Thanks for replying.
If that’s true, then the “reports” system isn’t working, because I’ve been reporting the posts of the same member [B][U]for weeks[/U][/B] - otherwise I wouldn’t have resorted to challenging your moderation in public (yet again).
The fact that you - so conveniently, as ever - “haven’t been able to confirm that”(!) doesn’t mean that it hasn’t been going on for weeks. And it [B][U]HAS[/U][/B] been going on for weeks. Your staff have just been [I]ignoring[/I] it. Either the reports don’t work (though I don’t believe that, because quite often the moderators act on a report but won’t communicate about it or answer questions, in spite of your repeated assurances to the contrary), or your staff aren’t telling you what’s going on, or they’re “losing” some of the reports before you look at them.
Your loyalty to your staff is touching, but demonstrates that actually you’re more concerned that the moderators shouldn’t be shown up in public than that the forum’s full of spam and self-promotion and that nobody will do anything about it! :rolleyes:
You mean that they’d allow your members and readers to notice that your staff aren’t doing their jobs and that members are increasingly and openly complaining about that (as well as offering [U]very repeatedly[/U] to help them to do it!). :rolleyes:
That [U]doesn’t[/U] happen and you know it. That has [U]never[/U] happened. So if you’ve done that, you’ve done it only since yesterday.
Let’s talk now about another unresolved matter - the posts of “Alex Cook”. This member very persistently pasted in a [B][U]huge[/U][/B] number of paragraphs of text from various websites (Investopedia, and so on - I gave links to [B][U]all[/U][/B] of the original sources from which he’d stolen them,in my never-ending reports), unaccredited, passing them off as “his own forum posts”, and I kept on and on and on asking whether it was [I][U]really[/U][/I] necessary to report every such post individually to get them removed (evidently it [B]was[/B], which is awful!), and I kept on saying expressly “I look forward to hearing from you about this and thank you in advance for your kind reply” ([B]that’s polite enough, isn’t it?![/B]) and I was totally ignored.
Clearly your staff were receiving the reports, because (eventually, very slowly) they managed to act on them. But they wouldn’t moderate his posts themselves. So if you’re “[U]unable to confirm[/U]” that, as you put it, then someone has removed the evidence, in which case “I wonder why”!
The inescapable reality is that they just weren’t doing their job, over many weeks. The “system” still doesn’t work.
I must have asked the same question at least 15 times (perfectly politely, which was a trial in the circumstances, let me tell you!) and [B]nobody has ever replied once[/B]. [U]Even now[/U].
I still haven’t had a reply about this, even after finally resorting to sending messages to both Pipzilla and yourself about it.
I’m asking [B][U]WHY[/U][/B], and having been [B][U]so[/U][/B] rudely treated over that issue, for so many weeks, I’m not going to stop asking until I’ve had an answer.
And please don’t try to fob me off with “I haven’t been able to confirm that”. :o
Can you understand that needing to report every such post individually, after doing a Google search for the original sources of the so-obviously stolen paragraphs of text in each case, before each was removed, made me feel that I was doing the moderators’ work for them? [B]Yes or no?[/B] I’m not asking to “blow off steam”: I’m inviting you to think about why you have a situation in which your concerned members are offering to help, and in fact end up helping, and nobody will even acknowledge it or reply to them, when your own moderators won’t even [U][I]on specific request[/I][/U] pro-actively look through the posts of a known offender to remove the paste-ins. What does that tell you about the forum’s moderation? It’s not a rhetorical question, Pipstradamus: I’m literally asking you what that tells you (and whether you can see what it tells everyone else) about the forum’s moderation, and I’m asking for an answer.
You told me in this thread that you take that very seriously, but evidently that’s just not true, is it? Or even if you do, your staff manage to ignore it for weeks and weeks after it’s been persistently but politely brought to their attention.
They [U]did[/U] (eventually!!) delete all the offending posts, after I’d reported all of them at least once and some of them twice, so clearly they were receiving the reports. My question is: [U]why weren’t they willing to look through the posts of this so-persistently offending member themselves, and why did I have to do it for them[/U]?
[I]And why did nobody reply to me about it, however many times I [I]perfectly politely[/I] asked for a reply?[/I]
As you see, I have now turned from “polite” to “angry”, and you know as well as I do that members reading this post will [B][U]FULLY[/U][/B] understand why, in the circumstances - as anyone would!
Without wanting to sound completely like “Little Miss Sense-of-Entitlement”, here, I [I]do[/I] actually feel entitled to an answer to these questions. They’re not going to go away just by being ignored. You know me well enough to know that I’m not making all this up just for the sake of it, Pipstradamus, and if you’re “unable to confirm it”, then I respectfully suggest that you start asking yourself [B]why[/B] you’re “unable to confirm it” and what you’re going to do about that. And if this all comes across as being “demanding”, then I offer you the observation that if your staff had simply been willing to reciprocate my own unerring politeness to them and not persistently ignore my entirely reasonable question completely, I might perhaps feel differently about the situation.
If your responses, when eventually provoked in public about the persistence of all these issues, bore any relation at all to the actual [U]outcomes[/U] following these discussions, when these same situations occur again and again (which they always will), then it would be. But very sadly, that’s [I]never[/I] been the case. So it isn’t.
And however much you try to make me sound “demanding” and try inferentially to cast doubt on what I’m saying by being “unable to confirm it”, the overall situation [I]isn’t[/I] improving - that’s the reality, and everyone knows it. And [I]that’s why you’re losing members and participation[/I].
Just look at how much time and attention have been taken up here, and how much bad grace and ill will and resentment have been caused, over the simplest of situations which could totally have been avoided if [B][U]any one[/U][/B] of your staff, on [B][U]any one[/U][/B] occasion, had simply been willing to say to me “Ok, thanks, we’ll check his other posts” [I]or even[/I] “Ok, thanks, we’re too busy but if you check them and report accordingly, we’ll delete them because that only takes a second”. But apparently even that’s too much to ask for!
Lexy
(Edited to change emphasis, punctuation, etc.)