Feedback Requested: New Patreon Reporting Feature slated to launch January 2018

Patreon Feedback Feedback
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Hi there!

You asked specifically to be included in new feature feedback and here’s an example of something that we’re hoping to launch soon.

Below is a potential explanation of this new feature that would be shared with all creators.

I am particularly interested in the following:

  1. What questions about this feature do you have after reading this?
  2. Do you have any concerns about this feature?
  3. What about this makes you happy?
  4. What else do you want to know?
  5. Anything else?

I’ll do my best to share as much as possible if the explanation is insufficient - this will help us to share more broadly and make certain we’re communicating things clearly.

Patreon is planning to roll out a better way for people to file reports when they believe a creator is not meeting Patreon’s community guidelines (https://www.patreon.com/guidelines). This new in-product reporting tool will help our Trust and Safety team filter out frivolous reporting while providing guidance and support to creators a one-to-one basis.

Key Improvements

Only logged-in Patreon users can make reports: Right now, anyone (yes, anyone) can claim a creator is violating our community guidelines. This sometimes led to frivolous reports by people outside the Patreon community. Moving forward, only people who have a Patreon account will be able to report content.

Individual posts can be reported (and not a creator’s entire account): Often, people were trying to report only a piece of content, not an entire creator. Now, by flagging just a piece of content, reporting is more accurate, which makes it faster for us to evaluate the reports and work with creators on updates (if changes are needed at all).

Better reports from users help us make better decisions about content: With the old system, we often didn’t get enough information. The new reporting system provides more information for content like DCMA takedown requests, which have a different evaluation process than something like doxing. The new system also directs the person filing the report with relevant FAQs, which we hope will alleviate concerns and improve reporting accuracy. [For example - one of the common patron complaints is that creators are not delivering on what was promised, that’s not an issue for trust and safety and we have robust FAQs on how to handle this issue that we can surface directly in the reporting tool.]

Quicker resolution for content in question: Over the long term, we’ll be able to see patterns in reporting, which will help our Trust and Safety team as they review each case, again leading to quicker resolutions for creators.

How It Works

You’ll now see a button with three dots and the word “more” in both web and mobile versions that will load a form to be filled out. (Please note: since you can’t report yourself, you won’t see three dots on your own profile when you’re logged in.)

This will generate a dialog box that will walk the person through a process to file a report. Logged-in users can file a report via the website, mobile website and, eventually, in the app. Once a report is submitted we confirm that we’ve received it. Behind-the-scenes, it’s routed to a member of the Trust and Safety team for review. The person filing the report does not hear back about the results of their claim, and we only contact creators if there is a need for some discussion.

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First and foremost, THANK YOU for including us.

My primary concern about this is that not all creators on the internet have a patreon account. Are you going to allow patreon account holders to report stolen/art theft/DMCA’s on behalf of those who do not have an account or will there be another avenue for non-patreon creators to report theft to you, outside of reporting it directly to your parent/web hosting companies? (which i would think would be more troublesome for you guys then a direct DMCA.)

This part here is somewhat bothersome. The worst thing is reporting and never being able to follow up to see if any action was taken and what part of your post was in violation. This leaves people in the wind especially if it is something related to a DMCA. On the flip side, if someone’s content gets reported and then removed and a creator doesn’t get any notification of that, that is actually rather rude. Many other art sites at least inform you that a report was received and what action was taken. Same for the reporter, it will tell you it’s been received and what action may have been taken (or, just that it was resolved, even though the vagueness is rather infuriating.) No names need or should be exchanged but knowing that it’s actually been handled is important, otherwise you will be getting people sending in communications to your team asking whats going on, which will just give you guys more work to do and piss people off when they get told you’ll just have to accept that you’ll “never know”. How are creators supposed to learn and be able to fix their reported posts or heck, even realize they broke a rule in the first place and actively work to avoid doing it again in the future if we aren’t told?

The rest of it sounds great honestly at first glance, though i will certainly take another read tonight/tomorrow with a fresher mind to ensure that i am digesting everything. Overall though, it’s nice to see better reporting features! It’s certainly needed.

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Thank you for the rapid response @Temrin!

So one thing that we should be clear on is that this does not change the current DMCA takedown process, which goes through a different form. This process would continue to allow anyone to reach out in the event they need to report that.

The other thing is that this reporting tool would direct you to the DMCA form if you go try and submit that sort of claim. (It would help if I uploaded some images…)

It also sounds like we should be clearer around when we reach out to creators. If someone reports a piece of your content, and our team reviews it and deems it a-ok, you are never contacted. Would you want to be notified even if we say it meets our community guidelines? (I don’t know if this is possible, would have to go back to the T&S team and ask.)

The second situation would be that we receive a report about a piece of content, the team reviews and decides it needs some adjustments, then they would reach out and let you know what the issue is. With every report like this, the T&S team would reach out on a 1:1 basis and explain the concern, ways to fix it, and then work with the creator on this remedy.

Yes, let me share this feedback too about not know what happened in general if you’re a reporter.

Again, thank you for the speedy response!

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Re: DMCA - Ah okay! Good to know and yeah that is fine. :slight_smile:

Re: Creator Responses: if the post in question doesn’t break any rules then I say it’s fine not to notify. No need. But for if it breaks the rules, yes. A little clarity on that would be needed for the final draft if the FAQ on this for sure.

No problem :smiley:

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This is an interesting one for us, because we’ve had several people unsubscribe citing this reason, and yet we’ve always delivered exactly what was promised but there’s no way to find out exactly what it was that the patroid was missing.

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This is a very good point. I know some of my own patrons have missed content just by not checking their inboxes/having notifications on. Some get ruffled by this but usually calm down when i point them to where the post was or respond to the previous DM thread with the content.

This isn’t to say i’m perfect. I have been late on some things but never without communication. Often times there are even extra goodies that come along with anything that is late, to make up for it. (None of my patrons have ever had an issue with this because i let them know whats up, but who knows, someone in the future might get really upset. How would this sort of thing be handled?)

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Every now and then I issue a ‘user feedback’ form, where patrons can anonymously send me feedback. I usually ask like “on a scale of 1 to 5, how satisfied are you with what you’ve been supporting?”
“what would you want to see done differently?”
"If you became unhappy with your pledge, what would you be most likely to do first? (‘Provide feedback / voice discontent,’ ‘Reduce pledge,’ ‘Remove my pledge entirely’)

etc.

Unfortunately even though like 1 or 2 patrons did say they were a bit unsatisfied, no one came forward to tell me why. I more want to know what patrons feel is wrong so I can address it.

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This is helpful - and this may be something we need to tweak in the product to make it clearer to the patron what they’ve received to date.

We are definitely going to be addressing a lot of those visible delivery things for creators, but I don’t know how it will look for patrons, so this is a great thing to surface to the product team.

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For certain! I know it’s hard when people don’t check the places where they are supposed to see content - again, this should be something more easily visible.

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Thanks for sharing, Carla. Luckily, this is nothing I’ve had to contend with, but I can see where this would benefit.

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There is one thing in this thread that bothers me a lot, and that’s that Patreon does not feel it’s necessary to communicate. If people (creators, patrons) don’t want to be communicated with, that’s fine, give them the option to opt-out of whatever communication you’re trying to provide. Mailing lists? Unsubscribe buttons are fine. Or in our settings you can give us a “I want to hear about” option list. Or when people fill out a form about something they can check a box that says “I don’t need to hear back about this”.

But please don’t just like…NOT communicate. A whole bunch of times when I’ve filed support requests they just kind of taper off, and I think it’s because of someone just deciding that I don’t need to hear back. And in general, people already feel like Patreon doesn’t communicate. So yeah, please do more of it, not less.

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Thanks! I agree - we’ll definitely be sending email about this in January, and likely some other posts here when this is live.

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This will be launching later this week! Thank you for the feedback - we’re excited that this will be rolling out.

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