EHDame is busy. The mods are busy. That all makes perfect sense to me. They only really have time to read what people complain about. That also make amazing sense.
Let me give you an example of how busy. In the past month, I spent many hours at the hospice bedside of a friend dying of cancer holding her hand. A week after she died, another friend unexpectedly dropped dead from a heart attack and I volunteered to pull off a lunch reception after the funeral for 300 people in just four days. I just returned from an out of state trip to address legal issues related to my father's messy death a year ago. Oh, if I were to tell that story, jaws would be scraping the floor. Another mod had a recent death in the family that wasn't exactly pleasant and her high level of emotions leaked out onto the forum.
EHDame points out that the same people tend to bring things to her attention--that's my problem.
I'm not sure I said that. I reported that in the past 30 days 167 different forum members made reports about threads and posts.
I rarely report posts because they tend not to bother me. I either debate or leave, I feel no need to complain most of the time. I should be able to defend my point well without going crying to "mommy" if I have to or if everybody disagrees with me, maybe I'm the problem.
People abusing the report link to tattle on someone who just disagreed with them get ignored.
But I suspect I can guess at least a couple of the constant "flaggers" and I find it annoying because:
I doubt you can. I'm looking at the list of those 167 and anyone would be pretty hardpressed to figure out who reports the most. And if you start a reporting campaign based on your exceedingly limited knowledge of who you think are the "flaggers", you are going to quickly get on the moderator radar. In other words, it's my job to deal with flaggers, not yours.
1. either they are endlessly snarky and I'm guessing not flagging their own snarky posts, so they constantly get away with it until someone calls them on it--unfortunately that tends to happen "in thread" which doesn't get read instead of through flagging. The calling out thread gets flagged by Ms. Snarky, the thread doesn't get read in total, and the the calling out person gets in trouble
I know many of the mods, including me, read the entire thread or go back to the Staff folder to ask what the dynamics are. Calling out (rehashing fights from other threads) , by the way, in a different thread is against forum rules. The mods read this and conclude that what is happening has to do with interpersonal conflict between two people with personalities that rub each other the wrong way and moderate both of them.
2. they only report people who disagree with them. Personally, I think these posters need to pull up their big boy/girl panties and move on with their day, but that's me.
There is more of that kind of reporting than we like and we ignore them. I haven't checked the report logs but when people complain that they make reports but no mods act on them, I'm left wondering if their report was one of those, "Wah! So and so disagreed with me and that's RUDE!".
It very much reminds me of the teacher's pet who is sticking her tongue out at people who they turn around.
Well, that's pretty insulting because a teacher's pet carries the implicit understanding that the teacher is complicit in favoring the "pet".
So, my solution is going to be a steady increase in flagging the people who I think "get away with it".
Just be aware that I have personally warned and gagged people who abuse the report link for their own personal agendas. The irony is that your determination to report more suspects actually makes more work for the moderators. Stick to reporting behavior that clearly violates a forum rule or alerts the mods to a potential problem brewing.
