[Suggestion] Lower the Reporting Buffer Period

[actmyname]

It is important to mitigate spam, but when it comes to reports, you can track their accuracy and raise the buffer back to default values (or add some consequence) if they are abusing it.The limit of 4 seconds per report means that for every page of spam that I have to report (nearly every page in Altcoin Discussion has 20/20 spam posts) it takes 5x longer to actually send the reports out than to check over the posts for quality.


Is it possible to, perhaps, for users that have [arbitraryNumber] good reports and an accuracy of [arbitraryPercentage], lower the wait time? Even a one-second change means 25% faster reporting.

(it also gets in the way when I have 200+ queued reports and have to wait a whole ten minutes before posting anything... like right now)

[actmyname]

Alternative proposal:

A "mass report dump" comment for moderators, so that they can see a list of posts (e.g. post URL, newline, post URL, etc.). This saves on the number of reports that a user has to perform and also sidesteps the issue of queue times.Reserved for future.

[Welsh]

I think anyone over a certain number of reports should just have the cooldown squashed completely. For now though, if the cooldown is annoying you, just put in the report field "more spam on page" or whatever, and we'll usually look at it. Right now I believe the cooldown is based on activity, and we are sort of limiting the amounts of reports we receive due to that. If we based it on number of good reports I think we'd see an improvement in number of reports being made.

[Csmiami]

I would suggest (more of a temporary "patch"), that instead of clicking the report link directly, you open it on a new tab (mouse wheel click, so still one click), so that by the time you finish writing the first report, you simply change tab, paste and I'd bet that does already take 4 seconds

Edit: some explaining; you open the 20 report tabs at once, and then close them as you send them

[Welsh]

I would suggest (more of a temporary "patch"), that instead of clicking the report link directly, you open it on a new tab (mouse wheel click, so still one click), so that by the time you finish writing the first report, you simply change tab, paste and I'd bet that does already take 4 seconds

I used to do it this way, and I believe I had a 2 second timer? I still hit that fairly regular. I can't imagine what its like reporting with 4+ seconds. Probably why we don't see a wide range of users reporting, and only a select few. At least regularly anyway.

[actmyname]

I would suggest (more of a temporary "patch"), that instead of clicking the report link directly, you open it on a new tab (mouse wheel click, so still one click), so that by the time you finish writing the first report, you simply change tab, paste and I'd bet that does already take 4 seconds

I'm using suchmoon's script. That is, everything is queued to (a personal buffer of) 4.5 seconds between reports. (to avoid the conflict, which still sometimes happens!)

I've already set my report text to fit the majority of the posts that are going to be spam (i.e. Generic, vague, padded, irrelevant) since you're not going to find many of the other options in the forum cesspools that are the * discussion$ threads.

[LoyceV]

Edit: some explaining; you open the 20 report tabs at once, and then close them as you send them

That's what I've been doing for a long time when I found a "batch" of bad posts, but I always have to slow down because of the 4 seconds delay.
I'd say, once a user reaches the minimum of 4 seconds delay, it should be removed entirely. On average, the forum doesn't allow more than one page view per second, so (apart from some burst space) that would be the new limit.

[Csmiami]

I used to do it this way, and I believe I had a 2 second timer?

At least that makes half the time...

I'm using suchmoon's script. That is, everything is queued to (a personal buffer of) 4.5 seconds between reports. (to avoid the conflict, which still sometimes happens!)

I've already set my report text to fit the majority of the posts that are going to be spam (i.e. Generic, vague, padded, irrelevant) since you're not going to find many of the other options in the forum cesspools that are the * discussion$ threads.

Hmmmm, that's too bad then. It doesn't work on hardcore reporters, but at least it works for medium/low reporters. I personally don't browse Shitcoin/discussion$ threads myself, because I believe most of them shouldn't exist in first place

That's what I've been doing for a long time when I found a "batch" of bad posts, but I always have to slow down because of the 4 seconds delay.
I'd say, once a user reaches the minimum of 4 seconds delay, it should be removed entirely. On average, the forum doesn't allow more than one page view per second, so (apart from some burst space) that would be the new limit.

I believe there are some restrictions that come with the forum, and I'm not sure whether they can be modified. For example, another forum I participate on, has a Direct Message (it's more like a chat rather than our PM system) limit; even for global mods/mods/any staff. The administrator has been told about this, but his answer was that this can not be modified, as per the forum being that way. Not sure this is the case with SMF though, but once again, if we are on the final stage of changing the forum software, I highly doubt that will be a priority in the next couple of years

[actmyname]

Bump. Relevancy has not decayed.

[Vod]

I'm using suchmoon's script.

??  You mean I reported 3,274 posts manually?   I'll have to look into this script, as I am sure my numbers are very low compared to users of a script.

[actmyname]

??  You mean I reported 3,274 posts manually?   I'll have to look into this script, as I am sure my numbers are very low compared to users of a script.

The script on its own does well enough, but needed a small hack to make it handle multiple posts at once. Efficiency does increase by a staggering margin, at least 10x greater... I would say that my most reported day easily surpassed your total report count.

[TheBeardedBaby]

I'm also in the same situation.
Clicking report and counting to 2 on every report.
Sometimes more than 50 posts/tabs (if you use the show all feature).
This can be unlocked for every user with 4 seconds waiting time and 300+ good reports (or 2000 for example as the first badge)

[ChiBitCTy]

How do scripts find these posts exactly? Are they just searching for key words in the title and post and if nothing comes back as a hit , your script logs it for you in a list of some sort? How do you know for sure it’s spam though? Sorry for the ignorance, but I’m tech stupid as most in this thread know already 

[actmyname]

How do scripts find these posts exactly? Are they just searching for key words in the title and post and if nothing comes back as a hit , your script logs it for you in a list of some sort? How do you know for sure it’s spam though? Sorry for the ignorance, but I’m tech stupid as most in this thread know already  

It's not automated. The reporting aspect of it is (i.e. the grunt work of opening the report link, putting in the relevant text, hitting submit), but when I go through the posts I try to minimize the number of false positives - I'm not going to suddenly report a user's entire post history just because they made a few one-liners.

Usually, the process is to go into one of the spam boards and subsequently a megathread, find a few users that post utter shit (easy task), and then go through their post history for a few months at most. If you're the type of person to go into multi-page threads with a general question like and write the same common-sense bullshit that everyone can easily crank out if they read the title... then you're probably the type to do it again.

Example posts:

Most of us are choosed the trading because we are know Trading is our best option or way in earning money in crypto.
About gambling yes it is fun but you need to be vigilant of using your money because once you lost it I don' t think it is for fun puposes because it will become fun once you win or maybe less lose but you enjoy the game.

I choose to trade because it is easy to make money depending on expertise and analysis when trading, and all I do is trade long or medium term to get good profits.
but I also sometimes like to gamble and only fill my free time and have fun, and only provide enough capital to play casually without lust.

So usually, the core cycle is: go through the page in the post history, check if all of them fit the same bill of 'zero-value', and if they do, then you hit the "report all" button and watch them go!

[Insanerman]

Edit: some explaining; you open the 20 report tabs at once, and then close them as you send them

That's what I've been doing for a long time when I found a "batch" of bad posts, but I always have to slow down because of the 4 seconds delay.
I'd say, once a user reaches the minimum of 4 seconds delay, it should be removed entirely. On average, the forum doesn't allow more than one page view per second, so (apart from some burst space) that would be the new limit.

Indeed. If ever that they would lessen the 4-second limit, then I think it would bombard the system with reports and would take a long time for moderators to approve and review almost 60 reports for a min (if you wanted to make it a second limit). And 4 second is enough, even the 1 second request per page must also be enough, to somehow prevent crashing the system as well.

I've never tried using script for reporting batch spam post as I only report manually and would take 4 seconds per report by opening it in new tabs. Though scripting is convenient, the 4 second limit is I think fits if reporting was done manually hence enough time to submit a report.

[LoyceV]

Indeed. If ever that they would lessen the 4-second limit, then I think it would bombard the system with reports and would take a long time for moderators to approve and review almost 60 reports for a min (if you wanted to make it a second limit). And 4 second is enough, even the 1 second request per page must also be enough, to somehow prevent crashing the system as well.

Even if you don't even load the post itself, "Report to moderator" and "Submit" means 2 requests to the forum already. So you won't be able to do more than 30 reports per minute anyway.