# Who deals with reported posts?



## DernierVirage

Something that's been on my mind for a while now, is what happens when a post is reported on a forum where there is no moderator on-line at the time.

I ask this because I have noticed that on one of the forums that I frequent there is only one moderator and on another forum, where there are a number of moderators, from time to time none of them are "active" - depending naturally on the time of day.

So what happens in practice if a post is reported - does it stay on the forum in question until one of the forum moderators looks at the report, or does it get transferred to other moderators on other forums after a certain time, to speed things up?

Thanks for enlightening me!


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## belén

Hello,

When a post is reported we get a notification in our "Reported Posts forum". All moderators online can access it.
If the post in question is something such as spam or a troll, any moderator will take action independently of the forum we moderate.
If it's something more specific to the forum, such a title change or a move to another forum, when the moderator from that forum is online s/he will take care of all the posts that were reported during the time s/he was not logged in.

I hope this answers your question.

Cheers,
Belén


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## DernierVirage

Thanks for your quick reply, which is very clear as regards the extreme cases (for example spam on one hand, title changes of posts on the other). 

As regards problems that fall between these extremes, especially infringements of the rules (such as asking for proof-reading, not giving context etc.) - are these usually dealt with by any moderator on-line or do you prefer to leave them for the specific forum moderator(s) to handle.


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## Nunty

That kind of problem waits for one of the forum moderators, since each forum has its own guidelines and "culture". (For this reason, we in English Only have moderators in several time zones, for example.)

All reports remain visible to the moderators until a moderator manually removes it. Usually (she said, hoping hard) nothing gets overlooked.


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## Orlin

I think that most rule violations are dealt with by the moderators of the particular forum because the other moderators need not be able to understand the language in which the particular post is written or the language being discussed so they can't see the problem and interfere properly and this task is left to the moderators of the particular forum as soon as some of them log in.


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## ampurdan

Of course, that is another reason why we don't meddle in other forums. 

However, even though when we know the language, we do not mod common rule violations in forums other than the ones we have been asked to mod. Each forum has its own idiosyncrasy which mods need to be well acquainted with, as Nunty has explained.


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## DernierVirage

Thanks for the useful replies. It's interesting to hear that different forums can have differing approaches to the rules, but anyway that's probably not really any of my business


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## Vanda

DernierVirage said:


> Thanks for the useful replies. It's interesting to hear that different forums can have differing approaches to the rules, but anyway that's probably not really any of my business



Just to be clear, there are the ''stone' rules, valid for all forums and treated equally at all forums. But there are some small issues that are treated differently. For example, you can't ask for translation in the EO forum (reasons are clear here), but if you go to a small forum and ask for a translation of a small sentence, let's say: a poor grandma received a sentence from her grandson who speaks only Portuguese, she has no idea of the language, of course we are going to help her and translate that sentence for her! 
Hope it clears a little for you!


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## DernierVirage

Thanks, that's useful to know !


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## Orlin

I have an interesting question: if a report claims that a particular post is offensive, but none of the moderators in WRF is proficient in the language in which the post in question is written (e. g. this is in a multilingual forum and none of the moderators is a native in this language), how is the problem solved?


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## Nunty

I don't think it's happened yet that there has been a report about a post in a language in which *no* moderator was competent, if not fluent. You'd be surprised at some of the talent we've got around.


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## ampurdan

This problem has never happened to me, but I guess my colleagues in Other Languages might have had this problem sometime. Fortunately, we've got a lot of polyglots among the mod crew. 

However, in a hypothetical case where no mod could really assess if a given expression is offensive or not, I guess asking other foreros with a good command of the language would be the most sensible thing to do.

This is just my personal opinion.


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## ewie

I don't remember that situation ever arising in the two years I've been moderating, Orlin.  But I suppose if it _did_ happen, we'd try and find an Upstanding Member of the Community to help us.


 We'd only use Google's digital 'translator' as a very last resort, I hope.


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## Nunty

One of the forums I help moderate is multi-lingual (Culture Cafe). Unfortunately for me, the most frequently seen non-English languages are not ones that I know. Good thing we work in teams. 

As the others have said, if we had a post in some language that no mod knows, we would certainly call on one of the other trusted members of the forum.


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## TrentinaNE

DernierVirage said:


> on another forum, where there are a number of moderators, from time to time none of them are "active" - depending naturally on the time of day.


I believe moderators can be "active" without your knowing it. If I recall correctly from my moderating days, mods have the option to override that green/red light thingy in order to maintain a bit more privacy.

Elisabetta


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## ampurdan

That's correct, but so can any other member.


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## fsabroso

Orlin said:


> I have an interesting question: if a report claims that a particular post is offensive, but none of the moderators in WRF is proficient in the language in which the post in question is written (e. g. this is in a multilingual forum and none of the moderators is a native in this language), how is the problem solved?


In such cases, if the report says "it is offensive" and at the time there is not moderator who speaks that particular language, we could (and we do sometimes) remove the post/thread from the public until this is solve by a mod who understand that language.


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## brian

We mods also have a good bit of contact info for each other, e.g. email addresses, Skype or Yahoo names, sometimes even phone numbers. So if there's a real emergency, we can usually be in touch pretty fast.

I think one time there was an issue in the Greek forum - where we have only one mod (Irene), and as far as I know, no other mod can understand Greek (and my Ancient Greek doesn't get me very far!). At the time, Irene was on vacation or something, so I think we removed or closed the thread/post for the time being, contacted Irene, and she got around to it as soon as she could.

Of course, you have to remember that we're also volunteers (not paid) _and_ human  ... so very occasionally, issues might be dealt with a bit slowly. But for the most part, we're pretty efficient, I'd say.


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