The old forums allowed you to write down specific details on why you felt a post needed to be moderated. The new forum only offers three choices: Off-Topic, Inappropriate, and Spam. These three choices do not adequately cover all possible violations. For example, reporting posts for violating a forum-specific ruleset (like out-of-character posts on the in-character Intergalactic Summit) cannot be easily conveyed to moderators via the flag tool. Please expand the options or just add a user-input field like the old forum had.
6 Likes
Much support for this.
But I get the impression that this would put too much work on the ISDGM group because it encourages more reporting than CCP wants to see. If you cannot report a thing, like redundancy or arcane rule violations, you are less likely to report at all, which puts less work on the moderators.
2 Likes
Eeehhhh… first i thought this as well, but actually it’s not necessary.
They could reduce the options to one (which, of course, wouldn’t be an option then 
): “Come and check, please.”
We have to assume that any moderator is aware of the rules and capable of telling if a specific flagged post breaks them or falls out of line. therefore any additional explanations are actually irrelevant. the need of a textbox stems from flaggers assuming that:
- moderators need an explanation
- moderators can’t think for themselves
There is no reason to add any reason at all, because we can safely assume that moderators will be capable of figuring out why a post has been flagged.
No?
This assumes they can’t think for themselves, which makes no sense. it also assumes that moderators would only operate within the reason provided from the flagger, which equally makes no sense, because the moderators aren’t bots.
Counterpoints?
Those are good points, but I feel in that case that there would at least need to be a “Other reason” option alongside the current 3. The issue that encouraged me to write this thread is that I tried to report a post that clearly violated a rule but was not covered by the three current choices, which forced me to select an option that did not apply just to be able to send in the report. A “Other reason” option would have sufficed in that case, noting an issue with the post but leaving the mod to determine the violation.
2 Likes
I believe this is covered by the fact that moderators aren’t robots and can for themselves realize what the reason for the flagging is. On the other hand did i not think about possibly higher motives why the amount of options is so limited. is it well meant, as to give people more freedom? is it an oversight? hmm…
I agree. At least an “other reason” option makes sense. it’s not about the moderator, though, who himself should be able to determine a rule violation (independent of the options), but for the flaggers who would have an easier time figuring out which option to pick.
So, I guess, it should be either no option, or an “alternative, all encompassing” option called “Other reasons”. Considering the increasing complexity, i feel like having no options at all actually makes the most sense, because moderators cqn figure it out for themselves anyway. i doubt they will only look for the one provided anyway. i guess a statement from @ISD_Rontea * would be helpful.
(* sorry, i just picked one. on mobile, the list is cut off behind the keyboard, and there’s no way to make the whole list visible.)
The point of different categories for flagging is to figure out at a glance which flags have priority over others. Your suggestion to reduce them to one makes moderation harder than it should be and is therefore counterproductive.
1 Like
can you explain that? because i doubt this is an issue, as long as one assumes moderators aren’t idiots.
that’s a great point.
1 Like
This has nothing to do with idiocy. It has to do with how these reports land on their desk. If you see 100 “check this” reports, you have no way to tell at a glance what these 100 reports are about. If you have 50 redundancy, 10 insults rule violations, 5 ooc rule violation, 10 char bazaar spam and 25 spam reports, you or the system can sort them by severity. Instead of working through them in chronological order and potentially leaving the most severe reports linger for a long time, you can tackle them based on their severity and get the most important reports dealt with immediately. You also don’t have to waste time on reading threads/posts first in order to figure out what is severe and what is not.
An additional Others field should not be an issue for such an automated severity sorting mechanism either, because it can sort by keywords in the report. This is already possible because the forum has a system in place that suggests you alternative existing topics when you type something in the title for a new topic, which means the forum has the capability to monitor and figure out information and there’s no reason to assume the moderation tools are less capable.
2 Likes
ah that makes sense, for once. thanks!
1 Like
Bumping this, because it’s once again come up for me. Reporting a thread as needing to be moved to a different forum is something else that is not clearly offered in the current report functions. There’s an off-topic button, but its description is specifically for individual posts within the thread and their relation to the original post ("… this post is not relevant to -the current discussion as defined by the title and first post-…"), not for entire threads.
Also, as a random sidenote, the bold function does not work on Firefox for me (version 54.0.1, 64 bit) . It does seem to work on Microsoft Edge.
1 Like
There should definitely be a comments section available with the report options. Having a comments section allows the report to be more specific and allows the person flagging the post to actually quote the offensive statement which could be edited out by moderators, thus leaving the rest of the posted reply intact.
At times players add derogatory remarks directed towards a specific player mixed in with their general text. While the overall posted reply may not be offensive to others, that single remark will definitely incite rage in the player it’s directed towards. Also if that remark is left in the post due to a moderator thinking it’s ok, that gives the impression of showing favoritism which ultimately creates animosity and resentment towards moderators as well as CCP.
Not to mention seeing a derogatory remark directed towards a specific player left in a posted reply just encourages others to do the same which incites a Forum Flame War and causes the thread to be derailed.
DMC
1 Like