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Chris,
How about this as an idea? Instead of the "strength" of someone's report being based on current rep points, how about a separate (and possibly hidden?) counter that records the validity of their previous reports. It would work something like this:
- I report a user, my "reporting strength" is recorded against that user
- If the member reports are successful, my "reporting strength" goes up, if unsuccessful it goes down
- If found guilty over over-zealous reporting, my reporting strength goes down
- Members with longevity and/or high rep points must have more points against them for a ban to be successful, possibly requiring manual confirmation from a restricted subset of members
I can see that, with the amount of spam we've had lately, it might be easy to get high "reporting strength", requiring some tuning of the sensitivity. If this counter is kept hidden it would prevent "farming" as no one would know their own score. It would mean that a very large number of puppet accounts would be required to put an existing account under threat.
You've spent a great deal of thought on this and I'd be more than happy to "give you my proxy". I very much support the concepts of openness that you advocate, but I'm also painfully aware of some of the pitfalls of human nature. Programmers should be inured against review and criticism, but sometimes ....!
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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Thanks for your thoughts.
The huge issue, though, is that abuse has come from members who have otherwise reported along the consensus.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Although I would have no problem being it public, the biggest danger at all is revenge.
But... if done I would do it in combination with other things (some already commented in previous posts)
1) Add some kind of weight to the reports (based on reputation and activity on the site) as in the reputation system. The older a member and the higher the reputation, the more weight of his reports to youngsters and the more reports needed before closing his/her account.
2) Add some kind of limitation on new accounts based on time and activity but not in reputation. It is very easy to join, subscribe newletters, vote up things give some easy answers in QA and "voila" you have 500 or 1000 rep points is very short time. That way puppets would be harder to grow and to be used, still not impossible but there is a lot of lazy people out there.
3) If reports public first after account nuked (as in QA posts), then I would add a report-counter always visible (at least for the reported user). That way a legitime user could inform the staff in the B&S if suspects something is going wrong. Spammers and abusers are usually nuked fast, cases like Nagy go over the time.
If we combine #3 with #1 then it could be like "number of reports - % to get nuked". I mean if 150 points to be nuked then...
80 of 150 report points by 8 users (reporters are "high level")
30 of 150 report points by 20 users (reporters are "low level" - probability of puppets revenge very high, still time to react)
4) I think it could be a good idea to add a "2nd chance" timeout as well, i.e. a user get some "abuse" reports due to polemic discussions. If (let's say) 6 months get by without any report, the counter goes back to 0. As I said in #3 real abusers and spammers get nuked quite fast, so that would just protect legitime users (Nagy's case as example another time).
Taking this points in consideration I think all other positive aspects of making it public stay, but some security is granted to the people trying to keep CP a nice site with quality contents.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
modified 12-Jan-15 15:10pm.
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Why introduce a completely different voting system only to report users/messages which should not belong to CodeProject?
If you want to have a open and transparent voting system, then why not start with the Q&A and articles as well where everyone can see who has given a particular vote (be it positive or negative).
I see a lot of opinions in this thread where people support the transparency. But please keep in mind that these are the bunch of matured and dedicated members of this site. Not every user of your 10 million user base would think same.
What about having a group/setting where you can specify if you want to have your name openly published that you have reported a particular user. That way you are providing the users with an option where they can chose if they want to keep their vote private or public.
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Manas Bhardwaj wrote: What about having a group/setting where you can specify if you want to have your name openly published that you have reported a particular user. That way you are providing the users with an option where they can chose if they want to keep their vote private or public.
Then 90% of the users would not set it and remain private, keeping the current problems.
If done, it should be done for all (as you say with the votes in the articles). That's the only way, retailation and too fast reporters (what actually is the problem) can be englobed.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Manas Bhardwaj wrote: Why introduce a completely different voting system only to report users/messages which should not belong to CodeProject?
We aren't. We're simply making the reporter public. This is exactly the same code we use on Quick Answers for reporting questions and answers.
Manas Bhardwaj wrote: If you want to have a open and transparent voting system, then why not start with the Q&A and articles as well where everyone can see who has given a particular vote (be it positive or negative).
It's not about votes (ie ratings). It's about spam/abuse reports. One is an opinion; the other is about protecting the site and the community. Very different.
Manas Bhardwaj wrote: What about having a group/setting where you can specify if you want to have your name openly published that you have reported a particular user
This defeats the purpose.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I agree with public accountability.
Retaliation is of course a concern, though I think some minor additions should minimize it. I'm envisioning a scenario of "Marc votes to ban SpammerX", which is publicly reported. SpammerX creates another new account and votes to ban Marc. To prevent/minimize this, maybe only expose the list to people who have >1k rep (arbitrary number, something low but high enough that you cant get it in a couple of days, but regular visitors will see it, or a minimum account age in addition to rep).
Or something similar to minimize retaliation.
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Chris Maunder wrote: if an account is closed due to a member or members reporting that account, a list of all those who reported the account will be shown.
I have reported a reasonable number of messages as either abuse or spam. I think that I did it properly and did not abuse the privilege. I figured that administrators had access to my activity and if I did something wrong I would hear about it.
I know that some people don't like being classified in such a manner. Some people who advertise black magic, UFC PPV or male enhancement pills consider themselves in the right to do so anywhere they please. Retribution for these folks is not limited to account deletion on CP.
If you make the above info public, I won't likely do any of the spam/abuse maintenance any more.
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
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H.Brydon wrote: If you make the above info public, I won't likely do any of the spam/abuse maintenance any more.
Out of interest: why? Because you fear retribution by the black magic spammers? (And no, I'm not being facetious). I think you over estimate the amount they care.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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[Response made by private email message...]
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
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My virtual two-cents is: try it, and see what happens. If the outcome is more dysfunctional for CP as a whole: revert, or change again.
«What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning» Werner Heisenberg
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I'm having mixed feelings about this.
A lot of opinions have already been expressed, especially when it comes to retribution.
I'm not really afraid of retribution. After all, what can a new user do? Downvote my articles for -3 rep per vote? It's annoying, but hardly damaging.
However, I think it would make sense, only to avoid retribution, to limit the amount of reports and downvotes that a user with less than x rep can make to a single user. Especially when the downvoted items are older than, say, a week.
Let's be honest, how often does a new user come along, read an article, decide it deserves a 1 vote and then reads another article by that same user and again decides it deserves a 1 vote? And then even a third article, on the same day? And articles that most other users found to be worthy of a 4 or 5? Then that's obviously a troll at work!
That said, I love my 'anonimity'. Sure, admins can probably see everything I do, but the regular CP user can only guess. And I'm more than willing to explain my choices against any admin or, more generally, any reasonable user who isn't out for revenge 
And when we have anonimity we don't have retribution (unless someone goes all out offensive against a user, but then you're just asking for it).
Coincidentally (or maybe not completely by coincidence) I explained why I love my anonimity in this post just a few pages up in the lounge[^].
Perhaps you should simply have some extra admins, trusted CP members who can see what everyone does. It's a bit of both worlds. I'm not completely anonymous, but it isn't all up to you, Chris Maunder, (hypothetically speaking) to keep 11 million members in check. So when Sergey get's his account deactivated (or whatever happened) an OriginalGriff (most obvious example), or any appointed/chosen/'automatic-by-rep' admin can do something about it too.
I'll refrain from saying if your suggestion nets out positive or negative. There's certainly a bit of both. Maybe it's a break-even, only time can tell.
My blog[ ^]
public class SanderRossel : Lazy<Person>
{
public void DoWork()
{
throw new NotSupportedException();
}
}
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As we're talking only when an account is closed (rather than just a message deleted) :
1. It is (or at least should be) relatively hard to have a 'regular' user account deleted (i.e. someone who has a few rep points and has been here a while) - so this should be rare.
2. It is (or at least should be) relatively easy to have a new account deleted (i.e. someone who creates an account and just uses it for Spam)
In case 2, the op would never bother with retaliation.
In case 1, they may, of course, but they must surely have done something pretty bad to deserve that sized slap (think MM and elephants) and they would, one hopes, just get back on and ask you nice chaps for their account back
But I don't see what advantage this has?
Keeping spam accounts seems a waste to me - they're never coming back and seeing thousands of one-off accounts being nuked just lets one see how much spam there is.
Keeping 'real' member's accounts seems like a good idea - don't nuke them - just disable them with an appropriate message on their account page ("nuked due to angry mob") - but listing who voted them off the island? No advantage, I think...
**EDIT** Having seen your comment in bugs & sugs it seems this move is prompted to stop people abusing their power and leading to the removal of an account... by naming and shaming you hope they won't vote abuse unless they feel they can stand up to their claims, I guess?
But, to me, it seems that the problem might be that it it too easy to nuke an account via the abusive vote
Do we need to differentiate between an abusive post and an account ? Nuke the post if necessary - and maybe suspend an account with > x abuse votes for a period of time, rather than nuking it?
Are the people really voting to remove the user's account, or just to give them a slap? If the latter (which I think in general is likely) then give them a slap - not a rocket ?!
PooperPig - Coming Soon
modified 12-Jan-15 20:59pm.
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_Maxxx_ wrote: by naming and shaming you hope they won't vote abuse unless they feel they can stand up to their claims, I guess?
Correct
_Maxxx_ wrote: But, to me, it seems that the problem might be that it it too easy to nuke an account via the abusive vote
Also correct, and something we fixed.
_Maxxx_ wrote: Do we need to differentiate between an abusive post and an account ?
Nuking spammer accounts quickly helps make life inconvenient for them.
_Maxxx_ wrote: Are the people really voting to remove the user's account, or just to give them a slap?
This one I don't know. I'm not even sure it's purely to give a slap or just to stir trouble.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I am a bit surprised by this change : I have requested several the same thing for those who approve articles, and it was always rejected. I fail to see why reporting someone should be public whereas rejecting articles should remain private, or vice-versa.
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Entropy isn't what it used to.
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Part of the issue is a basic "why and how" issue: where do we show approvers once an article is approved, and what value does it add?
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote: where do we show approvers
At the start, at the bottom, hidden in a tab, etc... plenty of possible places.
Chris Maunder wrote: what value does it add?
- Stop rep points harvesting that cause bad articles to be approved, so prevent bad articles from being approved
- Discuss about content with the people having approved by articles
- Discourage "fellow" approvals
~RaGE();
I think words like 'destiny' are a way of trying to find order where none exists. - Christian Graus
Entropy isn't what it used to.
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YES
Just do it already!
veni bibi saltavi
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It will exclude people who do not feel strongly enough to (or are not able to adequately) back up their decisions, so it will improve accuracy and appropriateness.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Will downvoting be restored with public accountability?
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Downvoting where?
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Isn't the problem that some of our longest serving members do things that could be classed as abusive sometimes and we are being asked to 'vote abusive' rather than vote for a 'member to be removed for abuse'.
I'm assuming this change in thinking has been triggered by recent high profile members accounts being removed.
I'm also assuming that these were closed because of Abuse votes rather than Spam votes and that these abuse votes were collected over a period of time.
I also get the impression from some of your comments in this thread that there were some high-ranking or 'upstanding' members amongst those who voted for those accounts to be removed. (I'm guessing that if you looked back at why they voted at that point in time there will be a genuine reason for it)
For example a long-standing member might call someone an 'anal-pore' or get drunk and make a post with a lot of unnecessary swearing in it or be condescending to someone in Q&A.
a.) Do we vote those as abusive.
b.) Or do we say to ourselves he's made a big contribution in the past so we ignore it.
Now nobody wants those members to removed, but at the same time the posts still can be classed as abusive. If we select b.) then we are being asked to judge members differently, depending on who they are.
I guess what I am trying to say is 'vote abusive' gives the impression that your single vote will go straight to an admin, who will read it immediately and then give the recepient a scolding and a warning for being abusive. It doesn't imply that your vote will go on some database somewhere and it will stay there and not be looked at until sometime, far of in the future, when that account has accumulated enough votes to be closed.
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Excellent points.
Part of my motivation is to provide you guys with the tools to protect the site and community without us needing to intervene. I don't want to spend my days reviewing every complaint against a member, and you guys don't want to have to wait for me or Sean to get around to reviewing complaints.
P0mpey3 wrote: Now nobody wants those members to removed
This is the crux, and it's probably best solved by adding an "immune" flag to accounts that are above a certain threshold.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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My concern is that without additional changes it will only encourage more bad behavior. Currently if Idiots 1-N gang up on Respected Member Y and suspend Y's account; the peanut gallery in the Lounge is limited to raging about the idiots in a new thread. If you make the votes public I worry that Peanutters 1-M will instead go on a rage banning rampage against Idiots 1-N creating a larger mess at least in the short term.
My bigger worry is that letting spammers/trolls know who's repeatedly nuking them until they glow will end up with them creating a swarm of sock puppets to wage banfare back.
To limit the problems I'd suggest:
0) Preventing new/low rep accounts from being able to raise abuse flags entirely. (Or at least limiting their ability to do so severely; reduced weight and unable to do anything without at least one flag from a more senior account.)
1) Don't allow any number of flags to kill platinum (and gold?) members accounts without confirmation from at least one CP Staff Member or user with Protector status. (I'm assuming that you've kept any of the flag abusers out of that group since the last thing they need is more power on the site.)
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, waging all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
Training a telescope on one’s own belly button will only reveal lint. You like that? You go right on staring at it. I prefer looking at galaxies.
-- Sarah Hoyt
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