An Abuse has been Reported...

Upon Logging in to Our Forums this Morning We found the following Message up on the Top of Our Administrator Home Page.

"6 d 14 h 22 min

Dear "www.themistsofavalon.net" forum administrator(s), it appears that your forum doesn't respect our Terms of service. Our service is free, so we are urged to only display legal content on the forums.

You have have until the 25-07-2011 to be in conformity. After this delay, we will have to delete your forum if it still isn't in conformity."

Its at this Point that I then went to the Abuse as Listed and or Reported in regards to "www.themistsofavalon.net" and found the following entry Listed.

"www.themistsofavalon.net/t2635-vortex-energy-part-27-of-27-winchester-cathedral-uk"

Now upon checking on this to see what Abuse of the Terms of Service might have occurred by one of Our Forum Members - It seems to Us or at least as far as We can find - That the Abuse has been taken care of / deleted by the Poster on Their own and the Copyright Infringement that WAS Reported is NO LONGER evident.

This would suggest to Us from Our angle that the Abuse has been taken care of as when clicking on the Linked Topic where this Abuse was supposed to have occurred - We as Admins are presented with the following Information as a redirect when querying the Reported Abuse as Linked...

"Information

.The topic or post you requested does not exist"

Can a Forumotion Admin or Moderator please check on Our Abuses to make sure that We're in compliance due to the fact that We as a Forum seem to have already dealt with this SUPPOSED Violation of the Terms of Service - AND YET - This remains on Our Admin Home Page as something that We currrently have "6 d 14 h 22 min" to deal with or Our Forum will be deleted...

WE DO NOT WANT THIS TO OCCUR IN THE LEAST. PLEASE HELP US TO ENSURE THAT WE AVOID THIS AS AN OUTCOME.

What more can We do ?

Sincerely and Respectfully,

Hello, you will need to read the terms of service again and find out what is wrong with your forum's content. You will then need to remove the offending content and then once the countdown reaches 0 and you have nothing against the TOS then your forum should be fine.

Terms of service: https://www.forumotion.com/en/create-forum/terms-of-service.htm

OK - But the Offending Link even says that the Abuse as Linked - "No Longer exists"...

Isn't that an adequate Answer / Remedy / Correction as It regards the Abuse being dealt with by Us as a Forum ?

Sincerely and Respectfully,

Hello, I would also like to ask something. Some users abuse the abuse button as they just want to try to close down the forum or something. And in some other cases they mistake "Report an abuse" for reporting an abuse to the site administrator about a member on the site!

Perhaps you could solve this problem altogether by simply changing it to a "Check this forum" button that, when clicked, automatically sends a notice to Forumotion to check the forum and decide for themselves the problem(s).

Then, if there is nothing against the terms of service by the time that the countdown time reaches zero then your forum should be fine and you should have nothing to worry about.

However, it is always best to go through your forum thoroughly and checking it for anything that might be disrespecting the TOS.

The Divine Clutch: this is a different report. This is an official report from Forumotion hence the timer.

Base wrote:Then, if there is nothing against the terms of service by the time that the countdown time reaches zero then your forum should be fine and you should have nothing to worry about.

However, it is always best to go through your forum thoroughly and checking it for anything that might be disrespecting the TOS.

The Divine Clutch: this is a different report. This is an official report from Forumotion hence the timer.

Oh I see. Thanks Base

Mercuriel wrote:Its at this Point that I then went to the Abuse as Listed and or Reported in regards to "www.themistsofavalon.net" and found the following entry Listed.

"www.themistsofavalon.net/t2635-vortex-energy-part-27-of-27-winchester-cathedral-uk"

Now upon checking on this to see what Abuse of the Terms of Service might have occurred by one of Our Forum Members - It seems to Us or at least as far as We can find - That the Abuse has been taken care of / deleted by the Poster on Their own and the Copyright Infringement that WAS Reported is NO LONGER evident.

This would suggest to Us from Our angle that the Abuse has been taken care of as when clicking on the Linked Topic where this Abuse was supposed to have occurred - We as Admins are presented with the following Information as a redirect when querying the Reported Abuse as Linked...

"Information

.The topic or post you requested does not exist"

Exactly the Abuses you see in your Administration Panel (Misc) do not go to Forumotion. When you received the message about your forum breaking the Terms of Service, it does not list or tell you what exactly is breaking the Terms of Service. You have to go through your whole forum and found what is breaking the Terms of Service.

So then as We now have the Timer going - Is this due to the fact that a Report of Abuse has been sent to Forumotion - Or is this because It was sent to Us as the Admins of the Forum ?

Additionally - If there was an Abuse reported such as Ours and the Timer had expired - How would Forumotion Staff deal with It if the Link to the Violation showed that It was no longer there ?

IE - If I as the Admin am having trouble finding out what is amiss - How would Forumotion Staff go about finding the Violation of Terms of Service when We are unable to ?

I mean for Pete's sake - We have over 51 000 Messages that have been Posted at Our Forums. It'll take Me Months to go through them all. There has to be some better advice than this relative to an Abuse reported - And It's correction when the Link VIA the Reported Abuse takes Us to a dead end...



Sincerely and Respectfully,

The Report a Abuse button at the bottom of your homepage only goes to the administrator of the forum. These are the reports you see in the Administration Panel under Misc.

A Litigation Report goes to Forumotion. The litigation team will investigate your forum, and if they found anything against the Terms of Service, you will receive a message in your administration panel. This message will not tell what specific things are breaking the Terms of Service. You will have to reread the Terms of Service and look through your whole forum.

I can assure you that this is an official warning from Forumotion itself, not a hoax.

It is your responsibility to oversee the contents of your forum and making sure that it doesn't disrespect the terms of service. It may be a tedious task of looking through many posts to see if anything disrespects the TOS but please check for the following:

Violent or repulsive content
Hateful or abusive content
Defamatory content and / or affecting the integrity of a person
Sexual and/or pornographic content
Harmful and dangerous acts
Copyright infringment
Spam
Phishing and/ or malware website
Credit card fraud
Hacking

I understand this Base but if You were to go in and try to prove the Abuse or that We had Abuses - How would Forumotion go about It ?

Would You Guys then begin to wade through every Single Post on Our Forums until You found a Violation or do You have a List that would Point You to the Violations on a case by case basis ?

You see - I'm trying to figure out how to solve this and do what I'm supposed to but there has to be a specific complaint Lodged against Us and a Link to It right ? Or is that wrong ?

I'm trying to figure out if Its just a general complaint Lodged against Us and We have to wade through every Post or if Its a Specific Complaint and I can get a Hint as to what I need to do to remove the Reported Abuse ?

Is this possible ? Can't You Guys tell Me "whats wrong" - Where "whats wrong" is - And what I need to do to clear "whats wrong" up ?

Sincerely and Respectfully,

Mercuriel wrote:You see - I'm trying to figure out how to solve this and do what I'm supposed to but there has to be a specific complaint Lodged against Us and a Link to It right ? Or is that wrong ?

I'm trying to figure out if Its just a general complaint Lodged against Us and We have to wade through every Post or if Its a Specific Complaint and I can get a Hint as to what I need to do to remove the Reported Abuse ?

Is this possible ? Can't You Guys tell Me "whats wrong" - Where "whats wrong" is - And what I need to do to clear "whats wrong" up ?

What has happened is someone send a litigation report (not an abuse report) to the Forumotion litigation team. The team has check out the report and deterred that your forum is breaking the ToS. You will not see a link to the complaint. You will have to go through the whole forum and check for anything against the ToS. The staff here is not part of the litigation team, so they do not know what the litigation report said.

I would like to make a sigestion on this, technically it is against the law to end a Lease (im using lease for lack of a better word here) without a legtitimate reason, you can kick someone out, but you still need a reason, and you cant just say you did an offence and not tell them what they did, or they will never learn, in fact no one will ever know what was wrong, i know that law doesent apply here, but, look at what i typed below, if your confused now

Ending a lease because they did something wrong and the person at fault diddnt correct it, but they diddnt know what they did wrong.

thats very similar to

CLosing down a website because they did something wrong nad the person at fault diddnt correct it, but no one told them what exactly they did wrong.

If you ask me, forumotion should change their policy on dealing with these kinds of situtations so they tell the admin what exactly is breaking the Tos, becuase technically it goes agaisnt freedom of information (again i know that doesent apply here, but still take it into conciteration)

Basically what i just said with my example is that, if the Team doesent tell them what is wrong, there is a 50% chance they might never find it.

or to put it on more of a perspective for Mercuriel's Position, he has a 1 in 51,000 chance of ever finding whats wrong, i mean the team could give thme a hint as to whats wrong. For example, if i let you ride a bus in a bus company i own for the sake of this example, and throw you off the bus and dont tell you why, how am i gonna learn to not make that mistake somewere else?

If Mercuriel really doesent know whats wrong he should alteast get some sort of hint as to what he did wrong so he can atleast try to correct it, and i guarentee you if you launched a poll about this the majority of your forum users would probibly agree.

Hi,

The litigation team members do not access your reported abuses - Their between you & your members, not the company.
The litigation team will search through all your posts, and threads to ensure that all violations are no longer present.

In our ToS, it actually states that you may not get a warning about a violation

Illicit contents
Forums that does welcome or promote warez, piracy, hacking, cracking, spamming, attacks against networks or servers, pornography, racial hatred, crimes against humanity, inappropriate activities on the servers, or any other actions which violate any applicable laws, aren't allowed. Any forum which contains texts, links, pictures, animations, videos or any other content recognized as illegal will be deleted without notice or warning. Forumotion.com reserves the right to delete any accounts or forums considered like not conform to the rules quoted here or specified in Forumotion.com or in the international website rules according to the international internet law. Any illegal content or act can or would be reported to the concerned services and prosecuted.

Responsibility of contents
You acknowledge and convene that any information, code, data, text, software, music, sound, photograph, picture, graphics, video, chat, messages, feature, or any other content, if transmitted publicly or in private, are the only responsibility of the person from whom the content comes from.. This means that you are, and in any case, entirely responsible of any content that you upload/download, post, send by e-mail or transmitted by any other way, than via the services. In none circumstance, Forumotion.com will be held responsible in any way or any content from a user or from a third-party, including but not limited, for any mistake or omission in these contents, or for any loss or damage of this kind, by the fact of the use of these contents noticed and, sent by e-mail or transmitted in any way via the services.

The Litigation team won't tell you whats wrong simply because they don't have to, as stated in the above quote, it is the user's responsibility to ensure every post respects not just your rules, but the ToS, so if they were to pin point spot x, there may also be a issue with spot f,r,t,h ect.

Generally the team makes a note and checks your forum later on, and if they see any violation, as they re-check every post that has been made, and if they find a violation, they'll close your forum.


I hope this clears things up a bit

So - In essence - We're screwed right ?

> We don't know what was in Violation.

> We can't be given a Link to what was in Violation.

> The People Who've found the Violation(s) (Litigation Team) won't or don't have to tell Us anything to help Us correct the Situation.

Don't You as a Forum Provider see this as an IMMENSE Issue when You won't tell others what is in Violation of the TOS.

I mean I can understand how We must be wary of what is Posted by Our Users but as Popularity Increases with any Forum Its almost physically imposssible to scan EACH AND EVERY Post that may be made.

Having the Litigation Team provide a Link or Link(s) to the Admins when an Abuse of the TOS is found is only good business IMO as You're enabling Your individual Forum Admins to control Their own Forums much better for Forumotion as a whole and that just benefits everyone...

Simply put - We have forbade - Swearing - Porn - Abuse of other Members. Warez or Phishing / Hacking as well are not spoken of at Our Forum and so We run a pretty tight ship in terms of allowable conduct.

This is why after spending almost 200+ Dollars now on Issues relative to Our Forum - Ads, Storage, Purchasing It's own Domain Name - Etc. - I'm trying so damn hard to solve this...

That said - Its next to impossible to do anything constructive about this from Our end when I need some help from Forumotion on this and none seems to be forthcoming in terms of directing Us to what was / is wrong.

-//-

The above stated - If the Litigation Team still finds the Abuse of the TOS to be evident as the Expiry Timer elapses - Is that specific Forum Out and Out DELETED - Or is It just shut down at that point until the Abuse of the TOS is taken care of by the Admins of that specfic Forum ?

Your forum being 'screwed' is the worst case scenario. If you have made an attempt to remove ALL of the offending content by the time the timer reaches 0 then your forum should be fine. However, failure to do so will mean that the forum will be banned completely with no access.

We made It through this Issue. Please mark this Thread as "Solved" and / or "No Longer Applicable"...