Constant Spam Threads

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by frcguy

Yep.

Just a thought: What do people think about students serving as moderators or maybe in a position like a moderator but with less power?

As the resident student with the "we can do it too attitude" I am not too sure about this. Not because of how good the students will do. I think a student can mod just as good as adults. But, because of the backlash from others.

[Philip Arola]

Originally Posted by frcguy

Yep.

Just a thought: What do people think about students serving as moderators or maybe in a position like a moderator but with less power?

Some imageboards I frequent have positions called janitors who only deal with spam/illegal content. They actually seem to work pretty well.

[ctt956]

Originally Posted by JustinCAD

I want to mention that I've gone back and looked at some different spam accounts that I had reported in the past: They have team numbers and cities already entered.

The accounts I looked at had #0000 as a team number, but one account has it's location as Las Vegas, and another as San Francisco. So either the spam bot is able to enter this in, or the two accounts I looked at were run by humans. This proves that they have the ability to enter things into these fields. After all, it is required.

Some of them have entered 0007 or another number. At least one entered FTC as its competition. And the titles are getting more believeable. There was one "about" build season and another "about" motors.

Originally Posted by frcguy

Yep.

Just a thought: What do people think about students serving as moderators or maybe in a position like a moderator but with less power?

Originally Posted by Hitchhiker 42

Personally, as a student - against. I don't think that students will have the responsibility to do it properly. Granted, even some adults aren't great moderators, but the chance that a student does not-so-good things is higher.

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

As the resident student with the "we can do it too attitude" I am not too sure about this. Not because of how good the students will do. I think a student can mod just as good as adults. But, because of the backlash from others.

I wouldn't be opposed to student moderators. I think that they should just have restrictions on what they're allowed to do. As others have said, there are some students that would probably be great moderators, and some adults who wouldn't.

Originally Posted by Philip Arola

Some imageboards I frequent have positions called janitors who only deal with spam/illegal content. They actually seem to work pretty well.

That sounds like a good idea. Maybe if student moderators could only "hide" posts, then adults would review them and decide whether or not to delete them?

[ollien]

Probably a stupid question: why are mods limited to certain boards? Just today, Greg Needel mentioned that he sees the posts, but can't do anything about it because he's not on the Rumor Mill board. I feel like unrestricting it would cut down on the spam quite a bit.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by ollien

Probably a stupid question: why are mods limited to certain boards? Just today, Greg Needel mentioned that he sees the posts, but can't do anything about it because he's not on the Rumor Mill board. I feel like unrestricting it would cut down on the spam quite a bit.

Different mods have different skill sets, if you will, as well as different interests. So rather than having every mod have full access to all the subforums, different mods work different subforums (or rather, different sets of subforums). It's a classic management trick: if you need someone with X skill, make sure that you've got at least Y (3-4) people with that skill, AND make sure that everybody in the relevant group has some Z number of skills. That way, you're covered.

Problem is, usually there's 1-5 mods on at any one time, but there's something like 30 subforums. And some mods only cover one or two subforums, while others cover a lot more.


If I was Brandon, I might think about conducting a moderator survey to see if anybody wanted to expand their coverage into some of the less-moderated subforums, or if a couple of moderators needed to be added.

[ollien]

Originally Posted by EricH

Different mods have different skill sets, if you will, as well as different interests. So rather than having every mod have full access to all the subforums, different mods work different subforums (or rather, different sets of subforums). It's a classic management trick: if you need someone with X skill, make sure that you've got at least Y (3-4) people with that skill, AND make sure that everybody in the relevant group has some Z number of skills. That way, you're covered.

Problem is, usually there's 1-5 mods on at any one time, but there's something like 30 subforums. And some mods only cover one or two subforums, while others cover a lot more.


If I was Brandon, I might think about conducting a moderator survey to see if anybody wanted to expand their coverage into some of the less-moderated subforums, or if a couple of moderators needed to be added.

Perhaps I'm wrong, but the skills of a moderator remain fairly similar across the board, no?

Why not just have people everywhere, and only the people in their expertise remove things that aren't relevant to the board? e.g. if I'm an EE I could see a ME post in the EE forum and move it.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by ollien

Perhaps I'm wrong, but the skills of a moderator remain fairly similar across the board, no?

Why not just have people everywhere, and only the people in their expertise remove things that aren't relevant to the board? e.g. if I'm an EE I could see a ME post in the EE forum and move it.

So here's the other part of the question, and what I was actually getting at:

Let's say you're an EE, and you're "all business", and you're not really interested in much outside of EE. What forums are you going to ignore?

--Looking at the technical side of the forums, Curriculum, Pneumatics, and CAD are probably on that list; KOP is probably going to only get half an eye of attention. Most of the others have SOME relation to EE.
--In the competition section of the forums, the Awards and Rules/Strategy subforums jump out as stuff to pay attention to, mainly for stuff pertaining to EE. Maybe some of the rest gets some attention if your team is mentioned.
--And in the "Other" section... yeah, there's a reason that it's got that name. Not much there if you're only looking for technical stuff.

So if you're an EE who really doesn't care much about non-EE stuff, are you really going to want to "patrol" the 2/3 of CD that you stick your nose in when someone forgets to put the EE stuff in the proper subforums? Right, didn't think so. Particularly since CD allows you to set up what you see in the Portal to ignore whatever forums you want to ignore (or, to be more accurate, to only show what you want to show).

I think that's more the reason that the mods only work a few forums each--that's just what they want to focus on.


Here's another suggestion, that might be easier (or harder): The "Mod of the Watch". Basically, for a given period of time (say, 1-2 hours), one trusted moderator has full mod power in all forums, and is "on call". If something crops up and other mods can't handle it due to subforum boundaries or dealing with a "hot" thread, the "Watch" moderator deals with it, at least enough to get it out of sight for review. (I can just see it now: half the mods on CD calling for my head for this one...)

[ollien]

Originally Posted by EricH

So here's the other part of the question, and what I was actually getting at:

Let's say you're an EE, and you're "all business", and you're not really interested in much outside of EE. What forums are you going to ignore?

--Looking at the technical side of the forums, Curriculum, Pneumatics, and CAD are probably on that list; KOP is probably going to only get half an eye of attention. Most of the others have SOME relation to EE.
--In the competition section of the forums, the Awards and Rules/Strategy subforums jump out as stuff to pay attention to, mainly for stuff pertaining to EE. Maybe some of the rest gets some attention if your team is mentioned.
--And in the "Other" section... yeah, there's a reason that it's got that name. Not much there if you're only looking for technical stuff.

So if you're an EE who really doesn't care much about non-EE stuff, are you really going to want to "patrol" the 2/3 of CD that you stick your nose in when someone forgets to put the EE stuff in the proper subforums? Right, didn't think so. Particularly since CD allows you to set up what you see in the Portal to ignore whatever forums you want to ignore (or, to be more accurate, to only show what you want to show).

I think that's more the reason that the mods only work a few forums each--that's just what they want to focus on.


Here's another suggestion, that might be easier (or harder): The "Mod of the Watch". Basically, for a given period of time (say, 1-2 hours), one trusted moderator has full mod power in all forums, and is "on call". If something crops up and other mods can't handle it due to subforum boundaries or dealing with a "hot" thread, the "Watch" moderator deals with it, at least enough to get it out of sight for review. (I can just see it now: half the mods on CD calling for my head for this one...)

Patrolling isn't needed. What's needed is for people to check reports for something like the blatant spam on rumor mill.

[Sperkowsky]

Originally Posted by ollien

Patrolling isn't needed. What's needed is for people to check reports for something like the blatant spam on rumor mill.

+1

[EricH]

Originally Posted by ollien

Patrolling isn't needed. What's needed is for people to check reports for something like the blatant spam on rumor mill.

But if they don't LOOK at the rumor mill, why would they want to get the reports?

See, that's what I'm trying to get at. There's a lot of people that don't like Chit-Chat, Rumor Mill, and some of the other forums. If those people are mods, do they want to moderate stuff they don't normally want to look at? (Or, if you were a mod, would you?) I really don't think so!

The Rumor Mill (since you called that one out in particular) has 13 moderators and one webmaster (look at the bottom of the forum's page). I can vouch that I've seen recent activity from at least three of the mods (deletions in Rumor Mill), and posts from some others--so maybe half of them have been online in the past week. Most of them are on Central time, so that'd give some best-guess as to when they'd be online (and, you know, deleting threads). Many of the moderators use "Invisible Mode", so telling when they're actually online is nearly impossible. Sure, reporting sends emails--but the question of whether email is being checked is an open one. (I tend to get notifications of email, but whether I pay attention is another story--and I'm not a mod anyways.)

I think having more moderators in "spam-target" forums is a good thing--but I'm not sure that expanding the permissions of the current moderators would go over quite as well with those moderators.

[ollien]

Originally Posted by EricH

But if they don't LOOK at the rumor mill, why would they want to get the reports?

See, that's what I'm trying to get at. There's a lot of people that don't like Chit-Chat, Rumor Mill, and some of the other forums. If those people are mods, do they want to moderate stuff they don't normally want to look at? (Or, if you were a mod, would you?) I really don't think so!

The Rumor Mill (since you called that one out in particular) has 13 moderators and one webmaster (look at the bottom of the forum's page). I can vouch that I've seen recent activity from at least three of the mods (deletions in Rumor Mill), and posts from some others--so maybe half of them have been online in the past week. Most of them are on Central time, so that'd give some best-guess as to when they'd be online (and, you know, deleting threads). Many of the moderators use "Invisible Mode", so telling when they're actually online is nearly impossible. Sure, reporting sends emails--but the question of whether email is being checked is an open one. (I tend to get notifications of email, but whether I pay attention is another story--and I'm not a mod anyways.)

I think having more moderators in "spam-target" forums is a good thing--but I'm not sure that expanding the permissions of the current moderators would go over quite as well with those moderators.

The porn thread, for instance, has been up since 3:30 PM Central today. 10 hours later, it's still up. Regardless, my solution to your issue of mods not reading the reports of separate sections is either a) send reports with "spam" in them to everyone or b) make all reports flood into a central inbox. I'd prefer b, but I'll take what I can get in order to fix these issues.

As a non-mod speaking out his rear: generally, we don't need more moderation. It's the spam that gets to be an issue.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by EricH

Different mods have different skill sets, if you will, as well as different interests. So rather than having every mod have full access to all the subforums, different mods work different subforums (or rather, different sets of subforums). It's a classic management trick: if you need someone with X skill, make sure that you've got at least Y (3-4) people with that skill, AND make sure that everybody in the relevant group has some Z number of skills. That way, you're covered.

Problem is, usually there's 1-5 mods on at any one time, but there's something like 30 subforums. And some mods only cover one or two subforums, while others cover a lot more.


If I was Brandon, I might think about conducting a moderator survey to see if anybody wanted to expand their coverage into some of the less-moderated subforums, or if a couple of moderators needed to be added.

It's really an artifact of when they were added. Anyone who got added a long time ago only got given subforums that were relevant to their skillset/knowledge base. At the time spam wasn't even an issue and it was mostly about moderating the actual forum.

Those that got added (relatively) recently were given almost every subforum because of nonstop spam. The older mods probably need to have their subforums expanded and there probably need to be some new ones.

Originally Posted by ollien

The porn thread, for instance, has been up since 3:30 PM Central today. 10 hours later, it's still up. Regardless, my solution to your issue of mods not reading the reports of separate sections is either a) send reports with "spam" in them to everyone or b) make all reports flood into a central inbox. I'd prefer b, but I'll take what I can get in order to fix these issues.

As a non-mod speaking out his rear: generally, we don't need more moderation. It's the spam that gets to be an issue.

I understand your complaint, but it just isn't relevant. I am a moderator, but not in the rumor mill forum. I do not get emails reporting that spam, because I cannot moderate it. If I go into the moderator subforum and read the reported post threads I would see that someone reported it, but I still can't do anything about it since I have no moderation privileges in that forum. The issue is there's like one active user who can actually moderate posts in that forum and the other 12+ don't read CD/barely come on CD anymore.

[adammiller3122]

Originally Posted by Cory

It's really an artifact of when they were added. Anyone who got added a long time ago only got given subforums that were relevant to their skillset/knowledge base. At the time spam wasn't even an issue and it was mostly about moderating the actual forum.

Those that got added (relatively) recently were given almost every subforum because of nonstop spam. The older mods probably need to have their subforums expanded and there probably need to be some new ones.



I understand your complaint, but it just isn't relevant. I am a moderator, but not in the rumor mill forum. I do not get emails reporting that spam, because I cannot moderate it. If I go into the moderator subforum and read the reported post threads I would see that someone reported it, but I still can't do anything about it since I have no moderation privileges in that forum. The issue is there's like one active user who can actually moderate posts in that forum and the other 12+ don't read CD/barely come on CD anymore.

As I said before, if you and your team would like more moderators, I am more than willing to help out. I am on here multiple times a day, so I would not have that issue. Let me know if you would like your help. I will PM Brandon as well.

[asid61]

Originally Posted by Cory

I understand your complaint, but it just isn't relevant. I am a moderator, but not in the rumor mill forum. I do not get emails reporting that spam, because I cannot moderate it. If I go into the moderator subforum and read the reported post threads I would see that someone reported it, but I still can't do anything about it since I have no moderation privileges in that forum. The issue is there's like one active user who can actually moderate posts in that forum and the other 12+ don't read CD/barely come on CD anymore.

I believe that (the segregation of moderators, so to speak) is what Ollien is trying to change, hence the relevance.

[Cory]

Originally Posted by asid61

I believe that (the segregation of moderators, so to speak) is what Ollien is trying to change, hence the relevance.

That may be what he wants but what he actually asked for was all moderators to be alerted to the presence of spam outside their "preferred" forums...which won't do anything because they'd have to hunt down someone in that forum who actually has privileges to moderate it.