A suggestion reposted on the subject of blogger violations.
I am reposting this suggestion, following the banning of Passionflower. I offered you these thoughts on December 19th and I strongly feel that if you'd instituted the 'Notify Blogit' button, many of the comments + posts leading to the latest crisis would have been brought to your attention early so that you could have prevented the loss of another blogger and the offending of many others, not just those directly involved, but indeed moreover those who are quietly posting unoffensive material in order to attempt to enjoy this site.
Policy Violations / Concern for a blogger
With regard to the recent banning of Blanche, I would like to suggest an improvement to the reporting system so that bloggers find it easier to report violations (and concerns) that they see. If we were encouraged to report violations earlier, then perhaps the Blanche banning might have been avoided and all the hurt that took place too.
At the moment, via the "Conduct Policy" or "Help" links, it is difficult to report concerns we might have. The form takes time to find and you need to know how to copy a link in order to draw attention to a post or comment.
What I would like to suggest is that you create a "Notify Blogit" link next to every post and every comment.
As it does now, your email address would appear, but also the link for the post or comment would be automatically generated.
A form would appear with a drop-down list or checklist where bloggers can indicate which part of the Conduct Policy they are reporting upon. There should also be a box which says: "Other Concern", as we might want to alert you to information which is not a violation.
The current text box for further details should also be included.
At the moment I feel the Blogit 'law' is being taken into private hands when we've got a perfectly good system for tackling violations. It's the reporting that is difficult.
I appreciate this might create extra work in the short term, both with the set-up and the extra reporting it will generate, but in the long term, it will foster a safer environment and may lead to more bloggers using the site.
Thanks for considering this.
Dave Cryer