How To Report Objectionable Content On The Forum

[Steve Herschbach]

So you see something that you do not think fits the spirit and intent of the forum. Somebody attacking somebody else, off topic posts, political posts, or just plain spam. How to handle it?

Please, do not go after the poster yourself. Maybe it is a misunderstanding of some sort, but now you have created hard feelings with somebody else on the forum. The main thing, unless I have made you a moderator, it is not your job to moderate the forum. However, it is everyone's job to report objectionable content. Let me decide what to do about the issue.

Every post has a unfortunately quite faint "Report post" link. On mobile devices there is a tiny grey flag. If the problem is obvious, just click that link and hit "Submit Report" and you are done. I will get the message and look into it, but if it is my middle of night, it may be a few hours. Be patient - I am on the forum every day. If you feel you need to give me more details, there is a place there for that also.

My default response to threads or posts that are an issue is to simply delete them without comment. People involved usually get the hint. Some may take offense, and while that is not my intent - oh well. Maybe it really was no big deal but if it is a non-essential post I will err on the side of caution and delete it. My apologies in advance. I have only had to ban a handful of people over the years, and if I have to ban somebody I may leave the posts in question up for a bit so people can see why I did what I did, but they also will be deleted eventually.

[jasong]

Quick question - I haven't really browsed much via phone until lately and I just realized that often when I touch the screen to scroll it turns the little flag in someone's post blue. Does that mean I've been flagging a lot of posts as objectionable on accident?

[Steve Herschbach]

No, as described reporting posts is a two step process.

[EZMoney Bob]

Steve, maybe I wear rose colored glasses but this is a good group and I've never seen any objectionable content on your forum.   However, assuming that it's advisable for us to know how to report objectionable posts, maybe you should make this a "sticky" so that it stays at the top of the page?

[Steve Herschbach]

Not a bad idea. I am not a fan of forums that start with a lot of pinned topics, so I keep them at a minimum.

The reason this forum gets on so well is that it is made clear that is the way it must be. Not a lot of objectionable content makes it to the forum, but if you've never seen it it was because I saw it first or somebody else reported it. Spammers hit regularly, in fact I nailed one just a few days ago.

[Steve Herschbach]

Due to an increase in spammers hiding little porn links in their posts I am bumping this up. If you see anything like that please flag it. The forum is busy enough these days I don’t read every single post and can miss them. Thanks!

[kac]

I have popups blocked so don't know if there are any bad links. Usually out of practice I try not to let my cursor hover over any ads as they are probably the riskiest where a click through could be injected. So far this is one of the cleanest forums I have come across.

[Steve Herschbach]

This has nothing to do with ads or pop ups. I am talking about objectionable posts by forum members. There are no advertising pop ups on this forum and never will be. We are talking links in posts. The banner ads here are served by Google or Amazon and not likely to be an issue. They pay for the forum in fact.