Hello again! Welcome to another episode in our Rules Roundtables, which feature us, the moderators, and your hosts explaining in comprehensive and hopefully comprehensible posts on the rules that make our subreddit great!

Today’s roundtable is on everyone’s favorite topic: REPORTING.

Why bother reporting you ask? WELL I’M SO GLAD YOU ASKED, HYPOTHETICAL PERSON!

Reporting is the one way each and every one of you can contribute! Reporting is also really important to us because it helps us maintain and improve the quality of our subreddit and our community. Because even though there are a lot of us moderators, and we work really hard to catch everything that goes against our rules, we don’t always manage to see everything (despite accusations in modmail, we are not Big Brother. Or The [insertgrouphere] Cabal. Or the Illuminati (well...maybe).

So if you see anything that breaks our rules or a post that fails to provide a source after being asked for them, or anything of the sort, then you know what you should do: REPORT. Go ahead, try it on this post, it won’t hurt me!

“But wait!” you say, “HOW do I go about providing the moderators with the very valuable contribution of reporting a comment?”

Well, thank you for asking! Here’s a helpful little imgur guide.

1. See the question.
2. See the rule breaking comment. (NOTE: Don't try doing this unless you fancy yourself a ban)
3. Click the report button.

Please choose the option closest as to why you think the comment or question is reportable—this helps us figure it out going in. Furthermore, if you feel like there is another reason, or you cant fit your report reason into the “other box” feel free to modmail us! We much prefer you to fill out the 'other' box.

Just to let you know: no, we sadly(?) cant see your username attached to a report, so you don’t have to worry about going on some sort of secret reporter list reports are always anonymous and treated as confidential, even if you modmail us directly.

Two things that are not helpful, however, are a) when users downvote obvious rules-breaking posts but don't report them or b) when users respond with something like "Just wait till the Mods show up!" but don't report. If a post is worth downvoting, it is probably worth reporting. If the only response a post deserves is derisive, it is probably worth reporting.

In the case of the latter, this is actually a great disservice to everyone. I know everyone is familiar by now with the occasional sea of [deleted]. What you might not know is that a deleted or removed comment only displays that if the comment had a response! So if you see a comment you know will be removed, replying to it is a direct cause of thread clutter even after removal! Simply reporting it and letting us remove it before it garners any responses helps to keep threads cleaner!

If you’re wondering what happens on our end, this is what it looks like. We hit the remove button and then jump into the thread to issue warnings and bannings as needed!

So as always, thank you for your participation and your reading of the sub and I hope this post encourages you to help us help you…or something to that effect. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments below!