When reporting spam ...

[Ron Miel]

If you see a Spam post, please Report it. DO NOT respond to it, even if your response is "This is spam!" or a similar variation. All this does is draw attention to the thread, furthering the spammer's goals, and potentially make it more difficult for a Moderator to correct the problem; it does not in any way help.

On another messageboard I frequent, it is usual to post a message saying "reported" when reporting spam, or similar violations. This is helpful, as it prevents the mods getting dozens of reports for the same thing.

Would that be appropriate here, or would it count as breaking the "don't respond" rule?

[137beth]

This came up before, and the answer was that multiple reports are not an issue.

In my opinion, what you described could make things worse, because someone could reply "this is spam" without reporting, and cause other people to think "well, someone already reported this, so I don't have to..." when in fact no one reported it.

[Douglas]

On those other boards, the problem is that the mods would check the list and see a flood of dozens of reports about the same thing obscuring other reports. Heck, the reports might even be going to mod PM boxes, in which case regular PM traffic is getting overwhelmed too. Here, all those dozens of reports would be collected together in a single report thread, and the primary view the mods have is a list of threads (what you're really doing when you report a post is posting to a mod-only forum. This is why it counts for the 60 second post timer).

So, mod comes on, sees a report thread dozens of posts long, and A) the length can tell him before he even opens the thread that there's a lot of consensus that this one's a problem and needs to be dealt with, and B) it's just one thread so other problems aren't obscured or lost in the shuffle at all.

Short version: multiple reports are not a problem here, and posting publicly that you've reported something is counterproductive.

[Jeraa]

This is actually covered in the Rules of Posting (Please Read!) (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/announcement.php?f=25&a=1) Specifically:


Reporting Posts
As a poster, the best way you can help the Moderators (besides following these Rules) is to report posts you see that are violating these Rules. You can do this by clicking on the Report Button (), which can be found in the user information box on each post (except Moderator posts). This will bring up a window where you can enter notes on what you think the violation may be.

This report is entered into a system where all Mods can see and review it, eliminating the need to contact a Mod directly. Multiple reports on a specific post are appended to the first, so don't worry that a post may have already been reported.

We strongly suggest you report rule violations rather than respond to them, as responding may put you in violation of one of the Forum Rules.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: As noted above, the Forum Rules specificly prohibit replying to spam because it is not helpful, in fact, it's actively detrimental. Threads with just the original post are easier to recognize as spam at a glance and are easier to clean up. All post reports get collated into a single thread for mod use, so ten reports on the same post looks pretty much the same as a single report.