Please explain:

Quote:

Forum link: Only registered users can see links on this forum! Register or Login on forum! You are an admin or moderator of this forum, and you have received this email as a WARNING from an automated precheck of PUBLIC posts that may have inappropriate content. If you are sure there are no violations the Terms Of Service (TOS) of ForumUp, and no content that is not appropriate to be on view to the public, you can ignore this email. If you do find content that is inappropriate for public view, you have 24 hours to remove this content from public view. (Delete the content, move to a private section, use word censors so vulgar language does not show, etc.) Please do not reply to this email. If you have any questions, please ask on the support forum at Only registered users can see links on this forum! Register or Login on forum! Regards, ForumUp Webmaster

First off that is not a threatening email.

Bloodymary already reported it in a staff section and the forum is fine.

I was not aware that it had been queried in a location not accessible to me.

In any case, with respect can we please explore a 'worst-case scenario'?

If site Admin happen to not check their e-mails for an extended period, perhaps days, for whatever reason ... computer breakdown, hospitalization, vacation etc ... then what happens to their forum if such an e-mail warning arrives in their absence and is neglected beyond its stated deadline for response?

Could they return after such absence to find their forum withdrawn?

As also stated in the automatic email that if you believe there are no violations ignore the email, it was probably just a word that triggered the system.

Hello Jon. Please see our FAQ about the "Automated Inappropriate Content Check" at:

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Regarding the link to a topic in your forum at

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, there is nothing wrong. I don't know what word or word part tripped the automated warning, but just ignore it.

It is not a perfect system. I am sorry for the worry it caused you.

Thanks gg'ssimon. I've re-read it several times and by now can only suspect that the word "psycho" might have been the culprit. It was in the quoted media article just as it came to us.

Given discussions above, (which I appreciate) there still seems a need to reconcile this ...

(From FAQ):

Quote:

You can change your email address in your profile, but if your forum has inappropriate content and you don't take an action, ForumUp will proceed as if you got the email. This means that ForumUp will send another warning email to the owner of the forum allowing 48 hours to delete that content, and if also this one is ignored, your forum may be banned.

... with reassurances given further up in this same thread.

It seems that room for some ambiguity of interpretation lingers. For the purposes of this discussion, being unavoidably absent from internet access for a number of days (as I had exampled) would effectively be the same for anyone as "chang(ing) your email address in your profile".

If the worst happens and unacceptable material arrives in a forum during such involuntary Admin / Moderator absence from communication, then a ban of the forum could still not be ruled out.

There is already an onus that forums be posted to within 21 days (down from 35). Couldn't it be seen that an onus to check our private e-mail accounts within at least every 48 hours has now been imposed also?

"With the best will in the world", from time to time personal circumstances still can and do interrupt such levels of vigilance. The price, it still seems, could be loss of a forum subject to Support Staff response.

There is no automated ban made by a computer program acting on it's own. As explained, before a forum gets banned, a staff member personally checks any reported forum. We do not ban forums due to a few profane or inappropriate words found. A curse word here or there among dozens of threads will not be cause for a forum to be banned.

What will cause a forum to be banned is violations of ForumUp's TOS. But first, we send a warning to the admin. A few types of TOS violations get automatic bans with no warning, such as porn.

It could happen that an evil person tries to get an innocent forum banned by posting porn, then quickly reporting it to ForumUp. We would look at the forum as a whole, and if we see that the only porn posted was by one member, and a new one at that, and made the same day as the report to us, we would conclude that it was not done by a "regular, good" member. A staff member would then personally send a warning email.

All forums should have at least one moderator aside from the owner/admin. Then if one of those staff members are offline for a few days, the other can delete any "bad" content, or move it to a private "trash" section.

I don't think the word "psycho" was what tripped the automated computer generated warning. There are a list of words and word parts in many languages, so maybe some English word in that post started with the word part for one of the "suspect" words.

In any event, for your and Bloodymary's forum, don't worry about any further possible automated email warnings as long as you did look at the listed thread to make sure some evil person didn't post porn or something else against the TOS.

By the way, I did get an email warning in the past sent to me about this support forum! That would be because there were discussions where a word in the "Automated Content Check" program were used.

Thanks again, gg'ssimon for that comprehensive coverage. I do feel more comfortable now about the checking process. In the final analysis there remains no substitute for the subtlety of decisions made by human supervisors. That seems to remain dominant.

Sorry but there seems to be potential for a further problem ... one of 'Logistics':

From FAQ:

Quote:

I continue getting emails for the same topic which does not show inappropriate content. Double check the topic, and if you do not find anything inappropriate, just ignore the email.

Today I got 3 Inappropriate Content Checker e-mails within the space of 3 minutes. All were for the same post. Perhaps I should feel lucky that a dozen posts were not flagged!

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I checked, but there was no inappropriate content. Therefore I ignored the e-mails ... as we discussed.

So, what happens now? Am I going to get the same e-mails denouncing the same post tomorrow, and the day after, etc piling up in my paid private e-mail account InBox until it maxes out, unless I go scampering to it more often than I would normally, just to keep clearing space in there for legitimate incoming e-mails, largely because of Content Checker? Spam does no worse.

How does Content checker know whether I have duly checked its findings so that it knows when to stop cramming my inbox? Is moving a perfectly harmless post to a hidden forum the only way to stop Content Checker from pestering about it over and over?

We take our forum Categories layout seriously and have put a lot of thought and work into that. Frequently shifting needlessly reported posts to inappropriate site areas on Content Checker's say-so has potential to mess up deployment of forum content, against our long practiced judgment.

Is it now down to a choice between that or risk missing an important incoming e-mail now and then because of a prematurely full InBox?

Contrary to the FAQ instruction above, we cannot "ignore" Content Checker e-mails that simply. Each one still has to be opened because until we do, we don't know which post it's reporting. Today I had to waste time opening 3 e-mails only to determine that all three were the same report. Someday it might be many more than three.

Is there a less Monty Python solution to all this?

I have no idea why you received three reports on the same topic. As far as I am concerned, you should receive only one email for the same thing. Maybe, there were three "inappropriate" words in that post. Keep in mind that the system is not perfect, and sometimes bugs can occur.
The content checker is created for assisting the admins in finding inappropriate information more easily and the investigation process has not changed at all. It is up to you, whether you want to take advantage on the program. Nobody obliges you into reading the emails . If you are 100% sure that there is no inappropriate content on your forum, you can completely ignore the emails, delete them, or do whatever you want in order to keep free space in you inbox. What you have to make sure of , is that you forum follows the TOS, and the Content checker is just an easy way that we offer. It is your decision if you want to use it.

gg'ssimon I checked back and the 3 e-mails were indeed received at: 05:45, 05:47, and 05:48 of the same afternoon. And I also confirmed again that they each targeted the same forum article.

No doubt you are right about the word 'sex' being the trigger. I had 'read straight over it'. It escaped my notice because of context. It was used in an everyday innocent way. Let's face it, a mainstream media article describing Farah Fawcett as a "gender goddess" would hardly sit well with everyday, speech and is therefore too unlikely a substitute to hope for.

The triple salvo of e-mails, nor even a single one targeting that same article have not been repeated as it turns out. Yet I know of no reason why. That was a concern.

It is true that my e-mail account is pre-paid inasmuch as it is the WebMail component of my monthly paid ISP account.

Even before this 'Dawning of The Age of Content Checker' I have in the past received occasional ISP notifications that my Webmail folders have reached account limit. Spam buildup is the main culprit even despite Spam Filtering. So one more incoming element (like Content Checker warnings) will hasten that buildup.

How secure is material that lingers in Yahoo? My ISP has several layers of security ... that's why I've persisted with it.

In any case all this raises a possible question of 'fine tuning'. If words like 'sex' have many polite uses, perhaps even mostly, then automated indignation at it raises the spectre of 'filter over-servicing'. And so many ordinary words start and end with 'sex' as a component that conniptions over them become puerile.

Then we face the question of 'balance'. Because a few sites use such words for illegal purposes, it means that all over the world people everywhere are kept scampering to their e-mail accounts and forums, dealing with warnings. A "Time & Motion" Consultant would immediately question that in terms of 'man-hours' spent for a given outcome. How did we get on before all that?

I personally hope that this is just an experiment.