Cauldron Suggestions Wanted: How Would You Improve TC?

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[RandallS]

This is just my long winded way of saying I think this is a well run board.

Thank you! We try. We aren't always successful, but we are always trying.

[Juniper]

My suggestion would be less nit-picking about unimportant matters. I will explain.

I have been a member of this forum for just over 8 months. In my first month of posting here, I received a warning for moderating another poster. I was slightly confused and a little bit upset by this, as I didn't think that the incident was so drastic. Basically (and to be honest, I really can't remember it all that well- which shows that I got over it pretty quickly  ) what happened was somebody said something that I felt was more of a personal attack as opposed to an attack on my beliefs, and I told them to please do not do that anymore. I received a warning for moderating another poster.

I went and re-read the rules. I saw that this was quite a major rule, and I had indeed broken it. Also, I realised that if I felt that somebody had attacked me in some way, I should have reported it and let the mods handle it. But I didn't. So I didn't gripe, especially since I still wanted to be a member here, and I learnt from my mistake and I continued on.

I've realised that, although sometimes a rule may only be 'slightly' broken, it wouldn't be fair to thus ignore it. At the end of the day, a rule was broken. All the rules are here for a reason, and if the mods didn't enforce them like they do, then where would the board be? Most probably in chaos.

I'm very grateful to Randall and all of the other moderators on here for doing what they do. And also, not being pissy about it. I only remember the mods being harsh with one poster before, and by the gods did they deserve it! I find that the mods here generally enforce the rules in a pleasant manner. It's one of the reasons I love being a member here. I never get the feeling of 'it's us against them'. This forum is great 

[nigel]

I'll have to throw my two cents in on that one, that the mods really won't give you an official warning unless you make a super mess up. Mostly it's just a "Psst, go back and read this rule thanks" type of warning that's not really official. Which is good because sometimes the rule isn't a major thing more of an etiquette thing.

[TLCTugger]

Hi,
I got a spam e-mail from member

mama4jesus

and it's like impossible to find the right place to mark it as spam or otherwise report that this member is pitching the dead millionaire from Nigeria BS. 

-Ron

[Koimichra]

Hi,
I got a spam e-mail from member

mama4jesus

and it's like impossible to find the right place to mark it as spam or otherwise report that this member is pitching the dead millionaire from Nigeria BS. 

-Ron

Already banned. You're not the only one who got hit.

[EverFool]

Hi,
I got a spam e-mail from member

mama4jesus

and it's like impossible to find the right place to mark it as spam or otherwise report that this member is pitching the dead millionaire from Nigeria BS. 

-Ron

For future reference, in PM you should have the option to 'report to moderator', or something like that.  That will send a copy of the pm to staff, who can then take action.

[Star]

and it's like impossible to find the right place to mark it as spam or otherwise report that this member is pitching the dead millionaire from Nigeria BS. 

Problem already taken care of this time, as noted, but for future reference (and for anyone else who's curious):

At the bottom of each PM message, there should be a "Report to Admin" link.  It looks like it works a little differently from the report links on posts, so I'm not sure exactly what happens on our end when you report it that way, but it's worth a shot.  

You can also contact any staff member through their profile to report this kind of thing.  Find a post they've made, and then click on the envelope under their name to send an e-mail.  (I don't recommend sending staff PMs unless you know for certain that the staff member you're messaging will accept them, as some staff members hate PMs with a passion.  For the record, I'm one who will accept them.  E-mail is usually safe with just about anyone, though.)  If you do this, you will need to be sure to include the user name that the PM came from, and preferably copy and paste the text of the PM into your message as well so that we can evaluate it ourselves.  (Not that there's much doubt in the case of the Nigerian stuff, but it's still nice to be able to see it.)

[Marilyn (ABSENTMINDED)]

At the bottom of each PM message, there should be a "Report to Admin" link.

According to the OP, though, the spam came in their e-mail.  When a member is e-mailed through their profile is there any similar link/button?  I prefer PMs to e-mails in most cases, so I haven't had much of a chance to see if they are any different from regular e-mails.

In that case, I guess getting a hold of a mod directly or posting about it are the only options?

Marilyn

[RandallS]

For future reference, in PM you should have the option to 'report to moderator', or something like that.  That will send a copy of the pm to staff, who can then take action.

It wasn't a PM.  The idiot was sending EMAIL to members from our email to member function. One person at a time. They can't get people's email addresses as we do not provide them, but they can sit in the forum and manually send them to members.

[Star]

According to the OP, though, the spam came in their e-mail. 

Sorry about that.  Somehow I'd gotten the idea that it was PM spam.     There's no specific link for reporting in e-mails from profile that I remember, but see previous about e-mailing a staff member through their profile to report it.

[thain]

They can't get people's email addresses as we do not provide them, but they can sit in the forum and manually send them to members.

That's either a pretty sophisticated bot or one hell of a dedicated spammer.  It's mind-numbing enough replying to REAL emails all day...I'd hate to imagine manually clicking through profile pages to send copy-n-paste spam.

[RandallS]

That's either a pretty sophisticated bot...

While it might be a bot, as most SMF boards do not have our weird member email mod, it would have to be specially written for boards like ours that use this mod.

[wisdomsbane]

While it might be a bot, as most SMF boards do not have our weird member email mod, it would have to be specially written for boards like ours that use this mod.

I think it's just someone with way too much time on their hands.  Or rather a group of people.  I used to get messages like this when I ran around Yahoo chats...  I mean almost letter for letter.  Just someone (or group) trying to cash in on the naive and sympathetic...

[Jixijenga]

2) Eliminating/weakening our quoting rules. (The Hosts will shut down the board first -- seriously, having quoting with the backlinks to the quoted message is that important.)

To me, that point is just anal retentive and completely unreasonable. Shut down the fucking board because people don't quote? Mind you, I'm quite cavalier in my posting style so don't mind me at all!

But, I have something for you, Randall.

http://www.stopforumspam.com/spamdomainsandips Behold. I don't have a lot of time, so, if it's been posted before I'm sorry. I saw this, and I thought of here, actually. Considering it's such a nice community, I decided why the hell not and went ahead with this very post. I do notice a bot discussion going on, so this is quite relevant to that as well, in my opinion.

I also did not know where it would be very appropriate to place this link, so, I just threw it here as to not clutter.

[RandallS]

To me, that point is just anal retentive and completely unreasonable.

It probably is. That does not change the fact that without the quotes so I know exactly which message is being replied to, following every thread on this board at least twice a day would be so much work for me that I would not be willing to do it. Worse, it would make moderating almost impossible as would would have no idea exactly what provoked a rules-violating reply.  This was important enough to the Hosts that we modified the SMF code to make it very hard to not quote.

Since the amount of extra unpaid work without the mandatory quotes would be more than either of the hosts willing to do, we'd have to shut the board down. Some may see this as anal and unreasonable. We really don't care as these folks are not paying us a living wage and full benefits to run the board the way they want us to.

With respect to your PM, don't worry, you position on this will not be held against you, but the Hosts' position on this subject is not changing. 

I also did not know where it would be very appropriate to place this link, so, I just threw it here as to not clutter.

Thanks for the link.

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