Hi, I've been on e621 for a while now and I'm starting to get tired of this response to my reports. If I report someone for wanting to violently stomp my teeth out, I expect a moderator to do something. I have never seen another website where moderators use such a poor excuse to avoid their duties. Do rules not matter if no one notices an offending comment until a month later? You may as well have no rules at all, or explicitly state that moderators are not held to any standard and can just pick and choose whatever rules they want to enforce. How is anyone supposed to trust moderators here when everything is just up in the air like this?

furz said:
Do rules not matter if no one notices an offending comment until a month later?

Of course they do. But it depends on the severity of the offense as to whether a month-old comment gets a record. Someone admitting to doing something illegal, for example, gets dealt with regardless of time. Someone lightly trolling or making a creepy comment, though, is generally not something to worry about after a month. The idea being that if it was a month ago or longer, they've calmed down and stopped the offending behavior; if there's more recent comments with negative behavior, you can still report those.

watsit said:
Of course they do. But it depends on the severity of the offense as to whether a month-old comment gets a record. Someone admitting to doing something illegal, for example, gets dealt with regardless of time. Someone lightly trolling or making a creepy comment, though, is not something to worry about after a month. The idea being that if it was a month ago or longer, they've calmed down and stopped the offending behavior; if there's more recent comments with negative behavior, you can still report those.

I can kind of get a hands-off approach to moderating. I stop getting it when physical threats become involved and are still written off. Un-fucking-acceptable.

For context:

ticket #105962

comment #6199378

furz said:
Hi, I've been on e621 for a while now and I'm starting to get tired of this response to my reports. If I report someone for wanting to violently stomp my teeth out, I expect a moderator to do something. I have never seen another website where moderators use such a poor excuse to avoid their duties. Do rules not matter if no one notices an offending comment until a month later? You may as well have no rules at all, or explicitly state that moderators are not held to any standard and can just pick and choose whatever rules they want to enforce. How is anyone supposed to trust moderators here when everything is just up in the air like this?

If you disagree with how moderators are doing their duties, you can contact the head admin @NotMeNotYou to discuss further.

Normally, comments over 6 months old are considered "old" so action won't be taken upon them unless the offence is severe. Not sure about the 1-month cutoff point for reporting.

Thank you for your reply. I decided to make this a topic on the forum for all to see because I've brought this up with specific moderators before. I think it should be addressed and discussed in the open. Of course, if it were a 6 month old comment, I'd find that reasonable. They seem to want a report within 1-2 weeks though? That's what I'd assume the moderators prefer. Are we expected to check comments so regularly that every report fits into that timeframe? This isn't facebook, twitter, or instagram. I can't imagine anyone pays that much attention to comments here. Thank you Kemonophonic for the links.

The thing about the moderations is that, except in extreme cases, the offending comment isn't removed, and it seems kind of a raw deal to give someone a record over an offense that happened a while ago that nobody thought was important enough to deal with at the time, or, worse, get punished again because someone didn't use the "this poster received a record for this comment" flag and the fact they were punished at all gets forgotten. I've seen people drop reports on comments that happened 12 years ago, when the person who made that comment might not even still be using the site.

And if you think one month is too short, there are times I've looked back on things I had written a month before and have no recollection of writing it.

lonelylupine said:
The thing about the moderations is that, except in extreme cases, the offending comment isn't removed, and it seems kind of a raw deal to give someone a record over an offense that happened a while ago that nobody thought was important enough to deal with at the time, or, worse, get punished again because someone didn't use the "this poster received a record for this comment" flag and the fact they were punished at all gets forgotten. I've seen people drop reports on comments that happened 12 years ago, when the person who made that comment might not even still be using the site.

And if you think one month is too short, there are times I've looked back on things I had written a month before and have no recollection of writing it.

you wouldn't get penialized twice because even if not getting the fancy border the record is still attached to the account, which was the older way of doing things. And in in events where users do get penalized twice by mistake, simply bringing that up nullifies the newer record for the same thing

As a community moderator for a 10k gaming discord, not punishing someone for something that happened over a month ago is something that I've experienced a few times in my tenure over the past few years. I'd bring something up about someone in the community and the staff on actual payroll above me wouldn't notice it until so much later that there wasn't really much that we could do in terms of punishment. We'd keep an eye on them of course, but yeah, even I was surprised that this was a thing.

Mods are going to mod, and sometimes we're not always happy with it.

mdf said:
As a community moderator for a 10k gaming discord, not punishing someone for something that happened over a month ago is something that I've experienced a few times in my tenure over the past few years. I'd bring something up about someone in the community and the staff on actual payroll above me wouldn't notice it until so much later that there wasn't really much that we could do in terms of punishment. We'd keep an eye on them of course, but yeah, even I was surprised that this was a thing.

Mods are going to mod, and sometimes we're not always happy with it.

the only thing I can think of happening on a gaming discord that isn't expected gamer behavior like 360 teabaging me while banging my mom last night, is unsolicited dick pics by some random greasy boi which I just imagine would get banned anyways regardless of time. Unless your discord is cool with dick pics idk.

I guess my main worry is that if these people don't receive consequences, more people like them will pop up. Threatening physical harm was the straw that broke the camel's back here. In general I think e621 has great moderation team, but I wonder sometimes. I think the point of moderation is to warn, then cull users that make a community worse. That's obviously being done, but someone's comment being a month old before it's noticed is not a reason for inaction in my opinion.

If the mod team is set on sticking to this method though, I think we ought to have a full explanation of how it works. Unless there's already one that I missed?

furz said:
I guess my main worry is that if these people don't receive consequences, more people like them will pop up.

The most that could happen here is that they'd get a neutral record. And unless they do it again after getting that record, that record will go away in 6 months.

Then again, the user only has three comments, all on the same picture and all trolling. And they got a record just over a year ago for their first comment. Perhaps some discretion would be warranted.

Looking into the comments and probably what you're referring to in regards to this forum, it probably doesn't help that you were a contributor to drama instigation.
https://e621.net/posts/2364441#comment-6199378

Honestly, if either of you got reported at the time this happened you probably would of both caught records.

versperus said:
Looking into the comments and probably what you're referring to in regards to this forum, it probably doesn't help that you were a contributor to drama instigation.
https://e621.net/posts/2364441#comment-6199378

Honestly, if either of you got reported at the time this happened you probably would of both caught records.

I'll not deny that I can be an instigator. I guess I take it personally when someone wants to see me and my friends dead. Speaking of, this topic kind of also speaks to moderation issues, doesn't it?

watsit said:
The most that could happen here is that they'd get a neutral record. And unless they do it again after getting that record, that record will go away in 6 months.

Then again, the user only has three comments, all on the same picture and all trolling. And they got a record just over a year ago for their first comment. Perhaps some discretion would be warranted.

Of course I'd considered this. Still, moderators reactions have been non-existent. That's been my experience with nearly all my other reports. This is a systemic issue that needs to be addressed or this community will be the worse for it.

You already got a response to this exact question 9 months ago.
https://e621.net/tickets/92569