We used to have an option on the Interactive 8Ball search page to “show reported questions”. We recently received an email from someone who objected to some of the questions submitted and didn’t like that the questions he reported were still available. Upon further reflection, we also decided that it doesn’t make sense for the reported questions to still be available on the site.

And so, without addressing the issue that people are still going to be mean on the site (which we’ve discussed before), we are no longer showing reported items on the site anywhere.

Here’s the email we received:

I think your interactive 8-ball “game” encourages stupid and crude behavior.

By googling my son’s name, the interctive 8-ball site came up. I have never heard of this site before.
I found references on the site to my son and other students from his school which are offensive, crude, and hurtful. I “reported” them as offensive and I reported them to the school. I want them removed from the site, and thought that they were removed by the act of reporting. However, I see that you can access them by clicking on ‘see reported questions’. They are also available in the “cached” items on the google site.

I find this very disturbing. He had nothing to do with these words appearing here and does not even know of their existence.

Please tell me what you can do about this. I want all questions or answers with his name removed. Can you do this? I am certain the are him because of the other names of students in his classes also being present.

Please respond.
_____ ______________

… and my response …

Mr. _________,

Thank you for contacting us about this. Before launching the site, we never understood how base and downright mean people who use Interactive 8Ball. It quickly became apparent though that most people who use the site use it to hide behind the anonymity and write hurtful things about other people.

Still the site can be fun for some… enlightening for others, and we’ve kept it online.

However, due to your email, we’ve re-evaluated our reporting system and agree that reported items should be removed forever. All of the question/answer pairs you reported will no longer be accessible on the site.

Please know that we have no control over Google’s indexing or caching, and so cannot immediately remove the content from Google’s site. However, they keep their index and cache fairly current, and after about a month or so our pages which were indexed there should disappear.

Regards,

Jason Coleman
Stranger Studios, Interactive 8Ball

Play the Interactive 8Ball now and see what all the fuss is about.