The following statistics summarise the post reports we received from members in 2021.
This is the 11th set of post report statistics that we've disseminated. Previous post report statistics cover 2019 to mid 2020, 2018, 2017, 2016, 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 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.
2021 post report summary
About 1 in every 145 forum posts made during this period were reported, and 71.5% of these reports were acted on - the rest were determined as not being rules violations.
The graph below shows the trend in both posts and post reports, by month, since mid-2006.
Reported forums
There were no major changes in the top reported forums. The closure of the Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum meant it fell a number of spots, and most of its reports were in the first half of the year. It was displaced by the Political News forum, in part due to the increasingly intertwined nature of politics and technology. The iOS 15 and iOS 14 forums essentially displaced forums for older iOS versions. The top 10 forums by number of post reports were as follows; deltas are in comparison with the previous set of statistics linked to above.
Grouping forums by broad areas, there has been a continuation of some longer term trends: more reports from news discussion forums, and fewer for iOS and iOS device forums (which have almost halved as a percentage in 3 years).
Report reasons
Moderators deal with a wide range of issues when handling post reports. Using keyword analysis we can determine the reasons for close to 70% of them automatically, which are shown above. Spam was the most common reason (17%), although this was only 8% in the first half of the year and increased to 23% in the second half of the year.
Longer term trends are shown below, normalised to the number of forum posts in each period.
Post reporters
2593 members reported posts during this period. Of these members, 58% reported just one post, while 94% made 10 or fewer reports each. The top 10% of reporters made 65% of all reports, with the top ten reporters alone making 19% of all reports - an average of 215 each. Compared to previous periods, we continued to see 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. 59% of threads containing a reported post received just one report, while 150 threads received more than 10 reports. There is a trend towards more reports per thread, and this is due to longer-term forum trends towards fewer, longer threads. The average number of posts per thread across the forums has risen from less than 10 in 2008 to over 25 in 2021.
The two threads with the most reports in 2021 were on the same topic and posted a day apart: Apple Threatens to Ban Parler From App Store as Twitter Bans Donald Trump (112 reports) and Apple Removes Parler From App Store Due to 'Inadequate' Measures to Address Dangerous Content (89 reports). Overall, 8.9% 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 11th set of post report statistics that we've disseminated. Previous post report statistics cover 2019 to mid 2020, 2018, 2017, 2016, 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 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.
2021 post report summary
- Number of post reports: 11422
- Mean per day: 31.3
- Max per day: 166 on Oct 24, 2021
- Number of post reporters: 2593
- Number of members with a post reported: 4209
- Number of posts reported: 8939
- Number of threads with a post reported: 4486
About 1 in every 145 forum posts made during this period were reported, and 71.5% of these reports were acted on - the rest were determined as not being rules violations.
The graph below shows the trend in both posts and post reports, by month, since mid-2006.
Reported forums
There were no major changes in the top reported forums. The closure of the Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum meant it fell a number of spots, and most of its reports were in the first half of the year. It was displaced by the Political News forum, in part due to the increasingly intertwined nature of politics and technology. The iOS 15 and iOS 14 forums essentially displaced forums for older iOS versions. The top 10 forums by number of post reports were as follows; deltas are in comparison with the previous set of statistics linked to above.
Code:
Rank Delta Forum Reports
---- ----- --------------------------------- -------
1 n/c MacRumors.com News Discussion 3890
2 +15 Political News 1103
3 n/c iPhone 897
4 new iOS 15 553
5 +72 Apple Silicon (Arm) Macs 536
6 n/c MacBook Pro 428
7 -3 Community Discussion 424
8 -6 Politics, Religion, Social Issues 405
9 n/c iPad 358
10 +23 iOS 14 279Grouping forums by broad areas, there has been a continuation of some longer term trends: more reports from news discussion forums, and fewer for iOS and iOS device forums (which have almost halved as a percentage in 3 years).
Report reasons
Moderators deal with a wide range of issues when handling post reports. Using keyword analysis we can determine the reasons for close to 70% of them automatically, which are shown above. Spam was the most common reason (17%), although this was only 8% in the first half of the year and increased to 23% in the second half of the year.
Longer term trends are shown below, normalised to the number of forum posts in each period.
Post reporters
2593 members reported posts during this period. Of these members, 58% reported just one post, while 94% made 10 or fewer reports each. The top 10% of reporters made 65% of all reports, with the top ten reporters alone making 19% of all reports - an average of 215 each. Compared to previous periods, we continued to see 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. 59% of threads containing a reported post received just one report, while 150 threads received more than 10 reports. There is a trend towards more reports per thread, and this is due to longer-term forum trends towards fewer, longer threads. The average number of posts per thread across the forums has risen from less than 10 in 2008 to over 25 in 2021.
The two threads with the most reports in 2021 were on the same topic and posted a day apart: Apple Threatens to Ban Parler From App Store as Twitter Bans Donald Trump (112 reports) and Apple Removes Parler From App Store Due to 'Inadequate' Measures to Address Dangerous Content (89 reports). Overall, 8.9% 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.
