What do you do when you find a question or answer offensive?

Move on

If it is something that violates Fluther TOS, I don’t have a problem flagging it because it is doing something positive for the Fluther site here. For questions that are just plain objectionable like you mentioned, I just avoid them because it’s not worth my efforts to be involved in something distasteful like that.

Tear them a new a…

I hate to say this, because I don’t want to put you on the spot, but do you have an example? It’s cool if you don’t want to pick on any particular question.

I rarely do much about things I find offensive. First of all, there’s not much I find offensive. Second, even if I do find it offensive, I’m a big boy, and I can take care of myself. Like gooch said, I move on.

If I think someone has been very, very wrong and cruel, then I might flag it, although I don’t really understand how the flags are responded to, so sometimes I don’t bother. Other people seem to do it.

Sometimes, I will respond to the answer by trying to turn things on their heads. It’s hard to say exactly. I try to come up with some smart response. I did one the other day I was quite proud of. It had something to do with wondering what it was like to talk to a bowl of jello. Unfortunately, other people flagged the post, and eventually it was removed, and now my response makes no sense at all.

Anyway, I don’t take insults online very seriously. People don’t know me, and they are talking to a fantasy of me, just as I am talking to a fantasy of them. Given that, it’s hard to take anything seriously. It’s just too hard to separate out the real from the posing.

It depends a lot on who asked and the sense I get from the asker. Sometimes there’s a new person asking a serious question and they’ve had a few not-so-serious answers. I want to go out of my way to let them know that there are some people around that will take the serious question seriously. Sometimes I want to let someone know they’re sounding like a dumbass. Sometimes I just want to ignore a rude answer and answer the question directly because I liked the question. Sometimes I ignore the whole question because there isn’t anything worth addressing.

I have flagged two or three responses ever, and I’ve been here since August of last year. It’s really rare that I feel something warrants that, but I have no qualms about doing it when I feel it appropriate to do so.

move on, but wish there was a bad or mean answer button. lol

@daloon, this question was inspired by an answer I saw to a question where the poster was bashing another quip. The bashing seemed uncalled for to me and I was wondering about the motivation behind such a post. If I am bothered by an answer or even a question, unless it is truly universally offensive or flaming, I move on.

I usually only flag spam. I don’t really care anymore, so I usually move on.

i don’t usually respond, but i do on occasion. otherwise i just ignore it or flag it.

I flag if I think it is universally offensive or violates the TOS as Bluefreedom said. If it’s just offensive to me, I try to ignore it.

If it’s picking on a new user, I will sometimes say something, because I think that is a vulnerable time.

If someone attacks me, I may respond once or twice. If it doesn’t drop, I just stop responding. I’d like to say I ignore all of those too, but sometimes I get pulled in.

If someone attacks me in what seems like a really unreasonable manner, which happens only rarely, I PM him or her, try to find out what is really going on and often apologize, for I know not what.

Depends on the circumstances. I might move on or I might flag it depending on how offensive it is or if it bugs just me. If someone is really being snotty to an innocent third party I might step in. Or I might not.

Well, as for me, this is what the “Flag as…” button was made for.. hello??! :-)

I think I have flagged maybe 2–3 answers. If I see something really stupid then I will usually just comment on it.

Ghost Busters.

If it’s truly bad, I will sometimes say something and flag it. Now that I’m a mod, I can actually do something about it, too :)

It depends on how offensive it is and if I feel it violates TOS. There have been a few offensive answers that I’ve educated the person because they were only offensive since I believed differently from that person. It was a matter of belief. But I’ve also flagged for a variety of reasons—most of which I assume were appropriate, as the question or answer has disappeared fairly quickly. I really love the flagging categories.

I like to find a way to hack into their computer and just cause problems for them.

just kidding, i don’t even know how to do that. i tend to either ignore them or point out their incorrectness

I very rarely flag. Sometimes I’ll make my own comment. Usually, I just seethe in silence.

Surprisingly, there has not been a ”[Mod Says]” comment yet, but they told me to ignore it.

@90s_kid: Mod says comment where? What do you mean?

Read it again thoroughly. ;)

@90s_kid I still don’t get it either.

I have gotten many PMs from mods telling me to “ignore” people who find a question/answer offensive instead of striking back.
No mod has said that yet. That is what I meant.

Man. The mods never PM me. =(

That’s because you don’t do anything wrong :).

That’s negative reinforcement. Hmm…What can I do? ;)