By having human beings review reports before acting on them.
Human beings that are prepared to evaluate the context of a report.
Not going to happen of course.
Absent dealing with any false reports at the first tier of moderation, we are left with using Appeal, escalating to a second tier of moderation. (There clearly is one, since sanctions do get rescinded.)
See: [My italics]
Expecting complete strangers to understand when telling someone to ‘f-off’ is an insult or friendly banter doesn’t make sense on a site as big as this. Expecting moderators to read a long thread and try to judge the tone is not reasonable, judging sarcasm online is notoriously difficult without context.
Marc Bodnick’s answer to Will Quora Moderation explain why a particular user was banned?
- Our moderation process emphasizes rule-based decisions that are fair and consistent. Every moderation decision on the site must be based on an existing policy. All we care about are policies; we don’t make decisions based on the substantive nature of the content that a user has published.
And for claims of false reporting, see:
- Anonymous: Does the banning of 8 Indian Quorans on 2017-03-15 point to some sort of coordinated action? by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency
- Sophie Dockx: Quora Moderation is Under Attack by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency
- Dan Rosenthal: Quora is not banning nearly enough people by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency