How to Report a User

While browsing or editing MusicBrainz, you might find that a user is acting in ways that go against our general Code of Conduct or MusicBrainz-specific Code of Conduct, or that seem to be otherwise negative for the community and/or the database.

Should I report?

In general, the first reaction when you find an editor who seems to be doing something wrong is to try to help them understand the problem and improve their editing. Sometimes this can work very well, and it's expected that new editors will make mistakes. Please assume good faith when at all reasonable and try to help editors before you report them! This includes cases such as editors who consistently do things wrong in a way that is time-consuming to fix, at least until it's clear that communication is not helping.

That said, sometimes either an editor is clearly not acting in good faith (engaging in vandalism or spam, or creating additional accounts to vote on their own edits). In other cases, trying to talk things through with an editor just isn't helpful (because they ignore edit notes or they respond badly to them), or the editor is engaging in abusive behavior towards other editors (insults, indiscriminate no-voting, etc.). In this case, you should report the user to the site administrators so that they can review the case and act as needed.

How to report

To report a user, click the big link at the bottom of their profile page:

Clicking this link will present you with the following form:

The first field of the report lets you choose the reason why you are reporting the user. This allows you to select the most common reasons or, if nothing else fits, the more general "Editor has violated some other part of our Code of Conduct". Choosing the right reason here helps us figure out the situation faster.

The second field is even more important, and it's a free text field where you should explain the situation in more detail. You don't have to write an essay here (unless a lot of context is needed!) but do make sure to both specify what the editor is doing wrong and provide some links to help the admins quickly understand where this is happening. For example, if the editor is leaving offensive edit notes, link to the appropriate edits. If the editor is ignoring edit notes and keeps doing the same wrong thing, link to an edit where they were told that they were doing it wrong and what they should do instead, then one or more recent edits where they have clearly ignored the suggestion. If there's a lot of edits that apply, you don't need to link every single one of them, but do link enough that the situation is easy to understand. Unless the situation is blindingly obvious (such a spammer that only makes edits about their illegal medicine store), not adding details to the message field will make acting up on it a lot harder and might mean that your report is not acted on or that an admin needs to contact you for more info.

The first checkbox indicates whether you want the admins to receive your email address with the report. This allows them to let you know about their decision, if any. If you uncheck this we will assume you do not generally want to be contacted, so if your message does not contain enough info to act on the report, the admin might decide to ignore it rather than ask for more details. That said, admins do have access to your email address, and if they deem it really important, they might still contact you about the report directly even if you have unchecked this box, but that should only happen in extreme circumstances.

The second checkbox just makes it so that you get a copy of the report when it's sent. This doesn't have any effect on the report itself, and it's just useful if you want to archive a copy for yourself (since you cannot otherwise browse your sent reports).

What happens next?

Once the admins have received your report, they will try to look at it as soon as possible. Keep in mind this might take a few days. After that, they will take the action they consider necessary. In mild cases this might just mean leaving an edit note or sending an email with a warning. Any offending edit notes might also be censored or removed if needed. In more serious cases, or for repeat offenders, the admin might revoke the editor's privileges to leave edit notes or to edit MusicBrainz, mark them as a spammer, or delete their account outright. As long as you have said you want to share your email address, you will usually get an answer from the admin who dealt with your report, letting you know what their decision was. Sometimes, in mild cases, an admin might not take action immediately, but ask you to report the user again after a period of time if their behavior has not changed.