Flagged Content, Reported Posts, & Warning Points (Needs Edits)

Let's Review: There are three ways to send a post for review by the moderators:

Spam- When a post is flagged 5 times as Spam, it is hidden from the board and sent for moderation. The point of this feature is to allow users to report spam to mods and remove it from the boards, so users don't have to sift through three pages of spam each day to get to actual forum posts.

What isSpam: This is for bots only- your garcinia cambogia, miracle skin treatments, babaji love specialists, etc. Please flag these items as Spam, do notreport them as Advertising.

What is notSpam: Anything that is not a spam bot.Often users will report advertisements from actual users, multiple posts from actual users, or users expressing an opinion they disagree with or believe to be misinformation as Spam - those should be sent as Reports.

Abuse- When a post is flagged 5 times as Abuse, it is hidden from the board and sent for moderation. The point of this feature is to get offensive or upsetting content reported to the mods and removed from the boards to reduce the number of people who have to see it.

What isAbuse: Pornography, graphic or disturbing images, hate speech, etc. Basically, if you wouldn't want your children or your boss standing behind you when you open the post, or if having it on your computer would get you fired from your job, you can consider it Abuse. This is for severe, urgent violations.

What is notAbuse: General community guideline violations, posts you disagree with, posts by people you are arguing with in a forum, and anything else that does not meet the criteria above.

If a post is neither Spam nor Abuse, it should be sent to the moderators via Report.

Report- This is the good old report feature we know and love. Click it, choose the reason, enter your grievance, and it goes straight to the mods. Here are the choices and some examples:

Advertising: This is for your MLM salespeople, join my Facebook group, follow my blog/instagram, contact me for awesome training/weight loss advice posts.

Attacking/insulting other members: This is for attacks, insults, general nastiness. Remember that reciprocation is also prohibited, so if you report another user and then attack them in retaliation, you will also be in violation of the community guidelines.

Trolling: For actual troll posts which try to start an uproar in the community, or posts attempting to derail the thread or start an argument between users.

Derogatory/Offensive: Derogatory remarks about a group (sex, gender, age, religion, sexual orientation, etc), includes words and images

Violates copyright/trademark: For posts where the user plagiarizes or uses images they do not have permission to use; mostly for when users include someone else's content in their response without crediting the original source.

Sexually explicit/Vulgar: Foul language, explicit language, include words and images.

This is my post and I want to delete it: Self-explanatory.

Other: Use this category for violations that don't seem to fit anywhere else, or if you're not sure if it is a violation.

• Underage users or eating disorder/VLCD promotion
• Multiple posts of the same topic by a real user (not a bot)
• Spam by real users (not bots), such as giving the same reply to every topic (i.e. A certain book you should read or link you should read/watch)
• Requesting edits to posts (change in title or content after your edit time has expired)
• Excessive and/or inappropriate flagging of posts in a thread
• Posts in languages other than English
• Posts that include personal or private contact information
• References to religion or political topics

What happens when a post enters moderation

Once a post enters moderation, we determine whether there is an actual violation and of which guideline, then determine the warning that will be given based on the severity of the violation and the frequency of violations by that user.

We do attempt to work with users when it is clear that there are issues between that person and another user or group of users, rather than just handing out warnings. If there is a problem, please come to one of us with the issue without reciprocating or responding to the user or users and escalating the situation.

What happens when a user abuses the flag feature

Users who flag content which does not meet the criteria for a flag will be subject to warnings and points. This includes users who are flagging content due to past events gone sour, a dislike of the user, and those who are trying to incite drama, flame-bait, or are flagging to attack another user in a thread due to disagreement.

How to use reactions such as "Like", "Awesome" and "Insightful"

We hope everyone has been enjoying the addition of our three new positive reactions “Like”, “Awesome" and "Insightful". They should be used when you like, love or think a post is insightful.

What does the woo reaction mean? Woo is a term for pseudoscientific explanations that share certain common characteristics, often being too good to be true (aside from being unscientific). Woo is understood specifically as dressing itself in the trappings of science (but not the substance) while involving unscientific concepts, such as anecdotal evidence and sciencey-sounding words.

We wanted to provide some additional clarity to the use of these new reactions. They were enabled with the intent to provide an additional positive element to the forums and should be used in a manner that supports our Community Guidelines.

With that said, any “Like”, “Awesome” or "Insightful" reaction that is used on a post that breaks our guidelines will be subjected to removal and/or a warning. It is not ok to promote posts that break the guidelines and users that do so will be held accountable as well as the original poster.

***Giant Thanks to @kgeyserfor writing up this fantastic explanation.