The following statistics summarise the post reports we received from members in 2019 and the first half of 2020.
This is the tenth set of post report statistics that we've disseminated. Previous post report statistics cover 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, the first half of 2011, and the second half of 2010. This set was delayed due to some issues getting a portion of the relevant data, so covers an 18 month period instead of the usual 12.
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 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 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 so that we can ensure more consistent moderation.
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 highlight times that we may need greater moderator coverage. We release a subset of these statistics publicly for the interest of our members.
2019 - mid 2020 post report summary
About 1 in every 135 forum posts made during this period were reported.
The graph below shows the trend in both posts and post reports, by month, since mid-2006.
Reported forums
The iPhone forum lost its place as the most reported forum, falling two spots. The MacRumors.com News Discussion now takes over the top spot, with over twice as many reports as the next most reported forum. The top 10 forums by number of post reports were as follows; deltas are in comparison with figures from 2018.
Grouping forums by broad areas, there are some noticeable changes since 2018: 31% of reports are from news discussion forums (up from 20%) and 27% from iOS and iOS device related forums (down from 38%). Other areas are within a few percent of what they were in 2018.
Report reasons
Moderators deal with a wide range of issues when handling post reports. Using keyword analysis we can determine the reasons for about 70% of them automatically, which are shown above. Spam was the most common reason (16%), but as a result of some additional anti-spam measures we've added, this has fallen significantly from 2018 (33%). In fact, so far this year spam has fallen to the third most common reason and an all-time low. There was an increase in prevalence of reports related to personal attacks and trolling, as well as political posts - these generally being for posts with political content that are made outside the Political, Religion, Social Issues (PRSI) forum.
Given wider societal trends, a new category added this time was reports for false, fake or misleading information. This is a low share of reports, and has historically been around a third of a percent (about one in 300 reports). However, in the first half of 2020, this rose to 1.2%, so is an area we'll continue to watch in the future.
An interesting trend is that of politics-related reports. These can be broken down into two categories: 1) reports made in the Political, Religion and Social Issues forum; and 2) reports made for political content outside the PRSI forum. Both of these have an increasing trend, with the former holding a higher but relatively steady share of reports since 2016, and the latter showing a more gradual increase but increasingly so in the last 18 months. These correlate well with real world events, namely increased polarisation in US politics in the last four years, and more recently both an increased intersection between politics and Apple-related news as well as the increased relevance to members of politics-related issues such as those related to COVID-19. Although political discussion is not a focus for the forums, the intention is that the PRSI forum can at least isolate much of this discussion for those who would prefer to avoid it and keep forum discussions as civil as possible; the trends above demonstrate some of the challenges we face balancing this. The future of these trends will likely be determined in large part by real-world political developments, particularly around the level of polarisation and partisanship.
When a post is reported, each report is carefully considered to determine if it's a violation of forum rules. Often, multiple moderators will discuss how to handle a report, particular if it sits in a grey area. Even if a report isn't acted on, it can still be useful to help us refine how we moderate over time as new issues emerge and the expectations of members change.
The acceptance rate (that is, the percentage of reports that we take some action on) varies by report reasons. For example, reports for spam are typically clear-cut and almost always acted on. Other areas like trolling are far more subjective, and we try our best to distinguish between members posting to rile up other members versus just expressing their genuine opinions. Accordingly, acceptance rates are much lower for report reasons like this.
Post reporters
2428 members reported posts during this period. Of these members, 57% reported just one post, while 93% made 10 or fewer reports each. The top 10% of reporters made 72% of all reports, with the top ten reporters alone making 21% of all reports - an average of 301 each. Compared to previous periods, we saw fewer high-volume reporters and a drop in the average number of reports per reporter. Whether you make one report or a thousand, we always appreciate the help to alert us to potential issues, especially as many issues are likely never reported.
Reported threads
Some threads, particularly long or controversial ones, have a large number of posts reported. 66% of threads containing a reported post received just one report, while 105 threads received more than 10 reports. The thread with by far the most post reports for the period was iOS 13 Speculation Thread [Merged] (172 reports), continuing the trend set by the equivalent iOS 11 and iOS 12 speculation threads in 2017 and 2018 respectively. Overall, 9.5% of all threads had at least one post reported.
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 and I can provide this.
Again, thanks to all the members who take the time to report posts to us for review. Thanks also to all the volunteer moderators who handle the huge number of reports we receive. It is often a thankless job, but I know the entire team do their best to moderate in as fair a way as possible while listening to community feedback so that we can maintain an enjoyable forum experience for everyone.
This is the tenth set of post report statistics that we've disseminated. Previous post report statistics cover 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, the first half of 2011, and the second half of 2010. This set was delayed due to some issues getting a portion of the relevant data, so covers an 18 month period instead of the usual 12.
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 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 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 so that we can ensure more consistent moderation.
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 highlight times that we may need greater moderator coverage. We release a subset of these statistics publicly for the interest of our members.
2019 - mid 2020 post report summary
- Number of post reports: 14448
- Mean per day: 27.0
- Max per day: 93 on Jun 3, 2019
- Number of post reporters: 2428
- Number of reported members: 5787
- Number of posts reported: 12172
- Number of threads with a post reported: 7555
About 1 in every 135 forum posts made during this period were reported.
The graph below shows the trend in both posts and post reports, by month, since mid-2006.
Reported forums
The iPhone forum lost its place as the most reported forum, falling two spots. The MacRumors.com News Discussion now takes over the top spot, with over twice as many reports as the next most reported forum. The top 10 forums by number of post reports were as follows; deltas are in comparison with figures from 2018.
Code:
Rank Delta Forum Reports
---- ----- --------------------------------- -------
1 +1 MacRumors.com News Discussion 3943
2 +1 Politics, Religion, Social Issues 1644
3 -2 iPhone 1358
4 +1 Community Discussion 660
5 +14 Mac Pro 567
6 -2 MacBook Pro 562
7 new iOS 13 461
8 new iOS 13 and iPadOS 348
9 +4 iPad 340
10 -3 iOS 12 313Grouping forums by broad areas, there are some noticeable changes since 2018: 31% of reports are from news discussion forums (up from 20%) and 27% from iOS and iOS device related forums (down from 38%). Other areas are within a few percent of what they were in 2018.
Report reasons
Moderators deal with a wide range of issues when handling post reports. Using keyword analysis we can determine the reasons for about 70% of them automatically, which are shown above. Spam was the most common reason (16%), but as a result of some additional anti-spam measures we've added, this has fallen significantly from 2018 (33%). In fact, so far this year spam has fallen to the third most common reason and an all-time low. There was an increase in prevalence of reports related to personal attacks and trolling, as well as political posts - these generally being for posts with political content that are made outside the Political, Religion, Social Issues (PRSI) forum.
Given wider societal trends, a new category added this time was reports for false, fake or misleading information. This is a low share of reports, and has historically been around a third of a percent (about one in 300 reports). However, in the first half of 2020, this rose to 1.2%, so is an area we'll continue to watch in the future.
An interesting trend is that of politics-related reports. These can be broken down into two categories: 1) reports made in the Political, Religion and Social Issues forum; and 2) reports made for political content outside the PRSI forum. Both of these have an increasing trend, with the former holding a higher but relatively steady share of reports since 2016, and the latter showing a more gradual increase but increasingly so in the last 18 months. These correlate well with real world events, namely increased polarisation in US politics in the last four years, and more recently both an increased intersection between politics and Apple-related news as well as the increased relevance to members of politics-related issues such as those related to COVID-19. Although political discussion is not a focus for the forums, the intention is that the PRSI forum can at least isolate much of this discussion for those who would prefer to avoid it and keep forum discussions as civil as possible; the trends above demonstrate some of the challenges we face balancing this. The future of these trends will likely be determined in large part by real-world political developments, particularly around the level of polarisation and partisanship.
When a post is reported, each report is carefully considered to determine if it's a violation of forum rules. Often, multiple moderators will discuss how to handle a report, particular if it sits in a grey area. Even if a report isn't acted on, it can still be useful to help us refine how we moderate over time as new issues emerge and the expectations of members change.
The acceptance rate (that is, the percentage of reports that we take some action on) varies by report reasons. For example, reports for spam are typically clear-cut and almost always acted on. Other areas like trolling are far more subjective, and we try our best to distinguish between members posting to rile up other members versus just expressing their genuine opinions. Accordingly, acceptance rates are much lower for report reasons like this.
Post reporters
2428 members reported posts during this period. Of these members, 57% reported just one post, while 93% made 10 or fewer reports each. The top 10% of reporters made 72% of all reports, with the top ten reporters alone making 21% of all reports - an average of 301 each. Compared to previous periods, we saw fewer high-volume reporters and a drop in the average number of reports per reporter. Whether you make one report or a thousand, we always appreciate the help to alert us to potential issues, especially as many issues are likely never reported.
Reported threads
Some threads, particularly long or controversial ones, have a large number of posts reported. 66% of threads containing a reported post received just one report, while 105 threads received more than 10 reports. The thread with by far the most post reports for the period was iOS 13 Speculation Thread [Merged] (172 reports), continuing the trend set by the equivalent iOS 11 and iOS 12 speculation threads in 2017 and 2018 respectively. Overall, 9.5% of all threads had at least one post reported.
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 and I can provide this.
Again, thanks to all the members who take the time to report posts to us for review. Thanks also to all the volunteer moderators who handle the huge number of reports we receive. It is often a thankless job, but I know the entire team do their best to moderate in as fair a way as possible while listening to community feedback so that we can maintain an enjoyable forum experience for everyone.
