2014 Post Report Statistics

[HexMonkey]

This is the fifth public set of post report statistics, covering all of 2014.

Previous post report statistics:

• 2013
• 2012
• First half of 2011
• Second half of 2010

About post reports

The forums are maintained by a small group of moderators whose aim is to keep them enjoyable and free from problems. There are thousands of posts every day, and the moderators don't have time to review all of them. We instead rely on post reports that bring particular posts or threads to the moderators' attention.

Post reports are submitted by members by using the report post icon (

), located at the bottom left of each post. You can use this any time you want to get the attention of a moderator, not just if you think a particular post violates a rule (for example, if you want a moderator to move or delete your own post, or if you want to bring attention to a thread in general). The moderation team will review every report, although in some cases we determine that no action is necessary. You won't get a reply to a post report, but we are still grateful that you alerted us to a potential problem.

About the post report statistics

Since 2006, I've produced post report statistics for the moderators and administrators. These statistics assist us in a number of ways, for example to highlight problem areas that we need to address, or to tell us when and at what times we're in need of new moderators. More recently, we decided to release a subset of these statistics publicly, for the interest of our members (we don't release certain statistics publicly, such as those that identify individual members).

Also see Doctor Q's Top 50 Posters Extrapolated, January 2015.

2014 post report summary

• Number of post reports: 24478
• Mean per day: 67.1
• Max per day: 205
• Min per day: 21
• Number of post reporters: 2901
• Number of reported members: 11859
• Number of posts reported: 19771
• Number of threads with a post reported: 13714

There were 24478 reported posts in 2014, at a rate of 67/day. The highest in a day (205) was on September 16, a week after the Apple Watch was announced and just before iOS 8 and the iPhone 6 were released. This is still below our all time record of 301, on September 19, 2012 (the iOS 6 release date).

Overall, there were 15% fewer reports in 2014 than 2013, despite there being only a 1% drop in posts. The post and report rate were fairly consistent throughout the year, except for a large spike in September, which lasted until partway through October. In fact, despite September making up just 8.2% of the year, 20.5% of the year's posts were made that month and it was the busiest ever month on the forums. The spike was still there, but not as prominent, for post reports, with 14.7% of the year's post reports made in September. In other words, there was a much lower ratio of reports to posts in September (0.85% as many reports as posts) compared to the rest of the year (1.35%). The long-term average over 8.5 years is 1.16%, with about 1 in 105 posts reported at least once.

The graph below shows the trend in both posts and post reports, by month, since mid-2006.

Time of day

There were two busy periods of the day: the main one peaking between 9 AM and 5 PM PST, corresponding with the North American day, and a second between 11 PM and 1 AM PST, when we often get a lot of spam. The quietest times were between 3 and 5 AM PST. The busiest hour (10 - 11 AM) had 270% as many reports as the quietest hour (3 - 4 AM).

Reported forums

The iPhone forum passed MacRumors.com News Discussion to be the most reported forum, regaining the top spot it had in 2012. Collectively, the two forums had a big increase in their share of reports: they went from 25.9% of all reports in 2013 to 35.3% in 2014. As a result, forums like Politics, Religion, Social Issues increased in rank (in this case, from 7th to 4th) but actually saw fewer reports.

The top 20 forums by number of post reports were as follows; deltas are in comparison with figures from 2013.

Rank	Delta	Forum					Reports Percentage
----	-----	---------------------------------------	------- ----------
1	+1	iPhone					4896	20.0%
2	-1	MacRumors.com News Discussion		3746	15.3%
3	+1	Community Discussion			1976	8.1%
4	+3	Politics, Religion, Social Issues	921	3.8%
5	n/c	iPad					918	3.8%
6	+4	Alternatives to iOS and iOS Devices	841	3.4%
7	-4	iOS 7					726	3.0%
8	new	iOS 8					678	2.8%
9	-3	MacBook Pro				662	2.7%
10	-2	Mac Applications and Mac App Store	585	2.4%
11	+2	Marketplace				510	2.1%
12	n/c	Mac Basics and Help			482	2.0%
13	+3	iPhone and iPod touch Apps		473	1.9%
14	n/c	Mac Pro					471	1.9%
15	new	OS X Yosemite (10.10)			420	1.7%
16	+2	iOS Blog Discussion			371	1.5%
17	-8	Jailbreaks and iOS Hacks		355	1.5%
18	-1	iPhone Accessories			333	1.4%
19	+2	Mac Blog Discussion			290	1.2%
20	+2	iPhone Tips, Help and Troubleshooting	251	1.0%

Post reporters

2901 members reported posts in 2014. Of these members, 51% reported just one post, while 90% made 10 or fewer reports each. The top 10% of reporters made 77% of all reports, with the top ten reporters alone making 29% of all reports - an average of 720 each. Whether you make 1 report or 1000, we still appreciate the help!

Report reasons

Moderators deal with a wide range of issues when handling post reports. The graph below shows some of the common issues and how the breakdown has changed over time. Spam remains the most common reason, but is below its peak in the second half of 2013. Despite some long-term trends in earlier years, the reasons for post reports remained fairly consistent throughout 2014.

The issues also varied by time of day. For most issues, the distribution was similar, and mainly followed the North American day. The exception was for spam, which was reported more during the North American night, primarily due to the location in which most of the spam originates. This is also a key cause of the second peak in the Time of day chart above.

Reported threads

Some threads, particularly long or controversial ones, have a large number of posts reported. 67% of threads containing a reported post received just one report, while 98 threads received more than 10 reports. The thread with the most post reports for the year was Apple CEO Tim Cook Publicly Comes Out as Gay in Letter Declaring Support for Equality (75 reports), followed by Consumer Reports: iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus Not as Bendable as Believed (49 reports).

 

[maflynn]

Great job HexMonkey.

With the issues that were being reported with the iphone 6+, i can understand the volume of reports emanating from that forum - not surprising at all.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Excellent job, HexMonkey, and thanks for the hard work and for compiling this data. For my part, I always find this sort of thing fascinating.

 

[stridemat]

Great statistics as always. Thanks.

 

[ucfgrad93]

Excellent job, HexMonkey, and thanks for the hard work and for compiling this data. For my part, I always find this sort of thing fascinating.

As do I. Thanks for posting this HexMonkey.

 

[Apple fanboy]

Interesting reading. I do report posts to help out this great forum and our wonderful mods! Thanks for all the hard work.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Interesting reading. I do report posts to help out this great forum and our wonderful mods! Thanks for all the hard work.

Yes, I have been known to report a post (or three) myself, almost invariably of the spam variety……

…..anyway, I like the site, like its ambience, and if such small attempts at some sort of online civic responsibility are a help in any way, I am more than delighted to be of assistance...

 

[grahamperrin]

A graph of reasons, over seven years, with nothing noticeably off-topic?

I'm surprised by the absence of both 'off-topic' and 'frivolous':

…

…

– I see off-topic content far more frequently than any of the six reasons on the graph. But I already know that people see things differently

 

[HexMonkey]

I'm surprised by the absence of both 'off-topic' and 'frivolous':

– I see off-topic content far more frequently than any of the six reasons on the graph. But I already know that people see things differently

I've long tracked reports for off topic content, but it's less common than all the other reasons in the graph. For 2014, they were at 2.6%. I also track reports for frivolous posts, but haven't been tracking them for long enough to include on the graph. For 2014, they were at 5.3%.

There are a number of reasons why you may be more likely to see off-topic posts than, say, spam, other than just the frequency of the problems occurring:

• Off topic posts are less severe than many other rule violations such as spam, so are less likely to be reported.
• Off topic posts are less likely to be seen and therefore reported than some other violations, for example they may be deep in a thread with few remaining viewers, compared to a spam post which is often designed to be seen. Regular members are a greater proportion of the viewers for these deep-in-conversation posts, which may explain why this logic does not apply to how often you see them personally.
• We try to deal with more severe problems (such as spam) more quickly, so you're less likely to see them.
• While many rule violations appear in isolation, off topic posts often appear in clusters (ie, a thread is derailed and there are multiple off topic posts). There might only be one report for this, even though it affects multiple posts.

 

[Ulenspiegel]

It was a very interesting reading and experience. Thank you.

 

[grahamperrin]

It was a very interesting reading and experience. Thank you.

+1

... There are a number of reasons why you may be more likely to see off-topic posts than, say, spam, other than just the frequency of the problems occurring: ...

Now I realise another reason, one that's unlikely to show statistically:

• I'm the type of user who routinely ignores, or refrains from contributing to, any topic that lacks a reasonably good subject line.

(A search engine might find something of great interest but if that thing is within a poorly-titled topic, then the title alone will repel me from everything that follows.)

In other words:

• a reader preference for well-titled topics may be accompanied by heightened sensitivity to people going off in those topics.

Thanks again