Proper use of the Report Button

[mycuccismells]

Throughout your time browsing these forums you may encounter posts or threads that disrupt the flow of the site and go against forum standards. There are only a few of us mods that work to clean these instances up so we are asking all of you for your help in addressing these issues. As some of you may have noticed there is a report button to the left of every post (below the poster's site trophies) that looks like this . This button allows all of you to instantly bring something to the staff's attention so that we can manage it. We would like to ensure that everyone knows and uses this function, so here is a little information that should clarify what it is and when to use it.

What it does: When the report button is clicked it redirects to a screen that prompts the user to enter in the reason for reporting the post. After the report is submitted it sends an email to everyone on the staff notifying them of the reported post and reason


When to use: Anything the staff needs to address in one way or another should be reported. This includes but is not limited to: flaming, insults, game sharing, account sharing, improper use of spoiler tags, posting in the wrong forum, not using a boosting thread, spam, etc. NOTE: The report button can be used on PMs and visitor messages as well as regular posts

Who it benefits: Everyone on the forum! Not only does it make our jobs as staff easier, but it ensures that all of our members will have a much more organized and civil place to browse. It will also deter users from posting unacceptable things because they know it will soon be removed, which again benefits us all.

By reporting an action it allows us as staff to instantly address an issue and act accordingly. We are able to get around to everything but this would help us to address things in a much more efficient manner. We appreciate all of your help and proper use of this feature should make the overall experience much more enjoyable for all.

[mycuccismells]

Reporting Comments on the Homepage

While browsing the news articles, you may have come across some questionable content. A user drawing attention to themselves with a 'fiiiirrrsssttt!' comment, a heated argument or as has been the case more recently, a spambot flooding every article trying to sell their junk.

The report button on articles functions slightly different to the one on the forum. Here's how it works:

To report a comment, click on the explanation mark button(which is located to the right of the thumbs down button) on the comment as pointed out(quite literally) in the image below:



This will take you to the report page:



Type in a short reason why you are reporting this comment and click the submit button. This will send a notification to our control panel, not an email like the forum report button does.

Unlike on the forum, if the comment has already been reported you will be presented with a message 'This comment has already been reported. Redirecting back to comment...' Note: It will be worded slightly different. I just wrote that off the top of the head

[Moose_PS3T]

One thing I'm still unsure about; If we find someone who has an oversized sig, should we just report a users post and say something like "his sig is too big" or what? I've seen every way possible done and all result in a message to the user but I'm not sure which is preffered. I remember I tried to report just a user once but I couldn't find a button on the page that just sends a report about a specific user and not a single post or thread or whatnot.

[Pirate]

Ah, I remember the first time I used the report button, it felt so dangerous

Now I've probably used 50+ times......

[Aidan]

The report button is, and always will be, the "teacher, Jimmy called me stupid" button.

[SimplySupreme]

Originally Posted by Aidan

The report button is, and always will be, the "teacher, Jimmy called me stupid" button.

Agreed, sadly there will always be people out there trying to score brownie points...

[Moose_PS3T]

Originally Posted by SimplySupreme

Agreed, sadly there will always be people out there trying to score brownie points...

In some ways, yes it is. But in other ways it's a nice way to help out the staff whenever you see a spam bot, or someone has a sig that's too large, or something rather mundane and that everyone agrees needs to be changed.

That being said it's easy to abuse it as well..

[Pirate]

Originally Posted by Aidan

The report button is, and always will be, the "teacher, Jimmy called me stupid" button.

True, if used improperly and excessively......

Originally Posted by SimplySupreme

Agreed, sadly there will always be people out there trying to score brownie points...

I think this pretty much answers that:

Originally Posted by Moose_PS3T

In some ways, yes it is. But in other ways it's a nice way to help out the staff whenever you see a spam bot, or someone has a sig that's too large, or something rather mundane and that everyone agrees needs to be changed.

That being said it's easy to abuse it as well..

[RedEye420]

I have a question for the kind souls that make up the staff here at PS3T.org:

In my Fly The Co-Op thread, I get a lot of people using it as a boosting thread. Trying to partner up individually. This causes a nightmare for me because it's hard enough to keep up with all the posts and improper sign-ups without having to sift through the posts that don't even have anything to do with the purpose of the thread. At this point, I just tell them to move it to a boosting thread, but I'm not a mod or a member of staff, so I'm sure I seem "out of line" when I do this.

So my question is, "Can I report these posts and have a mod move/delete the post for me?"

The reason I ask is because it seems that this would fall under the category of "not using the boosting threads" but doesn't cause the immediate problem of thread clutter in the forum. However, it certainly does clutter that singular thread.

No one reads the first page before posting anyways so making an announcement would be useless. Also, with over 800 replies, there's no way that people are going to see each reply I give to the offending posts. So that means EVERY TIME someone starts boosting in there, I've got to try and redirect them so that they may actually find a partner and so that I can continue to make progress on the list (which is really hard right now with all the great games my friends and I have been playing).

Just curious.

[Mendel]

As far as I'm concerned, absolutely RedEye. If it's an ongoing problem, and I received the report before anyone else, I would treat it the same way I'd treat any boosting post in the wrong thread.