The following statistics summarise the post reports we received from members in 2016.
This is the seventh set of post report statistics that we've disseminated. Previous post report statistics cover 2015, 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 us to monitor the forums, 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. We release a subset of these statistics publicly for the interest of our members.
2016 post report summary
About 1 in every 109 forum posts made in 2016 were reported, which is the same as last year.
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 between 9 AM and 7 PM Pacific time. The busiest hour (12 - 1 PM) had 5.2 times as many reports as the quietest hour (5 - 6 AM). Report volumes were highest on Mondays, gradually reducing over the remainder of the week.
The following graph shows every reported post in 2016, with the time of day each was first reported on the X axis and the time it took to be first reported on the Y axis. It shows that most problematic posts are reported quickly, but that many issues aren't reported for many hours. Not shown is the one in ten reports that's made more than a day after the initial post, and, of course, the issues that are never reported to us at all. The graph also shows how report activity varies over the day, with more activity during the North American day. There is also a slightly denser vertical region between approximately 9 and 12 AM Pacific time, which suggests some issues that occur overnight in the US aren't reported until seen by larger audiences in morning.
Reported forums
The MacRumors.com News Discussion forum was again the most reported forum, though the iPhone forum was not far behind and was top in the second half of the year. The Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum saw a 48% increase in post reports compared to 2015, likely due primarily to the US election.
The top 20 forums by number of post reports were as follows; deltas are in comparison with figures from 2015.
Post reporters
2263 members reported posts in 2016. Of these members, 55% reported just one post, while 90% made 10 or fewer reports each. The top 10% of reporters made 78% of all reports, with the top ten reporters alone making 45% of all reports - an average of 819 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. Note that this categorisation is done based on keyword analysis of the reasons members provide when reporting posts, so these numbers are likely to be an underestimate.
Spam remained the most common reason throughout 2016, stabilising at about 10% of all reports. This low rate compared to historical levels in the 30s can be attributed mainly to the better spam prevention tools we've had available since the XenForo migration.
After temporarily spiking after the XenForo migration, the level of reports for consecutive and duplicate posts dropped back to normal levels. This was as expected, since we initially lost the ability to have consecutive posts automatically merged after the migration, but regained this functionality in late 2015.
The frequency of other report reasons was fairly similar 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. This pattern was more subtle in 2015, and almost completely disappeared in 2016, which was the first full year using XenForo. Barring any significant changes, we expect this new pattern to continue in the future.
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 135 threads received more than 10 reports. The thread with the most post reports for the year was Waiting for Skylake MBP thread (126 reports), followed by Carrier - iPhone 7/7+ T-Mobile Pre-Order Thread (113 reports), although both threads had a lower percentage of posts reported than the forums as a whole. Overall, 12.6% of all threads had at least one post reported, which is an all-time high. This was despite the overall percentage of posts being reported remaining unchanged, and suggests a trend towards longer threads.
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 2016, 79% of reports were found to be rule violations and acted on in some way.
About seven out of eight 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.
Now is also a good opportunity to thank all the moderators for volunteering their time and ensuring that we can maintain an enjoyable forum experience for everyone!
This is the seventh set of post report statistics that we've disseminated. Previous post report statistics cover 2015, 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 us to monitor the forums, 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. We release a subset of these statistics publicly for the interest of our members.
2016 post report summary
- Number of post reports: 18129
- Mean per day: 49.5
- Max per day: 191 on Sep 15
- Min per day: 14
- Number of post reporters: 2263
- Number of reported members: 7335
- Number of posts reported: 15891
- Number of threads with a post reported: 9622
About 1 in every 109 forum posts made in 2016 were reported, which is the same as last year.
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 between 9 AM and 7 PM Pacific time. The busiest hour (12 - 1 PM) had 5.2 times as many reports as the quietest hour (5 - 6 AM). Report volumes were highest on Mondays, gradually reducing over the remainder of the week.
The following graph shows every reported post in 2016, with the time of day each was first reported on the X axis and the time it took to be first reported on the Y axis. It shows that most problematic posts are reported quickly, but that many issues aren't reported for many hours. Not shown is the one in ten reports that's made more than a day after the initial post, and, of course, the issues that are never reported to us at all. The graph also shows how report activity varies over the day, with more activity during the North American day. There is also a slightly denser vertical region between approximately 9 and 12 AM Pacific time, which suggests some issues that occur overnight in the US aren't reported until seen by larger audiences in morning.
Reported forums
The MacRumors.com News Discussion forum was again the most reported forum, though the iPhone forum was not far behind and was top in the second half of the year. The Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum saw a 48% increase in post reports compared to 2015, likely due primarily to the US election.
The top 20 forums by number of post reports were as follows; deltas are in comparison with figures from 2015.
Code:
Rank Delta Forum Reports Percentage
---- ----- --------------------------------------- ------- ----------
1 n/c MacRumors.com News Discussion 3535 19.5%
2 n/c iPhone 3490 19.3%
3 +1 Politics, Religion, Social Issues 1628 9.0%
4 +4 MacBook Pro 775 4.3%
5 +1 Marketplace 719 4.0%
6 +5 iOS Blog Discussion 674 3.7%
7 n/c iOS 9 636 3.5%
8 -3 Community Discussion 623 3.4%
9 new iOS 10 557 3.1%
10 +6 Alternatives to iOS and iOS Devices 509 2.8%
11 new iOS 10 (Beta) 488 2.7%
12 n/c iPad 408 2.3%
13 +1 Mac Pro 341 1.9%
14 +7 Mac Blog Discussion 319 1.8%
15 -12 Apple Watch 313 1.7%
16 +18 iOS Apps 272 1.5%
17 -2 iPhone Accessories 243 1.3%
18 -1 Mac Basics and Help 188 1.0%
19 +5 Jailbreaks and iOS Hacks 185 1.0%
20 +8 iPhone Tips, Help and Troubleshooting 153 0.8%Post reporters
2263 members reported posts in 2016. Of these members, 55% reported just one post, while 90% made 10 or fewer reports each. The top 10% of reporters made 78% of all reports, with the top ten reporters alone making 45% of all reports - an average of 819 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. Note that this categorisation is done based on keyword analysis of the reasons members provide when reporting posts, so these numbers are likely to be an underestimate.
Spam remained the most common reason throughout 2016, stabilising at about 10% of all reports. This low rate compared to historical levels in the 30s can be attributed mainly to the better spam prevention tools we've had available since the XenForo migration.
After temporarily spiking after the XenForo migration, the level of reports for consecutive and duplicate posts dropped back to normal levels. This was as expected, since we initially lost the ability to have consecutive posts automatically merged after the migration, but regained this functionality in late 2015.
The frequency of other report reasons was fairly similar 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. This pattern was more subtle in 2015, and almost completely disappeared in 2016, which was the first full year using XenForo. Barring any significant changes, we expect this new pattern to continue in the future.
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 135 threads received more than 10 reports. The thread with the most post reports for the year was Waiting for Skylake MBP thread (126 reports), followed by Carrier - iPhone 7/7+ T-Mobile Pre-Order Thread (113 reports), although both threads had a lower percentage of posts reported than the forums as a whole. Overall, 12.6% of all threads had at least one post reported, which is an all-time high. This was despite the overall percentage of posts being reported remaining unchanged, and suggests a trend towards longer threads.
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 2016, 79% of reports were found to be rule violations and acted on in some way.
About seven out of eight 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.
Now is also a good opportunity to thank all the moderators for volunteering their time and ensuring that we can maintain an enjoyable forum experience for everyone!
