Dear Mods, what happens after a post is reported?

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I apologise in advance for taking up your time, I feel that there could be flaws in the reporting system and have a few questions.

Also I request that any non mod responses do not derail the purpose of this opening post.

If enough people report someone do you have to take action that reflects their sentiments? Is it an unpopularity contest?

What can you do if it becomes clear that new members or sleeper/dormant members are doing most of the reporting but nothing is being reported about the person by regular long term members? Can an anomaly like that be taken into account?

Or that its the same people reporting others constantly, with a consistent theme?

How do you take account of cultural differences when deciding how to act on a report?

Is there one gold standard culturally acceptable norm?

Could the reporting method cause difficulties from a mod teamwork perspective?

Much appreciated
Edited to add that a pm response would be great either?

I'll answer this when I've had a chance to collect my thoughts.

A report is basically just a way of bringing a post to a moderator's attention. We don't have to act upon them but they're a useful way for users to flag potentially rule-breaking behaviour.

A post being reported is not a reason for it to be moved or the user to be warned or banned. That should only happen because of rule breaking behaviour. If a post is reported incorrectly then we'll just delete the report.

If a user is using the report tool in a manner that is clearly malicious or grossly inappropriate then we could ask them to change their behaviour. Ultimately it could lead to further action. I can't remember the last time we had to do this but it was several years ago.

Moderators interpret the rules as we see fit, rather than as users see fit. This does, of course, mean that rules are interpreted through our culture. However, part of our culture may occasionally be understanding that other cultures sometimes do things differently. We might, in some circumstances, react to a rule-breaking comment by explaining the cultural sensitivities than someone might have missed rather than giving them a formal warning.

So in summary - reports only bring posts to our attention, they don't affect whether we decide that something has broken the rules once we are aware of it.

Thank you!
Could this thread be locked please, its served its purpose.