Anyways everyone, I’m just going to mark this thread as resolved. In the end, all we can do is just flag the person, and ignore them, and let moderation do things. There isn’t much else we all here can do, so might of well used the 2 most powerful tools we have available to us.
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If you have found a pattern in how this player may be getting around proper account action, change your actions. Only report the first post. Hold on to the rest of your reports until the RLT.
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It is a bit complicated. They go into a thread that they did not create, usually. Start fighting with people and insulting them (standard trolling), but then start escalating it with worse insults and telling people to become unalive, over and over and over. Then bragging that nothing will happen to them besides the thread going poof. They KNOW the hours that Mods are usually around, know that a derailed thread normally does not get individual post scrutiny, know that the standard penalties are a day, then two days, etc. Mostly they just brag about the shortcomings of the current system which “lets” them continue their behavior.
So people end up running out of flags, even if they wait for what they think might be the troll’s “worst”. It is one of those cases where the time involved to review it all is likely in short supply.
I don’t think anything the posters are doing is wrong. They ARE flagging - which only makes the troll happy and gloating.
This really is a moderation resources issue, or software issue. Whatever happened in this case the other day.
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I guess it would be a good idea to start taking screenshots and sending them in as evidence in case that happens. I haven’t seen any posts like that, but then again, I don’t hang out in the GD too much; however, if I do see them and if it will possibly help, I will start doing that.
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Except that Blizzard does not accept screenshots from players as proof of anything. Sadly some people will edit them for malicious purposes so Blizz only uses their own records.
Further, they don’t accept reports of forum violations any way besides the flag system. There is literally no way to ticket for a forum violation.
This is one of the reasons this thread exists, because there is no other way to deal with this right now. The 5 flags we get a day is not enough to deal with someone heck bent on being horrible over and over.
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Thanks for clarifying. I can see why people are frustrated.
Just to confirm, that isn’t exactly true. We can still look at a deleted thread if we have the URL, which can also be looked at in posting history.
There are many instances where we’ll scan through a thread for additional reported posts / violations even though the original post was deleted.
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Can I ask a question Vrak, if a poster was violating the CoC, and lets say the moderation only removes the post, does this mean a poster is unlikely to recieve any further forum actions over such post if already dealt with, or is there a lot more behind closed doors that needs to be done before any action is taken care off?
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If i was to link you the 404ed post, can something be done regarding it?
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That has been taken care of I think 
I have not seen any recent posts by the individuals.
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Oh good /hug
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I mean, neither have I, but we don’t have any information on whether action as been taken care of or whether they are asleep or what not. And not that information needs to be requested, but I thought to ask my question on whether if it is possible such action could’ve been taken at a later time after some a post being removed or not.
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What exactly did happen? I’m not in GD much anymore so I obviously missed the thread but I haven’t seen this much heat in the CS forums before.
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It depends.
A post may be deleted for a number of reasons, the main would be that we feel it violates policy and warrants a forum penalty (i.e. a forum silence). We also may remove a post that we feel might be inappropriate for the forums, but doesn’t necessarily violate policy to warrant a penalty, such as off topic threads or posts that may derail a thread.
A post may also be deleted as part of a discussion from another post.
For example Player A makes a post, we’ll call it post 3. Player B replies to post 3, which Player A replies to, and so on and so on. If we received a report about post 3 and the post didn’t warrant a penalty but we feel it may need to be removed, we may also opt to delete the replies (it’s an option that can be selected during moderation). Doing so removes all posts from that discussion chain, which also may remove other posts that do violate policy which warrants a penalty.
Generally, once a post is deleted that is the extent of it. However, if one of the posts in the chain was also reported, that report remains for a moderator to review and we can take action accordingly.
The way moderation works can be a little funky because we go off of the reports that we receive. Those reports only show the post that is being reported, so things might be lost in context on occasion, though we do try to look at the surrounding conversation whenever we feel it may help while reviewing those reports.
Technically, yes. Mirasol’s instincts are pretty good here though. While I cannot provide information regarding what actions we may or may not have been taken against another account, this issue has been reviewed.
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Do the forums have auto-detection methods such as flagging posts that use certain phrases though? I’m fairly certain there are some “interesting” posts still leftover from old threads I’ve been in that were never hidden due to lack of reports.
In my case, getting staff’s attention myself has always worked as a last resort, but not everyone does this and people can’t be everywhere or respond to everything at the same time. Having more computerized assistance would help prevent or at least draw quicker attention to situations like this so they don’t get out of hand.
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I am not Vrak, but not that I know of. I don’t think that is a feature in the Discourse forum software package. It has the filters before you post that screen posts, but nothing beyond that. There is no auto moderation after posting. Just the forum software notification that your post was reported and is waiting on a Mod. It still takes Mod decisions to do anything.
Moderation depends on us reporting something, or the Mod being in a thread and seeing the posts themselves while cleaning the thread up. Sometimes they do take it upon themselves to tidy up while there if they see infractions.
Community Managers can also modify forum posts and vacation people, although they rarely do. Their job is, in part, to read the forums, so they may come across things that need attention.
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Thanks to you and Orlyia for dealing with this— and us. I know y’all have a lot on your plate and I get that it’s your job to deal with us, but I still appreciate you both for taking the time with this and us.
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Agreed! Thank you! 
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This much I know for certain. Vrak combs the thread and then gives his closing remarks or Orylia pulls out the red lightsaber and makes posts like these
so I can bookmark them, but too often in less moderated forums I have seen ridiculous comments just go completely unpunished because the attention drawn to them is contingent upon player actions. However, since people often don’t care enough to do anything at the time, toxicity just festers out of control and then people want to complain after the dumpster fire of their own making gets locked.
It’s just my opinion that there should be more proactive measures built in so actions are less contingent upon players deciding to do something. That way, we avoid more situations like this where players are going after mods with pitchforks because they finally decided that something went too far.
I’m sorry about the text wall and that this probably belongs in GD. Also, I think mods should also get a round of applause for keeping this thread open and addressing peoples’ concerns instead of just closing it, even when they were getting mobbed. Thank you Vrakthris and Orylia
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Yes and no. We do have some functionality that is designed to help our moderators, which tend to… highlight certain words/phrases that we want to keep a look out for. It isn’t a perfect system, so it does not highlight everything, but it is an evolving system and it does help a great deal. Moderation is still a very much human endeavor, outside of temporarily squelching possible spam posts, we don’t have any systems that take action for us.
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