"It's pretty obvious that if only one or two people report a giveaway that their reasons were nonsensical at best"
That's quite a stretch. People thinking that reporting does nothing, and/or not caring or knowing about the rule being broken are just as likely explanations.
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Are you saying that the mods/admins should look into every single report made, then?
In the end, both user reporting and mod/admin corrective actions are no more than a judgment call. There is no foolproof way of discovering a "bad giveaway" (if there was, we wouldn't need mods/admins in the first place, the system itself would disallow the user from creating a "bad giveaway").
If there are only two reports, odds are they are weak, and even if they make sense, the admin/mod still needs to make his own mind. If there are 100 reports, then reading them all would take longer than "investigating too closely". So, I agree with Shardok, there is no need for this.
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I think you misunderstood. He was disputing Shardok's claim that if there is only a few reports, then the reason for their report is "nonsensical". Which I agree with fatramer, in that really isn't true. I have been a mod on several sites, and I can tell you sometimes people don't bother reporting even the most obvious of rule breaking items due to that a) they can't be arsed b)they don't think it would do any good or the ever so rare c) they don't know how.
Also that statement about not needing mods/admins if there was a foolproof way to determine if there is a bad giveaways or not, is probably not the best thing to say. Not that it would insult someone, but it seems that you think that their only roles are for filtering giveaways, which makes me assume you think that filtering giveaways is their only roles, which is hardly true.
As for the idea, I think a better way, instead of giving people the freedom to write what they want in the report, it should have a dropbox with pre-described reporting phrases. ie. Selecting something likes "possibly fake", "misleading title", "exploited key", ect. Which could help narrow down reports on a quick look, and possibly speed the filtering process along.
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If you believe I "think that their only roles are for filtering giveaways", then I'm not surprised you assume that I "think that filtering giveaways is their only roles"... I mean, you just swapped a couple of words.
I think it's obvious that you still need at the very least admins, even if giveaways didn't exist at all. But if you want, you can assume I said "we wouldn't need the report giveaway [to a mod/admin] button in the first place".
I also think it's clear in my message that I was agreeing with Shardok's first statement (I even repeated the statement), but I do consider the possibility that there could be only two reports, both making sense. The point of my message was not to argue about "user psychology", it's a practical point, and since you seem to have taken ownership of fatkramer's comment, I ask the same to you: are you saying that mods/admins should look into every single report made?
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You believe it is clear, yet if it was so clear, I wouldn't have written what I have. :P
So I ask you this, have you ever been the mod or staff member of a large community with user submitted material? Even a medium size. I ask this because you keep claiming that just because there is only a few reports, that the odds are stacked against it being valid, or in your words, that odds are that it is "weak". I gave my reasons to why some would have a smaller amount of reports. I have done it enough to tell you that it is usually worth going through all of them, and that is what you sign up for when you offer to do mod work. "Quality and community control" in a manner of speaking.
"User psychology" plays into how many people do report, and if the report is even valid. SO while you say it isn't the part to argue about it, it is part of the discussion to if they should look into all of the reports.
I also even gave an idea to what would make it easier to look into most claims, by having a pre-configured report system with a drop down menu to select the best option for reporting a giveaway. My few examples for what they could say may not have been the best, but it is a start. It is slightly more efficient than nothing at all or having people write them, since some tend to write a bit too much, or a bit too illegibly. Meaning they express their report in a way that it is hard for the person reading it to understand what they're reporting. I am also not sure how they get notified of what is reported or not. But if they wanted to improve on the idea I said previously they could also just have a list showing which giveaways were reported, and statistics on the reasons why, without showing each and every report individually. By this I mean, they would see all the reported giveaways and see that x amount of people reported as it being possibly fake, and x reported it for title misleading, or what have you. This would further reduce clutter from individual reports.
So in short, yea mods should read all reports. It comes with the "job". But it is still possible to make it slightly easier by pointing them in the right direction so they don't need to spend that much time investigating.
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To answer your question: yes, I have been a mod, an admin, and also a GM in a private server (not exactly "user-submitted material", but close enough, in terms of people breaking rules, and other people reporting them). On top of that, I develop software, most of which have at least an admin, and some that also include "lesser" roles.
But... all that doesn't necessarily means anything, because not every community, nor every system, is "the same", nor "similar enough". If we are going to get into "user psychology", then you are analyzing it the wrong way: instead of asking "why don't people report?", in my experience makes more sense to ask "why do people report?". In most cases, it's because either they have a stake in it, or because they have a personal problem with the reported, and they just use "the rules" as a weapon.
For instance, if a forum rule is "do not use curse words", most people won't report it when someone curses, because they don't feel affected by it, so if you have only one report of that, then it's worth looking into it (not to mention is very quick and simple to confirm). On the other hand, if a game has a glitch (namely, there is a way to get mobs stuck and you can kill them without receiving damage), and you get ONE report that says "I saw [player] exploiting the glitch", then, unless you have a lot of time on your hands, you won't be following him around for days just in case you can catch him exploiting the glitch, because if he is truly exploiting it, odds are you are going to get a lot of reports, since everyone feels affected by him getting an unfair advantage.
The giveaway part of this site is more like a game than a forum. We all feel cheated when we see someone post a "bad giveaway".
Regarding your own suggestion, I think it's "just a little" better than what we actually have, and makes it "a bit" harder on admins/devs/mods. What's bigger, "just a little" or "a bit"? I don't know, that's for the admins/devs/mods to answer, since they are the ones that would benefit (or not) from it.
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Why do we need a report button? So mods/admins don't have to look at every giveaway on their own. Perhaps they should do just that, but let's just assume that they can't spare the time.
As regards expressing a reason for why you reported something: even to a staff member who should know what they're doing, what might be wrong with a giveaway may not always be readily apparent.
"are you saying that mods/admins should look into every single report made?"
That depends entirely on how many reports there are and how many man-hours can be invested in dealing with them. So let's say you get hundreds of reports but there's only one admin who moderates for like 15 minutes per day. Then it's obviously not feasible to look into everything. But that is different once you have several moderators each putting in perhaps half an hour daily or more.
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A drop down box, WOULD be an improvement for SG. As Zevs clearly pointed out; it's basically a way of filtering giveaways. Variety is the spice of life, give people the ability to click and they shall. Tell them to write an essay or reason, they mostly likely wouldn't attempt to do so.
Being a 'Mod' in any sense requires time and dedication. If you are not prepared to put the HOURS in then what use are you? This site seems to be expanding at a rather rapid rate, IF the current Mods don't feel up to the task. (i.e. more hours to filter through reports), then outsourcing and getting another Mod to spread the load IS ideal.
Either that, or close the site for new members and stick with the current consumer base until they have an adequate method of checking giveaways.
Penny for a thought. [insert Penny here]
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"As regards expressing a reason for why you reported something: even to a staff member who should know what they're doing, what might be wrong with a giveaway may not always be readily apparent."
This is true, but in my opinion still doesn't justify the original suggestion. This is true, as I said, but also very uncommon, and in those rare cases where this happens, you can post about it in the forum, which not only will get the admins/mods attention, but, perhaps more important, the rest of the community will now also share this obscure knowledge, and will start reporting this kind of situations.
As for the rest of your message, that is exactly my point: balance between the benefits and the costs.
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So, why even make this thread? You have no justification to report a giveaway, or way to express your reasoning for reporting, and want to defend your actions to the one or two people that could see that you actually reported a giveaway? I don't follow.
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He didn't say he doesn't have a justification for reporting, he said he wants a way to express the reason for the report, ie. giving his report justification instead of just a click. Explaining the reason in a short explanation can help in the filtering process between real and fake reports. Yes, fake reports probably do happen due to some people unjustly believing a giveaway is fake for one reason or another. Though I already described the method I think would be a bit more effective earlier.
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I just reported a giveaway and wanted to justify my reasoning, but found out there isn't any way of doing so. I'm sure this'll help the mods/admin(s) root out the bad giveaways without having to investigate too closely.
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