Report Function

Somehow, I accidentally posted the same post twice in one thread. When I tried to report it so you can delete it, the box opens and then closes before I could report it.
However, it worked when I asked Bobby to report it for me.
Can we not report our own posts when we make a mistake, and there is no way to delete it ourselves ?
If we can't report a duplicate post, should we just send a message to admin, or what is the preferred method to deal with this?
It might be just a glitch with the iPad; but it worked fine with Bobby's Ipad when I finally asked him to report the post for me, causing me to think that maybe I can't report my own post.
Thanks.....Yvonne

PS duplicate post is #13 in the thread about "thoughts on the word senior".

 

1. I don't know whether it is set up to allow people to report themselves. I don't see anything about that in the documentation but I'll check it out on this account.
2. A message to the Admin would work. As it is, I would probably come across it on my own but it's good to let me know, just in case I get too busy to read everything or something.

 

That's not really a duplicate post, since you're saying something different. I had seen that and, if they were both very short, I'd have merged them. But considering they were both substantial, and posted eight minutes apart, I just left it.

 

Just so you know, I was able to report myself.

 

Please do not be too quick to do so, but if you find something in the forum that offends you, you may "report" it using the report function, and I will receive the report the next time I log into my Admin account. Please do not reply to the post that you find offensive because if I decide to remove that post, I will then have to remove any posts that refer to it as well.

I removed a post today, which then resulted in my having to remove several other posts and, in retrospect, I probably shouldn't have removed the post. In my opinion, it was borderline offensive at the most, and probably should have simply been ignored by those who were offended by it. Of course, if someone frequently says things that offend you, there is also an option to "ignore" everything they say. The forum has a function for that.

In real life, when someone says something insensitive, or maybe a little gross, they might be embarrassed by the responses given by others, and most of them will learn what is or is not appropriate, which might differ from place to place, or person to person, and probably that's the way that I should have handled it.

 

I check it at least once a day, usually more often, but if something is really urgent, you will catch me quicker by messaging me at this account. In that event, it would be nice if you also used the "Report" function, since that keeps a record of it in the event that I am not able to look into it right away.

 

For anyone who has reported something to me using the "Report" function, I owe you an apology. The way the report function works is that when I receive a report, there is a space beneath it for a comment, very much like a reply field in a forum post. I have been replying to your reports using that field so that you would know what, if anything, I was doing about whatever it was that you reported, and why, but I didn't realize until a few moments ago that I am the only one who can read these comments. The comment field is that so I can make a note to myself or to any other moderators, of which we have none. So if you have been under the impression that I have been ignoring your reports, please forgive me. I didn't realize you weren't getting these comments. In the future, I will reply to you via private conversation.

 

As a reminder, this is not a full-time job for me. I do a fair amount of traveling, albeit mostly within New England, and there are occasionally things that my wife wants me to do around the house. More accurately, there are always things that my wife wants me to do around the house, but I occasionally do them. Plus, there is a matter of earning a living since Social Security doesn't pay quite as much as a full-time job.

There will always be those who disagree, but I try to be fair here, and I try to keep things reasonably on-topic and somewhat tame, but without being overbearing about it. I don't always succeed, but I try. I don't read every post in the forum, as I once did, since we are getting busier than we used to be. Even when I am participating in a thread, I may not read every post carefully because I far prefer to be a participant than a traffic cop. There is good and bad in that, I suppose.

If there is a fight going on in the games section, as occurs from time to time, I am not going to know about it unless someone tells me. I used to participate in some of the games but I guess I'm too OCD for that. I like rules, and it seems that none of the rest of you did so, while I appreciate that the games are there, and people are enjoying them, I haven't played in a while.

When you report something to me, I will look into it. I don't always act on it. Sometimes I'll reply to your complaint but, often, I will just assume that because the problem is fixed, no reply is necessary. In a future upgrade, I hope the forum software people will give me the ability to reply to complaints directly from the complaint but that is not currently the case. If your complaint results in my having to ban someone, I probably won't reply because I don't feel comfortable discussing such things with anyone other than the person who has been banned. Even in that, I may not be perfect but that is my goal.

Because anyone gaining access to my Admin account would be able to do irreparable damage, I use an insanely long and complex password for that account, one that I have to copy and paste, and I don't save it to my portable devices, such as my iPhone so, although I may be in the forum under my Ken Anderson account, I haven't necessarily read your complaint and may not be in an account that would allow me to do anything about it.

For those who may be new here, I know I have explained this before but, unlike some other forum administrators, I prefer to use a regular member account (such as this one) for forum discussions. I think that it makes it easier for me to participate as a member, since I do want you to feel free to disagree with me about issues being discussed here in the forum. In order to do any administrative stuff, I have to log out of this account and log into my Admin account. There is good and bad in that too, as I discussed earlier. I don't always have access to that account.

On the other hand, it helps me to be even-handed and reasonable about things that I might do administratively. If someone makes me mad about something, in order to anything about it as a forum administrator, I would have to log out of one account and into another, and by then I am probably not angry any longer, or at least I've thought it through.

I am not going to jump on every angry comment that someone might make, particularly in the Hot Button Issues area. We are people discussing things that are important to us, and people sometimes say things in anger. Anger is a human emotion. The forum gives you a period of time (I don't remember what I have it set at right now, but I think it's 24 hours) in which you can edit your post, so if you realize that you might have gone off the deep end on something, you might want to do that. I know that I have done so with my posts. If you come across something that you wish you hadn't said and it's too late for you to edit it, let me know and I'll edit it from my Admin account.

Not every post made in anger needs to be removed, however. Anger is a human emotion that has it's place in conversations between people. In some ways, an angry exchange followed by an apology or an understanding is probably more valuable than pretending it hadn't occurred. What I'd like to stay away from are personal attacks. If you're going to be angry about something that someone has said, be angry about the issues that you disagree with. Don't use that to label someone in a derogatory way, and then dismiss their words because of the label you've imposed upon them.

I know it'll happen. I have done it too. Because I know that these things happen, I won't be too quick to ban someone from the forum because of an angry outburst. In this, I won't be entirely fair. Those who have been participating members of the forum for a long period of time will be given more leeway than those who have just joined. Rather than banning someone for just one post, I try to weigh that one post against their overall participation in the forum. When someone joins the forum and immediately gets into a personal battle with another forum member, that person might be banned rather quickly, but if you've been a member of the forum for a while and your participation is generally acceptable, I am unlikely to ban you for one angry outburst. I'll probably remove that outburst from the forum, but I might not even mention it to you.

Fair or not, this seems to be working well so that is what I am going to continue to do.

 

Quite a bit lately because my recent request that quotation marks not be used in titles seems to have prompted someone (not you) to use them even more often.

 

I could, but it's not that difficult.