough good and consistent work on maintaining those annual collections, that they deserve a separate thread in my opinion.

Long story short, I'd rather see a separate thread for these stamp collections than have them piled indiscriminately into one single huge thread, along with everything that looks like an "unmaintained or semi-maintained stamp collection".

[dvgrn]

[...] At the moment there seems to be a consensus among moderators that it would be a mis-use of the post reporting system to bother moderators about moving response posts out of a hypothetical "stamp collections only" thread. [...]

[citation needed]
To be clear, I believe the link you provided doesn't support the claim you made. So far, it is nothing more than your stated opinion on the matter.

@confocaloid, I've moved your post to this thread, because it was terribly off-topic in the Sparker Compilation thread.

The link was to a post by Sokwe, quoting calcyman to say that "The report button... should only be used to alert moderators to actual spam, or offensive content, or other things that are severely inappropriate."

So the link definitely does give something more than just my stated opinion.

As far as I can tell so far, if a "stamp collections only" thread is created, and extended discussion is considered offtopic for that thread, then such off-topic posts can be reported with a link to another thread where such extended discussion could make sense.
...
I understand the general idea of keeping the rules sufficiently relaxed to avoid unnecessary maintenance.
However, without any ground rules at all or with too relaxed rules, any forum thread will devolve into a variation on "random posts" and die. Some maintenance is necessary (including dealing with offtopic posts).

My concern here is that you'll be creating a thread with special ground rules that will create a necessity for a rather large amount of maintenance, which would otherwise be unnecessary. I'm attempting to give you fair warning that the current moderator team is unlikely to do that kind of maintenance -- because we have what look like perfectly good existing alternatives:

1) don't try to create a single huge thread and pile all stamp collections arbitrarily into them, and/or
2) don't make arbitrary rules that require no discussion of new stamp-collection posts.
3) instead, create a new collection thread for each topic that seems to merit a maintained stamp collection -- pretty much the same as we've always done.

I certainly don't think that the current system is perfect. I just don't see any way that the current situation can be improved by adding a high-maintenance new thread that seems like it will either end up being ignored, or will turn into a huge jumbled mess of unrelated and incomplete stamp collections.

[confocaloid]

There could be a separate thread for any unmaintained or semi-maintained stamp collections (not limited to oscillator stamp collections, and not limited to annually updated stamp collections).

Please go ahead and create this thread, if you would like it to exist. [...] Long story short, I'd rather see a separate thread for these stamp collections than have them piled indiscriminately into one single huge thread, along with everything that looks like an "unmaintained or semi-maintained stamp collection".

I would likely start such a thread a few weeks ago, if there was some evidence of other people understanding the idea.
Unfortunately, so far there is no such understanding.

In particular, one of most active participants in the discussions describes the idea as "piled indiscriminately into one single huge thread" or "huge jumbled mess". It's fairly clear to me that there is no understanding of the idea (and therefore it is meaningless to discuss whether or not there is a support for it).
Hence currently I'm not too enthusiastic about trying to implement that idea.

As a single place for collecting stamp collections, a single combined thread is unambiguously better than lots of scattered short threads on narrow topics. It's easier to remember how to find a single thread, than to remember multiple topic-specific collection threads. It's easier to look through a single thread, than to look through multiple threads whose topics/scopes overlap.

Many narrow topics for which separate forum threads were created don't really need separate threads.

[dvgrn]

Getting back to this thread's stated purpose -- I'd like to put in a vote for the response that Sokwe suggested for violations of rules 3, 4, and 5:

After closing a large number of reports, in many cases taking no action, I think it might be reasonable to discuss what constitutes proper and improper use of the report button...

If you encounter violations of rules 3, 4, and 5, I think you should simply inform the user of the violation in the nicest way possible (seriously, be nice). If the user continues to violate the rules after that, then you can report any further violations.

I'd really like to see more than one attempt to explain the problem to the user in question, before posts start getting reported. Starting in September when I get back to monitoring post reports, I'll pay attention to rule 3|4|5 violation reports if they include links to at least two or three messages, posted a day or more before the reported post, that talk directly to the user and politely request that they change the specific bad behavior that is being reported.

Preferably these requests won't all be by the same person. It sometimes happens that one person considers some particular behavior to be obviously rule-breaking, or at least highly irritating -- but nobody else is reporting those posts, maybe on the theory that it works better to give newcomers extra leeway for a while and not try to make them do everything perfectly while they're still learning the ropes.

I'm currently planning to continue to immediately close reports about violations of rules 3, 4, and/or 5, in any case where I don't see any evidence that anyone has tried to talk to the violator directly. I've been doing this for quite a few months now, usually without taking any other action. If I close reports like that as soon as I see them, then nobody else on the admin/mod team has to waste their time looking at them.

I think it's fine to use the report button to suggest that off-topic posts be moved to the correct thread. If you do so, please include in the report a link to the thread you think the post should be moved to. However, posts or topics that you think are not notable or interesting should generally not be reported.

I mostly agree with this; there are occasional situations where a post clearly went astray and belongs somewhere else -- e.g., when someone starts a new thread for a particular rule, without noticing that there's an existing thread for that rule. If the post report mentions the thread by number -- the "t=nnnn" value in the target thread's URL -- then that makes it really easy for a moderator to do a quick move operation for that single post.

If the thread number isn't given, and/or the need to move the post is less obvious -- e.g., if the suggestion is something vague like "delete or move to the Sandbox" -- and if there's no sign that anybody tried to talk to the poster directly...

... then I'm much more likely to simply close that report without taking action. Exactly like minor rule violations, off-topic posts of this kind seem to me to be the community's responsibility, not part of the moderator team's job.

The first step is always to point out the problem directly (and politely) to the person making the post(s). It's only when a repeat offender seems to be unwilling or unable to listen to feedback, that it might help to get moderators involved.

[confocaloid]

[...] I'd really like to see more than one attempt to explain the problem to the user in question, before posts start getting reported. [...]

You will not always be able to see those attempts, because some of those attempts will be in PM rather than in forum posts.

I believe it's detrimental to the environment to demand evidence in the form of forum posts. Such forum posts will themselves end up being offtopic, derailing forum threads.

[...] I'm currently planning to continue to immediately close reports about violations of rules 3, 4, and/or 5, in any case where I don't see any evidence that anyone has tried to talk to the violator directly. I've been doing this for quite a few months now, usually without taking any other action. If I close reports like that as soon as I see them, then nobody else on the admin/mod team has to waste their time looking at them. [...]

I believe it's detrimental to the environment to "immediately close reports" merely because you personally don't see any evidence of serious problems or otherwise don't want to handle the issue at the moment.
Just because you cannot or don't want to handle the issue, does not mean nobody else in the admin/mod team is able and willing to handle the issue.

[dvgrn]

[...] I'd really like to see more than one attempt to explain the problem to the user in question, before posts start getting reported. [...]

You will not always be able to see those attempts, because some of those attempts will be in PM rather than in forum posts.

I believe it's detrimental to the environment to demand evidence in the form of forum posts. Such forum posts will themselves end up being offtopic, derailing forum threads.

Those are both good points. I'll modify my suggestion: if someone has done the extra work of private-messaging someone who is violating forum rules or being repeatedly off-topic, then it makes sense for them to report the next violation -- and mention the PM conversation in the post report.

A quote of the private message would often be helpful, so that moderators can verify that the PM clearly and politely explained the same problem that is showing up in the new reported post.

-- All of that said: sometimes it's worthwhile to put in a public forum post that brings up these kinds of issues, even though it temporarily derails a forum thread. If a problem is bad enough then it needs to be addressed publicly, where everyone can read it and be reminded not to do (whatever-it-is). Post reports aren't public, so they can't play that role of periodically reminding everyone -- not just one particular person indulging in an off-topic post -- about paying attention to forum rules.

[confocaloid]

If some problem reached the stage of being "bad enough [that] it needs to be addressed publicly", then derailing an unrelated forum thread (with some specific topic and scope) with a meta discussion is very unlikely to solve the existing problem, and instead is likely to create at least one new problem.

Further, a forum thread with some specific topic and scope is most likely watched by only a very small subset of members. Hence a post in such a thread will not solve the question "[...] where everyone can read it and be reminded [...]"

I think your attitude of "keeping bad things scattered in random places just to remind people about something" is misguided and counterproductive. Instead of encouraging people to keep the environment in a sane state, this attitude encourages people to ignore the rules and guidelines and to stop caring about their environment. I see this attitude as a very real, observable problem in itself.

[...]
-- All of that said: sometimes it's worthwhile to put in a public forum post that brings up these kinds of issues, even though it temporarily derails a forum thread. If a problem is bad enough then it needs to be addressed publicly, where everyone can read it and be reminded not to do (whatever-it-is). Post reports aren't public, so they can't play that role of periodically reminding everyone -- not just one particular person indulging in an off-topic post -- about paying attention to forum rules.