I Don’t Report Inappropriate Content, But Still Complain You Took Too Long to Remove It
Recently, a new member posted a request on one of my forums that violated our guidelines. Suffice to say, the request was inappropriate.
It was available for viewing for a few days. As soon as I saw it, I removed it and handled it appropriately.
A veteran member of the community had replied to the thread, remarking in disgust at the request. I went ahead and sent that member a private message to let them know that the thread had been removed and, more importantly, to encourage them to report posts of that nature to me, should they occur in the future.
Their response was one of surprise. They were surprised that I “let it go as long as it has.” Let’s review:
- This is a veteran member of our community.
- This is a member that I have personally encouraged (multiple times) to report any posts that he feels might be suspect, in any way.
- He does not report this post, despite being well aware of my desire to receive reports.
- He responds to the post, bumping it up for more members to see.
- I remove it as soon as I see it and ask him to report posts like it in the future.
- He’s “surprised” that I took so long to deal with it, when if he had reported it when he replied to it, it would have been gone shortly after the report was received.
Don’t you just love that? Something isn’t right here.
I find that these moments require a direct approach. Here is what I sent to the member:
Hello <name>,
Thank you for your message.
In the message I sent you, I told you that the post you responded to was a violation of our guidelines and, in the future, if you see a post like that, to please report it to me directly.
While we can’t know for sure what the posters intention is, that sort of request is inappropriate here. If you see it again, rather than responding, drawing more attention to it and sending more people to it, please report it to me, so that it can be handled as quickly as possible.
If you had reported it to me directly, rather than responding, I would have seen it sooner – and removed it sooner.
I removed it as soon as I saw it, but because you did not report it, when I saw it was when I had the opportunity to read the thread. I am not able to read all of the posts made here and, if a member sees a violation of our guidelines, it is important that they report it and be a part of the solution, rather than the problem.
Thank you for your time and cooperation.
Sincerely,
Patrick
His response was that he understood and would try to do that in the future, which is good. But, in other cases, some members just don’t get it. All that you can do is to remove inappropriate content, continue to educate your members and encourage them to file reports whenever they see something suspicious.
Do you have a moderating team on the site Patrick? I’ve found whenever a forum gets to a decent size (ie over 100 posts per day), that it rapidly gets impossible to read everything on the site. Having a good team of mods means a more round the clock presence is possible and these things don’t tend to escalate.
I think reporting things is a behaviour that some members will always have problems with. Some of them simply never think to do it, and others have too many years of grade school tattle-tale shaming built into their psyche to ever consider reporting someone to an authority figure appropriate or manly or whatever. There’s just the societal impression that reporting something bad is, itself, bad.
Thanks for the comment, Adi. That’s really a separate topic. It doesn’t matter how you are staffed, there will always be members like this, so it’s good to talk about how you communicate with them.
Thanks for the comment, Jacquilynne. You are right. Some members will always have a problem with it, for reasons that you have cited.
Thanks,
Patrick
I had a very similar thing the other day Patrick. It happens a lot doesn’t it. One member actually reported a post and said something about the “shoddy moderation.” My reply: “Many thanks for reporting a post. I just wanted to respond to your comment about the “shoddy level of moderation.” I’m not sure if you are away but our moderators are volunteers, they do what they can given the time constraints (they are allowed lives in the real world ;) ). They give their time freely to help the site out.
To add, this site is not pre moderated, and it’s impossible for us to read everyone one of the hundreds of posts that are made daily. Therefore we rely on members, such as yourself, to report any inappropriate posts they may witness. That way the post is then brought to the attention of our moderators.
At the end of the day a community is only as good, or bad, as the members who use it. You are a member of this community too, so please help us, and your fellow members by continuing to alert us to posts you feel are breaking our site posting rules. That way we can quickly jump on any behaviour that is not acceptable. I promise you we always look at every reported post.
Thanks again for sharing your concerns and letting us know about that post.”
Thank you for sharing that, Sue! Well said.
Patrick