Contact us form and notification of removed posts

[Promethea]

I'd like to make two suggestions based on a little thing that happened to me today.

- Notify users via PM when a post is removed.

Sometimes it may not be evident why a post was removed, or even if it was removed or just didn't go through due to a faulty connection. Some rule may have some degree of subjectivity to them, so if someone posts in good faith thinking they're not breaking any rules and the staff thinks differently about the post, a short PM can educate the poster and, it they're new like me, help them get a better feeling of the temperature in the forum, and keep them from reposting while blaming their ISP and annoying the mods in the process (I didn't do that  I was about to but thankfully I asked first!)

- A contact us form that doesn't go just to Susan or some other way to contact the mods in general, privately.

When I thought I'd ask about that missing post, I struggled to find a way to contact the mods that wasn't posting publicly. I ended up looking at the list of users that were online in the last 30 minutes and PM two global mods hoping they were still online. This wasn't urgent, but I can imagine situations when being able to shoot a PM to the mods queue would be more appropriate. An email to Susan would have been overkill. PhpBB let's you PM let's say "Global Moderators" and that PM will reach everybody in that list and in "Administrators". I don't know if the software used here has a similar feature.

I hope these are taken into consideration to ease communication.

Thank you for reading!

[Ms Grace]

Hi - we have a policy whereby the moderators usually don't send a PM about moderation matters. Although the moderators generally work as a team and actions are taken after conferring, a PM from anyone particular moderator can (and has) resulted in them being the focus of the concerned member's ire.

If a post was removed, you can be certain that it was considered not appropriate for the forum. If it was really inappropriate you will probably be sent a moderation notice. If a post is edited there will often be a note at the end by the moderator as to why.

If you feel the removal of a post was unjust or would like some guidance on why it was removed you can and should take it up directly with a senior moderator or forum admin via PM (doesn't matter if they are online or not) and they will get back to you.

[Promethea]

Maybe there's a way to have those notifications sent anonymously, from "admin" or something like that? I'm sorry, I've never used this platform before, so I don't know what it has or doesn't have that others have.

In this case in particular I wasn't even aware the post had been removed, I posted it from a mobile network with poor coverage so it could have failed. I could have as well reposted it, making things unnecessarily ugly if a mod thought I was being a smartass.

But I don't want to make it about this case since I'm not complaining, I respect why it was removed and it was very trivial. I'm suggesting this in a constructive manner.

[Mariah]

As Grace stated, if in doubt send any mod or admin a pm and we will help you as soon as we can. You also have another route and that goes in regards to anything that occurs on site and that is contacting Susan directly as prescribed in TOS 20. Grace explained why we don't generally send one directly since it puts all mods in a possible conflict situation and we work as a team. Please feel free to send a pm anytime in regard to figuring out what happened. As you saw, we responded fairly quickly once we are online. Thanks
Mariah

[Asche]

I've had posts disappear, too, leaving me quite puzzled as to why they disappeared.  It isn't always clear to me whether a particular post was intentionally removed or if the software just lost it; and if it was intentionally removed, I have no clue as to why.

One time I also got a mod warning around the same time as one post vanished, but it looked like a boilerplate warning and it did not indicate what post triggered the warning.  I contacted a mod, but never got a clear answer.

I'm someone who doesn't want to post stuff that the mods consider inappropriate (or whatever), but it's a little hard to figure out what is okay and not okay.  I don't have much intuition into social groups and interactions and such to begin with, and having stuff like this just happen is a little nerve-wracking.

[Mariah]

If you ever have a question as to what happened feel free to pm us or even better shoot Susan an email as prescribed on TOS 20. Now considering the removal of posts isn't up for debate. Thread locked.
Mariah