Reporting Abuse - New Submission Form

Former_MSE_Webmaster

Hi folks,

There have been many requests by users for using the automatic form for reporting abuse. For various reasons, we have stuck to the mailto option but we are now going to run a test where a select group of long standing MSEers will have the automatic submission form come up instead of the mailto.

Could we ask you folks to provide some feedback on how well the form works and whether you experience any difficulty or glitches in the system and also whether the auto-reply gets to your mail account.

This will be going live sometime in the next 24 hours and could all reports please be made in this thread.


Thanks,

Webby

Tigsteroonie

:T :T :T :T :T

As one of the users who has been requesting this, many thanks for looking into the possibility.

mandi

Hi Webby.

Will the new system speed up response times ? eg if if a thread is reported sometimes it can take hours before it is deleted , by which time the abuse has escalated.:)

marleyboy

Fantastic News, I imagine a select few will be to test the system's effectiveness before the idea of it going nationwide, the last thing we need is the "abuse" system being abused by members in a tit for tat pettiness quarrel.

Will this select few be notified of the update, or would it be as an anonymous selection?. Hopefully this update will prove beneficial to MSE and their members (I am sure it will be).

Well done MSE, thanks for listening to all those who suggested it, I just know it will be a success.

meher

you've worked it out cleverly thank you

jinky67

Excellent news, hopefully it will work out well all round :T

Biggles

Just one thought, possibly practical, possibly not......

Once a member has sent an abuse report, is it possible to indicate on the thread that this has happened?

What happens at the moment is one of two things:-

Either the person reporting adds a new post to the thread saying that it has been reported, in order that future readers can see that it has been done. But this, in itself, just adds to the thread and raises the visibility of the abuse; or

The reporter doesn't mention he has reported it, resulting in further posters deluging the system and raising the post up the forum.

Some indication that it's been reported would draw everyone's attention to the fact without any further reports, posts or raising of visibility.

meher

That would be exposing the reported person - would be specially unkind if it has been unfair reporting. Someone has actually posted spam after a newbie poster, when their link posted seems to be valid, on the online outlet shopping discussion thread. I felt sorry for the poster who was new and must have posted in good faith.

Re the form, I was thinking if it would better if it was a pop up instead of this page turning into a form, so that it makes it easier to copy and highlight the reporting part. Apart from that it's simply perfectly functional :staradmin thanks.

I made a mistake of clicking on the site feedback initially instead of abuse so it must have got sent to feedback and then did a test on abuse. And both worked well, so did the appropriate reciepts.

wok_boy

Biggles wrote: »

Just one thought, possibly practical, possibly not......

Once a member has sent an abuse report, is it possible to indicate on the thread that this has happened?

What happens at the moment is one of two things:-

Either the person reporting adds a new post to the thread saying that it has been reported, in order that future readers can see that it has been done. But this, in itself, just adds to the thread and raises the visibility of the abuse; or

The reporter doesn't mention he has reported it, resulting in further posters deluging the system and raising the post up the forum.

Some indication that it's been reported would draw everyone's attention to the fact without any further reports, posts or raising of visibility.

I've admined and moderated similar forums, in my opnion better to have several reports about the same thread.

Biggles

meher wrote: »

That would be exposing the reported person - would be specially unkind if it has been unfair reporting. Someone had actually posted spam after a newbie poster, when their link posted was valid, on the online outlet shopping discussion thread. I felt sorry for the poster who was new and must have posted in good faith.

Yes but, as you point out, that has 'exposed' the reported person already. A more impartial marker to show, possibly, that the post had been 'referred' (for example) would let Admin deal with it and/or remove the marker if need be.

in my opnion better to have several reports about the same thread

That would be fine if that's what MSE Admin want, but, with a direct reporting system, I suspect they want one report that they can deal with, not several all saying the same thing to confuse the issue. Still, that's up to them.

marleyboy

Reporting abuse is not about exposing members, what generally happens is a post gets reported, by one or more members, the abuse team will then check the thread and decide whether or not the post is abuse, if the post is indeed abusive, it gets deleted, in some cases a whole thread can be deleted.

If a member consistently posts abuse, this will result in them being PPR'd. It is not really upto us members to dictate if a post should be deleted, this is the responsibility of the team, all members can really do is report it and leave it upto the team to handle.

Its advised not to antagonize an abusive poster, known commonly as "feeding the troll", by interacting with them or "exposing" them, but to simply report the abusive post as when and you come across them, the MSE team are pretty quick at dealing with these type of issues, obviously they are not able to instantly delete an abusive post the second it is reported, but they do it as soon as they can.