Recently I created a report regarding a user that I’m concerned about, but I never got a reply from the Data Working Group for days. I then resubmitted it two more times but again no response at all. This is really weird because in the previous times I reported, I would get an automatic response within 24 hours, but not this time. Is there anyone in the DWG here who can check to see what’s wrong with the report system?
The relevant issue has just come over the fence to us. What I think happened was this:
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You reported a user, but used a category (“other”) that wouldn’t normally come to us.
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You then reported a user again with the same text, but this time used a category (“vandal”) that would normally come to us - except there was the previous report, which left it in the admins’ queue. However, the admins looked at it, and sent it to us.
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Unfortunately, before we had a chance to do anything with it you reported the user again, this time with the same text and with a different category (“spam”) that wouldn’t normally come to us. This took a little longer to be passed to us (unsurprising; whatever the problem was, it was not spam). The ticket was passed to us about 9 hours ago.
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We then grabbed it from the issues list and created a ticket from it tonight. You should have had the initial acknowledgement 23 minutes ago and my reply 11 minutes ago.
Assuming you used the “Report user” functionality on the website, you won’t receive any response but the report is most likely processed and dealt with. It was recently discussed on Github (Reports via website do not reach DWG · Issue #4568 · openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website · GitHub).
The lack of automatisation has already been raised here:
See also
Users do not know whether issues are being forwarded to the DWG or dealt with by admins.
It is extremely annoying for mappers who regularly flag dubious contributors to not receive any feedback, nor can they track the status of their reports.
Yes, I used the “report user” feature. And like I said this is not my first time using it. In the previous reports that I made (a year ago and further), I always got a response from the DWG, either an automated message noting that the report has been created, other someone from the DWG team would reply. This time I’m not receiving anything, not even the automated message (which should be done automatically right?). If it is processed like you said, should I at least be updated on it?