What to do when idiots attack...

Those of you who were here last Friday afternoon know what Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]m referring to. There are people on the internet who think itâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s really funny to post truly vile pictures on family oriented forums to get a reaction. We were randomly targeted Friday because we are family friendly, and because the forums are a busy place. This is a pretty uncommon occurrence around here, mostly because we are a fully moderated board, and itâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]s difficult to find a time when there arenâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t at least 1-2 moderators on the board. Because of the holiday weekend, they happened to find ½ hour when there werenâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t any of us on.

So what do you, our wonderful and ever vigilant members, do when you see these kinds of posts?

1. Hit the Report Post button to report it to the moderators. That button is found at the top of every post in every forum. When you hit the report post button, you will get a dialog box that prompts you for the reasons why you are reporting the post. An email with a link to the post and your reasons will be sent to every moderator of that forum. For instance, if you report a post in The Lounge, an email will be sent to me, Deb, Mary Anne, Christy, and Cindy.

2. You can PM moderators, but chances are that we will get the reported posts and PMs at the same time. Please do not flood our PM boxes, as that will only make it more difficult to get to the posts in question, especially if we have the pop-up notifications on when we are trying to move posts.

3. Put the poster(s) on Ignore so you donâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t have to see the posts. Click on their Username and choose View Public Profile. Underneath their header will be the option “Add (Username) to Your Ignore Listâ€. By clicking on that, you will no longer see their posts (you will see where they posted, but not the content), and they will not be able to send you PMs.

4. Do not engage them, confront them, challenge them, threaten them, etc. This is exactly what they want. They want a reaction. If there is no reaction, they have failed. Please do not post multiple threads saying “Do not read posts by XXXâ€. That will draw them into the thread and they will fill it with posts containing exactly what you donâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t want everyone to see. I do understand that reaction; I did it myself the first time I saw a raid like that. But it really is the worst thing to do. It only encourages them to do more because now they KNOW that they made you mad, frustrated and grossed out.

5. Please note that the Mentors, Community Leaders, Advisors and Guest Moderators cannot remove threads or ban members.

If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

i was on a lot on friday, but thankfully, looks like i missed it. I wasn't even aware of the 'report' button, i'll keep it in mind for the future

Also a lot of times they will choose a very popular thread and insert graphic pictures into it- when that happens, it is helpful to after you hit the report button- too quickly type in what page the photos appear on. It just makes it easier to find.

Heidi is SO right, DO NOT RESPOND to these jokers. That is playing right into what they are here for. They want the reactions, they crave it like junk food. If you don't give it to them they will find someplace that will.

Please know, that as mods we deal with this a lot. Most of the time, the photos vanish with no one even seeing them but the ADMIN and the Mod Team. Unfortunately, this time they happened to get lucky and get into a block of time where the mods were busy with their own lives.

Threatening these jokers is a no-win situation too- trust me, all you make them do is laugh and hit again and again. We aren't on these boards 24/7 but these forums are moderated more than the usual forums are. Heidi was wonderful in taking care of this issue so quickly as sickening as it was for her to do so. So please next time- and there will be a next time, just don't respond to them. Respond instead by reporting the posts-to the mods-

i was just appaled how they did that!
i mean seriously!
I just wished i had the button to ban them because i sat here watching them go through thread after thread and i was like quick mods come!!!


Well im glad that the little ones didnt see it. (i hope they didnt the ones i spoke to didnt anyway)

I didn't see anything at all. Thanks for the tips, though. Now I know what to do if I ever see something inappropriate.

Originally Posted by Leli

I didn't see anything at all. Thanks for the tips, though. Now I know what to do if I ever see something inappropriate.

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Be thankful you didn't see anything. The pictures they posted where disgusting!!!! I signed on when they were posting and after looking at a post I just left. Thankfully the mods had everything taken care of when I signed back in later that night.

Can this be made a "sticky"? I'm afraid it will have disappeared into the "back pages" by the time the next strike occurs.

Just a question - if we can't make threads that say "don't look at posts by this user" then how can we warn members as they sign on? I know that when I got online, if I hadn't seen some of those threads, I would've gone into a thread that looked normal enough and been repulsed. I mean, that's fine if we figure it out ourselves and can block the users - but is there no way we can warn others?

Originally Posted by pinkdaisy226

Just a question - if we can't make threads that say "don't look at posts by this user" then how can we warn members as they sign on? I know that when I got online, if I hadn't seen some of those threads, I would've gone into a thread that looked normal enough and been repulsed. I mean, that's fine if we figure it out ourselves and can block the users - but is there no way we can warn others?

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Yes that's the thing, I completely understand why you are saying we shouldn't make those threads but i am soooo glad I read one of those warnings and didn't see more disgusting pictures.

The thing is if you make a big deal out of it, and post" Don't look at threads from so and so," you just play right into what they want. Ignoring them takes all the fun out of it and these bunkheads will go somewhere else to have their fun. Yes they were disgusting- but I have seen worse. We can't monitor all the time, but we are on here a great deal. This was rare that they sat for so long without a mod being present.

This used to happen so many times on another site i used to go on, and i left because no matter how many times i told the members not to respond they couldn't help themselves answering back because they were so wound up by the idiots in question.

We e-mailed the site many times asking them to stop them but they did nothing, and they couldn't understand why i had left?!

Originally Posted by hissy

The thing is if you make a big deal out of it, and post" Don't look at threads from so and so," you just play right into what they want. Ignoring them takes all the fun out of it and these bunkheads will go somewhere else to have their fun. Yes they were disgusting- but I have seen worse. We can't monitor all the time, but we are on here a great deal. This was rare that they sat for so long without a mod being present.

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We completely understand that you all have lives! I guess maybe if we did want to warn someone, we could PM each other and warn them that way? Hopefully we won't have to worry - you all do such a great job and this is the first time I've seen this before in the 6 months I've been around... I guess it was just a shock.

That's a good question Ari. It's a tough balance between wanting to warn people, and yet not wanting to call their attention to it.

What I noticed with the raid on Friday was that they replied to the threads with their names in the title. However, the threads that were posted with titles like "Attention Members" and "How to Block Users" were not on their radar. Now, that's not always going to work. Some of them will be smarter than others. But calling attention to them by name in the title of a thread will definitely get them into a direct confrontation. And that's what they want.

i never seen what happened on friday, but thanks for the tips

I admit I am guilty of sending a few PMs to MA (that was the first mod name that came to mind). Thank you so much for posting this thread Heidi; I wasn't aware of the report button on posts either.
And a big THANK YOU to the mods who acted so quickly in removing the heinous pictures!

Thank you from me too. I don't know about the rest of you but I am still a little traumatized by it! I mean the shock and it took me a couple of days to get them out of my head!

I'm just grateful that Friday was a day I was not around much -- so I was spared the display. But one of the great things about this board is that that sort of thing almost never happens. In almost two years here, I'm not aware of another such event. We are well taken care of, and these pointers will help us all do our part in minimizing the effect, should it happen again -- as it likely will, but hopefully not for a long time!

:bump: for the night shift.

Read and Understood

Bumping!