Do you see that button at the top right of the page? That's the Alert Admin button. Interestingly enough, it's both unused and abused.

First of all, it's not like calling the police. You don't get fined or grilled for using it. It's more like telling a policeman on patrol if something's amiss.

And here's a little secret - the one who presses that button first will usually appear to be right. Let's say that you put a game on the downloads page. Now Bob calls your game "a piece of **** and tells you should give up making games and start making ******-**0*". He also gives your game a 0 star rating. Now while that is grounds for admin alerting, you decide to take it like a man and ignore him.

Then Bob posts a game, which you think was even worse. Since you don't like him, you remark that his game was "a piece of ****". And you vote it 2 stars. Bob presses the alert admin button and next thing you know, you get a warning DC-mail from an admin. That's not fair!

True, but we don't know what Bob did if you or nobody else report it. There have been a few rare cases of fights being unfairly solved because someone reported the person who didn't start the fight.


When to use it
You press that thing if there's something on the site that looks amiss. This includes:
- Mean comments
- Broken links
- Swearing
- Pornographic images/links
- People starting a fight
- An error in the website

You don't have to be the victim either; it fact it's nicer to report it when you see someone else being victimized.


When NOT to use it
First of all, don't use it to settle fights. Let's say A doesn't like B. Both of them always insult each other on the forums and everyone's sick of it. Now every time A makes a typo that ends up in a swear word, B reports it. If B calls another member a gimp or some other minor insult, A reports it.

That in itself is not abuse. But it makes you look petty. If you tell the same policeman on patrol about every minor detail, you'll either look like a whiner or look vigilant. So don't overdo it. If you REALLY want to do that, don't keep alerting on the same guy, whine about other people too. That way, you actually look vigilant.


How to use it
It's pretty obvious. Just click the Alert Admin button. Then when it asks the error, you just type a *very short* comment on it. The alerts don't handle long notes yet.


That's all there is to it.