Bitcoin Forum

Yesterday I had few hours of long boring time. In one go, I reported over 200+ spammy posts (LOL) (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3712669.msg36876446#msg36876446) until I received a message from hilariousandco.


Then I stopped my reporting and later discovered hilariousandco indeed banned those users.

Today I have encountered another spammy user ( katyaskripnik (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=1694770) ) who is actually spamming the same contents through out different boards. Please have a look on the users post history (http://archive.is/CkUlI)

Same contents but in the boards: Serious discussion, Altcoin Discussion, Project Development, Economics, Press, Legal and Bitcoin Discussion.

Now what I understand that different board have different mods. In this case of  katyaskripnik, if i report the content which is on the Serious discussion board then will the other mods from other board will be able to see the report? I guess not. And if not then I have to report the individual contents for individual board?

PS: Since I believe reporting in individual board is more logical that's why I have reported each contents to the boards they were posted.

Thanks in advance for your feedback.

---

Update: The user has more spammy posts. In fact all the posts on his post history looks spammy.

Hilariousandco has a point... Just report one post and state everything, ex. "there are similar post from this forumite on different threads/boards" that way, we can check the profile of the said person and do what's necessary...

What I have done in the past is report the 1 post stating " spamming same message in multiple threads" or something along those lines.

While I don't know the extent of the powers moderators have I assumed it would be taken care of, or passed on to the others if it needed to be a team effort. It usually gets the trick done, this way you don't bog them down.

So, reporting to one mod (does not matter on which board) will do the job?

Yes it doesn't matter i've seen rickbig, mitchell and other mods move threads from boards that they're not assigned to moderate. I guess all mods would see the reports cmiiw it depends on which mod is active during the time you submit your report.

I'm not sure on specifics but AFAIK it's mainly the global moderators which have the full perms to see reports from all subforums. The rest only moderate the subforums they are assigned to and naturally can only see reports from their sections

This will be a healthy discussion for those who report.
I would like to know if I report 1 post two times or a two people report one same post does it comes as a two different cases or one case with 2 reports?
Also homographic attacks, I do report some and I try to put proof, do you need a proof really for every post? Because it takes time to edit pictures and upload them?
It is fairly ease, just a quick auto-correct to determine if one post has changed characters > reference here. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2977866.msg30599424#msg30599424)

Moderators sometimes give conflicting answers. It's either the above, or sometimes they say it's easier to handle them if they're all reported.

It would be nice to have clear guidelines for people who report a lot, if all mods handle them the same way. That's the least amount of work for everybody.

Just one post per account is enough to get them banned for plagiarism. It's unfortunate we can't see which accounts have been banned already though.

You made that thread one week after I made this one: Plagiarism: the difference between "wallet" and "wallet" (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3094459.0).
The easiest way for me to detect it, is copying their text into an xterm that doesn't support the weird characters.
That turns this:
Into this:

I've been planning to get more of them banned, but I don't want to investigate the ones that are banned already.

@LoyceV

I wasn't aware of your thread until some days ago someone mention in with the connection to the homograph attacks.
I do use Cyrillic so is fairly easy for me to search for specific characters while reporting.

On a daily basis I see 1-2 such posts created, and I do report them.

I'm very happy that you can search for a single character in the forum search engine. Helps me to detect also Russian spammers outside of their local section.

What about the Off-Topic section? Do I need to report from there too. I don't really visit this section since there are only 3-4 good threads and the rest is just a trash.
I don't really see point of having such section. Almost all sig. campaigning do not count the off-topic posts so it is just a place to generate activity, nothing more.
Profiles posting only there, what we do with them? Why would you register account on Bitcointalk only to discuss how to find if your wife is cheating on you or how much tomato sauce you have to put on a pizza/pasta (I don't remember)??

I'm considering opening a thread with guidelines for the everyone wanting to report. Different approaches I use to detect spam, copy/pasting etc. also to exchange ideas and techniques.

Yes, what I do when I find a post to repost is to look at the posting history and if I find more such posts, I write “look at the posting history”.

Lol! OP has given a lot of work to Lamborghini member Hilariousandco.

I gave him a freeway to drive around  ;D
Actually I was actually ignorant.


This was my point too. Those who only moderate the subforums/subboards, IMO they will have no clue that if those same contents were reported in other boards or not.

Like LoyceV stated I've also had conversations with different moderators on how to handle reporting a large amount of posts. I've come to the conclusion that it depends on the moderator as well as the type of post you are reporting. I know that when reporting bumps it's best to just report the earliest one in the thread and specify that there's multiple bumps in the same thread. If it's the same user posting the same nonsense then you can just report one of their posts and ask whoever is reviewing the report to take a look at their post history for similar posts.

Although, I won't mention the names of the moderators, because at the end of the day it's up to them if they want to specify how they would prefer to handle things. I report individual posts in long threads if they are posted by different people and know the moderator of that board prefers that all of the posts should be reported to make it easier for them.

Of course, it isn't always that the moderator of that board will be dealing with the reports, and the likes of hilariousandco and other global moderators/admins deal with it instead. But, after a while you get used to the timezones of these people and know when to report different. Hilariousandco probably sent you that message specifically because, it was all made by the same user.

The rule of thumb that I usually follow is if the same user is posting the same garbage just report one of their posts and note in the comment field that there's many more like it in their post history. Sometimes it's easier to identify situations such as posting "res" type posts in small threads you can just report one of them and let the moderators know in the comment field that there's more like it on the thread from different users.

In your example in the OP; It would likely be sufficient enough to report one of their posts and specify that there's many more like it in different boards. The moderator who deals with this can either act on it themselves if they have the permissions or leave it for someone who does have permissions to deal with all of their posts and whether any other action should be taken.

Just think of it this way; If you can make the person reviewing the reports life easier by specifying certain things such as taking a look at the users post history, do so instead of reporting all of them.

I would very much appreciate it if you open a thread about that as I've been wanting to be more helpful in the forum by reporting users the I stumbled upon which happens to be a spammer and plagiarizing.

Will it be too much of a workload for the mod or maybe we can implement it in the system that whenever we use the "Report to moderator" button and it got resolved, we will get a notification through our emails, saying something like "it has been taken care of" or is the "You have reported # posts with 100% accuracy" says that it is already taken care of?

I'll definitely do it but at the moment I have no time.
If you wanna be helpful and have a free time, search for "#join" from the last 10 days and report all the fake applications, they are so easy to spot. Like this one :

I write this in my reports:

If it is from one forumite, then report just one post and state in the report that there are other similar post in other threads, and as I've said it is easier to just look at their profile and check their post history and we can delete posts  from there without going into threads and delete it one by one...

Exactly...

@theymos, request for "report to mod" button from the search results.

This will make my life easier.

There are hundreds of those false registrations per day.
Same example from before.

My take from here is, and this is what I am doing now:

When I am seeing someone is spamming with same contents then I am archiving their post history. From all these same contents, I am reporting 2/3 posts with the comment like "spamming with same contents. Please review post history <archive.is URL>".

I've archived peoples posts before, but only for long term. When I recognize a name I refer to my list, and see if they are on it. If they are then I report one of their comments with the archive of the previous posts. However, this is over a long period if you are reporting them within short period like a hour or so then you likely only need to report one of their posts, and ask the moderator to check their post history.

I'm not saying it's bad practice what you are doing, but is likely a little unnecessary if you are reporting them in the same period.

Still no answer to this question, hoping to get some information on how the report system is working so we can be more efficient.

I didn't realize mods actually did that (checking a member's post history), because although I've taken a break from post reporting, there was a time when I reported TONS of shitposts, and that's exactly what I was doing, going through a given member's history and reporting shitposts.  They're like roaches--when you see one, there's usually a whole colony of them hiding out.  This is good info to know.

Hilariousandco is a good mod and I know he appreciates reported posts.  Unfortunately as much as he cares about the sections he moderates, he has a near-impossible task.  Bitcoin Discussion is just crawling floor-to-ceiling with spammers, and my impression has always been that Theymos limits what he can do as far as deleting posts and banning spammers.

Regardless, keep reporting garbage as you find it.  Sometimes it may feel like your actions are in vain, but it a person has a low enough post quality, action will eventually be taken.

AFAIK hilariousandco has stated a few times he has very little contact with theymos, and I doubt there's many restrictions in place. After all it's up to the individual moderator on how they deal with something. It's probably a lack of time, and not enough reports. As well, as partly giving up fighting the masses of spammers.

You could be right, of course.  Obviously I'm not privy to any communication between Theymos and any of the mods, and I don't even have anything to back up what I wrote--but I swear I recall either Hilariousandco or Lauda stating something to the effect that Theymos doesn't want all these shitposters banned.

I would agree that there's probably some throwing in of the towel on Hilariousandco's part and that's understandable.  It's harder to find good posts on Bitcoin Discussion and Economics than it is to find shitposts.  I'm also aware that as soon as these jokers get a neg, get banned, or get so much as a handful of posts deleted, the noise they make is deafening.  They'll spam your PM box to no end, and they'll make threads complaining about their situation with every excuse and blame-deflection known to man.  It gets very tiring very fast, and I'm sure it's worse when you're a moderator. 

Not sure how it works however if I would design a system then...
=>if two people reported one post then both will get the credit for reporting. Means one post two reports.
=>If someone report one post twice then one will be counted. I will ensure a front end validation so that one post does not get reported twice by the same person.

AFAIK If two/three/ten people report a post then they all get credited for a good report if the post/thread has been deleted. If multiple people have reported a post they come up as separate in the report queue. However, if a moderator deletes the post all the users are credited with a good report. If the post is moved, then not all reports are credited with a good report, and quite often if someone hasn't specified something along the lines of "Wrong section, doesn't belong in <section>" then a moderator may think you are reporting it for being in the current section it's been moved too and thus mark it as a bad report.

I'm unsure what happens if an account is banned, but their posts haven't been removed. However, I would think that after someone has been banned the report would still remain in the queue, and you would be marked on it's accuracy. A moderator probably knows if a user has been banned, and might mark your report good without removing it.

You bet it. They probably get hundreds of messages per day just because they have the title/rank "Staff/moderator/admin/Lamborghini Member/Ninja. Even, if they wasn't the one that dealt with that users post they'll likely get abuse just because, they are the first one they saw that was a member of staff.

So in other words, reporting without a valid comment (on the report section) will always ends up as a bad report?


I can confirm that, I have seen it few days ago in a post he/she mentioned.

I always do that, when I suspect that a forumite posts garbage (reported), I always check their profile, and post history, and delete the posts that are almost the same as what was reported...

As far as I know Hilariousandco checks everything, he can't just trace 200+ accounts without investigating at their posts thoroughly... (He is like Robert Langdon)...  :)


It's not like that... We always look at the reported posts even if it is a blank report... If it's an obvious spam, then it should be deleted... But if you would report it the way those ICO shills are doing (Reporting posts that they can't answer themselves, or reporting posts that would
 open their can of worms), then it is either ignored or labeled as bad, it is almost like reporting without any basis...

MODS don't just label a report "bad" without looking into it...

I wouldn't dare speak for anyone else but because different mod levels have different abilities I think this may lead to some conflicting answers?  

I don't get a lot of reports in the P&S section but if its a general "low/no value" type report than I personally want to see each report so I can run down the queue handling reports quickly and efficiently.  But the little P&S section is nothing compared to all the boards with no local mods in which the globals end up taking care of so perhaps they don't want a million individual posts reported?

I can't "handle" request for ban type reports, so they get "left" by me and in the queue for a global mod to handle.  I can see why they wouldn't want multiple posts reported about the same "user" issue and I'm pretty sure they do check profiles to get info on the user.

It's definitely kind of annoying to have to think if a board has a local mod or global mod and is it a shit post or ban type report but at the end of the day I personally like seeing any reports LOL!!

I've never looked at a report (from a legit user) and said to myself "I wish they hadn't reported this" or "this user is an idiot for reporting this".  Even if I disagree and mark it as a bad report, I still appreciate the report none the less.

Well hope this helps with a little perspective from your friendly neighborhood P&S mod!

When I think about a mod the first one comes in my mind is Hilariousandco because I see him very active in the forum. I like it calling him  Robert Langdon  :)

Ok, this makes good sense.

---

I believe Hilariousandco and you are global mod. You guys have more control than local mod like Flying Hellfish (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3735045.msg37521917#msg37521917)

It's pretty clear to me after reading all these feedbacks is, different mods has different views judging a report and they response different as well.