The following statistics summarise the post reports we received from members in 2015.
This is the sixth set of post report statistics that we've disseminated. Previous post report statistics cover 2014, 2013, 2012, the first half of 2011, and the second half of 2010.
About post reports
The forums are maintained by a small group of volunteer moderators and administrators 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 clicking the report button (the small exclamation mark in a circle), located at the bottom right of each post to the right of the "Share" button. 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 or member in general). The moderation team will review every report, although in some cases we determine that no action is necessary. We are always grateful when you alert us to a potential problem, even when we take no action, so if in doubt, it's always better to report.
Behinds the scenes, generating statistics on post reports helps 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. We release a subset of these statistics publicly for the interest of our members.
2015 post report summary
The highest number of reports in a day (146) was on September 16, which was coincidentally also the day with the most reports in 2014. About 1 in every 109 forum posts made in 2015 were reported.
The graph below shows the trend in both posts and post reports, by month, since mid-2006.
![months.png]( "months.png")
Time of day
The distribution of reports over the day roughly followed forum activity in general, peaking during the North American day. The quietest times were between 3 and 5 AM PST. The busiest hour (12 - 1 PM) had 3.8 times as many reports as the quietest hour (3 - 4 AM).
![hours.png]( "hours.png")
Reported forums
The MacRumors.com News Discussion forum was the most reported forum in 2015 overall, regaining the top spot it had in 2014. However, it wasn't actually the most reported forum in either half of the year in isolation. The Apple Watch forum was the most reported forum in the first half of the year (1928 reports), but fell to 7th place in the second half of the year (323). The iPhone forum had the opposite trend; after being by far the most reported forum in the second half of 2014 (3724), it fell to third place in the first half of 2015 (761), then regained the top spot in the second half of the year (2236).
The top 20 forums by number of post reports were as follows; deltas are in comparison with figures from 2014.
Post reporters
2595 members reported posts in 2014. Of these members, 55% reported just one post, while 92% made 10 or fewer reports each. The top 10% of reporters made 78% of all reports, with the top ten reporters alone making 34% of all reports - an average of 666 each. Whether you make 1 report or 1000, we always appreciate the help to alert us to potential issues, especially as many issues are likely never reported.
![reporters.png]( "reporters.png")
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 remained the most common reason throughout 2015, but dropped enormously from almost 35% in 2014 to just over 10% in 2015. This was in large part due to new tools that help us prevent and more quickly catch a significant portion of spam, particularly after the XenForo migration at the start of June.
At the same time, we saw a noticeable increase in reports for the category that covers consecutive and duplicate posts, primarily because we initially lost the ability to have these consecutive posts automatically merged after switching to XenForo. Since we now have this functionality again, we expect this category of reports to drop back to normal levels in 2016.
The frequency of other report reasons stayed fairly stable compared to previous years.
![reasons.png]( "reasons.png")
The distribution of reports across the day for each category was generally similar to the overall distribution above. In previous years, the notable exception was for spam, which was more likely to occur in the North American night. Because of the changes in our spam prevention tools, this distribution changed, with the distribution of spam now fairly even across the day (but still not following the distribution of other issues).
![reasontimes.png]( "reasontimes.png")
Reported threads
Some threads, particularly long or controversial ones, have a large number of posts reported. 72% of threads containing a reported post received just one report, while 121 threads received more than 10 reports. The thread with the most post reports for the year was Yosemite looks terrible! (99 reports), which had over twice as many reports as the runner up. This thread was particular long, with 3265 posts, however posts in this thread were reported on average about three times as often as typical forum posts.
How we handled reports
We encourage members to report posts even if they're not completely sure if the post is a rule violation. In 2015, about four out of five reports were found to be rule violations and acted on in some way.
About five out of six post reports were found to be clear-cut cases; the remaining ones required moderator discussions, and additional time, before the appropriate action or non-action was determined.
Other
We don't publish statistics comparing how many reports each member makes, both for privacy reasons and because we don't want to turn post reporting into a competition. If you want aggregate information about your own post reports, you can contact me privately.
This is the sixth set of post report statistics that we've disseminated. Previous post report statistics cover 2014, 2013, 2012, the first half of 2011, and the second half of 2010.
About post reports
The forums are maintained by a small group of volunteer moderators and administrators 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 clicking the report button (the small exclamation mark in a circle), located at the bottom right of each post to the right of the "Share" button. 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 or member in general). The moderation team will review every report, although in some cases we determine that no action is necessary. We are always grateful when you alert us to a potential problem, even when we take no action, so if in doubt, it's always better to report.
Behinds the scenes, generating statistics on post reports helps 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. We release a subset of these statistics publicly for the interest of our members.
2015 post report summary
- Number of post reports: 19611
- Mean per day: 53.7
- Max per day: 146
- Min per day: 8
- Number of post reporters: 2595
- Number of reported members: 8831
- Number of posts reported: 17139
- Number of threads with a post reported: 11084
The highest number of reports in a day (146) was on September 16, which was coincidentally also the day with the most reports in 2014. About 1 in every 109 forum posts made in 2015 were reported.
The graph below shows the trend in both posts and post reports, by month, since mid-2006.
Time of day
The distribution of reports over the day roughly followed forum activity in general, peaking during the North American day. The quietest times were between 3 and 5 AM PST. The busiest hour (12 - 1 PM) had 3.8 times as many reports as the quietest hour (3 - 4 AM).
Reported forums
The MacRumors.com News Discussion forum was the most reported forum in 2015 overall, regaining the top spot it had in 2014. However, it wasn't actually the most reported forum in either half of the year in isolation. The Apple Watch forum was the most reported forum in the first half of the year (1928 reports), but fell to 7th place in the second half of the year (323). The iPhone forum had the opposite trend; after being by far the most reported forum in the second half of 2014 (3724), it fell to third place in the first half of 2015 (761), then regained the top spot in the second half of the year (2236).
The top 20 forums by number of post reports were as follows; deltas are in comparison with figures from 2014.
Code:
Rank Delta Forum Reports Percentage
---- ----- --------------------------------------- ------- ----------
1 +1 MacRumors.com News Discussion 3263 16.7%
2 -1 iPhone 2997 15.3%
3 +4 Apple Watch 2251 11.5%
4 n/c Politics, Religion, Social Issues 1102 5.6%
5 +1 Community Discussion 948 4.8%
6 -1 Marketplace 751 3.8%
7 -4 iOS 9 692 3.5%
8 n/c MacBook Pro 668 3.4%
9 +17 OS X Yosemite (10.10) 420 2.1%
10 +5 MacBook 372 1.9%
11 -1 iOS Blog Discussion 360 1.8%
12 -3 iPad 354 1.8%
13 +17 iOS 8 327 1.7%
14 -1 Mac Pro 309 1.6%
15 -4 iPhone Accessories 290 1.5%
16 -1 Alternatives to iOS and iOS Devices 282 1.4%
17 -5 Mac Basics and Help 249 1.3%
18 +10 Site and Forum Feedback 198 1.0%
19 +24 Mac Applications and Mac App Store 191 1.0%
20 -1 OS X 189 1.0%Post reporters
2595 members reported posts in 2014. Of these members, 55% reported just one post, while 92% made 10 or fewer reports each. The top 10% of reporters made 78% of all reports, with the top ten reporters alone making 34% of all reports - an average of 666 each. Whether you make 1 report or 1000, we always appreciate the help to alert us to potential issues, especially as many issues are likely never reported.
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 remained the most common reason throughout 2015, but dropped enormously from almost 35% in 2014 to just over 10% in 2015. This was in large part due to new tools that help us prevent and more quickly catch a significant portion of spam, particularly after the XenForo migration at the start of June.
At the same time, we saw a noticeable increase in reports for the category that covers consecutive and duplicate posts, primarily because we initially lost the ability to have these consecutive posts automatically merged after switching to XenForo. Since we now have this functionality again, we expect this category of reports to drop back to normal levels in 2016.
The frequency of other report reasons stayed fairly stable compared to previous years.
The distribution of reports across the day for each category was generally similar to the overall distribution above. In previous years, the notable exception was for spam, which was more likely to occur in the North American night. Because of the changes in our spam prevention tools, this distribution changed, with the distribution of spam now fairly even across the day (but still not following the distribution of other issues).
Reported threads
Some threads, particularly long or controversial ones, have a large number of posts reported. 72% of threads containing a reported post received just one report, while 121 threads received more than 10 reports. The thread with the most post reports for the year was Yosemite looks terrible! (99 reports), which had over twice as many reports as the runner up. This thread was particular long, with 3265 posts, however posts in this thread were reported on average about three times as often as typical forum posts.
How we handled reports
We encourage members to report posts even if they're not completely sure if the post is a rule violation. In 2015, about four out of five reports were found to be rule violations and acted on in some way.
About five out of six post reports were found to be clear-cut cases; the remaining ones required moderator discussions, and additional time, before the appropriate action or non-action was determined.
Other
We don't publish statistics comparing how many reports each member makes, both for privacy reasons and because we don't want to turn post reporting into a competition. If you want aggregate information about your own post reports, you can contact me privately.
