The Lemon Fool

When one reports a post, one is presented with the following list of reasons for the report:

* The message contains links to illegal or pirated software.
* The reported message has the only purpose to advertise for a website or another product.
* The reported message is off topic.
* The reported message does not fit into any other category, please use the further information field.

If this list is modifiable, I'd suggest reviewing it in the light of the site rules. For example, a common reason for reporting in my experience is that the reported message criticises other posters rather than addressing the issues they're discussing, in violation of the site rule "Stick to the facts and argue the points discussed, rather than criticise the poster." - but that reason can only be expressed by using the last option and the further information field. Another issue is about the second option - does TLF really want to give the impression that such advertising is only against the rules if it is the only purpose of the post? (Yes, I know that impression will be dispelled by reading the site rules - but that doesn't deal with the case of someone reading a post that contains some advertising among other significant material, going to report it, finding that the list seems to indicate that isn't a reason for reporting, and giving up.)

To be clear, I'm suggesting such a review, preferably done by the moderators (since they'll know what the frequently-encountered reasons for reporting are), not saying that I've tried to do such a review myself (i.e. the above is only a couple of examples, not an attempt at a comprehensive list!).

Gengulphus

I've noticed this morning that the list of reasons for reports has been changed, to:

* This post is off topic and distracts from the original post
* This post contains claims not validated, cited, or bias
* This post contains offensive or upsetting language.
* The message contains links to illegal or pirated software.
* The reported message does not fit into any other category, please use the further information field.

This list does seem to me to cover the common reasons for reporting better than the old one does, so thanks to the admins and/or moderators for that! And the first reason on the list (which is the one used by default) is now one I encounter reasonably frequently - the old list's default "illegal or pirated software" reason was one I don't believe I've ever had cause to use!

Gengulphus

You are welcome. It still needs work but we will do what we can

Gengulphus wrote:I've noticed this morning that the list of reasons for reports has been changed, to:

* This post is off topic and distracts from the original post
* This post contains claims not validated, cited, or bias
* This post contains offensive or upsetting language.
* The message contains links to illegal or pirated software.
* The reported message does not fit into any other category, please use the further information field.

This list does seem to me to cover the common reasons for reporting better than the old one does, so thanks to the admins and/or moderators for that! And the first reason on the list (which is the one used by default) is now one I encounter reasonably frequently - the old list's default "illegal or pirated software" reason was one I don't believe I've ever had cause to use!

In terms of the second item there:

"This post contains claims not validated, cited, or bias"

I would suggest that a huge proportion of TLF posts fall into that category. To take a literal view of such a rule would imply that any post that is not or cannot be immediately proven would be subject to removal. At a stroke that would justify the removal of almost every post on CAN, for instance, where the expression of opinion and bias is the norm. Indeed the concept of validating a political opinion seems impossible. Same for religion, sport and even investment matters.

More generally I do not believe that any post should be removed merely for being factually incorrect, not least since that is usually a subjective judgement. Rather the content of the post should be examined and discussed to gradually elicit its truth value.

Moreover we cannot expect the moderators to be subject matter experts. Rules should be based on clear behavioural issues and not on views about the underlying "facts".

Lootman wrote:More generally I do not believe that any post should be removed merely for being factually incorrect, not least since that is usually a subjective judgement. Rather the content of the post should be examined and discussed to gradually elicit its truth value.

Moreover we cannot expect the moderators to be subject matter experts. Rules should be based on clear behavioural issues and not on views about the underlying "facts".

I think you are right. That is why we moderators are here, to apply moderation. The rules are the rules and it needs a certain amount of leeway to interpret them. Until AI catches up we perform that role. So if a post contains "claims not validated, cited, or bias" then we exercise some kind of judgement as to whether that, under the circumstances, the missing validation, citation, or untoward bias is material to the argument being made.

It isn't always straightforward.

C.

This post contains claims not validated, cited, or bias

This is a reason, not a rule. (Hiding a rule where you have to report a post in order to find it would be unfair!).

An opinion is only a claim if it is expressed as a fact. The above reason would not normally be relevant to a general discussion of different people's views (although this would depend upon how you apply the "bias" criterion).


Julian F. G. W.

jfgw wrote:...

Yes, well put. C.

Gengulphus wrote:I've noticed this morning that the list of reasons for reports has been changed, to:

* This post is off topic and distracts from the original post
* This post contains claims not validated, cited, or bias
* This post contains offensive or upsetting language.
* The message contains links to illegal or pirated software.
* The reported message does not fit into any other category, please use the further information field.

This list does seem to me to cover the common reasons for reporting better than the old one does, so thanks to the admins and/or moderators for that! And the first reason on the list (which is the one used by default) is now one I encounter reasonably frequently - the old list's default "illegal or pirated software" reason was one I don't believe I've ever had cause to use!

Gengulphus

I definitely approve of the This post contains claims not validated, cited, or bias

We all have different world views but to state ones world view as a fact without supporting evidence is just unhelpful noise.

The world is as it is - not as you wish it to be.

Need to be careful here. So if I comment, "the world is a dangerous place", do I now have to back that up with crime statistics from across the globe?

Or, "the stock market is a risky place to invest", I need to provide statistics and examples?

Is common sense allowed on the boards?

richfool wrote:Need to be careful here. So if I comment, "the world is a dangerous place", do I now have to back that up with crime statistics from across the globe?

Or, "the stock market is a risky place to invest", I need to provide statistics and examples?

Is common sense allowed on the boards?

I suppose there's a difference between "the coronvirus vaccine is dangerous" (a slightly vague opinion I don't share) and "the coronavirus vaccine has killed tens of thousands of people" (a factual claim for which I've certainly seen no evidence). The problem is that if I post "the coronavirus has killed thousands of people' then it's probably pretty well accepted as a fact, but do I still need to post evidence every time I repeat it? If not, then we are expecting the moderators to know/adjudicate on what are 'accepted facts' because that seems to me to be a dangerous route down which to go...

stooz wrote:You are welcome. It still needs work but we will do what we can

Stooz - see discussion above.

Couldn't we simplify the list by having "breaks site rules" as the first in the list? The site rules are well defined so there should be no ambiguity. Or perhaps you could have a few reasons which are based on site rules:

Breaks site rule on racism/sexism
Breaks site rule defaming others
Breaks site rule disrespectful of others
Etc.

With regard to the "This post contains claims not validated, cited, or bias" reason, yes, just about every post contains multiple such claims - and most of them are entirely reasonable, either clearly being statements of opinion (which will obviously contain the poster's own biases) or statements of fact that are either near-universally (*) accepted as fact (e.g. "1+1 = 2") or easily verified to be true (e.g. "There have recently been calls from medical advisers to the Government to move on to Plan B for dealing with Covid"). And it's also perfectly reasonable for posters to make statements of fact in the belief that they're true without citing a source, provided they're willing to respond to reasonable requests to provide the missing citation if asked to do so, usually by providing such a citation, and to engage constructively in any resulting discussion (and to be clear, just repeating the same claim again and again is not constructive engagement!).

It would be possible to expand the wording of the reason to include more conditions about it - e.g. by adding the words "and despite being asked to do so, the poster hasn't provided the missing validation or citation or acknowledged the bias". But that would spawn further issues about the wording - e.g. in most contexts, it's thoroughly unreasonable to expect posters to provide validation or citation for "1+1 = 2" or even to ask them to do so! And even if one were to expand the wording into something that dealt with all the exceptions, exceptions to exceptions, exceptions to exceptions to exceptions, etc, the result would be pretty unsuitable for this form's purposes, i.e. of getting the reporter to give the moderator a succinct summary of the general nature of the complaint.

So basically, I agree with jfgw that this reason (like the other reasons in the list) is not a rule - and so it's not a suitable subject for rules-lawyering!

I will also observe that the text at the top of the report form says "Reporting should generally be used only if the post breaks forum rules." - so reporters should generally convince themselves that one or more of the forum rules has been broken (**) before even starting on the process of filling in the "Reason" and other fields of the report form.

(*) Weasel word inserted to deal with the fact that in a few contexts, 1+1 is arguably something other than 2 - e.g. in the mathematical area of modulo 2 arithmetic, 1+1 is 0, and in the physical theory of Special Relativity, the result of adding velocities of 1 km/sec and 1 km/sec is something microscopically less than 2 km/sec.

(**) Or at least that the moderators and admins may well regard one of them as having been broken. E.g. the rules forbid "potentially defamatory posts", but people vary widely about what they regard as "defamatory". As it seems clear to me that a major purpose of that rule is to safeguard the site against lawsuits, which the site might well not be able to cope with even if they are without merit due to the legal costs, I don't give my own opinion about whether a remark is defamatory much weight in deciding whether to report it, but report if I think there's any significant chance that it will be regarded that way and leave it up to the moderators and admins to decide whether the rule has been broken.

Gengulphus

Clariman wrote:Couldn't we simplify the list by having "breaks site rules" as the first in the list? The site rules are well defined so there should be no ambiguity. Or perhaps you could have a few reasons which are based on site rules:

Breaks site rule on racism/sexism
Breaks site rule defaming others
Breaks site rule disrespectful of others
Etc.

I don't entirely agree about the site rules being well defined to the extent of there being no ambiguity - there are grey areas in them. But as for all rules regulating human behaviour, there will always be such grey areas - one can reduce those areas by more precise (and generally longer) wording, but not eliminate them entirely. Despite that caveat, your suggestion strikes me as a very good one.

About the "Reporting should generally be used only if the post breaks forum rules." text I commented on in my last post, if it's changeable I would suggest a change and a point to consider:

* Make "forum rules" be a link to the rules to help users consult them if they need to. I know that there is a link to them in the page banners, but there is a tendency to concentrate on the parts of the page of immediate interest and pay little attention to banners, etc, especially when they're standard features of all a site's pages, so having the link at the point where people are reminded of their potential need to check them can help.

* There is actually another reason for reporting that comes up reasonably often, and AFAIK is generally accepted by moderators, namely requesting uncontroversial simple actions that the user cannot do themselves. Examples include locking a crosspost when it's desirable that all replies are confined to the thread the crosspost links to, and correcting a seriously misleading typo in a post that is only noticed after the editing window has closed. Is it worth changing the text to include that possibility and adding a "Request for uncontroversial simple moderator action" reason?

Gengulphus

Gengulphus wrote:it's also perfectly reasonable for posters to make statements of fact in the belief that they're true without citing a source, provided they're willing to respond to reasonable requests to provide the missing citation if asked to do so, usually by providing such a citation, and to engage constructively in any resulting discussion (and to be clear, just repeating the same claim again and again is not constructive engagement!).

We need to be careful about any requirement to provide a source, even if that requirement can be deferred until such time as another poster asks you for one.

And the reason is that there are all kinds of facts for which there is no source. The idea that every fact has to have a citation or reference seems well wide of the mark. I can think of many facts for which there is no internet reference. This is particularly the case for events that happened before the internet was commonly used (1995 or so in my case). Or things that only the poster can know.

There are facts that I know because of memory, observation, inference and other kinds of reasoning, and so on. Then there are suppositions, theories, conjectures and hypotheses, all of which might be true and helpful, but not necessarily provable or citable.

And yes, moderators can and should use common sense, and surely do. But overly broad rules come with a problem, because they can encourage so-called "tactical reporting" where a Lemon reports a post of another on a technicality and for less than noble reasons. In fact one moderator yesterday stated that he has seen posts reported for "pretexts", confirming my personal sense that this kind of thing goes on. It is gratifying that the mods see through such tactics. But even so, having rules that are needlessly broad and open-ended might encourage such tactics.

Finally I don't think moderators should be in the business of deciding whether a stated fact is true or not. That is for the discussion to elicit and for the community to determine.