Report Resolution

Discussion in 'Site Feedback' started by DaveC426913, Apr 2, 2016.

  1. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    It frustrates me that Report Resolutions I receive in my Alerts box have no identifying information for followup.

    I recently received this Report Resolution:
    Unfortunately, your recent report has been rejected: Post in thread 'Why do ghosts wear human clothes?' - We can't understand your report or why you reported you own post.
    41 minutes ago

    The Resolution message has no mod/user associated with it, and there is no way I can provide any feedback in an attempt to clarify myself. There isn't even a reference to which post (of 300+) it is in regards to - only the thread title.

    Anything that can be done?
     
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  3. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    You could post your clarification here, if you think it is important.
     
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  5. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Right. Except I don't know what the problem was - i.e. I don't know which post was reported, and I don't know what I said about it. I have no access to that as AFAIK.
     
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  7. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Sounds like it probably wasn't a major issue, if you can't remember what your reported or why.
     
  8. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

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    Dave -

    The post you reported was this one:

    Hopefully that helps jog your memory?
     
  9. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Like any member trying to assist forum quality, I report infractions regularly.

    I'm trying not to read into that response that maybe reports are less a help for moderators than a burden (i.e. when there's doubt, assume it's not important). Am I misreading it?
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2016
  10. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

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    Thank you.

    I must have clicked on the wrong post. The subsequent post, 268, was a continuing attempt of a member to moderate participation in their thread.
     
  11. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,133
    Would it be feasible to modify report feedback to include a link to the reported post, along with a quote of the original report reason given?
     
  12. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

    Messages:
    39,397
    DaveC426913:

    At least two moderators looked at your report originally and couldn't work out what was being reported or why. That is why the report was rejected.

    Reports are often appreciated by moderators because they draw our attention to things that deserve moderator attention. We do get quite a lot of reports, and sometimes they come in bunches. In some cases, particularly when two members are engaged in a mutual personality battle or flame war, some members think they can gain leverage in argument by bringing the moderators in as a kind of extra weaponry for the battle. We try to avoid getting dragged into such disputes. Arriving at sciforums to be confronted by a list of 10 reports from 2 members reporting each other's posts in the same thread, is something we'd usually rather not have to deal with. However, we do examine all reports, even if we would rather not, so there is an element of a burden there on occasion.

    In the case of the conversation that you reported, it seems to be that you and Magical Realist were busy sniping back and forth at each other. As you have explained, it seems you considered MR's replies to you as an attempt by him to exclude you from the thread. I do wonder what response you expected from him, given your own posts leading up to his request that you leave the thread, though.

    It helps when you report the bad behaviour of another member if you have clear slate yourself. You shouldn't expect moderators to take a side in a flame war you are participating in, and in fact you could find yourself subject to moderation (probably in addition to the member you're reporting, if your report is justified), depending on the circumstances.
     
  13. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    I'm not sure whether that's possible given the forum software. In any case, there's nothing I can do about it. You could try asking Plazma Inferno!
     
  14. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    Right. I'm simply pointing out that the forum software dropped the ball. The report died because there was no facility for feedback when the mods needed clarification.

    In retrospect, my thread set the stage as that of a personal complaint; I should have led with what Daecon said: could the reports resolutions include a link?

    Wasn't really planning to get into the actual report. The world wont burn if this report doesn't get resolved.

    (Although, I presumed I was legit reporting an infraction. Member moderation is an infraction often called out in-thread by Mods.)

    My concern is more for smooth operation of the forum over the long-term than for a specific report.
     
    Last edited: Apr 4, 2016
  15. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    I was one of the moderators that read your report and I am fairly certain that I was the one that rejected it. We get a lot of reports on any given day, so I don't exactly remember the specifics of who did what in the report, but I am fairly sure I rejected it.

    As James noted, we read the threads or discussions attached to each report. It was clear that your report was a mistaken click, in that this was obviously not the post you wished to report. But I went through and read the your discussion with the other member and it was clearly a to and fro, you were both throwing jabs. So I then tried to spot what other post you could have reported that would have been actionable. And I couldn't find one that would have resulted in my actioning it. These are things that could and were discussed in the thread itself.

    The software does allow for some feedback and often, I will leave a message to be sent to the person who wrote the report. I don't think any of us were aware that the software did not provide a link as to which post that response was referring to. But that is how the software works. The current software allows us to be able to get through and deal with the reports a lot faster, which is good for us. It is not always feasible or possible for us to give such a detailed response to the reports we action because frankly, the text box we have to work with to give said response does not allow us to go into much detail. To wit, it is just a tiny text box that provides us with one line of text and that is it, there is no formatting, no ability to even have paragraphs. And I don't know about any other moderators, but that's fine for me. It makes our job easier.

    I haven't tried to fit a link in there on the occasions I do type out a response to the person filing the report. I don't even know it would fit or how it would come out the other side.

    What I can say is that we won't always provide feedback on the reports we get. For pretty much all of us, we get the report, we read the thread/discussion in question and we evaluate what is going on, determine whether there happened to be a breach of the rules and then we action it. Sometimes we will get multiple reports, all from the same thread and sometimes the thread can be over a dozen pages long. I am not being petty when I say that I often don't have the time to give a detailed response after that. I do not know if the software can be altered or tweaked to provide automatic links when you get notification of a decision from how we have actioned a report.

    You could try and ask the forum owners about that, since they operate the software.

    We can try and include a link to see if it can fit, but keep in mind that we don't send resolution feedback for all the reports we get.
     
  16. DaveC426913 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,935
    OK. Appreciate the attention to this.
    I suspected that the software would need more than just a setting tweak to do this. Much as it would be a nice feature, it isn't so.
    And it's of course not the mods' fault how the software works.

    Thanks.
     

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