Report to moderators cooldown

[AverageGlabella]

Spam is one of the biggest problems on the forum and there are many posts which are in the wrong boards. I'm not sure how many reports a day the forum is having but I can guarantee if a few changes were made we would see a lot more.

I think the forum could benefit hugely if reporting cooldowns were removed for people that have over a certain amount of good reports. 500 good reports or even 1000. We currently have some dedicated individuals which are reporting despite the huge cooldown they have to wait even after being whitelisted. I propose we get rid of the cooldown completely for those that report often and have accurate reports. I assume the only reason a cooldown is in place is to prevent spamming of reports. That's why you only grant those who report accurately and regularly the privilege.

For instance I have a 8 second cooldown between posts which often stops me reporting more posts and disrupts the flow. I reported around 130 posts yesterday and could of easily reported over 200/300 if the restriction wasn't in place. I currently have just below 500 good reports with a 100% accuracy.

But there are other people who are less privileged than me and are still reporting a lot of posts. Take this post:

Hi guys glad to be of help

A newbie account which doesn't post often and will likely not rank up due to number of posts but they have managed more than 500 posts within a very small amount of time. This could be improved by a lot if the restrictions were less. This user has been whitelisted but still have to wait over a minute between reporting posts. If we removed the cooldown for people over a certain report percentage then the forum would greatly benefit. I think a 500 good post or 1000 good post would be an acceptable amount and would whitelist the user automatically.

Tying cooldown to activity is a poor choice when its reporting. You should be allowing those who report regularly to report easier and more efficiently. Activity is not a good indicator on whether someone is going to abuse the report feature or not.

[Lafu]

If this would be done automatically for 500 or 1000 reports ,then it would be possible i guess that some shitposters or spammers get on the Bounty section and report just some threads and post and they got the whitelist and they going on with there shit !

[AverageGlabella]

If this would be done automatically for 500 or 1000 reports ,then it would be possible i guess that some shitposters or spammers get on the Bounty section and report just some threads and post and they got the whitelist and they going on with there shit !

Then they get punished for it. Not many people who going to grind their way through 1000 reports just to spam the report button to annoy the moderators and if they do they get banned. Its such a small chance that someone would want to do it because there's no reaction from the public and as long as the staff don't make a big deal and just punish the members doing it I don't think its a huge problem. I think the benefits out weigh the cons by a great amount.

[khaled0111]

You should operate differently when reporting and you will be fine.

If you find that 8 seconds is too much, then I suppose you are operating this way: you read all posts, choose spams then you start reporting consecutively.
If you report each post individually after reading it then you move to next post, it will take exactly the same time.

I think reading a post and concluding whether to report it or not takes more than 8 seconds.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I think reading a post and concluding wether to report it or not takes more than 8 seconds.

Absolutely not.

I report posts as you say - read the post, report it, go back to the thread, move on to the next one. Since you don't actually have to wait for the page to load after hitting the "submit" button, you can go back and move on to the next post very quickly. In cases where the spam posts are only a few words or even a line long, I can get through them in well under 8 seconds. My cooldown is only 4 seconds, and I can still sometimes hit that on a good day. My reporting accuracy is 100%, so I'm not reporting inappropriately either.

I think there is merit to OP's idea. Given that reporting is a completely thankless task, and we rely on it to keep the forum semi-readable, we should be making reporting as easy as possible for the few users who are consistently doing it. I wouldn't remove the cooldown altogether, but certainly linking it to good reports rather than to activity might be a good idea.

[suchmoon]

While we're at it, please add "Report to moderator" to user post history just like we have it on the Patrol page. That would speed up reporting of certain types of shitposts, e.g. when user post "good project" or spams some shitty service all over altcoin threads.

[Lafu]

While we're at it, please add "Report to moderator" to user post history .

That would be an awesome nice help for sure !
It will save some time and Reports can be better done.

[AverageGlabella]

I think there is merit to OP's idea. Given that reporting is a completely thankless task, and we rely on it to keep the forum semi-readable, we should be making reporting as easy as possible for the few users who are consistently doing it. I wouldn't remove the cooldown altogether, but certainly linking it to good reports rather than to activity might be a good idea.

I just think tying the cooldown to activity is the wrong way to go about it and it should at least be tied to something related like number of good reports. Activity does not mean a member of the forum is going to report correctly where as if it was connected to number of good reports we already know that this member has been reporting correctly. If someone abuses it after reporting 500 good reports then they can be dealt with by the staff but at least we had 500 good reports from them before they started abusing.

Activity is something which is earned by just being around and posting where reporting takes time and effort and as you said is a thankless task. The forum should be encouraging people to report and not putting restrictions on those who want to help. 4 seconds sounds a lot more tolerable but I can see myself hitting that too. I don't see why the cooldown cant be completely removed for those that report accurately and regularly.

While we're at it, please add "Report to moderator" to user post history just like we have it on the Patrol page. That would speed up reporting of certain types of shitposts, e.g. when user post "good project" or spams some shitty service all over altcoin threads.

This would save a lot of time too as there are a lot of members who just keep on posting the same rubbish and sifting through their post history would be tiresome.

[Veleor]

please add "Report to moderator" to user post history just like we have it on the Patrol page. That would speed up reporting of certain types of shitposts, e.g. when user post "good project" or spams some shitty service all over altcoin threads.

It must be said it's not always possible to judge fairly about the value of comments just by how they look in the post history.
For example, the one-word-messages ("Yes" / "No") might be seen as having a low value.
However these comments could be important in the context of discussion.

[suchmoon]

please add "Report to moderator" to user post history just like we have it on the Patrol page. That would speed up reporting of certain types of shitposts, e.g. when user post "good project" or spams some shitty service all over altcoin threads.

It must be said it's not always possible to judge fairly about the value of comments just by how they look in the post history.
For example, the one-word-messages ("Yes" / "No") might be seen as having a low value.
However these comments could be important in the context of discussion.

True, but I'm aiming for truly useless garbage like I mentioned. In fact for some of these types of posts user history can be a better context, for example:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2512193;sa=showPosts


Edited 2020-11-30 to fix a broken image

[Lafu]

I realy hope we get this Button soon if we get it , would make such things easy for the reporters !

[Kopyleft]

It must be said it's not always possible to judge fairly about the value of comments just by how they look in the post history.

Its possible to discern more often that not. A post does not have to long and drawn out, but one or two word replies like, Great project, I agree, adds no value to any discussion and the context in which it is used does not really matter.

[TheBeardedBaby]

People often are whitelisted, like I was when I was member.
That time I had 11 seconds cooldown, and it was difficult yeah but I kept reporting, after I was whitelistednow the time when to (probably) 0, never got a error until I ranked up to full member, since then it's just 4 seconds which is fine.

Cooldown time avoid double/multiple reporting which often leads to bad reports.
In addition it prevents flood report attacks image how easy is to get 500 good reports, there are so many lists with spammers in our Club thread that it takes a day to make 500 good ones.

I think people should be manually whitelisted as they are now, there are other aspects to be considered before that no only the report statistics.

[Veleor]

~

I just wanted to note that before sending the report is advisable to ensure that comment violates the rules, so not to distract moderators in vain.

[bitart]

...
It must be said it's not always possible to judge fairly about the value of comments just by how they look in the post history.
For example, the one-word-messages ("Yes" / "No") might be seen as having a low value.
However these comments could be important in the context of discussion.

I saw somewhere in the technical discussion part of the forum that a developer or someone techie person has just used one word replies to show that he/she has read the post. It was really important in that context that the post has been read by the appropirate person, so yeah, one word sometimes can have much greater effect than a wall of text...

[AverageGlabella]

It must be said it's not always possible to judge fairly about the value of comments just by how they look in the post history.
For example, the one-word-messages ("Yes" / "No") might be seen as having a low value.
However these comments could be important in the context of discussion.

Staff are probably required to read the conversation before making a decision on the report anyway and a bad report isnt the end of the world and I'm sure the staff don't mind too much.

People often are whitelisted, like I was when I was member.
That time I had 11 seconds cooldown, and it was difficult yeah but I kept reporting, after I was whitelistednow the time when to (probably) 0, never got a error until I ranked up to full member, since then it's just 4 seconds which is fine.

Cooldown time avoid double/multiple reporting which often leads to bad reports.
In addition it prevents flood report attacks image how easy is to get 500 good reports, there are so many lists with spammers in our Club thread that it takes a day to make 500 good ones.

I think people should be manually whitelisted as they are now, there are other aspects to be considered before that no only the report statistics.

If people that have a certain amount of good reports abuse it then they have their reports marked bad and fall below the threshold to continue having the cooldown removed. I think the system kind of moderates itself without looking into banning those that spam the report button but if a case came a across which was unbearable the member could be banned from either reporting or completely.

[pooya87]

i don't think it is possible since reports and posts share the same restriction, so if you remove the report "cooldown" you also remove the post cooldown. and it could be abused! a spammer can go to one of these spam-filled places and "farm" reports to be white-listed and then start spamming himself... farming report is easier than making posts and earning merit to rank up and remove the cooldown anyways!

it may not be the case with OP but these two points may solve the problem for most people:
1. if you are reporting multiple posts of same person, for example from their post history, then think about reporting only 1 but including a longer explanation in that one report. something like "a spam bot posting referral link in multiple topics, needs to be nuked". the mod would take care of the rest.
2. if you are reporting multiple posts in one topic, then the topic itself may be a spam-fest. so try reporting the OP and request closure or deletion.

i checked my report history and my record is about 30 seconds and the average time is about a minute between reports.

[AverageGlabella]

i don't think it is possible since reports and posts share the same restriction, so if you remove the report "cooldown" you also remove the post cooldown. and it could be abused! a spammer can go to one of these spam-filled places and "farm" reports to be white-listed and then start spamming himself... farming report is easier than making posts and earning merit to rank up and remove the cooldown anyways!

i checked my report history and my record is about 30 seconds and the average time is about a minute between reports.

That is what I'm proposing though removal of the report cooldown being relative to actiity/post count as it does not make any sense and to adjust the cooldown to reporting based on reporting statistics.


I'm going to be making an effort of getting Bitcoin Discussion back under control and have spent the last 30-60 minutes reporting there. I must have reported around 50 reports alone within this time there. Its time Bitcoin Discussion was brought back to life without the spamming issue that is currently there.