When a post or comment is reported, moderators receive an e-mail. The moderators include the Node’s Community Manager, and the Executive Editor and Reviews Editor of Development. As soon as they get the e-mail, they will read the post or comment that is being reported, and decide what to do next.
If the flagged content is obviously spam, it will be removed. User accounts created for the sole purpose of adding spam will be removed as well. If a user contributes regularly, and only posts spam once, they receive a warning. Repeat offenders lose the ability to write posts.
If a comment is marked as being inappropriate because it contains explicit and offensive language, threats, or other well-defined breaches of the terms and conditions, the moderators may choose to remove the offending parts of the post or comment and notify the author, or ask the author to rewrite a particular section.
In some situations, however, flagged content may not be as straightforward to remove. These situations include (but are not limited to)
-If removing flagged content would affect an ongoing discussion (For example: a post may have a lot of comments, and be linked from other sites, before someone flags it.)
-If moderators do not reach a consensus on whether something needs to be removed or not.
-The flagged content concerns a matter of scientific debate
In all these cases, the moderators will contact the Node’s curators for advice. The curators make the final decision on any contentious content when that decision cannot be made by the moderators alone. For any given decision, the curators involved will be three, or at minimum two, people from the following group: The Company of Biologists’ Publisher, Executive Editor of Development or Executive Editor of the Journal of Cell Science, Development Editor in Chief, The Company of Biologists Director on Development Advisory Group, Development Editor.
No individual can be both a moderator and curator in the same decision, and if the report is a matter of scientific content, at least one of the curators involved should be a working scientist.
The time it takes to make a final decision on whether to remove content varies:
-Spam is removed as soon as possible
-Most other inappropriate content is dealt with within 24 hours of receiving the report if no curators are involved
-If curators are involved, a decision will be reached in 2 days if the matter is not one of scientific content, or up to one week if an academic expert needs to be consulted.