As a forum administrator (elsewhere), I have to disagree with this suggestion.
- Reports are a way for users to alert staff of posts that may need moderator action. After the report is submitted, users are no longer part of the process, and a staff member either takes action, chooses to not take action, or starts discussion about what to do. Sometimes there's gray areas and edge cases where a user is not wrong to report something and a staff member is not wrong to take no action.
- If a user is reporting things they shouldn't, or if a user is reporting the same things multiple times, a staff member will contact that user, saying to stop. My site actually has a warning category for misusing the report button, since have had people use the report button thinking it's the reply button, despite the labels that say otherwise.
- A counter of reports made by a particular user that had action taken would have no benefit except maybe to administrators, who can already look up that information. A better metric for community contribution is karma/likes, even though it can be abused, because it measures direct contributions to the community. This is the job of the users. It's the moderators' job to do behind-the-scenes and janitorial work.
There's also the consideration that it would require quite a heavy modification to the CMS, one which probably(tm) isn't already available for XenForo, and one which I'm sure the administrators here would not want to make themselves.
This x1000. When handling reports, if it's a report that the requester could benefit from a brief update from, usually such as requests to lock or change the title of their own thread, I have the option to close it and notify them it was closed and provide an option closure note in the notification, which will usually just be something like "Done!". If someone reports a post because there is a legitimate issue with it, I'll delete the post. If you're so interested, keep an eye on that specific post and see if a delete reason is given. If you just report a user profile with something like "This person is repeatedly going into threads and spewing nonsense" and don't provide direct links (individual posts should have been reported in the first place) I'll reject it with a note saying to provide specific examples; I'm not going on a witch hunt for you.
If a post is reported because someone did something marginally rude like call you an idiot, I'll probably silently reject it on account of me not being here to protect everyone's feelings (this site would have about 8 posts otherwise). If they called you something a bit more abrasive than that though I'll look into it.
tl;dr the report system is here because the
literally hundreds of thousands of users that we have (disregarding how many are or aren't active) have many more eyes on the forum than the two dozen or so staff members we have that can access the reports system. User submitted reports help us help you uphold the community standards we have established over the years, both in writing and in practice. Without the reports, with only staff eyes on the entirety of the forum, it would quickly run rampant with rude, off topic, or even illegal content, as we don't nor will a community of this size ever have enough staff members to police the forum on our own. What it's not, is a mechanism for members to feel rewarded, track stats, or compete against one another to see who has submitted the all-time highest reports.
As much of a feel-good'y, groan-inducing reply this may be, if you're looking for a way to see someone's or your own contribution to overall forum decency, look around at the forum as it stands now - that's what your contribution is. If it doesn't meet your standards, if you think there's room for improvement, be the change that you want to see in the forum. Lead by example, don't get caught up in the drama and the bullshit, and if you see someone causing issues, don't even acknowledge it, just report it. Everyone here is our eyes and ears to help ensure you have as safe and enjoyable of an experience as we can possibly provide.
