Lack of interest Community Moderation: Report a post *AS SPAM* workflow

[Digital Doctor]

Here's a version of the current REPORT POST option.
The second version is tweaked to allow a SPAM REPORT (a more specific version of reports).



or ... hmm ...

You could do the reverse .... have a new posts area where you need someone to [Approve] a post to get it seen in the actual forums !

Use your members to do free moderation !

Update: March 2013 - sonnb has Spam Community Moderation in his spam addon !


http://xenforo.com/community/resources/sonnb-stop-spam-here.1086/

 

[Slavik]

What happens when a pissed off member then goes and reports loads of posts as spam?

 

[Digital Doctor]

What happens when a pissed off member then goes and reports loads of posts as spam?

An excellent rule of good coding and good for life in general is:
DON'T MAKE RULES from EXCEPTIONS.

You are outlining a rare situation.
But as you suggest, it will happen. Likely more on some forums than others.
The worst case scenario is that you have to remove some new posts from moderation. That's not that scary really. Mods will take care of it.

Tweaks to avoid that:
(1) You can only Report as Spam every second or third time. (If I report one, I lose the ability to do it ... until someone else reports one, then I get it back).
(2) It takes two Reports (from 2 different people) to put a thread in moderation.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Keep in mind, I'm trying to reduce *YOUR* SPAM workload at Xenforo.com


Tweak 3:
Admins or mods can assign specific users the ability to Report As Spam.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Lots of spam reported today

 

[Disrelation]

You're on the right track but no dice.

As Slavik mentioned, what happens when one or multiple rogue members decide that they want to troll someone (it's not a rare situation, you can find similar situations happen very frequently on various forums) and report multiple posts by a specific user? It should be something like, if a specific post gets reported multiple times, than the post should be moved into the moderation queue. The whole thread shouldn't be moved into the moderation queue because spam usually is not in just one thread multiple times, it's usually spread out by one thread or posts on threads that are actual discussion and not spam. Rarely, you'll see a spam thread with one post in it that is spam but typically, this does not happen.

 

[RobParker]

An excellent rule of good coding and good for life in general is:
DON'T MAKE RULES from EXCEPTIONS.

That's an awful rule by the way

 

[Digital Doctor]

As Slavik mentioned, what happens when one or multiple rogue members decide that they want to troll someone (it's not a rare situation, you can find similar situations happen very frequently on various forums) and report multiple posts by a specific user? It should be something like, if a specific post gets reported multiple times, than the post should be moved into the moderation queue.

Sure.
But most spam posts are just one post, so hopefully in that case the entire thread will be in moderation. The point is to hide spam posts until the moderators get a chance to make the decision.

 

[Pipelin]

Little suggestion:
If x members will report the post as spam (like 10memmbers) post will be deleted automatically.
If x members attempt to troll some member and report some post who is not spam. 10 warning points to that users.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Community Moderation would be helpful here when Jake is sleeping

 

[Digital Doctor]

I'll try to hash this idea over more.
Essentially ... having some Trusted Members (the frequent flyers) to do "Spam Duty" would be one method of balancing risk vs. reward of community-based moderation.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Community moderation via a Spam Link. [see below]

 

[digitalpoint]

I'll try to hash this idea over more.
Essentially ... having some Trusted Members (the frequent flyers) to do "Spam Duty" would be one method of balancing risk vs. reward of community-based moderation.

Exactly this... you would need some sort of system to determine the trust of each user. A system that blindly trusts all members to do it properly wouldn't work (there are even cases where someone might consider something spam, but in your eyes it's not)... if it did, you simply could make all users low level moderators that can soft delete stuff.

In practice you would have people censoring people for saying things they don't like and all sorts of other annoying things.

But I do like the idea of *something*... like if 3 TRUSTED members report something, push that thread to the bottom of the list of threads until a moderator reviews it or something. I just don't think giving all users the "keys to the kingdom" is a good idea... if you want to do that, just make the "Registered" usergroup all moderators with very limited access.

 

[Digital Doctor]

I honestly think it would be easy to select members that wouldn't abuse it.
Maybe the spam team could get an Alert if other members have reported a post as spam.

Maybe some point system ... it takes say 10 points to send a post to moderation.
An admin could give some people's spam report a 9, maybe other members 1, maybe the general population, 0.

 

[digitalpoint]

I honestly think it would be easy to select members that wouldn't abuse it.

Well if you are manually selecting them, the functionality is already there really... you could just make them low level moderators that can only soft delete stuff.

 

[Digital Doctor]

Well if you are manually selecting them, the functionality is already there really... you could just make them low level moderators that can only soft delete stuff.

Sounds like a good Spam Tip for Jake's thread.

Current and Proposed interface for "SPAM" moderators.


I think I would still prefer that Spam (or lite) moderators had a SPAM link (as below)

 

[Digital Doctor]

You could make a spam moderator's job easier by displaying the spam link on the "What's new" and "Recent Threads" pages.



The current wave of xrumer posts ... it is easy to tell they are spam from just the title.

 

[Digital Doctor]

SFS will chop out a good proportion of them, but you do need customization. I your idea DD, but there are only none/very few false spam reports right now as people don't have any power to abuse it... as soon as it can become abused, it will

Isn't the abuse prevention just a matter of picking people who won't abuse it ?
Like at Xenforo.com ... I'd pick you !

I am talking about picking 10 people at Xenforo.com

I think the abuse risk is minimal and the time saved by moderators would be huge.

If required, a system of checks and balances could be made.

 

[tenants]

How do you know I wont abuse it... you might only have to call me a few names
People are un-predictable

If you design a system that can be abused, eventually it often is

Wouldn't it just be easier to make more users modertors (and it's hard to pick users you can trust to do that job)

Edit: same as DP said above

 

[Digital Doctor]

Wouldn't it just be easier to make more users modertors (and it's hard to pick users you can trust to do that job)

FULL MODERATOR STATUS:
Doesn't that have like 10 times more possibility for abuse ? Like deleting threads ? Editing posts ? etc. etc.

The worst a spam moderator could do would be to hide a thread / post (put it into moderation) until a full permissions mod approves of what to do with it.