Proposal for high reporters

[Csmiami]

I'm personally a bit picky, and hate it a bit too much whenever a report gets marked as "bad". Even more when it's an avoidable mistake such as reporting a post twice when reporting a few tens or hundreds.

So here I'm thinking, is there something, a resource or so that we coud have in order to prevent this? Well, that's the porpuse of this thread. I'd like to request that from a certain number of reported posts, or good reports as we already have the report history, a small warning is shows saying that you have already reported that post. This warning could also contain some information like the time of the report or even the reported text.

I'm not asking for something too flashy either, a simple red text similar to the "someone has posted while you were typing" text that is usually displayed.

I'm not aware of something similar having been proposed in the last few years, but should that have happened, I'll be locking the thread.

This could also come together with those "reported badges" that have been in the air for some time, although I rather have this functionality than the badge, since it's something practical (although badges are cool).

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[Mbitr]

That’s a nice idea re: red text to say that you’ve already reported the post and I’m pretty sure it’s easy to implement.
But I am against the reporting badges. For example, when my kids were young they would get stickers for doing good things, tidying up, etc. One evening I overheard them, they deliberately made a mess to then get a sticker for tidying up. Knowing human nature , I’m sure they would be plenty of people who would create alt accounts and deliberately produce spam to be able to report these posts, In order to get a “sticker”/badge !!
Sorry that’s my 2 sats 

[LoyceV]

I'm personally a bit picky, and hate it a bit too much whenever a report gets marked as "bad". Even more when it's an avoidable mistake such as reporting a post twice when reporting a few tens or hundreds.

I know the feeling, it feels a bit like getting stabbed in the back for trying to help. But it's rare, and in many cases I can guess why.
But in some cases I just don't get why it's marked bad. Like this post: it's deleted, but the report was marked as Bad. Maybe a Mod made a mistake, maybe another Mod decided something else later on, or maybe the user deleted their own post.

a small warning is shows saying that you have already reported that post

I know the feeling, it happens sometimes when reporting many posts, and in that case I already expect one of them to be marked as Bad.

I don't think it's worth giving Admin (or the Mods) extra work though, just suck it in and let it be. Nobody else gets to see how Bad your reports are anyway

[Csmiami]

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I don't think it's worth giving Admin (or the Mods) extra work though, just suck it in and let it be. Nobody else gets to see how Bad your reports are anyway

There's always room for improvement, so I don't think any suggestion/idea is not worth being presented. It can later on be discarded, but at least it's considered.

If it's something that doesn't require to put a big effort or a lot of work, then it's feasible. Yes, I know that only I know my bads, but I still know them. Besides, it's a tool that can help self-improve reporting wise.

[Upgrade00]

Following the text in the report page about your percentage not being very important and not to be focused on, it's unlikely the admins put extra effort to maintain that percentage. This is a good suggestion and if it is easy to implement would definitely be worth it.

But I am against the reporting badges. For example, when my kids were young they would get stickers for doing good things, tidying up, etc. One evening I overheard them, they deliberately made a mess to then get a sticker for tidying up. Knowing human nature , I’m sure they would be plenty of people who would create alt accounts and deliberately produce spam to be able to report these posts, In order to get a “sticker”/badge !!

No one would be getting a badge for one or two good reports, them need to do hundreds or possibly thousands of them to be eligible for a badge, this seems like a lot of work for someone to do normally, much less when you're the one causing the trash you hope to pick up, chances of this happening I'll say is very unlikely.

[Lafu]

a small warning is shows saying that you have already reported that post. This warning could also contain some information like the time of the report or even the reported text.

I'm not asking for something too flashy either, a simple red text similar to the "someone has posted while you were typing" text that is usually displayed.

If you really care about that , when you reporting a lot of posts in a thread and you report a few twice then report it slowly and concentrated.
The computer is only as good as the user sitting in front of it , about the warning i guess this would be a problem when other Users report it then.
Dont care about the bad reports , keep reporting and at some stage you will find your way that this not happen again or often.

[suchmoon]

I would prefer to get an explanation why it's bad (could be short, picked from a list of 3-4 predefined reasons). If it's my cock-up that's fine, but if it's something mods didn't find proof of then maybe I need to resubmit a better report, or if it's something that's not considered against the rules that'd be helpful to learn too.

Other than that, an occasional bad report is not worth worrying about.

[Csmiami]

No one would be getting a badge for one or two good reports, them need to do hundreds or possibly thousands of them to be eligible for a badge, this seems like a lot of work for someone to do normally, much less when you're the one causing the trash you hope to pick up, chances of this happening I'll say is very unlikely.

This has been discussed in the past, and although unlikely to happen, it's still a real option that would not be worth the time and would most likely get spotted or found sooner or later.

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There's still a chance to report some posts twice or more by mistake. You could for example report a post on patrol, later on reach to the same thread and report it again not knowing you've already done that. The same thing could happen if you have reported a few posts from a certain user and then proceed to report his post history.

I'm not particularly worried about the accuracy, 34 bads out of 2704 is not really a problem, but it's more of a psicological punch that could easily be avoided. I don't see how it could become a problem if it only warns you about you having reported that post before (sorry if that wasn't clear enough on OP).

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When you're right, you're right. However, adding a reason to be marked as bad is a "manual" thing to do. This would be completely automatic, implying an additional of 0 units of effort from the staff; except implementing the function.

[RickDeckard]

I'm not particularly worried about the accuracy, 34 bads out of 2704 is not really a problem, but it's more of a psicological punch that could easily be avoided. I don't see how it could become a problem if it only warns you about you having reported that post before (sorry if that wasn't clear enough on OP).

I totally understand your point of view as Loyce rightfully described as a "stab in the back" for trying to do the right thing. In the beginning I also felt the same way and for sure I haven't reported the massive numbers that you guys have - 610 posts with 96% accuracy (576 good, 29 bad, 5 unhandled) - but the thing is that after a while I went from just "reading" the phrase that is presented to us - Do not worry about your accuracy too much; one accurate report is worth many inaccurate reports. - to really think about it and what it made me (unbeknownst to me) do. Whenever I was in doubt that a particular post was or not following the rules ( because I was either too new or didn't study/comprehended the rules as much) I would just fire it away and see how it went. Turns out 29 of the 610 times I was bad at judging, but I honestly can't measure the other KPI (if we may call it that) that isn't being stored - The posts that I wasn't sure if they were "report" worthy but that, in the end, were. And even thought the doubt that I had at the time, I went forward because at the end of the day we're fighting the good fight.

Yes, from the psychological side of it having this information right in front of our eyes whenever we're reporting may take a toll on us - But at the end of the day what would we prefer? To report and never know what % of them were effective (would happen with no information regarding bad reports and unhandled) or a system similar to the one that you've suggested that would be an additional benefit to the already good report history function that (some of us) have? This leads me to your next good observation:

When you're right, you're right. However, adding a reason to be marked as bad is a "manual" thing to do. This would be completely automatic, implying an additional of 0 units of effort from the staff; except implementing the function.

I don't know how hard that it would be to implement this feature in our forum - after all we do know the struggles that there are whenever a new feature is trying to be implemented in SMF - but I do believe that whoever judges/evaluates these requests always sees them from different perspectives such as (but not limited to) :

• Is the suggested proposal being done on a already broken/bleeding system? Or the system is standing by itself (it may have it's downsides) and we're just talking about a quality of life/ nice to have feature?
• Who would that feature impact the most? All users? Some users? 20 % of the users?
• Is it aligned with the current goals that we - as a team running the "show" - have for the future of the community? Is it something that could attract more users to a particular behavior (in this case reporting) that would be positive for the forum?
• What would be the side effect of it? Would it be transformed in additional work towards our staff members?

Lookg these were just some ideas - some may even be incorrect/stupid - that came to my mind on this subject. I think that the addition of a "color" or "warning" to a reported post/thread would be good - because we often get lost in the threads reported - but I'm unsure if the time that would have to be dedicated to create could be better used elsewhere (but I guess that's the life/decisions that admins/staff have during the course of a forum life). Take, for example suchmoon perspective:

I would prefer to get an explanation why it's bad (could be short, picked from a list of 3-4 predefined reasons). If it's my cock-up that's fine, but if it's something mods didn't find proof of then maybe I need to resubmit a better report, or if it's something that's not considered against the rules that'd be helpful to learn too.

Other than that, an occasional bad report is not worth worrying about.

I would be really thrilled to have this feature as well, but I think that it would be an additional action that the mods would have to make even if we're talking about just a click on a few already pre - established options. Imagine getting hundreds of reports per day and having already the work to deal with them (and to classify them as good or bad - even thought this may be automatic whenever the thread is deleted or not) and give an explanation for it (from the available options). What if the reason isn't listed and the mod would have to answer "N/A"? I think that we would be back at square zero after all this work even though there are very compelling arguments given by the community.

So now you say - "-Alright old fox what do you suggest?" - and the truth is that I don't have a direct answer to give you. I do know, for a fact, that the "[HACK] One-click mod report, not for the faint of heart"[1] extension made my suchmoon provides a similar feature - even though it's not permanent (it stays active only if the reported post tab is left open):

-snip-
If the code succeeds it will add a yellow border on the left side of the post being reported, if it fails - a red one. Styling is configurable in bct-content.css. o_e_l_e_o created a custom stylesheet for a "blend in" look-and-feel.
-snip-

As a theoretical exercise, would it be possible to keep some sort of "internal" log of our reported posts and whenever the page loads the extension would check the post id (?) within the code and if found edit the css to red? Assuming it works (and that someone would be willing to make it work) this could be implemented by whoever wanted this feature. Don't take me wrong - I'm not dictating which improvements should be made, I'm just wondering if it would be something possible to me made.
As an honorable mention, since we're talking about the reporting system and how to better improve our "judging" capabilities and report tools, I can't end this reply without mentioning the incredible detailed post provided by o_e_l_e_o (and then complemented by tranthidung[2]) regading the powerfull Patrol page functionally that may pass unseen for some of us (especially newer reporting members):

-snip-
Customize your patrol page

I just discovered interesting things on patrol page, so I updated the thread today.

Now, let me presenting what I discovered.

Beside the standard patrol page, that most of us know, at: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol ⁽¹⁾
There is another 'hidden' patrol page, in which posts made in bounty threads disabled by default, at: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;patrol;nobounty ⁽²⁾. I knew about that page by @suchmoon or @Vod, and originally it was disclosed in Russian board.

Generally

• The (1) page is overwhelming spam posts, and there is no reason to find spam posts in bounty threads, with abundant proof of authentication or weekly report posts
• The (2) page is more helpful, but by default, there are still so many posts over many boards

So, what users can do if they want to limit posts in their interest boards, such as Altcoin Discussions?
There is solution, but users have to manually customize their patrol page. Here is a guide, given by @o_e_l_e_o

Patrol isn't really hidden. You can make a link to it appear at the top of each page immediately above the link to your Watchlist by going to Profile - Forum Profile Information - and checking the box titled "Show patrol link".

What is hidden is that you can customize the patrol link to view other recent posts. Patrol shows the last 200 posts by newbie accounts. If you delete ";patrol" from the link, so you are left with https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent, you will see the last 100 posts by all accounts. You can also customize this by adding ";boards=x,y,z" on to the end, where x, y, z (and so on) are the boards you are interested in. For example:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;boards=1 will show the last 100 posts in Bitcoin Discussion
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;boards=7,8,57 will show the last 100 posts in Economics, Speculation and Trading Discussion.

You can also chain this together together with patrol, so for example:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;boards=1;patrol will show all the posts by newbies on Bitcoin Discussion out of the last several hundred newbies posts. I'm not sure exactly how many recent newbie posts the forum keeps on file to populate this list from, but it's not a huge number (in the region of several hundred) I think, and since the vast majority of newbie posts are spamming the altcoin boards with bounty reports, then usually this will only show you a small handful of posts.

What users have to do (if they want to customize patrol page) are:
- Having a list of interest boards/ sub-boards and their identifying figures of those boards/sub-boards
- Bookmarking the customized patrol page: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent;boards=X
- Changing the X-value to their interest boards/ sub-boards at specific timepoints when they want to check spam posts.
Notes:
Users can includes multiple boards/ sub-boards in the customized patrol page
I listed a few boards/ sub-boards and their identifying numbers

• Meta: 24
• Bitcoin Discussion: 1
• Altcoin Discussion: 67
• Trading Discusion: 8
• Gambling Discussion: 228

-snip-

[1]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5103488.0
[2]https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5169937.0

[The Cryptovator]

I can't recall exactly where, but I think it has been discussed previously and we hadn't gotten any response from the admin. Although this isn't a too important feature, we can reduce bad reports by implementing this feature that OP mentioned. Besides that, it will save the time of the reporter and could move another report when he/she will discover that post has been reported already. So we don't need to waste time on already reported posts.

Anyway, it shouldn't be a matter of concern since the forum itself describes "Do not worry about your accuracy too much; one accurate report is worth many inaccurate reports". We can continue reporting without any fear.

[lovesmayfamilis]

Anyway, it shouldn't be a matter of concern since the forum itself describes "Do not worry about your accuracy too much; one accurate report is worth many inaccurate reports". We can continue reporting without any fear.

This is exactly the situation described by the OP, where we strive not for quantity, but quality, although the forum in its warning implies the opposite.
But as Lafu correctly observed, the reporter develops a habit in which he begins to understand which case is suitable for a good report, and which may not be understood by the moderators.
I rarely report spam, but in other cases, if I suspect that a simple report without additional evidence is not good enough, I try to make it as clear as possible. And yes, we must understand that we are making reports not for ourselves, to indulge our usefulness, but for others, and we may not always be right.

[_BlackStar]

Two of my 900 report were tagged as bad simply because they were double report. I didn't notice it before until I finally checked it manually just to find out what the reason was. I don't think it's very bad to have, but forums should have a feature to notify us that the same post has been previously reported ^[unhandled] like when I access the forum too quickly or when I want to send merit to the same user ^{[same post]} twice in a row in the near future.

It's hard to avoid double reporting when I can't wait to report dozens of spam posts from the same user at once. But I'm starting to be careful now that the forums don't yet have the feature I want ^{[double report prevention]}.