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I'm curious about how CV handles abusive/rude users who continue to act inappropriately on the boards despite being directed to the CV posting guidelines and warned about their inappropriate postings? See the discussion here with the user James Draper, who has been abusing the board guidelines and posting inappropriate comments: Need to know the correct way to compute p-values for a two-way ANOVA across 4 groups with unequal sample sizes?

I've been attempting to help this particular user who wasn't satisfied with the fact that I initially advocated closing/moving his post to Stack Overflow given that his initial question was better suited for programming. I've tried to be very accommodating to this user, but he continues to use flippant language and make rude comments. Several of his posts required deletion, so it may be hard to get a feel for what was actually said originally and why I felt this user went beyond in appropriate. Is there any system in place for board moderators to either warn users or remove them from the site?

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    $\begingroup$ There is and we're handling it. The standard mechanism is to flag the material. Escalating your complaint to Meta should be reserved for issues of concern to the entire community. One risk in going public with a particular complaint of this sort is that it can be a lose-lose situation: all parties can come out looking petty or worse, because most readers will not have full information about the events. $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 17:45
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks, @whuber. I agree. I was just curious about the more general situation, and not necessarily this particular post. I appreciate the response and the handling. $\endgroup$
    – StatsStudent
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 17:51
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    $\begingroup$ OK. You might want to refer to stats.stackexchange.com/help/mod-flags and stats.stackexchange.com/help/mod-cm-contact, as well as stats.stackexchange.com/help/harassment and stats.stackexchange.com/help/flagging. I think most of the answers you might be looking for are covered in those pages. Some of the lesser-known options are outlined at stats.stackexchange.com/help/site-moderators. $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 17:55
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    $\begingroup$ Great. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I'm happy to remove this particular post if you think it appropriate. $\endgroup$
    – StatsStudent
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 18:02
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    $\begingroup$ That's your decision to make. If you would like to focus on the issues you think would be worthwhile for the community to have a conversation about, then consider editing it to tone down the specifics and focus on the issues. BTW, I appreciate your efforts to be helpful. Sometimes, to de-escalate a problem, we find it useful to remove comments from multiple parties, so please don't read anything into that. $\endgroup$
    – whuber Mod
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 18:07
  • $\begingroup$ Of course, @whuber. I totally understand and didn't read much into it. I have some ideas that I think would benefit the community and development efforts. I'll edit them when I'm back at my desk this evening. Thanks! $\endgroup$
    – StatsStudent
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 19:31

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I'm curious about how CV handles abusive/rude users who continue to act inappropriately on the boards despite being directed to the CV posting guidelines and warned about their inappropriate postings?

  1. Flag the post having such comments for moderator attention and explain the best you can about the situation. Wait the result.

    Possible outcomes are:

    • you don't have a case. Try looking at the declined flag and see if any comment was left by the moderator explaining why he/she disagrees with you.

    • you have a case. If so, moderators can edit such comments, delete them, talk to the targeted user to call his/her attention (ask what happened, etc), and in extreme cases, they can consider suggesting a temporary ban to such user.

  2. If not satisfied, one option is to flag it again and explain even better. Probably, a second moderator will double check the matter.

  3. As a last resource write a report to SE managers hitting the 'contact us' link at the bottom of this page (choose subject 'Other').

However, from own experience be aware chances of having a real case after the first flag is reviewed, is very low; and after the second flag, almost zero. So think twice before re flagging a post, and think three times before engaging with the 'last resource'.

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    $\begingroup$ (+1) NB moderators don't get an opportunity to explain why they've declined flags on comments, only on questions & answers. $\endgroup$
    – Scortchi Mod
    Commented Jul 14, 2017 at 9:00

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