| TalonMan said:
Exactly - and for every one of these types of posts that you are showing restraint towards, there will be 5 or 6 other people who will report the same exact post as 'trolling'. Yeah, we could do what your saying and warn people for reporting things that aren't against the rules - but the problem is, trolling is so DAMN subjective. It's just not as black & white as say 'flaming' or 'spamming' or any other the other rules we have in place. And then we'll wind up having debates with users who've reported something as trolling, we disagreed with them and warned them not to report such things, and instead of fighting with YOU guys, we'll be fighting with THEM!!!! And they'll be flooding the forum with threads like this insisting the reporting system is flawed... ...stalemate???
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Well there is the alternative of mixing a positive feedback system in with the negative. Essentially you find some way to reward people for reporting bad posts consistently and use them to fight the negative reporters for you. It is a very hard situation to get around I admit. More so because the moderation here has always been so soft, and the few times it isn't there is a stream of people throwing temper tantrums over it. This would hurt the alternative system I suggested as well though as it would likely lead to an escalating hissy fit thread war between the two sides of the arguement, and then everyone loses.
The only way I can see the system working is if it was eased into. Start by saying the policy exists, and then just do a verbal warning for any offense. After a few weeks you start punishing the repeat offenders and throw out hard numbers and possible examples of the bad reports they have to try and stem the early tide of tears. This would require a "non-trivial" amount of extra time from the moderators though, so it might not be logistically possible.
Pick your poison is clearly the option you guys have infront of you right now. I know the one I would go with, but it is neither my decision nor in-line with previous administrative calls. I can try to brain storm on it if this is in anyway an actuall issue for the mod team, but I suspect it is just a matter of explaining how things run to those on the outside right now.
