BTW do You, as staff member, have access to others "report to moderator" stats? Or only Theymos has it?
We have access to most recent reports, but not total amount of reports handled by x user. So the only person who would be able to verify the data would indeed be theymos or presumably cyrus. Plus, I doubt any staff member would release any data without permission from theymos anyway. Another fact is what o_e_l_e_o said, spammers could easily change the report stats with just using a inspect element page and receive their merits. Or it could happen such that, they would report almost everything in Bounties (Altcoins) section. That place is just absolute trash and we can easily get around 20-30 reports added to your count daily. None of the staffs is really available here to confirm these numbers other than theymos himself and probably we are never seeing these report stats quite often. Whenever theymos thinks of providing us with the stats, he posts them. Other than that depending on him for stats is just like wasting our own time.
You could easily hit 5000 reports a day if you were dedicated to the course in the altcoin section, and many users are reporting hundreds a day. I've woken up to reports in the thousands some days, and a lot of them are coming from the altcoin section. The place is absolutely incredible, and unfortunately good discussion does get lost there. If anyone does come up with an idea which would encourage others to report more without the drawbacks discussed then I can absolutely get behind the idea. |
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The above image is just one of my latest bad reporting. As I have said on my previous reply I know moderators don't have the time to read all the previous post, but, if there will be some ratings on the quality reporters I would have the lowest ratings just because I forgot or never link which post I was saying as rehash post. I also have one report which got a bad report, AFAIK the post was just  (yup, just a smiley and got bad on that), when I check again it was already deleted. I know moderators can see this link, if I'm correct it is just a smiley >>> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5134505.msg50705307#msg50705307My bad reports are around 0.81% of my total reported posts. I hope it won't affect my quality of reporting, I know we all make mistakes or moderators click the wrong button and I admit I make mistakes. It really depends on if you care about report percentage, and actually removing the message. I'm only speaking of my viewpoint on this, and how I go about moderating. I'll try my best to go through the pages, and check if there's duplicate content, but if I believe that the post is unique enough or adds just enough to discussion then I'll likely leave it. Sometimes I'll ignore the report, and possibly allow another moderator to make the decision if I think its borderline. My point being without going off topic too much here is that if you report with references its much better, although its not a requirement, and most of the time its not needed. Regular reporters, and moderators can kind of spot duplicate content from a mile off due to the fact that we get reports, and report within the same threads quite a lot. If its a smiley then yeah it should have been deleted, and I'm not sure why it wasn't marked good, but it was probably just a mistake on the mods behalf. 0.81% is a really good margin for error, I wouldn't be bothered by making too many mistakes guys, and as long as you have a good amount of good reports then there's no real need to change from a personal perspective. Back in my reporting days I made over 200 bad reports. My personal advice would be to go more in depth on non obvious cases. However, simply stating "spam" etc is usually fine for the majority of low quality content. I fully agree with your post especially with the part in bold. If a reward system like that got implemented I think that not everyone should be able to participate in it. It should be based on the stats of good reports, both quality and quantity wise. That way you would be dealing with a handful of members who already know what an off topic and spam post looks like. That minimises the possibility of abuse and gaming the system.
But, people get greedy, and will game the system by creating alt accounts, and posting spam, and reporting it with their mains. Then, the original goal of the campaign of removing spam is void, and we are left dealing with more spam than original. It's a hard one, but the very core of the idea is a good one. |
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An additional little suggestion that might help: Expand the comment box on the reporting page. I've since started using a script to do that automatically, but it's really difficult to write a meaningful comment to the mods, especially one that needs to be a couple of sentences long, when you can only see ~40 characters at a time.
Yeah, I remember a few times I literally typed it out in a text editor, and then copied it over. Those where the days! I haven't taken a look at much of the development in the new forum software, but hopefully these little quality of life features will have been considered. Keep up the good work at reporting though! You are helping with my therapeutic therapy  Similar things have been suggested before. In the end it comes down to rewarding members with merits, like a payment, for offering a service (finding spammers) which is not the reason why the merit system was implemented.
It could create a huge log of reports for moderators to handle. Users will report as much as possible only thinking about their end-reward.
Personally I have nothing against users getting some sort of reward for helping out the forum but not sure that the admins will agree that it should be merits. Curious to see their response as well.
Just to add onto this also. This is why I considered giving out payments, although that also has its drawbacks. Honestly, I couldn't care what the motives behind someone reporting is as long as they're not gaming the system. Therefore, I don't mind offering rewards up for users that are using the system properly, but as soon as payment is introduced I know that it will be gamed to no ends. I'm not a big fan of handing out merits for reporting, although I wouldn't critique anyone doing it as there's far worse things they could be wasted on. |
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I am probably guilty of this. In cases that require a little bit more investigation on my or a mod's part I always include a longer message, such as providing links and signposting to the relevant parts in cases of plagiarism, or explaining why I think a thread has run its course and deserves to be locked. However, the majority of my reports are for simple low/zero value meaningless shitposts which add nothing meaningful to the discussion, and I always report them with the same message, unless I think it's not complete obvious why it's spam (for example, if the post isn't bad, but is a rehash of something that has been said 10+ times already). I have a very low percentage of "bad" reports, so I had always assumed using the same message was acceptable.
Where is the balance to be had here? I could expand my report message for these kind of posts, but it would then take me probably around 10x longer to make a report, so 10x less posts being reported. Is the same repeated message fine in these cases of obvious spam?
It is acceptable, but you definitely run the risk of it being bad. Generally, spam posts are easy to figure out, and reporting them for "spam", "low quality content" or any other variation is usually fine, and perfectly acceptable. However, some posts which are being reported for being repeated or duplicate content, and not providing a reference runs a higher risk of being marked bad. When I receive a report like that I'll normally check the thread to a certain point, but I'm not going to go through a 200 page long thread for example looking for duplicate content. I'll use various plagiarism tools to see if that pings anything back, but if it doesn't then it'll be marked bad. The best practice when considering duplicate content or replies which have already been rehashed a few times is to include a reference. A lot of the time its obvious, and can be verified only a few replies up, and then its not a big deal. However, I've received messages from users who have reported something, and not included a reference, and the duplicate was over 20 pages ago. Generally, use your common sense, and include detail in your report if its not obvious. I haven't noticed your reports honestly, and if you haven't received much bad reports I think its safe to say you're fine. We all fall guilty of it too I definitely did back in my reporting days, and I had a few marked bad where I didn't provide enough context, and then I reported it again with context, and it got deleted. Generally, I'm aware of threads which have a lot of spam in them, and it needs cleaning up. I've been busy recently, but I'll be visiting these threads periodically, and cleaning them up now that my activity should be back to normal. In terms of my feature suggestion. I wouldn't mark down reports for specifying "spam", because that's all that's needed. That isn't a bad quality report. I'm not expecting essays or to nail everything, but sometimes a reference is absolutely appreciated. If you know that their reply is just rehashing what someone else said you've likely seen the original message, and providing that reference goes a long way, because the moderator handling the report hasn't seen it, and needs to go looking for it. This is my personal opinion obviously, and I'm not speaking on behalf of every other staff member, and I think the report quality suggestion definitely has bigger drawbacks than positives, but that's the only way I see running a competition/reward campaign like this to work. |
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I've considered doing something like this in the past, but the room for abuse, and bothering theymos ultimately stopped me from pursing it. I had the idea in mind of rewarding Bitcoin to those that outperform others in reporting in an attempt to get more reports coming in for the mods. Although, the quality of the report has to be taken into consideration, and its not all about quantity. Doing my time moderating I've come to the conclusion that there are a few users that report a large amount of reports, but they copy, and paste their report message, and it is often inaccurate or doesn't supply enough information for the moderator. It would be nice if moderators had an optional rating method of rating someones posts, and when displaying their report count, and accuracy to them it would also display quality of reports rated by the moderators. Having a drop down menu where we could rate the report from 1-5 or something. Then, if theymos was willing to display individual reports based on a competition or movement such as this we would have a good idea of those that are reporting higher quality reports than the rest, and not just spamming. For example, there's users that report individual bumps when it would be more efficient to report the oldest bump, and specify that there are more bumps within the thread. That would be a higher quality report than reporting all of them. This of course is all subjective, but I think this would be the only way to do something like this, and unfortunately including a rating system would likely have drawbacks which I won't go into here. It could create a huge log of reports for moderators to handle. Users will report as much as possible only thinking about their end-reward.
And this is why I think for something like this to be plausible we'd have to have some rating system put in place, but then differing opinions on quality, and that extra bit of workload that the moderator has to do to rate the report are all drawbacks. Not to mention that users will likely create new accounts, and post spam with them, and report it in an attempt to pad their post count. Which would create new workload on the moderators. The idea in general is a good one, and would likely increase report stats, however putting it into practice is complex, and probably would lead to too much abuse for it to be plausible. |
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How about a new pay-to-mute feature, where you can pay BTC to keep someone from being able to post for the day. Might be a fun fundraiser also.
Although, it would be funny its probably best to keep to ideas that don't have an effect on those who don't want to participate in April fools, and just wants to carry on using the forum like usual. |
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What I've noticed is a lot of users will actually report a post for being a repeated message/copy and paste, and just label it "spam" or "low content" or something like that. I fell into this trap when reporting too so I do get it. Basically, when you are following a thread you can pick out copy, and paste really easy, but if you don't link to it in your report message, then the moderator reviewing it, will not go through every single page looking for it to verify, especially when we are talking about hundreds of pages. Even if there's only a small amount of pages, and they go through it it can be missed. Basically, what I'm getting at is try to include as much information as possible, including references. It makes our job easier, and also decreases the chances of your report being marked bad.
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I’m quite stoned, tried to read the OP diligently but it’s confusing me. Will try again tomorrow  If you don't understand this stoned you're certainly not going to understand it with all your faculties present. |
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It's 24 hours, correct. However, make sure to delete your previous bumps once you've made your new one. This is forum etiquette, and helps you keep a cleaner thread anyway!
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An explanation could be that your replies were deleted because they were made in a spam megathread. That's not bad at all, it's possible (or happens quite often) that normal discussions are abandoned and bumped by shitposters all the time with low-quality replies.
Somewhen these spam-megathreads get nuked by mods and your reply on the first pages gets also deleted. But I'm not sure if all the users commenting there are getting notified when the message is deleted in nuked topics or only if a moderator deletes a reply directly.
I'm not sure of the behavior with nuking, and posts getting deleted automatically if they're quoting that, because honestly I haven't paid that much attention to this specifically. However, sometimes when deleting a spam post I will also delete a post quoting it if it's no longer relevant or doesn't add to the discussion. I used to report this way at times too, and they usually got deleted. It's very case by case, and I can't really give it a definite answer/example. |
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You win! I've been foiled with some of the new updates to ranks, and merit requirements 90% of the posts I come across I can remove myself. So, I rarely report these days. I can officially announce my retirement @ 39899 reports. I didn't even make it to 40k. Pfffft.... anybody can get 40k reports in the altcoin boards. Try doing it in Bitcoin Discussion. (Seriously, please try. Would do wonders for clearing that board up.) Anyone, but old Welshy over here. |
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Human psychology is the main reason, people seem to ignore anything that appears on top when it looks any different, how often do you click the first link on google that has the tiny label "ad"?
our minds have been trained to think that those "special" topics on top are fake/ inaccurate or at least do not contain what we actually look for.
a simple trick would be moving that sticky symbol and the slightly darker color and rotating the position for those topics every once in a while, because it won't take too long for our unconscious minds to process the new positions at some point, so changing where they appear will give them more chances to be actually read.
Yeah, psychology is a big thing, and it's exactly the reason why it won't work even if we do randomize the order. I think I actually voiced my support for randomizing sticky threads throughout the section, but our brains are trained well, and we will noticed the title, and automatically skip. I do this all the time for threads that I've already visited, and might not have any interest in. |
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Expanding on what Hilarious has stated. Post gaps don't always mean that the account has changed hands, or that the user has returned to earn a little money, but even if that's the case it doesn't take away from their post quality. What Hilarious has stated is correct though. Every campaign manager should be going through, and taking a look at the history of the account, and consider their motives. The first major thing you would have to establish is whether the same user that was posting at the start of the account is still the one posting today. That can be hard, and really that does require a signed message, and I know that certain campaign managers will find it easier to accept someone else than to do background checks like this, however I believe going into the extra effort for more substantial users is always going to be better for the advertiser, and save headaches for the campaign manager. Honestly, I could probably look at the list of campaign participants, and tell you which ones are solely in it to make money, and probably wouldn't post all that often if they wasn't in a campaign. However, that doesn't mean that these users aren't posting constructively. I think the accepting of new users into a campaign is a difficult one, but those that are well known, and are known for their quality of posting for a long period of time are more likely to get accepted. But, you truly never know who the best participants are until they're in the campaign, and posting. Honestly, if I was a campaign manager I would be looking at past campaigns they have participated in. It's basically a online CV. If they performed well during the time they're enrolled then that likely means they will continue those good habits. Just a thought for new campaign managers don't reward users based on rank, reward them on post quality. I don't mean merits gained, I mean your personal viewpoint. if someone had good posts in 2015 and stopped posting and came back years later, why should I not hire this person assuming he says he will be active again from now on? If he came back only to join a signature campaign, I wouldn't hire him. I've seen many accounts that only apply to campaigns, and don't post anything as long as they're not getting paid for it. So, I actually have an opposite view to this. This user would probably be less likely to be hired due to the fact there's a lack of content recently to judge off. However, if they're going to be active, and posting good quality content again then I don't see why not. Having said that I would check whether this user has applied to campaigns before, and most importantly their reaction after being rejected. Did they continue posting after rejection? or did they go quiet? Generally, I view it as rewarding those that were going to post anyway, because that's when you get the genuine posters, and not those that will post 10 posts in 10 minutes just because their deadline is in 10 minutes. Large periods of inactivity could be totally innocent but I’d be inclined not to enroll them in my campaign for a number of reasons. - Account could have been hacked
- Could be an alt of somebody being used solely for paid to post work
Either way I’d be looking to enroll very active, good quality postersif I was a campaign manager. Long periods of inactivity rings alarm bells for me. And there are genuine reasons. I know that there are a few climbers in this forum, and they go climbing for months on end out in the middle of nowhere. So, as long as you do your checks; Signed message, thorough look at the accounts history then I wouldn't completely write them off. Obviously, this hugely depends on the user you're reviewing. If there's equally as good users applying then they'll likely get it before the account in question. |
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You might have got mixed up with Blockchain.info a little bit, and I can't recall how inputs.io was actually ran, but like odolvlobo suggested your warning does have significance when it comes to exchange wallets, and how they're operated. Yet, I know personally people who continue to store large amounts of Bitcoin on them, because its "easy".
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I think the dream would be to have a already generated template when posting in certain sections. For example, this could be executed in the auctions section by generating fields for title, starting bid, bid increments, BIN, notes, and end date/time. Additional fields like whether escrow is to be used, and any other additional information in a notes section. This would then greatly increase the structure of each section, although honestly I could only see this being beneficial in a few sections. The thing is with stickies, like some others have mentioned they get ignored. Although, stickies are a little more tolerable on this forum due to not having any excessive colours or indicators that its a sticky the general view of stickies is that they're annoying or they are a one time read thing when in reality they should be read frequently, and used as a reference. People block them out mentally after a while much like they would block out advertisements.
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