What is the report abuse button for?

Answer 1

The report abuse button is there to allow users to report questions or answers that are of low quality or that are abusive in nature.

Examples:

• Questions or answers that contain profane language (swear or curse words)
• Questions or answers that encourage people to commit illegal acts or explain who the break the law
• Questions or answers that are racially abusive
• Questions or answers that are homophobic
• Questions or answers that are designed to upset or intimidate a specific person or group of people (bullying)

If you saw any of the above you could check the box marked:

"is inflammatory/offensive or contains bad language"

Questions or answers may also be reported for being of poor quality:

An answer may be poorly spelt or contain bad grammar or syntax (e.g. "Nu Karz r vry xpensiv" as an answer to the question "How much might a new car cost?" would clearly require an improvement in spelling.

In a case like that you would check the box:

"needs spelling/grammar cleanup"

The above answer even with corrected spelling doesn't really answer the question very well and could reasonably include some more detailed information. As such you might check the "needs more detail" box.

Some answers may have had contributions from many users who have all made their own additions to an answer. This can make the answer difficult to read and very disjointed. If this is the case then you can check the "is repetitive or poorly structured" check box.

For some questions there may not be a single correct answer, rather opnions may be needed. This tends to happen in questions of the type "what is the best" or "Is X better than Y". If you see a question like this where someone has written an answer that only covers one side of the debate without discussing the second then it may be sensible to check the "is one-sided" check box.

An example might be for a question "What is better XBOX or PS3?" This is an opinion question. So if you saw an answer like "The PS3 is best XBOX is rubbish" then you would check the box.

A good answer to this question might be something like "The PS3 is able to produce better graphics than the XBOX, however the PS3 is more expensive to buy. Also there is a larger range of games available for the XBOX however the newest games tend to be available for the PS3 first" (NB - I've made these up as examples!).

The second answer gives a better feel for the pros and cons of both consoles and allows the reader to form their own opinion from the evidence.

Questions or answers containing personal information:

It is not a good idea to provide too much personal information when you are online. Answers should not contain personal email addresses or phone numbers, or peoples names or addresses.

If you see an answer that contains personal information then you would check the "contains phone number or web address" after clicking the report abuse button.