This provides an excellent opportunity to review Rule 3b:
Rule 3b: If you see or are targeted by a post that violates these rules, click the report button located at the bottom right corner of the post; do not respond in kind!
Lately, we've had a lot of folks reporting posts and then replying directly to the post they reported. Don't do this, as we consider it a violation of the rules and you may be subject to moderation yourself.
I feel that this rule encourages each person to become their own moderator.
A report feature on a forum is, by normal operating procedures, a tool of last resort to report something that requires immediate action, such as malware infected links, pornography, and other materials which might compromise the forums themselves.
It seems to be highly irregular for any forum to use it as a means of reporting these sorts of issues. Should not the moderators be reading posts to moderate them?
The report button should be used to bring to the attention of the moderators posts that violate the rules. Regardless of what you believe SOP on any other forum to be, for
this forum, we use it as a tool to that end.
As with many thing, 'how it's done on some other forum' is not really the relevant issue. We certainly
do encourage people to
self-moderate, and to report posts that break the rules. As Casiella mentioned, we can't read every post, but we certainly do check into every report - whether or not we ultimately act on it.
Edit:
I also wanted to quote something that is more relevant to the topic at hand:
Want to talk about the newest Modern Warfare game? Maybe you have a humorous link to share? A comment about current events?
This is the place for it. Please tread carefully when it comes to RL religion, politics, and other controversial issues. There are lots of forums for debating that kind of thing, this isn't one of them.
Essentially, while debating serious and controversial issues can be engaging and entertaining, you may want to ask yourself is this particular forum is the appropriate place for it. There are already plenty of other places on the internet dedicated to politics, religion, and the ethics of hacking, for example.