Just reported a post

curveball

I just reported a post in the Breast Reconstruction section as spam. The post is one of four by that member, all similar in style, and although there is no direct commercial approach I think they may be coming from a business rather than an individal. But I may be mistaken about that and if so I apologize

It would be nice if the "report a post" feature had a text box where you could say why you are reporting the post, i.e. your reason for thinking it is a spam or a rule violation.

otter

curveball, I found those posts you mentioned.

They're kind of ... well, kind of strange. The grammar is poor, suggesting that they were written by someone from elsewhere or perhaps by a computer bot.  (You know, how Google and FB secretly spy on your on-line activity, and then offer you commercial products or services that almost match what you've been reading about on line?)

Mostly, though, the posts by that person are so unnecessary.  I don't know -- I guess I don't think they constitute spam, but they really are odd.  I didn't report them because, so far, I don't think they violated any rules.  (If being odd was a rules violation, many of us would have been gone a long time ago.)

This, for instance, was what "ambulatoryalliances143" posted on May 5 to a thread about Vitamin D on the Alternative Medicine forum:

"Vitamin D suplementation may help prevent harmonal chang that can lead to bone loss among adolescents and uoung adult being treated for HIV with tenofivir according to a national Institutaion of helth publish online ahead of print of clinical infectious diseases."

Not sure what that had to do with the O.P. on that thread, but, hey...  whatever.  Maybe I'm being too critical, though. Somebody must think those statements are helpful, or he/she wouldn't be posting them here.

BTW, what I typically do when reporting a post as spam is reply to the post with the following statement (or a similar version):  "Reported as spam." 

I don't care to be anonymous. I think if we had to admit to having reported a post, there would be less covert gang activity. Fewer personality conflicts would erupt into public battles.

otter

ETA: I inserted a quote from one of the posts to illustrate a point.

reesie

I have no problem letting people know I reported a post but don't make a post on obvious spam because it just serves to bump the topic up in the active topics list. So I just report it and let the mods do the rest.



I do only report spam.

AnnNYC

For more than a year now, whenever I have reported a post, when you get to the page asking if you really want to report it, there is a "cancel" button and two other buttons: "report as spam" or "report as rules violation."  I have to choose one of those to complete the report...

otter

Good point, reesie -- I never thought of that (duh!). I guess I'll stop announcing that I'm reporting a post. 

And, AnnNYC, yes, that's true about the two choices we have (spam or rules violation) when reporting a post. So, I imagine the Mods can tell whether we thought the post was spam; but nobody else can tell. I've always figured it was good citizenship to 'fess up and admit that I've reported a post. I hate it when a post just disappears, replaced by a cryptic note, "This Post was Removed by the Community."  We know it takes just a handful of people (5?) to make a post go away, and we never learn what it was about the post that those people found objectionable.

However, the Mods now play an active role in reviewing and removing posts (or not) that have been reported.  So I guess admitting that we've reported one is less important.

otter