Welcome to Gaia! ::

This thread is to help users unfamiliar with reporting private messages learn how to do so in a way that is most helpful to moderators. What many users may not realize is that when they submit a report, they are obligated to provide the evidence for the report. For reporting spam threads and posts, the evidence may be in the thread or post itself, but when reporting private conversations or deep/complex situations, it is up to the user to provide evidence and to help the moderators understand what is going on.

Knowing how to properly quote a private message conversation is very important.

Let us suppose that a user named George Bush decided to private message you out of the blue with some spam. You respond for him to leave you alone, but he refuses, or he agrees but continues to spam you anyway. You decide to fill out a report. When you are asked to quote the private message conversation, this is what a moderator is looking for:

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=======Good report! biggrin ========
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We are looking for the entire conversation (if the conversation is lengthy and started fine but became a problem later on, then it's only required to include the quotes pertaining to your report; however, giving a little too much information is much better than giving too little. Just be sure to highlight any areas of interest if you are giving a lot of information.)

If you can do this, you will make the moderators very, very happy!
If you don't know how to do this, simply click the at the top right of the private message that is in your inbox, and copy/paste the entirety of the text box.

Any other kind of copying is subpar compared to the above example. The only other kind of highly-acceptable evidence is unaltered screenshots.

Here are some examples of poor-to-bad reports:

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===========Bad report ><===========
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okay well first he said

George Bush: I like pancakes.

then I said

me: i dont want to talk to you!

then he said

george bush: give me gold

then I said

me: please lave me alone!

then he said: want to be friends? gold please

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As you can see, I paraphrased the example in the actual private message, and that is definitely a no-no. Believe it or not, some people will do this, and that's a bad thing- but another problem is that she picked apart the conversation and put it into seperate lines, making it difficult to 1) trust the reporter, and 2) know what has been left out due to laziness or bad judgement.

This kind of report is obviously better than no quotes at all, but it is definitely not what we are looking for as moderators. Not only that, it is MORE work for you to do it this way than simply copying everything!

There is one other major type of quote we get (that I can think of at the moment) and it looks like this:

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========Bad report ><=============
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George Bush Wrote:
Yourself Wrote:
George Bush Wrote:
Yourself Wrote:
George Bush Wrote:
I like pancakes.
That's great, but please don't message me. I don't know who you are, and I don't like pancakes!

Okay but can I have some gold? I have a lot of debt.
No! Please stop talking to me, I don't want to talk to you.
I didn't do anything! I just want to be friends? Can I pleaaaase have some gold?

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This is one of the worst kinds of quotes you can do. In larger conversations, it is impossible to know who said what. This kind of quote happens when you copy/paste the text when you're viewing the PM, as opposed to when you're trying to reply to the PM. Please be sure you don't do this!

In short, make sure you are in the reply screen when you quote the PM, and make sure you include everything from the original message. Text color, bold/italic/underline markers, and ecetera, are all important for your report. Make sure to include everything, and don't edit anything.