Hide Reported Post - Until Report Closed

[Dan Stylez]

If someone posts something offensive and a member reports it - a report is opened but the offensive post is there for all to see until an administrator or moderator visits the board and closes the report.

Unapproved posts are hidden until an administrator or moderator approves them... it would be handy if reported posts were somehow hidden like that until the report is closed.

An example of why it would be handy...
If a forum has members in various countries but is ran by administrators and moderators who live in the UK - a user from another country could post someone's personal details during the day time in his/her country - and if it's night time in the UK, the post could be public for a while until the administrator or moderator gets to see it.

The obvious flaw...
You could get a crazy person signing up to report everyone's posts which would then empty the forum until all the reports have been closed, though it would take a while so probably wouldn't happen but on't web you never know.

[warmweer]

That shouldn't be default behaviour.
Posts that have been reported have usually been seen by many members so it wouldn't make much different. Also, he suspicious post could have been quoted (or plain copied) before it was reported.
As an extension or as a feature which can be switched on and off: ok, but certainly not default active as default.
I'm tempted to post a NO vote immediately but I'ld like to read the discussion about it first.

[John connor]

I gave it a thumbs up because such a post may be violating the forum rules and the possibility of it doing so is probably pretty good so such a post should in fact be hidden until a Mod or Admin can have a look at it. I see it as minimizing exposure instead of leaving it there until a Mod or Admin deals with it.

Though, you can have annoying users that report posts all the time for senseless crap and when I was a Mod on a tech forum many years ago, I saw just that. If that were to happen on my board I'd issue a warning and if it happens again where a post is reported for stupid crap then I pull his/her reporting privileges and issue yet another warning.

Anyway, the idea sounds fair and just to me and makes sense.

[P_I]

Voted thumbs down. Reporting a post is a member's viewpoint only and may or may not lead to a moderator/admin removing or changing the content. The decision to hide (or delete) a post should belong to the moderators/admins, not the end-users.

On the boards that I'm involved with we have many different reasons that posts can be reported, some are for objectionable content but others are for other scenarios, such as duplicate topics for example, or posting a topic to the incorrect forum.

Heck, report this post and take a look at all the Reasons in the drop down list here. Many are administrative and therefore there would be no reason to have the post hidden until the report is closed.

[david63]

I can see the arguments for doing this but, in my opinion, they are few and far between.

I could not support this idea in its present form but it is was to be expanded a bit then maybe.

• If each report reason had the option of hiding or not hiding it would get around the problems mentioned above for non abusive reports - it would not however prevent someone using the wrong reason.
• Limiting the number of reports that a user can make (Admin setting) would go some way to prevent misuse.
• Only hiding a post if there are no replies after that post.
• Something that I have seen is that the actual content of the post is replaced with "Awaiting moderation".

Also there is one basic flaw with this idea and that is what would happen if somebody reported the first post in a topic?

[AmigoJack]

The obvious flaw...
You could get a crazy person signing up to report everyone's posts which would then empty the forum until all the reports have been closed, though it would take a while so probably wouldn't happen but on't web you never know.

That can be automated. Want me to report every post in a board?

If someone posts something offensive
...
Unapproved posts are hidden until an administrator or moderator approves them

There's your actual flaw: why approve posts when they are offensive? That's the whole point about moderation: to review posts, not just blindly approving them.

[EA117]

Not sure "can it be abused" is the right question. Even simply posting a message "can be abused", can be automated, etc. And no, simply because "it can be abused" doesn't mean "so the only rational action is that I want to moderate and pre-approve all posts on my board."

That might be the answer for some boards where abuse is high and the majority of membership cannot be trusted. But other boards want to default to what's best and easiest for the membership, and just deal with the more rare issues when they occur. Enabling the membership to report things immediately & have them disappear immediately until an administrator can review the report can be exactly what's appropriate for a board.

Giving the administrator the "per report reason" ability to control what happens with regard to hiding the post sounds like the right direction. Sure, "if the administrator is paying attention they will deal with reported posts right away anyway." But the reality is that these things happen in the middle of the night and/or while real life is happening, and you don't necessarily get to them right away.

The administrator would get to decide "which things are important enough to make the report hide them immediately?" Doxxing is an example; the sooner this information is hidden from the view of others, the less damage will be done.

And if someone already quoted the message isn't really the issue; any post where the message includes doxxed details needs to be reported.
It doesn't matter whether the author typed it themselves or quoted someone else's message; the post still needs to be reported. Being quoted doesn't mean "oh well, there is nothing we can do now, so we shouldn't even bother trying."

But the reasons don't need to be "serious" like that. Even "spam" can be something the administrator would like their membership to be able to deal with immediately. Rather than spam lingering around until the reports are dealt with. Whomever wakes up in the earliest time zone and sees it first can reported it, and no one else need be bothered with seeing it. Simply to be considerate to the other members.

So. Dealing with the abusers. There is already a per-forum permission for "Can report posts." Do we force administrators to make alternate phpBB groups which have "all the normal forum permissions but with report set to Never", and then move any abusers into that group as needed? Or do we introduce a new User-level permission that lets you set "Never" for this on a user, regardless of the fact forum permissions might otherwise grant it?

An action in the report queue of "resolve all reports by this user" might be helpful too, to make dealing with a newly-identified abuser easier on the phpBB administrators.

[Talk19Zehn]

Hello, if, then you would have to question legally, --- is that correct?
There was the post-expire: Back in times heed
https://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?t=1976495
... managed to postpone topics.

Administrators are subject to liability (depending on the law and jurisdiction in their own country) depending on the legal offense. Under certain circumstances after notice (action clerk included) ...
An approximate standardized measure in the form of the then MODIFICATION is certainly advantageous to document for any liability claims fuses, to archive legal offenses.
Therefore initially neither Yes nor No

Why: Such problems are, in my opinion, greater than initially thought.

Regards

[warmweer]

Administrators are subject to liability (depending on the law and jurisdiction in their own country) depending on the legal offense. Under certain circumstances after notice (action clerk included) ...
An approximate standardized measure in the form of the then MODIFICATION is certainly advantageous to document for any liability claims fuses, to archive legal offenses.
Therefore initially neither Yes nor No

That 's all true but :
There is no default feature allowing automatic "invisibilisation" of posts (how could they all be identified automatically anyway) so it's being left over to the users and no admin nor anyone with the required permissions can be online 24/24 7/7. Once notified (or better having been made aware of the notification) the admin (or powerguy) should take action within a reasonable time window. On a forum where that is so necessary , I suspect the probability of users being unhappy (either with the number of inappropriate post, the reaction time, even the decision) is bound to be quite high and the occurrence of misuse of certain features by user will increase.

The feature could be useful if used correctly but opens a new door for abuse. Moderation should be performed by a limited number of people, and being able to make posts invisible is a moderative action (well, it is to me).
As I mentioned in a previous post; in the right hands it could be a useful tool but you need to find the right hands first and as a tool available by default to all users it's bound to cause a hell of commotion.

[Tastenplayer]

Such contributions write in my forum only people, who register themselves specially for it. This mostly, if with us night is and no member in the forum, there all seniors.
It is nevertheless in many forums in such a way that the completely bad contributions of newly announced are written at times, in which nobody is in the forum.
Until then this message is reported, they have already read all nocturnal visitors .
Anyway, my members are so well educated that they don't write anything that has to be deleted .

So any user can report a post.
The reported post becomes invisible immediately, even if it is not a post to be deleted (you can even accidentally click wrong with the mouse). Maybe I just don't like the user who wrote the post.
This causes unrest among the forum members and is legally unacceptable.

Also there is one basic flaw with this idea and that is what would happen if somebody reported the first post in a topic?

The obvious flaw...
You could get a crazy person signing up to report everyone's posts which would then empty the forum until all the reports have been closed, though it would take a while so probably wouldn't happen but on't web you never know.

A spinner or drunk clicks on the exclamation mark on all first posts - That's it! That's why I'm giving a NO.

[warmweer]

...
Anyway, my members are so well educated that they don't write anything that has to be deleted .

And in that case the feature isn't even needed. Should you have the kind of users for which that feature is needed, then the feature isn't the solution, rather a more strict selection as to who is allowed on the board.

I wonder how long it would take before some maniac decides to have fun with the invisibilisation feature or automates something.

[AmigoJack]

That might be the answer for some boards where abuse is high and the majority of membership cannot be trusted. But other boards want to default to what's best and easiest for the membership, and just deal with the more rare issues when they occur.

That's their own choice of comfort - the board I administrate has a real staff of moderators checking all posts that aren't automatically trusted (which is also our quality assurance). If you expect many posts then have a plan on how to deal with them - plans based on trust require you to know your members quite well. Once you experienced the first idiots or bad quality posts you'll most likely rethink your concept.

until an administrator can review the report

A common mistake: mixing administrators with moderators. Moderators moderate (posts), administrators administrate (the board). One can have the permissions of the other, they still have a primary purpose.

Doxxing is an example; the sooner this information is hidden from the view of others, the less damage will be done.

Edge cases will make you think if the content should be invisible to everyone and only one member with moderator permissions is able to see it, too. This even extends to restrictions like not being able to copy a topic when it has a reported post with that report reason (so moderators are neither able to evade invisibility, nor able to copy information for their own interests).

Administrators are subject to liability

No, website owners are liable. The board administrator(s) is/are not automatically the owner(s) of the board or the entire website.

It is nevertheless in many forums in such a way that the completely bad contributions of newly announced are written at times, in which nobody is in the forum.
Until then this message is reported, they have already read all nocturnal visitors

Another case of: if you don't have a team of moderators sitting in different timezones then don't auto-approve posts. I would rather let the posts wait 16 hours or even days before checking and approving them instead of letting idiots publish what they want. I could post a picture with illegal porn straight away and sit here and wait what happens - most likely the owner of phpbb.com is made liable first, no matter how good its intentions were.


Guys, you have to accept that all this is possible right away: not checking content means not being aware of it. Also reports don't work quite well in regards of members issuing them - for them it's only additional work.

[warmweer]

until an administrator can review the report

A common mistake: mixing administrators with moderators. Moderators moderate (posts), administrators administrate (the board). One can have the permissions of the other, they still have a primary purpose.

Oh, c'mon, that's nitpicking and you know that EA117 knows the difference. There are cases where it's useful to point to incorrect wording, but this ain't one of them.

Another case of: if you don't have a team of moderators sitting in different timezones then don't auto-approve posts. I would rather let the posts wait 16 hours or even days before checking and approving them instead of letting idiots publish what they want. I could post a picture with illegal porn straight away and sit here and wait what happens - most likely the owner of phpbb.com is made liable first, no matter how good its intentions were.

Seriously? I doubt any judge wouldn't accept the reality of life that a forum, no matter how large or busy, can be unattended to for a couple of hours.If it's a regular thing, then it might be considered negligence.

[AmigoJack]

Oh, c'mon, that's nitpicking and you know that EA117 knows the difference.

I'm not sure. It's also not about the wording, it's about the concept and distinguishing both competences - by default it's none of the administrator's business to moderate. And vice versa. I also wanted to point out that moderation is underrated for many.

I doubt any judge wouldn't accept the reality of life that a forum, no matter how large or busy, can be unattended to for a couple of hours.

Judges can seriously lack technical understanding. And the EU is thinking about a directive for reacting within 24 hours.

[Tastenplayer]

AmigoJack wrote: ↑
Fri Nov 29, 2019 9:34 am
Another case of: if you don't have a team of moderators sitting in different timezones then don't auto-approve posts. I would rather let the posts wait 16 hours or even days before checking and approving them instead of letting idiots publish what they want. I could post a picture with illegal porn straight away and sit here and wait what happens - most likely the owner of phpbb.com is made liable first, no matter how good its intentions were.

If I would do that, there would be no more posts at all in my forum. None of the mostly very old seniors, would look more for help in my forum.

By the way: Only a link to a dealer can lay you an egg thanks to EU data protection regulation. As soon as you have such links in the forum or inserted and linked test reports, or you have members in the forum who are allowed to post actions for forum members, you are already considered a commercial forum and would have to hire a data protection officer (Which is exactly the problem with my forum. How can you prove that you, as a forum operator, don't get any financial benefits from it?).
They don't even have to be ugly things that someone links or writes to cause problems.

Which wouldn't be bad, but probably impossible: If guests couldn't see / read reported posts.
But even this possibility is not optimal. Because also there a member can announce all first contributions and how then looks a forum for visitors!