Comment Flagging Has Arrived!

I wrote a post a while back—which was followed up by an even better one by resident Creature Robert Spain—about the Bleacher Report Community’s internal methods of dealing with bashers.

Since the content on Bleacher Report tends to be opinionated and provocative by nature, sometimes you’ll find profane comments and personal attacks courtesy of insecure, anonymous users at the bottom of the articles. The best defense we had until now from the bashers were the attitudes adapted by our community of sports freaks and aspiring writers, who bonded together in the threads over the principles of competitive camaraderie, fan-journalism, and good ol’ freedom of the press.

However the Bleacher Report community now has another tool at its disposal which it can use to fight the flamers: comment flagging.

Yes, comment flagging has finally arrived on Bleacher Report, courtesy of Axel Molina, one our superstar web developers. Now members of the community have an actionable way of reporting an inappropriate comment within seconds—and will no longer have to resort to sending an email to the admins when comments run afoul of good taste.

Instead, they can click “flag” next to the comment and immediately go back to doing what they do best: debating sports with like-minded people.

Moving forward, feel free to flag wherever you deem appropriate—or rather, inappropriate—over the next few weeks. With your help, we can set the precedent for what will and won’t fly in the Bleacher Report comment threads.

On our end, we’ll make sure that the flagging system gets rid of the truly obscene, profane, and distasteful, while also making sure not to censor comments that get flagged for the wrong reasons (ie, because the flagger disagrees with the flaggee’s opinion).

Thanks as always to the Bleacher Creatures for fending off the flamers with the tools at their disposal, and finding ways to turn negative comments into positive community building experiences.

And most of all, thank you to the anonymous bashers. (Yes, I’m serious).

Through all of your unwarranted criticism, immature personal attacks, gratuitous profanity, and inability to grasp the English language, you have helped take our community to new heights.

When the expert fan-journalists at Bleacher Report encounter attacks of this nature, they grow closer as a community and develop a thick skin. Even the worst of the worst flaming hasn’t stopped our members from planting the roots for the greatest sports network the world has ever seen.

Now flamers will become even more of a non-issue on the Open Source Sports Network. Flamers, if you’re reading: maybe it’s time to take your business to another site…or here’s a better idea: find a craft you love and work at it, rather than wasting your time criticizing those who do.

Game on flamers.