Recently, on one of my communities, there was a member who had a post removed. He didn’t care for this and in his next reply, on the very same thread, he talked about how someone had “snitched” on him. His aim, of course, was to speak poorly of the person who supposedly reported him to a staff member and to devalue the action itself, in general.

Of course, this post was removed as well, for a couple of different reasons, with one of them being that it is inappropriate to attempt to intimidate or belittle members who report posts on my forums. We encourage people to do so, proactively, through our guidelines, through messages displayed on our site and directly to members, when they reply to a painfully obvious violation of our guidelines.

I told the person, in no uncertain terms, that his behavior was unacceptable. Members who report potential violations to us are to be thanked and appreciated, not ridiculed. This is why we never say whether or not something was actually reported and, even in a case where it might be relevant, we’d never say by who. We’d never put someone out like that. You have to protect the people who are helping you and your staff, who are helping you to maintain the atmosphere of the community.

Oh, yeah. By the way, the post that was removed, where the person said someone “snitched” on him? No one reported the post. I saw it myself and I removed it, myself. But, I didn’t correct him because it is irrelevant, whether or not someone reported it. The important thing is that he not be allowed to treat post reporting as something that is dirty, or wrong.