Guide on creating negative records

I just wanted to give some pointers on leaving negative records, which will hopefully get greater compliance from those negged. Since I want to start following these records more closely and follow up with bans where necessary, it'll also make things easier for me and other mods when we're deciding how to act on records that were left.

Since the majority of negative records come from just a few users, hopefully we can get fairly standardized on these even if only a few people read the forums. Note that many of you already do some or all of what I'm requesting, but I just want to put it in writing.

1) Be descriptive. Explain precisely what happened. You're not just leaving a message for the offender, you're leaving a message to all the mods as well, explaining the situation. If possible, paste all of part of the offending item into the record.

2) Link directly to the problem post/thread/wiki, if one in particular really illustrates the issue. This is in addition to pasting the comment into the record, if you do that.

3) Be polite, more or less. I know this is the hard part when someone is being an idiot, but it usually results in a lot more success on point #1. Leave facts, not just opinions.

4) Link the wiki pages, such as howto:comment or howto:upload. Particularly if it's someone's first offense, you should think of it as if you're educating them. "Reason: Your comments are shit" doesn't give someone a lot to go on. howto:comment is the detail they need.

5) Try not to "pile on" multiple records for the same infraction. Negatives carry more weight if they relate to multiple events over a period of time. Two negatives on posts a week apart are worth more than four on the same incident.

6) Contact a mod if nothing has been done after ~3-4 negative records spread over a period of time. While I plan to keep a closer eye on this from now on, I do have a lot of other things to do as well.

The more informative the records, the easier it is for a mod to decide if they should be blocking the user, and for how long.

As usual, input is welcome.

Edit: I didn't mention positive records because I don't think we've ever had a problem with those. They're quite rare anyway.

Sounds good to me, maybe we should put this in the wiki and/or on the record creation page. Don't want negative records to mean nothing.

That's a reasonable set of guidelines I can follow. A Wiki page and a link to said Wiki page above the Records list would help.

When leaving negative records for stupid comments, I often just copy the body of the comment directly into the record message. Is this unacceptable? I kind of see the record message more as being a message to whatever mods drop by than as a message to the person to whom I was giving the record. After all, it is called a "record", not, say, a "warning" or an "admonishment", etc.

I generally accompany a negative record with a PM to the user explaining in more detail why they are getting the record.

I've used the system a few times when necessary, but I've found myself hestitating due to being unsure of proper usage. This topic clears most things (everything?) up for me, thanks jxh2154.

Edit: Just read forum #23922 and wanted to add that the amount of stupid comments that we all see daily is rather incredible, and that I'm pleased to see that - hopefully - more attention will be applied to negative records for this sort of thing.

P.S. Hella off topic but uh, where's Hazuki? Sort of figured he'd have a lot to say about these topics.

0xCCBA696 said: When leaving negative records for stupid comments, I often just copy the body of the comment directly into the record message. Is this unacceptable?

Posting the comment in question is acceptable, as it serves much the same purpose as linking. The benefit of linking, though, is that it's hard proof (not that I have any reason to believe you would forge a record). A link also gives context, so feel free to copy/paste the message (especially if it's something buried in a long conversation), but link as well so we can read the rest. If an offensive comment was prompted by an even more offensive comment, that's important information.

After all, it is called a "record", not, say, a "warning" or an "admonishment", etc.

Well, let's not read too much into the specific word albert used. I think it's most effective when it serves both purposes. Note that users are sent a PM when they receive a record, so it's a chance to explain what they're doing wrong. A follow-up PM like Fence does is never a bad idea either, but it's up to you whether you want to do that. If you can both warn and record in one go, then you can save yourself time. It also might give the user the sense that their infraction is a public failing, not a private feud with the record giver, which they're more likely to blow off.

After all, if it's just taken as a message to the mods, then the burden is still on those mods to follow up on every single record and make sure the user understands. I'm sure that *sounds* fine but it's a bit burdensome. A more descriptive record in the first instance means that by the time a mod has to intervene with the user, we know for sure that they've already been adequately warned and don't need to give them extra chances.

I'm not trying to pass off the burden of modding to non-mods, I just want to hopefully empower the veteran users who do lots of negging to leave records that hopefully have more of an impact.

Tieria said: P.S. Hella off topic but uh, where's Hazuki? Sort of figured he'd have a lot to say about these topics.

I have no idea, but yes I've noticed he hasn't been around the forums.

jxh2154 said:
Posting the comment in question is acceptable, as it serves much the same purpose as linking. The benefit of linking, though, is that it's hard proof (not that I have any reason to believe you would forge a record).

People can delete comments though, or they can be deleted by a mod unaware of the record. Relying on the evidence to not be destroyed isn't the best strategy.

piespy said: People can delete comments though, or they can be deleted by a mod unaware of the record. Relying on the evidence to not be destroyed isn't the best strategy.

I know, but that doesn't seem to happen much. It's one of the reasons I don't delete certain comments, actually. But as mentioned, that's why doing both isn't a bad idea. I think I'll add that to the "be descriptive" part. The link should be there either way though.

And maybe deleted comments should be stored like deleted posts.

In regards to #2 and linking, don't forget that you can search for comments by a specific user with the "user:" prefix (example: "user:danbooru_user").

You could then link to that user's comments in the record with "text":link (include the quotes), for identifying consistently bad comments.

jxh2154 said:
And maybe deleted comments should be stored like deleted posts.

This would be good.

Apollyon said: In regards to #2 and linking, don't forget that you can search for comments by a specific user with the "user:" prefix (example: "user:danbooru_user").

You can also just go into their profile and access their list of comments too, which is what I do when a link isn't provided.

jxh2154 said:
And maybe deleted comments should be stored like deleted posts.

Could this only occur after, say, a day (or three days, like the approval time)? I have a lot of junk comments up and deleted, and among the deleted are typo- and format-fixings. Recently, I went through about 6+ just trying to get and tags to work around a URL. Would it be worth it to store correction attempts?

T5J8F8 said: Could this only occur after, say, a day (or three days, like the approval time)? I have a lot of junk comments up and deleted, and among the deleted are typo- and format-fixings. Recently, I went through about 6+ just trying to get and tags to work around a URL. Would it be worth it to store correction attempts.

Mmm... well albert is the programmer, I'm just suggesting the idea. Perhaps it could note who deleted it?

I'm not looking at deleted comments as something that would be held against the user necessarily, I just want somewhere for them to be accessible after they're removed from the page. So that they can still be "evidence" after we clean up the comments.

Maybe only deletions made by someone else (i.e. a mod) would go in there. If you're deleting your own for typos and such, nobody cares about seeing that. Of course then someone could delete their own comments if they're getting in trouble... well whatever.

There is no good answer, but what we've been doing already has been working well in my opinion so no change may be necessary anyway.

T5J8F8 said:
Could this only occur after, say, a day (or three days, like the approval time)? I have a lot of junk comments up and deleted, and among the deleted are typo- and format-fixings. Recently, I went through about 6+ just trying to get and tags to work around a URL. Would it be worth it to store correction attempts?

How about if deleted posts are only visible to mods? This means other people won't stick their noses in your edit history, and mods can still uncover deleted evidence.

Soljashy said:
How about if deleted posts are only visible to mods? This means other people won't stick their noses in your edit history, and mods can still uncover deleted evidence.

I'm in favor of this.

Yeah, deleted comments being visible to mods would be an excellent idea. I've often come across comments that I would've deleted if it weren't for the fact that I wanted to show other mods/admins to it, so they could keep an eye on the person.

Does it seem to anyone else that the users getting repeated negative records don't have any idea on how to view them?

I was thinking that the PM that gets sent to users along with any records should include a link to their individual User Record page. The body of the PM should say:

"[user] created a positive/negative record for your account.

Click here to view your user record."

Maybe this would help lessen the need for repeated negatives. That, and this could shoot down any excuses users give about not knowing how to view their records.

It certainly wouldn't hurt to do so. +1

Apollyon said: I was thinking that the PM that gets sent to users along with any records should include a link to their individual User Record page.

Makes sense. Submitted it to trac: http://trac.donmai.us//ticket/853