"Report to moderator" wording

[suchmoon]

Use this function to inform the moderators and administrators of an abusive or wrongly posted message.
Please note that your email address will be revealed to the moderators if you use this.

That's what we see when we click "Report to moderator". Most prolific "reporters" probably don't pay attention to it since they have a fairly good understanding of forum rules but I think the text is not very friendly to less experienced users.

Let's start with the second part - is it true, i.e. do moderators get to see e-mail addresses? If yes, that should be changed. Reporting should have nothing to do with e-mails. If it's not true then that part of the text should be removed. It might discourage some users.

Now the first part. I think the word "abusive" might be interpreted as "someone insulted me" and if users report based on that interpretation they might get discouraged in their reports are unhandled or marked bad. It should be reworded to reflect the most common reasons to request moderator action, for example:

Use this function to inform the moderators and administrators of a post that violates forum rules. Please provide all relevant information in your comment.

I know theymos doesn't believe in "definitive rule lists" so if the above is not acceptable then maybe something like this:

Use this function to inform the moderators and administrators of off-topic, spam, low value posts, malware, plagiarism, and other rule violations. Note that scams and insults are not moderated. Please make it clear in your comment why the post is being reported and provide any supporting information to help the staff make their decision.

Although it does sound odd to say "rule violations" without pointing to actual rules.

Any comments welcome but please stay on the topic of the "Report to moderator" page. Let's not go too far into discussing the rules themselves, or violators of rules, or anything of that sort - there's plenty of other threads for that.

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[Lafu]

I dont have a problem with wording "Report to Moderator".
Would be "Report to Staff" sounding better? I guess not or maybe it does for others, i dont know.

For the Email thing I also have no problem with it, because Moderators, Global Moderators, Admins and the Account recovery Team are all the bitcointalk Team.

For sure if there is something that got abused about Emails it should be only be seen for admins and the recovery Team, but trust them for that is /was or will be not happens. Say never, never!

But im fine with the things, just my opinion!

[rhomelmabini]

With the second part I have no issue with it but (there's a but) I think the higher position member here in the forum can only see our emails and not inclusive for all mods or staff that we are submitting the report, just a suggestion though. I don't know what's the use of it to see our emails if we are reporting some posts but if those have use/s then I have no grudge against it.

Use this function to inform the moderators and administrators of off-topic, spam, low value posts, malware, plagiarism, and other rule violations. Note that scams and insults are not moderated. Please make it clear in your comment why the post is being reported and provide any supporting information to help the staff make their decision.

How about a link on the unofficial lists of rules of the forum be included in this part of the message? When I am reporting I am really using that as a source to report some posts and so do I guess for the most of the reporters here.

[UserU]

I dont have a problem with wording "Report to Moderator".
Would be "Report to Staff" sounding better? I guess not or maybe it does for others, i dont know.

For the Email thing I also have no problem with it, because Moderators, Global Moderators, Admins and the Account recovery Team are all the bitcointalk Team.

For sure if there is something that got abused about Emails it should be only be seen for admins and the recovery Team, but trust them for that is /was or will be not happens. Say never, never!

But im fine with the things, just my opinion!

Actually "Report" would do just fine. After all, mods/ staffs are involved in handling them.

But I feel that email disclosure is kind of intrusive. While thankfully no data breaches happened so far, I don't really feel comfortable when a non-admin views my email whenever I report. After all, our username is sufficient.

Imagine a member holds a grudge against a mod/ staff and reports the post. You can see where this goes.

[Lafu]

Imagine a member holds a grudge against a mod/ staff and reports the post. You can see where this goes.

Thats why they are Staff and Mods , and i guess that was happend a lot of times for sure!
Its not an easy job or handling things when you doing that and you have to be always neutral , no matter what a member writes or post .
They have to follow there rules too they get from theymos .
Also all reports can be watched from all so everybody knows what for reports are coming in and all .
The only diffrent thing is that Global Moderators can Ban and Unban users and they can handle all Boards.
Should be no problem with that.

[TheBeardedBaby]

That's not the only thing that might confuse the inexperienced users.
You have administrators which have a vision of the forum but not clear rules stated anywhere on the board, then you have community generated "unofficial rules" and strictly enforced by the mods, and people should always relate to those Unofficial rules
And the craziest thing for me is that there is no link to the rules in the Beginner & Help section, only a post by Lauda " newbies reads before posting" where the rules are mentioned somewhere in the wall of text as a small, invisible link.
I don't think the newbies will read all, they might read the rules if there's a visible link.

Sorry, I really didn't want to go so off topic as OP asked for but this is also a thing that bother me for quite a while.

Now on the topic, I like the newly suggested info text, maybe a link to the Welsh's Reporting guidelines will also be beneficial to the newbies.
For sure the email address shouldn't be shown. Whst is the whole logic behind it, to send the user an email if he is away for long time and there is some urgent matter to be dealt with?

[Little Mouse]

Use this function to inform the moderators and administrators of an abusive or wrongly posted message.
Please note that your email address will be revealed to the moderators if you use this.

I never noticed this, never knew that moderator could see my email when I report. I have no problem with that though. But there are a lot of users who are reporting without the knowledge of revealing their email address since people hardly read the statement.
I think email must not be visible to anyone except the admin- if they want to check.

[DireWolfM14]

I wondered about the logic of sharing the email address with mods for a report.  Maybe it was designed to discourage abusing the feature to annoy a mod or stalk another member?  I'm not using an email that discloses any personal information so it never bothered me, but I can see how it may discourage some one from making reports in specific board moderated by someone with whom they've had issues.

The terminology could use an update, I agree the use of the word "abusive" should be addressed.  Being a global forum it's likely someone would have to translate that phrase, and the meaning could easily be lost in that translation.  I'm not sure how I feel about links to rules and guidelines that are not official.

And the craziest thing for me is that there is no link to the rules in the Beginner & Help section, only a post by Lauda " newbies reads before posting" where the rules are mentioned somewhere in the wall of text as a small, invisible link.

Very good point, even if it is off-topic.  

[Welsh]

I don't receive emails, and AFAIK no moderators receive emails anymore, and your email is not revealed within the report queue. I believe it was a feature which was disliked by the majority of the staff at the time, and was removed. The only information that is received when you make a report is the username of the reporter, username of the person being reported,  a link to the post, and of course any comments you include.  

As for the message; the post about guidelines is unofficial, and there aren't any definite rules. Therefore, having the message reflect that would likely make more sense; "Inform the staff members of any posts that you believe are wrongly posted" or something along those lines.

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

I think the most important information that page show carry is a link to example of what spams are and probably some examples on how to report a post effectively. I also believe there was a reasonable intention behind moderators been able to see our email from theymos's point of view so if he (theymos) can come clear the air, then that'll be great as just as you explained above, from a regular users point of view, it isn't pleasant and might be discouraging. Supposedly my email was linked to any of my valuable asset/details, i won't have partake in spam reporting.

The abusive part; funny enough, I think I have reported an abusive post directed at me but can't recall if it was deleted or not (as that was a long time ago). The choice of words used by the forum needs to be more direct in passing on the information it intend, and not waiting everything on the community to interpret them. I also second this part too.

[hosseinimr93]

I just found a post by Theymos regarding how the reporting system works.

How SMF 1.x handles reports is that it sends an email to all mods with jurisdiction over the reported post, with the email's from address set to your email. bitcointalk.org still does this, though I also added a reports queue, which is what most mods actually use.

I don't know whether the system has been changed or not.
Anyway, I don't think moderators need to know the email address of reporter to handle the report.


Edit:

I don't receive emails, and AFAIK no moderators receive emails anymore, and your email is not revealed within the report queue.

So, as suchmoon said, that sentence regarding revealing email address should be removed.

[UserU]

Imagine a member holds a grudge against a mod/ staff and reports the post. You can see where this goes.

Thats why they are Staff and Mods , and i guess that was happend a lot of times for sure!
Its not an easy job or handling things when you doing that and you have to be always neutral , no matter what a member writes or post .
They have to follow there rules too they get from theymos .
Also all reports can be watched from all so everybody knows what for reports are coming in and all .
The only diffrent thing is that Global Moderators can Ban and Unban users and they can handle all Boards.
Should be no problem with that.

If they follow, good enough. But like us humans, there might be some that go rogue because there's nothing stopping one from simply harvesting.

Hope you get what I'm saying.

[Lafu]

I don't receive emails, and AFAIK no moderators receive emails anymore, and your email is not revealed within the report queue.

Thanks for the clarification on that , so maybe only Global Moderators and Admins can look at them or seen it !

An other idea or maybe useful thing with the E-mail thing would be good for the Account recovery Team .
If an account got hacked or compromised and have reported a few posts and things it would be easy to see the E-mail used on the report.
Dont know if that would help and its just an opinion , sry for off topic.

Hows about maybe to get this Message when you report a post :

"Using this feature will report the post to the moderators and administrators who will receive a notification.
These are informed about the wrongly posted messages or contributions and can act accordingly."

[suchmoon]

How about a link on the unofficial lists of rules of the forum be included in this part of the message? When I am reporting I am really using that as a source to report some posts and so do I guess for the most of the reporters here.

Now on the topic, I like the newly suggested info text, maybe a link to the Welsh's Reporting guidelines will also be beneficial to the newbies.

Perhaps it wasn't obvious with the way I posted it, but my first suggestion (and my personal preference) would include a link to the rules and a link to the guidelines:

Use this function to inform the moderators and administrators of a post that violates forum rules. Please provide all relevant information in your comment.

However:

the post about guidelines is unofficial, and there aren't any definite rules.

So that's why I suggested the second format without "officially" linking to any rules.

I find this "let's not tell important stuff to the users and let them figure it out on their own" approach quite stupid though. It feels unfriendly, lazy, arrogant from the user's point of view. We should make things easier for users, not harder. Sure, let's explain that rules are not set in stone etc, but let's give them at least something to start with. I can't imagine a scenario in which giving a link to unofficial rules or guidelines would cause more harm than benefit. If the current rules are too unofficial, create a shorter definitive list: plagiarism - no, spam - no, malware - fuck no, scams - welcome, racism etc - yes please, trolling - ok if at least 2000 characters long, and so on. There are definitely 100% enforced rules here so pretending otherwise is not doing anyone any good.

[dkbit98]

I think that most members don't even know how to use 'Report to moderator'...

I also don't know why should email be revealed when we send reports.
We saw to many email leaks recently to trust anyone with them.

Recently I reported bunch of members for Ban evasion... and some of those reports are marked as 'bad'
My accuracy percentage is down now, and most of this members are now banned.
Whats up with that?

[bL4nkcode]

How about a link on the unofficial lists of rules of the forum be included in this part of the message? When I am reporting I am really using that as a source to report some posts and so do I guess for the most of the reporters here.

I only include in the comment the number of the forum rules which the post violated, not including the whole link of the unofficial rules.

I also don't know why should email be revealed when we send reports.
We saw to many email leaks recently to trust anyone with them.

Need an answer for this one as well.

[Welsh]

create a shorter definitive list

I completely understand the frustration on your end, and I do wish that this forum was a little more beginner friendly at times. I've actually been very vocal in the past about moderating scams, but honestly as time as passed I can understand why they aren't moderated. There are rules that are enforced definitely, but the reason these are guidelines is because the forum encourages moderators using their intuitive.  Contrary to belief moderators aren't given strict rules to enforce when they are appointed as a member of staff, and its very much a learning process as you make mistakes etc. Theymos usually messages us if there's an issue with the way staff have handled reports, but there's no concrete rules even as a moderator.

I would agree that having some very basic concrete rules would likely help as I believe the forum has outgrown the initial ones posted by sirius regarding the forum moderation policy. They would have to be constructed in such a way that there's no loop holes, and honestly I think that's one of the reasons concrete rules have been avoided, because users might try, and dance around the technicalities of the rules.

So, as suchmoon said, that sentence regarding revealing email address should be removed.

Yeah, I actually hate some of the default wording of SMF. I feel like a lot of it could be streamlined, and made a little more friendly.

[suchmoon]

I would agree that having some very basic concrete rules would likely help as I believe the forum has outgrown the initial ones posted by sirius regarding the forum moderation policy. They would have to be constructed in such a way that there's no loop holes, and honestly I think that's one of the reasons concrete rules have been avoided, because users might try, and dance around the technicalities of the rules.

Rule #1: Moderators have the ultimate discretion in applying any of the following rules.
Rule #2: ...
[...]

As far as dancing around... some do it already with the current "unofficial" rules and arguably this indecisive rule policy actually helps the "dancers" more than it helps honest users who might never wander into Meta to figure out how they should use the reports, or how to appeal (or not) moderator decisions.

But I'm not asking to change the rules right now. Just a small wording change to at least remove false and/or ambiguous information. Baby steps.

[malevolent]

Last emails about reported posts that I can find in my inbox are from 2018/01/09. So if you reported at least one post until that date, all Administrators (duh), Global Moderators and Moderators who have jurisdiction over the reported post can see the email address associated with your bitcointalk account at the time that you made the report.

[rhomelmabini]

I only include in the comment the number of the forum rules which the post violated, not including the whole link of the unofficial rules.

No I wouldn't do that of course, just a shorter comments I add to report some posts with it and not the whole link of the unofficial rules. I guess you just misinterpreted my reply .

So that's why I suggested the second format without "officially" linking to any rules.

Better that way but for new individuals that are new to reporting I guess it's best if at least they can read what to include in the comment of the report and the guidelines for reporting some posts. To tell you honestly, on the very first time I am reporting some posts I have an open tab of Welsh guidelines on reporting and the Unofficial forum rules by mprep to better at my reports, so far 2k+ of it and I'm at 100% accuracy but my sole focus really when I report is the spam and most of those report I made are spam posts of random users. So including the link of Welsh and mprep thread at the top of the report page when you click that "Report to moderator" button is for best for beginners as well as to those who wants to refresh their memories of these two threads.