A couple of my personal thoughts that I haven't answered myself yet.
[quote] Did the period of darkness, with[i] years[/i] of low activity, skew our perspective of what kind of activity happened on this site? Things were slow, much slower than desired, but that allowed for much broader understanding of the state of the community and more precise moderation (presumably, I was not a moderator then).[/quote]
[quote]Should there be "official" direct encouragement of positive activity, not just punishing/removing negative activity? What existing groups should do that? Should a new group do that? How? [/quote]
[quote] In what ways can the staff and community encourage the use of the under utilized report tool? [/quote]
Beyond these, I'm always curious to read the new and creative views the community has. Would love to see some new faces join the discussion.
English
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So the report tool is underused? I find myself reporting probably more often than actually replying to posts. Sometimes I feel like I should've been a traffic officer instead of a brewer...
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Same. The report/reply ratio is disturbing.
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Don't say that. The world needs brewers.
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Brewer by day, traffic cop by night...Sounds like a sitcom...
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Brewers are real heroes.
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Spoken like a true college student. ;)
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I have a reputation to uphold.
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AAAAAAAAA - old
Same. -
Concerning your third point, unfortunately I don't really see a way that can be easily fixed. One of the more prevailing mindsets is if you mute a user, you're a coward. Unfortunately, I think that same mindset carries over to reporting people. People seem too easily bullied when it comes to whether or not to mute other users. It's quite the conundrum because some people are caught up in the "it's just the Internet" mentality, while others allow those users to influence their choices but preach "it's just the Internet." The users are allowing themselves to be controlled by other users in fear of being seen as a coward or a loser, when in actuality nobody knows whether you muted/reported without blatantly stating it.