Steveam wrote:I raised a report about a comment which I found offensive and racist. No action was taken (I’m assuming the moderator didn’t agree with my view) - fair enough. I then posted to explain that I found the comment offensive and racist - I also mentioned that I’d reported the post and no action had been taken. My post has been removed and I’ve received no comment or explanation. I assume the moderator found that I was “arguing” about the original decision.
Dear Steveam
I am really sorry about this and can only apologise for the lack of communication and the apparent lack of action. As you have acknowledged you have made some assumptions about the thoughts and motivations of the site's moderators and their actions (or inactions). They are reasonable assumptions to have made but a close analysis of the log files and time-stamps shows me this is not the case, but before addressing that I want to make something crystal clear. This site abhors any racism, sexism, or stereotyping of people and their actions of beliefs. This is embedded in the rules of the site and was recently restated very clearly just 12 days ago:
viewtopic.php?f=101&t=31229 My investigation of the actions and timings show the following occurred.
- You reported a post at 9.42 AM this morning
- At 1.50 PM a volunteer Moderator closed the report and manually escalated the report to the Admin team (consisting of only 3 people)
- At 2.56 PM an Admin edited the post you reported - presumably to remove the offensive wording
- At 4.09 PM an Admin appears to have edited the post again
However, before an Admin could get to it, you posted on the thread to complain about the inaction. Another user issued a Problem Report because you had discussed Moderation in the wrong place and a Moderator subsequently removed your post. The appropriate method of raising Moderation issues is described here
viewtopic.php?f=101&t=31312 .
None of these individual actions were wrong, but collectively they led you to feel ignored and understandably led to you making some assumptions about people's motivation for ignoring you. In reality, the issue had only been escalated and was eventually addressed.
Now there are lessons to be learned here for the Admin and Moderation team. Ideally we should deal with things promptly where possible. Where something has been escalated it would be better to either leave the report open or to inform the problem-reporter that things have been escalated.
I hope you find this reassuring and decide to stay.
Clariman