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Today I thought I'd wet my whistle and go about policing the Portal for abusive comments and flash submissions.

I checked the FAQ to determine what breaks the review guidelines and what constitutes an abusive submission.

6 hours later I now have a Garbage Whistle. This is highly demotivating. Surely I've flagged more genuine abusive comments than non-genuine. I think that I have been careful in selecting reviews that break the guidelines but perhaps I haven't been as careful as I thought. It must be a lot of work as a moderator to go through review flags and be bombarded (not to say that I'm necessarily bombarding) with borderline rule-breaking reviews. It must be exhausting when there are probably very few genuinely terrible ones. I suppose it can be compared to receiving 100 reports of stolen bikes when a murderer is on the loose - what would you rather encourage people to look for?

So perhaps I am just a bad whistle blower, or perhaps some moderators are trying to tell me to be less judgemental with my whistling. But I am still disheartened at the garbage status of my whistle. I guess I'll just keep trying until it breaks.

Vainly, though, I am bothered that it makes me look like some kind of delinquent who enjyos flagging genuine reviews. I mean, these reviews I've been flagging are far from cordial and none of them offer any sort of constructive criticism whatsoever. The pinnacle of help in any of them is probably "this sucks", and it just goes downhill from there. I've been very careful - extremely, I thought - to avoid flagging reviews that despite their debauchery actually provided any inkling of advice. For instance, this would probably pass my radar:

"THAT SUCKED FUCKING BALLS THERE WAS TOO MUCH SINGING"

Like, at least that offered criticism. Even:

"THAT FUCKING BLEW - BORING AS FUCK"

States that, in fact, the movie/game was boring. So I'm not being malicious or anything. But still... sigh, garbage whistle. Garbage whistle! What a demeaning name for it, even. Couldn't they have picked something like... "Unfavorable Whistle" or like "Poor Whistler"? Alright, I'm just whining now.

Enjoy this video about dead puppies.