Who can be reported, and who can report others?

Before displaying it’s numerous report buttons, Block, Suspend, Report for BuddyPress carries out a number of checks to determine if they should be present. These checks can be summarised as follows:

Who can be reported?

1. Admins can never be reported. While there may be some benefit to being able to report administrators, for the vast majority of sites this is unlikely and unnecessary. It is far better to have a formal complaints system in place for the site owners, which should be conducted away from the reports system, for example, via email.
2. You cannot report youself. Unlike the above, we can’t think of a single reason why you might want to. This also means you cannot report groups or forums that you create. However, you can report the individual activities by others inside those activities. If you feel that a group or forum topic may have got out of hand, and is no longer in the spirit of how you originally created it, we recommend reporting an offending comment or reply, and asking the administrator to consider closing it down entirely.
3. You cannot report anyone in a whitelisted role. These are roles specified on the Reports Setting Screen.

Who can report?

1. An admin cannot report any other user. Administrators have the ability to create their own reports from the backend. However, even this may be surplus to requirements, as administrators can now Quick Moderate from the dashboard by simply entering an activity or user ID and the activity type. Admin created reports are primarily useful for logging reports to monitor users, to add them to an auto-moderation queue, to assist other administrators in larger sites or for general housekeeping.
2. Logged out users cannot report. This means that unregistered visitors cannot report site activity. In the last two years, we have never been asked to add visitor reporting as a feature. Regardless, there are significant problems with this, such as the fact the reporter would essentially be anonymous, or that it would generate a huge amount of spam. It could aslo be a vehicle for spurious or vexatious reporting, which would place a considerable burden on administrators.
3. Members who have been blacklisted cannot report. These are members who an administrator has decided should not be able to report, by using the input box in the report settings screen. The most obvious use of this tool is for members who have made vexatious or spurious reports about others, often for personal reasons or to fulfil a grudge.

In addition to the restrictions above, there may be more users who cannot report/be reported based on one or more integrations you are using. For example, Block, Suspend, Report for BuddyPress integrates with Paid Memberships Pro, so that only members who have a particular level have the ability to report others. This means that the plugin can be used as a marketing opportunity for your site, increasing your revenue by allowing members to use our functionality. We are always looking out for further integrations, so if you are a user with an idea (or even the developer of such a plugin), please get in contact.