Things You Can do to Make Moderating Easier

What with 400,000 some members, and thousands of posts every day, there is a fair amount of moderating to do. The moderating staff does all we can to keep the forums a clean and friendly place, but there's only so much that we can do. There are a couple things that you, as members, can do to make our job a bit easier.

1) If somebody breaks the rules, don't make a big deal about it in the thread. Just report the post and ignore it. Most times, when somebody points out that the rules were broken, it degrades into a flame war, and we then need to clean that up too.

2) If a spam/ advertising bot is on the forums, don't reply to any topics it makes. As useful as 3 pages of people calling the first post spam are, the thread's just going to end up deleted. Merely report the post, and one of us will take care of up.

3) If you want a thread closed, don't just keep saying "Please close this thread." PM me or another moderator and we'll close it for you.

4) Do not abuse the report button. Reports are for when somebody is breaking the rules, not for when somebody disagrees with you or makes a post that you don't especially like. This leads to "boy who cried wolf" syndrome.

5) If somebody makes a post with links to pornography, illegal content, things that aren't approved, don't quote their post. Every time you quote it, it is one more time that we need to delete that link.

6) If you have a problem with somebody, don't take it out in the public. PM me or one of the other mods, and we'll attempt to help you work it out.

7) Finally, if there is something you don't like about the forums, please contact us. Our job here is to help make the forums a better place, and we're always willing to consider suggestions. However, if you act rudely or attempt to make demands your requests will most likely be ignored. Also, while we take everything into consideration, not everything will necessarily be implemented.

Thanks for all of the help guys!