As a sort of the next best thing (since getting child board is realistically a long shot given how things work here), have you tried contacting cyrus and/or hilariousandco about maybe pinning el che's
BTT Community Contests Directory & Discussion thread, with the list of all active pools? That could bring more attention to them.
I tagged them a few times trying to get his thread about WC promos pinned during the World Cup.
They did not do it, so I assume they either didn't see the notifications or that they didn't deem it necessary.
Let's be realistic - the gambling boards are poorly moderated. That is a part of the problem as well.
The 'this wasn't done before' argument is a poor one as well.
It would be a huge plus for Gambling to have paid pools separated and it's a few hours of work to move these threads.
I'm glad that you're interested in working toward finding some middle ground.
#1 - I think creating the child board is a good idea if you think it will help reduce spam overall. As we saw with the case of ILuckyGuyI, just because someone is paying to participate in a pool, it doesn't mean they're not primarily generating low quality posts. We can debate "low quality" from account to account, but this type of account that exists solely to game the system shouldn't be immune from moderation simply because they are posting in one particular board.
#2 - I'm largely in agreement here, although almost everything you mentioned could have been done long ago, and can still be done now, without the need for a special committee. People can report bad posts and the mods could sigban the most egregious offenders. But the thing is, it wasn't getting done, and it wouldn't be with only the pre-existing incentives in place.
I am open to feedback about sigbans, and I think the appeals process works well enough as it currently is that no restructuring of mod duties is required. If you disagree, feel free let me know why, and perhaps I can learn something to improve the process. IIRC in our last conversation, you said you couldn't disagree with any particular sigban (as of late), so I'm just wondering why you think an overhaul is needed.
#3 - I don't know what to tell you on this one. You guys are 100% responsible for your own actions. What you're talking about in the 'how to demand more' section is stuff you guys should be imposing on yourselves. If you want to consider signature campaigns a job, its unreasonable to expect your employees to also be your overseers.
#4 - This is also something that campaign managers could work together to implement, and it could be a positive change. I think some kind of union between the managers could go far in helping to set standards for campaign entry while also rewarding honest participants.
Ultimately, whatever changes are made should be with the goal of reducing spam and rewarding quality content. Currently, incentives heavily favor the mass production of low quality posts which affects all areas of the forum. This needs to change first and foremost.
The managers can help everybody out by not hiring low quality posters to begin with. Only they can stop the propagation of the perception that its possible to earn a living here by being a spammer. Its this perception that encourages people to spend their time leveling up a particularly meaningless skill, not applicable to human development or any other corner of the world economy.
A managers union could potentially act as the primary guard against spam if you guys would be willing to work together to implement a general plan. I support this change first and foremost.
#1 - Yes, agreed. The thing I'm mostly trying to point out is that posts that seem like quota fulfillment from the outside quite often exist for banter - a guy writing about Kosovo's late goal is writing about it because it made him lose a game in a competition we're playing. Even if that goal was mentioned 3 times before in that same thread, the contexts differ.
I'd like that we support banter/organic posting as much as possible - and we have to be aware that organic in sports discussion quite often seems (or truth be told - is) low quality.
There is no banter in the majority of the threads in gambling - it's often post after post of nothing. There is extreme banter in paid pools. Separating it would be helpful for any sort of analysis down the line.
#2 - for a system to work, it has to be fair. I think that, as long as people like that union barikin guy are still getting paid, a user like Strongkored should never be banned. I think there's a lot of people writing total generic random crap and I still see them on the gambling boards with signatures, and then I hear that mitchr4, Strongkored and Jinetics1111 are banned and think to myself, well, this isn't really fair. I know them, the are organic gambling participants, I didn't go through their posts but I can guarantee that they are better than a lot of others that are still getting paid. Maybe you just got to them first but still - doesn't sit well with me.
I don't mean to individually check banned users, nor do I interfere with the decisions anymore. I think that an automatic flagging process would help you in banning the low hanging fruit more easily, and then maybe you'd have more time for analysis of borderline cases. Also, if we already reduced spam automatically, maybe these guys would be spared because the banned quota would be high already.
While we're on the topic - I also think that for a first offence, especially considering that the sigbans came unannounced, the 1-year bans are extremely severe.
The idea of a sigban should be to help a user improve, a 1-year ban does not have that effect.
#3 and #4 - us working together is a bit naive. We're working against each other at the moment - and neither the clients nor regular users know statistically which managers are better and which are worse.
I think it would be an interesting experiment to have - more work given to better managers would hopefully lead to better campaigns and less spam.
We're doing mostly competitions so we don't fight for the same piece of the pie but you can see for yourself how divided the CM community is. It is a shame, but also partially the nature of business. I think we as a community should actively work toward pointing out the bad ones, demanding improvement and weeding them out if improvement isn't achieved.
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@Upgrade00, @yahoo62278, @joker_josue
Nope, I'm not saying DT1 should have the power to ban. Let me explain a bit better:
user XY wrote 136 posts this month. 32 were reported as spam, 27 were deleted by mods.
If the vast majority of the 27 that were deleted came from regular users, a notification arrives to nutildah.
If more than 7 posts (5% from 136 written posts) that were deleted by the moderators comes as a result of a report from multiple DT1 users, than the user whose posts are deleted receives an automatic sigban.
It is just an idea, doesn't have to be DT1 only, numbers can be moved around. The core idea is that we start reporting posts again, and that this would be the collective effort in fighting against spam.
Any solutions used without fixing the merit system will not have long term effects.
Maybe, that should not stop us from looking at the problem from multiple angles. Maybe we shuld not have 1 fix, but 4 running in parallel.
The fact that something does not fix the situation in its entirety does not mean that it's automatically something to be discarded. Baby steps and we maybe get there.
Its full name is "Marketplace DefaultTrust"; therefore, it should not be used to judge the quality of user posts, and it is a mistake to use it for spam mitigation. If there are complaints regarding "sig-ban," it might be best to add another member who can only reduce the duration of the ban.
The idea was that some of the senior members can help in cleaning up the forum. Seniority works everywhere in the world and if we were more active in different parts of forum, it would become a better place for us all.
Not sure how the DT list was imagined, I know how it works now - and I feel that the ~100 people there would do a good job in helping mods to clean up the forum.
