New feature for reporting private messages

[Victoria-NRAS]

Hi All

Just to make you aware, there is now a new feature on the HealthUnlocked forums, allowing users to report messages that have been sent to them through the private message (PM) feature, when they deem them to be abusive or upsetting.

Most of you will be aware that you can report threads or comments on threads which you feel break forum guidelines or are worrying or upsetting etc, but up until now, if someone received an abusive message through private messaging, they would not be able to report it.

I really hope this won't be something that people have to use often (if at all), but I know that some of the forums on here have had problems with this (usually from people 'trolling' the site, not generally messages from regular forum users), and it is a way to protect members from receiving this abuse privately. Should you find yourself in this situation, you will now find a dropdown box when you open the message, and you can select 'report' from this.

When a thread or comment on the forum is reported, notification of this report is sent to HealthUnlocked, but also to the admins for that forum, and it is usually the admins who deal with this. In the case of private messaging, because some of you will be on more than one of HealthUnlocked's health forums, admins will not be made aware of a reported message, and this will instead be dealt with by HealthUnlocked.

Hopefully this will not be a feature that any of you need to use, but even having it set up might act as a deterrent for anyone who might consider sending abusive messages to another forum user.

Kind regards

Victoria

(NRAS)