Report abuse feature updated

A contentious issue on any website is abusive behaviour or spam. People want to debate issues without getting personal, and they don't want to see threads loaded with spam. DigitalJournal.com has always taken the issue of abuse toward other members seriously; we do our best to police the site and when we're notified about abuse we evaluate the issue and aim to resolve it. However, as the site grows and as the community becomes increasingly involved in the day-to-day operation, we believe it's important to stay current and give more power to people. We're introducing an addition to the comment thread today. Digital Journalists now have a say in policing the site and removing spam or abusive comments. If you are a Digital Journalist, you'll now see a link to "Flag as Abuse" on the bottom of every comment. For now this feature is only available to Digital Journalists. This feature is designed to stop abuse e.g. a personal attack against a site member, or to flag a spam comment. It should not be used to flag comments you disagree with. By pressing this button, you will be minimizing the comment in your view -- it will fold in on itself and you will no longer see the comment. If others also flag it as abuse, our system will collapse it by default for all readers of the site. We are bestowing more power and features on members of DigitalJournal.com so they can have a say in how it's run. If site moderators are busy editing, researching and attending to other business, this feature allows you to instantly provide input rather than waiting for a staff member to review an issue. It also gives power to numbers, where multiple people decide if a comment is abusive/spam rather than just site admin. While we do minimize comments reported as abuse, it's important to note we also have a link to "Show comment." We believe it's important to remove abuse and spam, but we also want to do our best to ensure free speech prevails. With this system, an offender will see what the community deems to be abusive, and the nasty comments get scrubbed from the site. As a final note: We don't anticipate this feature will be used often, but we've installed it for serious cases. It's for abuse only, not when you disagree with something -- only use it to report an attack on a site member, or for spam. Digital Journalists may lose their privileges if they unfairly or unnecessarily use this feature to flag comments that are not abuse. This tweak replaces the "Report Abuse" button that sends a message to DJ admin. From now on, it's up to the community. If something is severe abuse, or if you feel a particular comment needs to be brought to the attention of site administrators, feel free to Contact Us to let us know. Thanks again for everyone's input. We hope you enjoy and appreciate this feature.