Can we please have better moderation of obvious hoaxes and fantasy posts?

I've been a member here for about three years now and I genuinely value this community. We've got some brilliant investigators, genuine historical documentation, and a good balance between healthy scepticism and open-mindedness. But recently the forum's been increasingly flooded with obviously fake posts - people claiming they've got video evidence of full-body apparitions, reports of demonic possession that read like they're copy-pasted from horror films, obviously trollish content.

I'm not suggesting we need draconian moderation, but could we have some basic vetting of new reports? Maybe a requirement for multiple corroborating witnesses or basic photographic evidence before something gets accepted as a legitimate sighting? Right now the signal-to-noise ratio is getting pretty terrible.

The alternative is that this forum becomes indistinguishable from paranormal entertainment blogs, and I genuinely think we'd lose credibility as an actual investigative community.

You're not wrong. I've noticed it too. The mods are volunteers though and we're getting absolutely hammered with moderation requests. What would help is if people used the 'Report Post' button more liberally rather than just complaining in threads. That actually flags things for our attention properly.

That said, I'm wary of being too strict about vetting reports. Some of the most interesting cases have come from people who seemed questionable at first. Better to let borderline stuff through and let the community discuss it critically than to gatekeep too hard.

Obviously fake posts

- the problem is defining 'obvious.' What you think is clearly bullshit might be someone's genuine experience filtered through their own biases and understanding. I'd rather have noise than miss real reports because we've gotten too cynical.

Completely agree with you though. The 'demonic possession' posts that read like they're from a horror movie are taking the piss. Could we at least require reports to be written in normal language rather than dramatized narrative form? That alone would filter out about 70% of the fantasy stuff.

I'll be honest - the mods are doing their best with limited resources. If you want better moderation, volunteer. Otherwise accept that a community this size will have some chaff along with the wheat. The good threads and good investigators still exist, they're just interspersed with rubbish like they are everywhere online.