# Responses to reported posts



## DonnyB

I tend to report posts fairly regularly - usually two or three a day - and I try to give specific detail on the report form as to what I think is wrong with it/them.  But in all the time I've been a member I think I've only ever twice had a response telling me whether the report was felt to be justified or not.  A lot of the time (spammers, out-of-scope questions and so on) I wouldn't expect or need any feedback.  However, with some of the 'greyer' areas - particularly what is or isn't off-topic, I'm occasionally left a little puzzled as to why no action has been taken.

So I was wondering if there is any support for the idea of moderators giving feedback on reports?  I feel that it would help reports to be more accurately targeted and focussed, it would cut down on the number of unnecessary reports and if nothing else it would give a reassurance that the report was appreciated.  It may well be that the moderators feel they have enough work to do without this extra burden, or possibly that it would be seen as opening the door to unnecessary arguments.

But I'm curious as to how people feel about this?


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## velisarius

DonnyB said:


> It may well be that the moderators feel they have enough work to do without this extra burden, or possibly that it would be seen as opening the door to unnecessary arguments.



I think these are the main reasons why reports don't get feedback. 
I just report and then forget about it, virtue being its own reward. But I know that all reports get read, and they are often useful. It's much better to report than to get involved in nasty arguments in the thread or make pointed comments about rule-breaking.

If I'm not sure whether to report a post I usually refrain. I don't report a title that need changing either, trusting that one of the mods will notice it anyway. 

I agree it's difficult to know whether you are over- or under-reporting, so I suppose it's better to go with "less/fewer(?) is better". 

By the way, I think a "report" post no longer ups one's post count.


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## sound shift

Once I ended a report with the words "I don't know if you want reports about this sort of thing; perhaps you could let me know" - and I got a reply by PM (or whatever we're calling them now).

Reports don't contribute to post count? Blast!!


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## Paulfromitaly

This is my personal point of view, so other mods may disagree with me.

I will never complain if members regularly report posts (unless they are clearly picking on someone out of personal dislike). Some reports may be unnecessary but I can see no harm in reporting.
Bad titles? Go on and report them!
Titles should always be relevant, spelt correctly and in the source language. Poor titles make threads hard to find through a sensible search and therefore useless.
Users should report any post or thread that doesn't comply with the WRF rules (spam, users flooding the forums, proofreading requests, abusive messages, out of scope requests, misplaced requests, duplicate threads, umpteenth requests about the same topic, etc)
The fact that sometimes mods may decide to take no further action doesn't mean the report was useless or not justified.
I don't consider going through reports and taking care of them an extra burden, however systematically giving feedback on reports would in fact take too much time.


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## ewie

You should try my method, Donny: I report stuff then _instantly_ forget about it.  Admittedly the forgetting is accidental


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## cherine

I agree with Paul. More reports are definitely better than less reports. After all, we're humans and we can miss things, so a second eye (that of the other forum members) would surely help us get what we could've missed.


DonnyB said:


> However, with some of the 'greyer' areas - particularly what is or isn't off-topic, I'm occasionally left a little puzzled as to why no action has been taken


Maybe because they're "greyer areas"?  Even the mods, again because we're humans, get to be confused or uncertain from time to time about what is really on topic or what is better be moved to a new thread. If you report such incident and see no action taken, I believe it's because the mods had a different opinion. Sometimes we're not sure whether a new question is worth being split to a new thread; which is hard to decide when the new question is not 100% off topic, so some of us prefer to just let such questions remain where they are. And sometimes reporting such question kind of favor(?) the scale and make us decide to split it.

So, please don't worry and just keep reporting. And please don't be offended, confused or upset that you don't receive feedback. We are all volunteers here and we try to give the forum as much of our time as we can, but giving feedback to every report could take more time than the actual moderating work, and we would be left without enough time or energy to contribute in the forum as regular foreros, which we all are and which we enjoy.


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## JustKate

I agree - just keep reporting.

Sometimes despite appearances to the contrary, action had been taken, but it's action that isn't visible on the forum. For example, we might leave an iffy question on the forum but write to the OP and provide suggestions to improve his or her future posts. And sometimes, we just don't see it in time to take any action.

So yes - just let us know and we'll do our best.


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## Parla

I'm with Ewie (post #5).


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## DonnyB

First of all, a belated thank-you to everyone who's replied for their comments and opinions.  

There's a pretty clear consensus that what I was suggesting is impractical as being too time-consuming and it's probably not something that the majority of users would want or need anyway.  So thank you to the moderators here for their encouragement: I'll continue as before, perhaps following sound shift's suggestion (post #3) of asking specifically for the occasional clarification of anything I'm particularly unsure of.


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## Paulfromitaly

DonnyB said:


> asking specifically for the occasional clarification of anything I'm particularly unsure of



Sure, we will be happy to get back to you if you need clarification about a specific issue.


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## JustKate

DonnyB said:


> First of all, a belated thank-you to everyone who's replied for their comments and opinions.
> 
> There's a pretty clear consensus that what I was suggesting is impractical as being too time-consuming and it's probably not something that the majority of users would want or need anyway.  So thank you to the moderators here for their encouragement: I'll continue as before, perhaps following sound shift's suggestion (post #3) of asking specifically for the occasional clarification of anything I'm particularly unsure of.



The other problem is that we are very reluctant to discuss our interactions with a member to another member. We generally consider those things confidential. There are times when it's possible to discuss a report without discussing who wrote the post that was reported, but other times... Tricky, if you see what I mean. But if you have a specific question, you're welcome to ask me or another moderator, and if we can discuss it and if we have time to discuss it (a lot of "ifs," I know), we will.


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