Catch me up on the status of how reports are handled

Brent W

Brent W

Well-known member
One of the weakest parts of xenForo, even with the 1.1.4 (and from what I gather 1.2) is still how reported posts are handled.

Currently, reported posts appear and no notification is given at all. No email, no new created thread, nothing. (Yes I know there are add-ons. I am talking what needs to be improved).

So you log into your forum and see there are 4 new reported posts. You have a comment section where you can make a reply and follow up on it.

1) Your comment is never seen by the original poster (this isn't made clear or obvious. I have had moderators ask questions directly to the original reporter via this)
2) You make a comment and have no way of knowing if someone replies to it without constantly checking the report.

Mike and Kier, what are you guys going to be doing to improve this and where are we on having it included in the core?

If there are posts scattered around with information about stated improvements, please post them here.
 
I think it really depends on how you handle reports... If admins/moderators tend to have a lot of discussion about an individual report, the way XenForo handles reports probably isn't ideal since you can't "watch/subscribe" to a report.

For my site, XF's Reports system has been pretty fantastic... stuff gets handled really quickly now (before it could be hours or in some cases days before stuff was handled). But we also don't dilly-dally around with much talk about individual reports. It does happen on occasion, but I'f guess 95% of reports never end up with a comment... they are just handled and done with.

We *did* make some workflow changes to how Reports work by default in XenForo...
  • Reports will automatically close out as resolved if the reported item is deleted or receives a warning... because of this, I'd say most reports are never even seen since if we get a spammer and spam clean them, all reports related to them are closed out on their own.
  • Reports are a searchable content type for mods/admins... This is handy when tracking down things like duplicate accounts.
Again... I think it's how much time/discussion you normally have about individual reports. Since we have always had very little (more just about handling it than talking about it), the way XenForo reports work is great for us.
 
Depending on our forums we can be like your example and be pretty open and close or need to really dive into the issue. The ability to comment on the report is there and it is being used in my experience, which is why I think the developers should really look into treating those comments the same as others on the forum.

For example, you do not even receive an alert notification on a reply to a comment in a report. These are some of the most important parts of the forum that you should be notified about as an admin and it falls very short there, to me.
 
BamaStangGuy said:
Depending on our forums we can be like your example and be pretty open and close or need to really dive into the issue. The ability to comment on the report is there and it is being used in my experience, which is why I think the developers should really look into treating those comments the same as others on the forum.

For example, you do not even receive an alert notification on a reply to a comment in a report. These are some of the most important parts of the forum that you should be notified about as an admin and it falls very short there, to me.
Click to expand...

I complained about the report system as it stands before the software was even released. Even back then, it was hinted that there might be some changes in the works. Haven't seen one yet.

As it stands, the reporting system is absolutely worthless if it can't be tied seamlessly with the rest of the site. That includes including the report itself and comments in search results. If that can't be done, include an option to do away with it and send reported items to a specified forum.
 
I've installed an add-on that creates threads (in our mods forum) when stuff is reported - makes the modding job much easier as we can search reports, get alerts to replies, etc.

I suppose if you have a really structured modding set-up and your mods simply act rather than discuss, then the current implementation would probably work okay for you, but we gave it a go and didn't get on with it and it stilted our modding until we got the add-on.
 
We love the reporting feature at my site--being composed of primarily teenagers, we can get a lot of stuff that needs to be sifted through. Compared to vB's system--which would send an email out to all staff members--it's great. Reports are handled much faster and it's rather organized. That said, I think there are definite improvements that need to be made to to the system, the biggest being notifying the reporting user when the status of the report is changed. Furthermore, it would be nice if they could be sorted by the user whose content was reported (e.g. show me all of User A's reported posts) or by who reported it (show me all content User B reported). It would also be nice if the alerts that there is reported content was a bit more detailed (e.g. alert that a reported post has been commented on, or some such)

We do keep a separate log in a hidden forum with a record of moderation we do, as well as keep in contact via a Skype chat, so we have supplemented the system. Overall I think it's a great feature and am excited to see what improvements come to it.
 
mistypants said:
... it would be nice if they could be sorted by the user whose content was reported (e.g. show me all of User A's reported posts) or by who reported it (show me all content User B reported).
Click to expand...

Now there's a good idea - that would come in handy for persistent trouble causers and persistent reporters!! (y)
 
The reports process is a pain on our forum too. We've tried hard to make it work, but we prefer a system that at least has the option to create a thread in a specified forum (yes I know there is a plugin, but it doesn't work on my forum for some reason). Threads are easy to search, pin, scan quickly, whereas the reports are not. An email on report is also critical I feel - in our case we've set it up via a plugin so that a text message is also sent to admin. This enables us to respond to reports very quickly as none of us sit on the forum 24/7.

So in agreement with most of the above, I'd like to see:

  • Option to create a thread in a forum, alongside or in place of, the report itself (would prefer option to switch the report centre off and just use threads)
  • Email to specified users when a post is reported
 
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