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[sigtau]

Lately, there has been a significant amount of misuse regarding the relatively new Report button feature--namely, users not utilizing it as it was originally intended.

Please bear in mind that the original intent of the Report button was to assist Site Staff and Moderators with identifying posts that violate the rules, and not for when you want to get the staff's attention to point out something/someone you don't like. As a general rule of thumb, if the post is not in direct violation of the rules, please do not use the Report button.

If you have any concerns to raise with staff regarding other users or posts that you think might be a violation, please use the Staff Dropbox instead--it'll save the moderators a bit of PM space (since the Report button operates by sending a private message to the moderators of the affected forum).

Also, remember that maturity also plays a huge role when using the Report button: If the user/post in question is something that might be sarcastic or contextually not an insult, simply PM a staff member directly or use the Dropbox instead. Sarcasm may not travel well over text, but that isn't necessarily an excuse to inadvertently pester multiple moderators.

On a final note, please remember to specify a proper reason for reporting the post. Stating that the post is "a rule violation" or simply not giving a reason at all (such as "..." or just leaving the field blank) is equivalent to spamming the PM box of multiple moderators at the same time. If you see something you think is a rule violation, tell us which rule you think is being violated (i.e. "Obvious trolling in this post" instead of "He's been bugging me a lot lately"), for the sake of making our job much easier.

Thanks!

[sigtau]

Just going to re-iterate on a few things, since it seems we're having a bit of a hard time understanding the functionality of this board feature.

1. Please familiarize yourself with the forum rules a little more to determine what is and what is not spam. We, as staff, do not want to run a forum where it's impossible to make (or take) a joke. Consult the staff dropbox if you're really concerned about a user's postings and whether or not it's spam.* Staff receives a PM every time the report button is used, and having to clean 20+ messages out of their PM inbox because a handful of members couldn't take a joke is nothing short of annoying.
2. If your better judgment determines that you absolutely, positively need to use the report button, please provide a reasonable explanation as to why you are reporting the post. Simply typing "Spam," or random garbled text, or random punctuation (yes, this has happened) is annoying and likely won't get your report taken seriously. Failure to do so may result in warnings from staff and/or removal of ability to report posts.

* I'd like to also personally mention that, in light of recent uses of the feature, if someone replies to a post with an image that is (1) clearly a joke, and (2) not a blatant rule violation or an attempt at harassment, it's not spam.

Thanks!