Just thought I'd write to everyone about this issue, it's been a while since we've had any major outbreaks and I'd like to try and prevent them if possible. Approving a new user whose IP address came up as "questionable but not highly suspect" made me think to write this.
If you get a private message (the little envelope to the right of your forum name on the top bar) that comes from a user here, that contains either advertising that is irrelevant to the discussion or a request to go to another website that may be questionable, you can report it to the moderation team here and we'll deal with it. Note that we cannot normally see private conversations, so we can't just browse through and pick out the bad stuff for you from there. We can - and do - in the public areas, although reporting a public message brings it to our attention faster, as moderators have a little flag that appears at the top of our screen telling us we've got something to do.
If you DO report an issue - the sender can't tell. They usually send this sort of thing in bulk and won't know which one of their recipients pressed the 'Report' button. And we won't tell them who reported it.
If you have any doubts at all about a link in a post or sent via private message - don't click on it. You can ask us about it, we'll investigate and get back to you. If it's a public link and it's dangerous we'll deal with it. If it's private and dangerous we'll let you know so you can delete it.
Happy trails!
If you get a private message (the little envelope to the right of your forum name on the top bar) that comes from a user here, that contains either advertising that is irrelevant to the discussion or a request to go to another website that may be questionable, you can report it to the moderation team here and we'll deal with it. Note that we cannot normally see private conversations, so we can't just browse through and pick out the bad stuff for you from there. We can - and do - in the public areas, although reporting a public message brings it to our attention faster, as moderators have a little flag that appears at the top of our screen telling us we've got something to do.
If you DO report an issue - the sender can't tell. They usually send this sort of thing in bulk and won't know which one of their recipients pressed the 'Report' button. And we won't tell them who reported it.
If you have any doubts at all about a link in a post or sent via private message - don't click on it. You can ask us about it, we'll investigate and get back to you. If it's a public link and it's dangerous we'll deal with it. If it's private and dangerous we'll let you know so you can delete it.
Happy trails!
