Topic: Actions against spam translators (Read 311 times)

That'd make 2 of us; but it's also what I was told back in the day (I can't really tell who was the one saying it tho). The end decition will always be on the mod handling the area/report, and even if we disagree with it, there's nothing we can do about it other than openly expressing that disagreement

I don't doubt that, not one bit. I think a solution in one board can probably be implemented in all the other local boards.


I disagree with that, pretty strongly actually.

An update is the same as a bump, and the same rules apply to updates as apply to bumps. There is an argument that an update doesn't need to be removed when writing another update, however, it should be removed if no one has posted since the update. If the old update is not removed, the thread gets unnecessarily cluttered. The forum is ultimately a discussion forum, not a place to talk to yourself.

I don't see the point in having a thread with 60 replies from one person. Having that many replies creates the illusion that there is a lot of interest in the thread, and will cause people to read the thread, only to find that there is literally no actual discussion going on. If I was browsing the forum looking for an interesting thread to read, I would be annoyed to find that thread.

As you said, nothing against pedrillo0 personally, he is just one example of many people that are acting similarly.

Being fair to everyone, it may have started as a rant out of seeing that in 6 months not regularly posting and reading only a few nothings nothing has really changed. Having worked as a translator may make me a little bit biased; but seeing the same few users posting all the garbage, seeing that literally no effort has been put into said garbage and that nothing can or is being done to said garbage... It's a bit infuriating. It was not a specific concern about this particular local board; since I know this is an extended practice over the forum.

This might be a more personal thought, but going this way is not the right one. Most of the altcoin ANN related content is either "new" or hard to think of a specific term in another language. Knowing this, a machine translator would simply find a way, but it's not the right way most of the times; requiring more work to re-do it than if starting from scratch.



I've actually had talks in the past with a few mods about this (not focusing on this particular user) and it's entirely up to the mod. A thread made of 10+ pages of just updates CAN be considered spam, but since every post is an update and is usually separated by 24+ hours, it does not count as a "bump" or multipost. Fine print sucks.

In your particular example, you noted that google translate was used. If you find that another translation tool was used, you can note your report accordingly.

I might expand on what DdmrDdmr, and ask what is the root cause of your concern? Are you concerned that your local section is being cluttered by unintelligible posts? Or are you upset that someone is taking work from someone that might otherwise be available to a native speaker of your language?

If I was hiring someone to translate very specific content that I have in one language to another language, I would probably want the translator to use an automated tool as a starting point, and to make corrections using their knowledge of the other language. Doing this ensures that nothing is missed. I would point out that copying specific content is not the same as having a conversation or interacting with someone. If someone is being hired to post specific content in another language, there are other rules that need to be followed, such as the bumping once every 24 hours, and not making "double posts".

One person you mentioned in your other thread is pedrillo0. This person's most recent post is in a thread that he created. The thread has a total of 68 posts, all of which are written by him. The issue of using automated translation tools aside, making this many consecutive posts is obviously not acceptable. This person can write the OP, and any reserved posts, he can subsequently bump his thread by giving an update/news, but if no one posts in his thread after he writes the update/news, if he wants to post in his thread again, he needs to remove his previous post with an update/news, and if desired, he can consolidate the information into a single new post.

I am willing to bet there are a lot of poorly translated posts that fit the above description. Finding and reporting the above type of "double post spam" will probably (close to) solve the problem with people using automated translation tools to professionally translate. Getting these posts removed will not remove all posts written with automated translation tools, but it will make using these tools less profitable, so people will have less of an incentive for doing so.

I don't think there's any issues answering it. I do tend to try, and keep things that were sensitive discussed privately, well private. However, most of what has been said is generic, and vague rather than anything sensitive. Also, I like to keep the community in the loop somewhat, so I like to engage in these types of conversations.

To answer your question, I've adapted myself to the role rather than having input from theymos on that particular issue, although I have been given advice by theymos in the past, however that was in general moderating rather than local section specific. I think I've touched upon it before, theymos tends to give you a nudge in the right direction, when required.

Ah no, I totally agree with this. This is why I somewhat indicated that theymos is on the same page, because I believe I remember saying that a local moderator that is a native speaker is always best, and he agreed. Plus, I mentioned of the importance of a local moderator being involved in the local community, I do believe that's also important, as I touched upon local sections being rather tightly knitted compared to the rest of the forum.

I know theymos can catch a lot of stick for being rather hands off, but definitely does a lot of work behind the scenes, and that's why I thought reassuring that he at least acknowledged the issue was important. I definitely wasn't the first choice, and I'm not the solution to the problem. See me as a piece of duct tape stuck on a leaking hole, it certainly isn't perfect, but it's slowing down the issues while we seek alternatives. How long that will take, I couldn't say.

Rules are, as usual, open to interpretation. However, we can agree that a user using a translator to help write something is by far not the same as someone getting paid for doing a translation job and then simply doing a copypasta on GT or any other machine. This is the part where I believe the interpretation of the rule comes to play; allegedly professional jobs should be held to a higher standard than casual posters. So I must disagree with this not being a rule related phenomenon.

I don't usually visit the altcoins boards either, but it's a similar situation to not reporting. Reports don't get handled, why report? Most of the content is rubbish, why bother trying to find interesting stuff?

I must say too, that I'm not against the use of translations tools. Hell, even dictionaries are translation tools; but a tool is meant to help you do a job, not do the job for you.

Anns get posted in the Tokens sub-board, ignoring them could be an option, but as I've said before, it's not really a solution. As for the merits, I'm sure we'll be seeing each oyher around, so no problem there; besides, I'm not here for them merits

I’d like to take a step back in this conversation, and revisit the spirit of rule 27: "Using automated translation tools to post translated content in Local boards is not allowed."

Here I lack the full history in order to know the exact reason why it was proposed as a rule, but it was seemingly conceived in this post:

Here I’m talking from a conceptual point of view, and not about specific cases. Now I figure that the rule had, in principle, the objective of facilitating a seamless conversation and/or understanding on what is posted on a local board. If that were the objective, then would automated translations that are clearly intelligible be permitted? What if they only strayed a few words here and there, but were still easily intelligible?

Something that has a terrible translation is obviously subpar, and certainly falls under the said rule, but on broarder terms, and just as an afterthought, we probably see a fair share of that on regular posts in the English sections, made by or assisted by tools used by non-native people.

What I’m trying to get at is whether these tools, and their output, are not allowed per se (as the rule reads), or if they are if the result is good enough (albeit not perfect).

The secondary layer of debate is on whether the translator used any automation tools in the process of translation, due to which they may or may not be skimming who hired them to some extent. This latter effect is not really a rule related phenomenon.

I barely visit the Altcoin board on the Spanish board, as it is not normally something I’d be interested in reading through, so I’m not really aware of how good or bad these translations are.

Note: Professional translators often do use tools in their work to make translations, but it then their degree of knowledge on the language and translating techniques that come into play to enhance or correct the output of such tools.

Great answer to OP's question.  I have a question for you, though I understand if you won't or can't answer it: Is what you wrote above advice given to you by Theymos, or is your reluctance to delete posts or to be a strict moderator in the Spanish section a personal choice?  Theymos rarely gives his thoughts on forum moderation to the community, so I'm just wondering.

And the Spanish section doesn't have a dedicated ANN section for projects if I just looked at the list of sections correctly.  Where are these threads being posted?  Is it in the Spanish Tokens section?  If that's the case, I'd say ignoring the whole section is a good option if altcoins and/or tokens don't interest you--which is the case for me, and I've got the whole altcoin array of sections on ignore.  I know it's not an ideal solution (as OP even pointed out), but if altcoins aren't your thing, it's the next-best one.

Welsh, I'm sure you're doing a good job moderating the Spanish section, but it'd be nice if Theymos did appoint a native speaker as a mod.  It's hard for me to imagine that there aren't any good candidates around who'd be willing to take the position.

Edit: Csmiami, I've hit my 50 merits/month limit with you, else I would have given you far more than 2 merits.  I owe you.  If you want to remind me via PM, I'll be happy to recheck your posts.

The problem with that is that you don't always know the source it's beeing translated from, so most of the times you just notice some things that are funny. Besides, there's a handful of neural translation tools nowadays, which are way better than GT, so it's even harder to catch.

Nothing to argue with what has been said here. It's even good to know that the administration is on the same page; which is not always the case

I think you have found a good way to authoritatively catch people using automated translation tools, and that is to use automated translation tools to translate the post in question, and if the translated post is sufficiently similar, I think most would agree the post was translated using automated translation tools and should be removed accordingly. If you note that you used google translate in the report, it would be much easier for a moderator to handle the report as opposed to saying that someone is using words in a strange way in your native language.

The argument that someone is using automated translation tools is almost always subjective, although there are some cases that are more clear-cut than others. What may be a clear-cut case to a native speaker may be too difficult for a non-native speaker to understand.

Ah yeah,  I think I remember seeing the election thread now. I believe I recommended that in personal messages last time out. I can't actually remember since it has indeed been a while now.

Anyway, going back to your broader approach of things I think there's several key issues we have to tackle:

- Lack of reporting
- Having reporters who are native speakers
- Having reporters which are actively posting in that local section

Now, I know that "lack of reporting" seems like I'm trying to put the blame on the community for not reporting enough, when that's not what I'm trying to do. The thing is, theymos only works with data. He doesn't personally know everyone on this forum. Therefore, he can only work on what is in front of him. So, this will probably include timezone, languages written in, amount of reports, and these metrics have to fit in with his criteria. Now, because his criteria isn't public, and likely never will be, we don't exactly know what it is. This, at the very least prevents gaming the system, but ultimately it comes down to theymos' judgement on who to make a moderator, and for the most part I think he has done a good job over the years, so it's hard to question that judgement. I'm also aware that users get disheartened when their reports are either marked bad or left unhandled, especially the latter which contributes to the lack of reporting, so by no means am I blaming this on the community, the community isn't exactly expected to report in fact, though the moderators are definitely grateful across the board I'd say.

It must be quite nerve wracking on theymos' part when appointing a new moderator. He has to think about how well will it be received (especially applicable in local sections), whether they will go rogue (despite limited permissions), and if generally they are suited to the role. In person, you can get references, have them work in the work place, and actually meet them in person. Theymos, isn't blessed with these types of options so it makes the process harder.

The second point is hard to determine, especially with how sophisticated translation tools are becoming. Alright, they are far from perfect, but the more popular languages are generally decent. For example, if someone was to write in Welsh from a translation tool it's almost immediately obvious, and that's because it hasn't had a ton of resources poured into it, whereas French, Spanish, and these types of languages have been worked on more. Again, I know they aren't perfect.

Nah, fret not I didn't take this personal, although I thought going into the specifics of the Spanish section gives other users that might not be aware a overall viewpoint on the complexity of running a forum this large. I know, the previous local moderator was well respected in the section, and it was a big hole to replace once they had been inactive for a while, and with theymos only identifaying users that rejected the offer, then a less than ideal situation was created. Thus, the action taken by theymos. Although, I appreciate the kind words, but I did by no means take any of it personal. In fact, I agree that something needs to be done, and quite frankly I think all parties involved know this, like I said theymos definitely indicated to me that a local speaker is always ideal, so he's definitely aware of it too.

Right, I understand why users can be discouraged from reporting when this does happen, although I included this for a reason, and that's mainly for other instances except for this particular situation. Basically, I believe theymos does a review at least every month, because he pays the moderators, so he gives us statistics on the amount of reports handled, unhandled, and marked bad. Hilariousandco recently made these statistics public. So, theymos knows how many unhandled reports there are, and if there is a large amount of unhandled reports he's more likely to investigate where, and why they are happening. Thus, this could indicate a need for additional moderators where ever these mass reports are going unhandled. Although, as you hinted above I believe; in this case all parties are already aware of the situation, so it has little benefit. Though, I don't really want to discourage users from doing it either, since who knows theymos might find a user who's suitable. I don't know theymos' criteria, and not he hasn't reveled for obvious reasons, but if reports are being unhandled I assume that would trigger at least some investigation.

So, to be clear; I think generally if theymos isn't aware that there's a less than ideal situation in a local section, then Yeah I think it's a good idea to report these types of posts, so that he can see things aren't getting unhandled. In the Spanish section currently, theymos is already aware of these issues. So, theymos is also probably well aware that you've reported hundreds of these types of posts, so potentially there's little reason to continue doing so as he's aware. However, theymos would have to weigh in on that directly to know for certain what would be best.

Yeah, ideally it would be nice to have local moderators which are active in the community, not just handling reports, but those that actively contribute to discussions. Since, I think everyone knows that within a local community they are usually quite tightly knitted at least more so than the overall forum. I think the only place that rivals it is the Wall Observer thread, both local communities, and Wall Observer for this reason can be quite intimidating from anyone that isn't a regular, although I think this is has a stronger effect when not communicating in a language you aren't a native speaker of.

Then, having global moderators which can sort of understand a decent amount of the language, at least enough to verify the local moderators opinion. At the moment, global moderators being the only ones able to ban have to rely on the local moderators input, if they don't understand the language. Though, I'm not 100 percent sure how they go about that.

it also has a large percentage of native speakers will be reported for their incompetent to distinguish between natural human language and google language, because so far google's technology has developed.

Seeing the structure tenses of translator is also unreliable, because most people with English both in the USA or elsewhere do not pay attention to the tenses also.

Hey Welsh! Long time no heard from you. First of all, I'd like to point out that this was neither complaining nor something personal. I do like the way you've been modding the forum overall, adn you've always been open to discussing certain points of the more local boards. I do have the utmost respect for you as a member here for the many things you've done over the years, and whilst I don't think this has been interpreted as a personal thing or an attack, the internet is a place in which people sometimes get confused, so I'd like to just point that out first thing.

I was rather talking about the situation in general over the forum, with the many spammy-machine-translated threads that do pop up more often than what we'd want to. Of course I'm concerned about the boards I most usually visit, but it was not something exclusive of it.

I did know that a certain member was offered the position some time ago, and that he did reject it; we also organized some sort of voting and we did also write some messages to theymos about the issue. Some things, however, are in a sort of loop in this situation. If the most "difficult"/"controversial" reports don't get handled, why would we report them first place if we already know what is going to happen next? This passive discouragement further lowers the report volume (or at least in my personal case, I can say it has happened quite a few times; and if you can see my reporting history, you know I'm rather trigger happy). I'll even go further and say that precisely that inaction is one of the things that pushed me into this last time off the forum; after spending so much time checking threads, reporting them and making some noise so that action was taken on them, and then seeing the same user simply re-post those same threads as if nothing had ever happened did a bit of a number on me (not that a big one, as this is still an online forum full of strangers).

I also think that back then I did mention that the involvement of a staff member among the discussions going on was missing. It may not be a big thing for some, but when there's not really many people participating in a local board, it does bring the morale up a bit. I'm of course not trying to compare you with the previous mod; as I've already said it's not a personal thing (and I do like the way things get done).

Seeing how things are at the current stage, I know it would make no sense to go on another reporting spree. Would I get the numbers up? Definately. Would they get handled? Possibly not. Does it make sense to do such a thing? Well... Nope?

Now, is it best to wait until someone decides to go hunting for sport and floods the queue, or would it be best to anticipate to that and look for someone that is going to slowly start cleaning up shop before it gets clogged? I know it's not on me to decide, but I'd like to think you are seeing the point I'm trying to make here.

Getting a bit out of the particulars of the Spanish boards, I see that this is not a problem specific to us (as LittleMouse pointed out), and I'm inclined to belive it happens in many other sub-boards. Of course it's not possible to hire global mods that know and are fluent in every language; that's simply not realistic. But there's still room for improvement in some places.

PS: It's rather strange to see you without an avatar...
PS2: As usual, I'd like to invite you to participate in any of the multiple threads open on the Spanish section; it's always good to remember and practice the languages you know.

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Edit: In origin, this was more directed to see if there was any real action that could be taken against this kind of users. Basically, asking if a ban would be the right solution for it, since many of them can't be nuked unfortunately.

Unfortunately, this is one of the problems you'll run into when you run a forum catering for all the languages that exist. The Spanish section used to have a local moderator which I presume was a native speaker of the language, however when they went inactive, theymos likely contacted other users to fill the position (which I presume would have been a permanent addition due to them likely being a native speaker). The old moderator did actually return briefly after my appointment, giving me a glimmer of hope and gave me a message, which was relayed back to theymos or at least I posted in the staff section about it. However, I think their activity dropped off again. I haven't really been keeping up to date with that.

Thus, theymos asked me to fill in temporarily. The only issue with that is, and this was made quite clear  I'm definitely not a native speaker hence my username , and I'm definitely not fluent in the language, thus the more complex reports are often the more likely they'll be left on ignore, since I can't act upon something that I don't understand completely, and this has become more strict over time as I've adapted to the role, and this is the same answer to your question about global moderators. From my observations; a few global moderators have some understanding of several language, but probably aren't fluent in all of them. Therefore, they also don't act upon reports they don't understand.

Now, how do we solve this? Well, there's a lack of data to work on, and theymos was aware of the regular reporters in the Spanish section, I know of one user who would have been a brilliant fit, but rejected it like I said. Those regular reporters however, haven't really changed. There's a small amount of users that are reporting in the section, and then it's only a couple of reports in a week. Your reporting spree that month was by far the largest in the Spanish section since I've been filling in. I think we've had discussions privately around the time this was happening also. I do send my own updates to theymos from time to time, however it has been eerily quiet on the reporting front, and I'm not going to send an update to him when there's nothing really changed since the last one.

I know that theymos prefers to appoint local moderators which are native speakers, and have demonstrated good knowledge of the language. However, this decision from theymos was seen as a temporary one, and I absolutely didn't see this as a permanent appointment, and I'm still under that impression, and by all means wouldn't want to be the permanent position, I am happy filling in for the time being until a suitable mod is found. However, due to the inactivity of reporting that has become a little longer than anticipated.

As for the translation reports you can report them if you want, but if they are particularly complex, then you risk them being ignored. That's just unfortunately the situation we are in, until a suitable native speaker is appointed, which at the moment I couldn't possibly comment on how likely or when that's going to happen. I think you may have private messaged me a while ago, and I said it was likely temporary. Though, I know that was a long time ago now. I know last time theymos responded to me on the situation, he was aware of several candidates, and at that time it looked fairly likely that there were options, however some of those users have fallen off on activity.

Until theymos identifies, and decides who shall be moderator there, then there's always a risk that your reports will be ignored due to complexity. Hence, the need for a native speaker. Unfortunately, despite a somewhat active community there, there isn't too many which report actively.

Finally, as a community you could potentially try the election format that I believe has been adopted in the past. If a decent amount of users from the Spanish section were to put their heads together, and elect a user suitable for the job, and then this was forwarded to theymos, who knows he might appreciate the effort, and get it sorted sooner.

Probably would, and it's probably a good idea to look at changing it. Though, if you want you can write formatted text in a text editor, and then copy, and paste it into the report field. Yeah, it's not a great solution, but at least you might find it easier to keep your trace of thought while writing it up. On the other end, moderators will still be able to read it fairly easy. The only time it can make things  difficult is if the moderator has a particularly low resolution, and then it misaligned the reporting page a little bit. Though, It's usually not a big deal at all.

This is ultimately what it comes down too. Global moderators aren't going to be competent enough in that language, therefore can't act upon it in the majority of the cases, unless they are decently proficient in that language. Users have in the past, proven in the reporting field that a piece of text was translated via Google translate or other service by identifying that it's an exact translation, and thus in those cases it makes it easier. Though, as we know translation tools are actually getting much better these days, and really only native speakers can differentiate between the little nuisances that they create.

The only solution to this is a native speaker as the moderator of the section, which theymos was aware of, and acknowledged to me personally a year or more ago when I filled in temporarily. So, he knows what needs to be done, and is likely reviewing it somewhat frequently, but it's difficult due to the lack of reporting data to work on.

Someone has to create a consensus thread (or use existing ones) about each member who normally works as a translator.  Consensus participants involved must be native speakers who were previously appointed to determine whether the translators are native or not. This will help the moderators consider taking action on the reports. It also shortens the report text (just link the reference to the consensus thread), sample report text: "fake translator, ref: topic=5365489.0" .

There are some BMs who instead appoint some fake translators as permanent translators, that's why this case will never end. I think their BM should also accept the consequences of punishment as far as they are responsible for running the campaign including when selecting participants. The solution is to report bounty threads where they apply to be removed or insert moderator notes like the "consecutive posts merged" case.

Of course I can do that, but it would defeat the whole point of moderation. If we simply ignore what shouldn't be there, why do we need mods in the first place?


This could actually be a great idea for the "benefits" that have been talked in various threads for the top reporters/similars

Problem is when there's no local mod for a local board. Global mod can't read and understand whether the report is good or not. I have been in the same situation when I worked for a project to complete their translation. I used someone from this forum and he didn’t translate perfectly. But when for a small edition, I worked with GazetaBitcoin, he said the other translation was totally spam.
As long as there's no mod for all the local, you can't do anything. If mod can't be sure whether the translation is a spam or not, he can't delete because they can't just believe the report. If they delete based on report only, likely that someone will abuse the system.

This is one of those outlier cases that does not have a perfect solution. Ignoring such users could be a partial solution, as you will not see their crap posts.

Not sure if we are on the same page here, but I remember discussing sometime ago, that the presentation of the report option makes it difficult to write lengthened texts, which may by necessary sometimes. It is probably designed that way so as to reduce the texts the mods have to read, but allowing it more text friendly would encourage more detailed reports where necessary.

yeah, I'm aware and familiar of how things should work. But reality tends to be a bitch with theory, and in many cases these reports simply go into the void. I know moderating is not always easy and it's a time consuming thing; but "containing" the spam to some sections is no good option in some cases.

There are restrictions for local communities which don't have sub-boards. Members of such local communities are not allowed to publish translations of ANN threads in their local threads. I guess it's because global moderators will have difficulty to moderate those contents and they can not rely on translation machine to do their moderation.

In local communities, with sub boards, you can submit reports and global & local moderators will handle your reports.
 
Do not create threads or post translated ICO Announcements in here