Reporting Improvements

A large forum will probably get a lot of reports, so in 1.2 we've tried to streamline the reporting system and make it easier for moderators to work with. Let's see what new options there are...

Reporting to a forum
Before I start, if you're one of those people that really doesn't like the default reporting system, you can turn it off and have reports create threads in a forum. If you have a workflow around this, then you can go back to using it but obviously you'll need to setup things like prefixes or workflows to define how to mark "closed" reports, etc.

If you choose this option, none of the changes that I'm listing below apply to you, so you can just ignore the rest of this message if you want.

Updated reports counter


The counter showing the number of outstanding reports has been updated in a few ways:

• If a report is assigned to you, that number will be listed first (I'm assigned to 1 of the 2 open reports).
• Once you have visited the reports list, the counter will no longer be shown in red (unless you have a report assigned to you). Whenever a report is updated (either a new open report or a new comment/action on an open report), the counter will be red again. This allows you to track changes to the reports.
• Hovering the counter will tell you the last update time (of any open reports).

What's changed on the report list
You'll see a couple changes here:

• You can now search for reports based on the owner of the content being reported. (Searching by people reporting may be implemented in the future.)
• A report that you're assigned to is shown in bold.
• Reports closed recently (last 24 hours) will always be shown below the active reports list.

What's changed when viewing a report

• You'll see a user block above the report with quick access to links like editing, spam cleaning, etc.
• The comments are now listed in oldest first order.
• There is clarification that any comments made are only visible to other moderators.
• You don't need to be assigned to the report to take an action with it. (If the report is assigned to someone else, you will be told this before you will see the actions to handle the report.)
• You can assign a report to other moderators. This triggers an overlay which shows you the list of users that can actually see/handle the report.
• When resolving or rejecting a report, you have the option to alert the reporter(s) of what action was taken, including an optional comment. (The alert does not tell the reporter which person handled the report.)

I think that's everything for now. I still see plenty of things that could be done to make moderators' lives easier in the future and we'll always be revisiting additional options.

http://xenforo.com/community/threads/reporting-improvements.49338/