Topic: Is there any point in reporting spam megathreads? (Read 632 times)

Well I agree, but trust issues is something theymos has mentioned briefly before, but I don't know whether theymos was on about it's hard to find trustworthy people to do things like the coding of new software or stuff like the accounts/legal dealings here that goes on behind the scenes. I was talking more about making new Admins than just mods though, who would obviously need to have a higher level of trust when you have access to IPs and can restore access to accounts etc. Regular mods obviously also do need to be pretty trusted but there's probably not that much damage they can do other than delete posts etc and would be found out pretty fast and dealt with if they were abusing their position. Posts can easily be restored as well. I get the feeling theymos doesn't really trust anyone to deal with admin issues though because why wouldn't new admins have been made already? (then again, I guess we could ask the same about why more mods haven't been added to meet demand either). We wouldn't have had the issue with accounts not getting restored if one or two other people could be dedicated to restoring accounts. Not addressing these issues though just makes the forum worse and worse in the process. The forum obviously needs both more of mods and admins so that's something theymos should prioritise because there are obviously people here who care about the forum and can make it better in the process and all that is required from theymos is the initial decision that will then free him up for stuff only he can be trusted with (like the coding etc). He must get annoyed at all the constant PMs that he gets from both users and staff for things that he doesn't have the time to do and if he doesn't then distribute that workload which is the most logical answer to the various issues we have here.

I just don't buy that. If we are that worried about assigning new moderators, then just start a few people with very limited power (say, deleting only newbie posts in a specific board only) for a probationary period, say a couple of weeks. Then move up to any posts. Then move up to moving posts to other sections. Then move up to locking threads. Etc. Etc. Even if someone suddenly went on a rampage (highly unlikely) and locked every thread in a board, then you can just demote them and undo all their actions. Or start some new mods in Off Topic. That board is a complete mess, and even if someone went rogue and nuked every thread in there, it would probably be an improvement. If they do a good job there for a few weeks, move them up to a real board. Or put a threat of temp-banning any new mod that goes rogue/does anything malicious.

But seriously, given the numbers of people who clearly care about the forum and spend hours of their time for nothing reading mind-numbing shit to report, I struggle to believe he can't find a handful of people to moderate. It's not a money issue, as he's previously stated about potentially dropping the forum advertising slot altogether. So I just don't understand why we are letting some boards be permanent spam fests with no discussion that most senior members won't even visit, let alone post in.

He must know people in real life that can be trusted and can do the job correctly. Considering he is basically famous around these communities, there is no way he doesn't know someone that can be trusted.

He's acknowledged the need to do so and it's obviously something that needs to be done sooner rather than later. He did put my suggestions of more sub mods/admins in the 'OK in principle, would require thought/adjustment/implementation' category in the community suggestions thread but for some reason he just isn't committing to it. I don't know whether it's just down to trust or what, but it's not like there isn't anyone trustworthy on the planet to do some of this stuff. In his own words he doesn't have time for even the basic of things here and barely even posts here so this work should be delegated out to those that can do it. We could have one or two people restoring accounts, one running the ad slots, one or two replying to emails and then that leaves theymos to crack on with the most important stuff behind the scenes. At the moment nothing is getting done at all and people are having to wait a year+ to get their account back which isn't acceptable. The forum could run so much more efficiently and he doesn't even need to do anything other than initially sort that out by giving the ability to trusted people to do this stuff. All he has to do is then oversee things but you can do that from the backseat. Not doing anything at all just makes things worse and we're practically going backwards at the minute as more and more issues just keep getting pilled up.

I feel like this forum has so much potential and theymos is really not taking advantage of it. I understand he is extremely busy but can he not give someone else permissions to assign mods/admins and other stuff?

I don't disagree. I would rather each board have three mods as opposed to either one or zero (especially if you discount Globals). Mining isn't even that active and is certainly one of the less-spammed boards, but Bitcoin Discussion on the other hand is spam central and doesn't even have even one dedicated mod. I managed to get a list of the top reporters in there from theymos a few months ago but nothing since despite a handful of PMs about the matter. Not going to keep annoying him with it so the ball is in his court now. Things like this should be done ASAP though and only require a short amount of his time and then no further action would be required from him and the forum benefits in the process.

Nope, but it's a great example of what can happen when a board does have enough moderator time dedicated to it. Low value/meaningless/duplicate threads deleted before they develop, threads locked once the conversation is over, not a spam comment in sight. And how to spread this behavior to the other boards isn't some great mystery - we just need some dedicated sub board mods. We shouldn't be at the stage where I can tell if you've been busy for a couple of days because my number of unhandled reports keeps climbing.

There's probably no reason other than that's just how it came to be. That board probably doesn't need three mods, but there's certainly some other boards that do need at least one and Bitcoin Discussion is one of them. In fact, I'd say most sub boards probably need at least one dedicated mod. It just frees up workload and saves everything being pilled up for Globals. Moderating Bitcoin Discussion (or trashing all the shit threads in there) would probably be a part-time job in itself, but until we get a couple of dedicated mods there and clamp down on the root cause of the spam (ICO campaigns) then nothing much will change.

Because almost EVERY thread gets deleted. And without a Pm to say it has been so you can't go and repost it elsewhere without a bit of knowhow.

Why can't we get this forum wide though?
And hilariousandco is just a glob mod, it's the same work no matter how many ways you split it. If there were three glob mods (instead of the two we have not) much more moderation could be done... Instead, Cyrus and Theymos have to moderate alongside the others...

Can we? All we need is a bit of preset concrete, some bricks and a few hundred 'servants' to really get out island built in a fast amount of time .

-ck is a mod because he made a piece of mining software (cgminer as far as I remember). I'm not sure what the others have done, gmaxwell was a core dev though also...

We could be if we pooled all our money together for seasteading! Nah, for a lack of better word I used it. Someone who has all permissions to lock in that section or to that particular usergroup. So Global moderators or the moderator of that section.

I'm not sure. Only theymos knows the answer to that. I'm guessing there's not a whole lot of reports going on in the project development section. I can only think of one person who I regularly see reporting there. Although, bare in mind I can only see newbies that are reported there.

It explains why the Mining board isn't a spam fest.

At the time of posting this comment, of the 39 threads on the front page of the Mining board, 31 of them are locked. Any thread that is low quality or spam is trashed, and any thread that has had OP's question answered is locked. OgNasty's thread is 14 pages, but there isn't a single spam post in it - that would be impossible in Bitcoin or Altcoin Discussion. Dedicated board mods not only help to keep a board clean (obviously), but they also free up the likes of hilariousandco and other global mods to deal with more important issues than deleting garbage posts.

The question remains also why a section so heavily moderated such as the mining section gets three mods whereas things like bitcoin discussion gets 1 (and that's a global mod so it doesn't really count) and project developement has no mods...

Agreed, but we run in to the problem of not enough mods again. I frequently report newly created threads for being spammy, low value, duplicate questions, etc. Sometimes these reports aren't acted on for 24 hours or more, by which time there can easily be 4-5 pages of spam replies.

This is quite true that it pushes things down the page.
And jurisiction? We a country now or something?
It is a lot better to lock topics with a large number of replies. If you're after not paying people for their sigs, move the thread to archival (they usually don't get paid that way)...

Yeah otherwise you get a lot of reports in meta going "welsh deleted my 50 copy-pased posts 50 pages down this spam megathread aargh".


Probably when their "I'm interested in this too!" comment gets deleted .

There's also the thing that something that never started as a spam megathread in 2014/2015 has turned into one later down the line. There will be quite a bit of loss in activity points if this happens and a lot of spam in the meta section about how someone's be demoted from legendary to sr or something...


I did with all the megathreads I made. Still commenting on them every few pages or so...
I reported posts on them as spam in 2015/2016 (when spam seemed to be accepted) and then didn't report any ever since because they never got deleted.

You've persuaded me that locking is better than nuking. While nuking spam megathreads would harshly punish the spammers, it would also discourage those who participated in good faith, which kind of misses the whole point of a forum, hence I am convinced.

That said, the thread I reported is still accumulating shitposts...

Lately too many old threads on the discussions board are revived by these newbies. I'm quite sure all these accounts are connected.


One post a day on a thread (40+ accounts, 40 threads) that didn't had any response for the last two weeks, a month, three months, six months. it's purposely done with a lengthy paragraph to look like it ain't spam (but definitely spun). Guess, there ain't any rule to ban them. These posts are simply opening up the window for all the spammers to post on a dead topic.

Guess, with the existing forum rules, these newbies intentionally bumping old threads can't be nuked. Reporting the whole thread with a reasonable reason is what can be done.

Definitely worth it. It pushes actual worthy discussion down the page, and it will then be forgotten in an hour, and never return. You see this all the time. I appreciate it from the standpoint of a user of the forum, and I'm sure a lot of other moderators do too. Unfortunately, I only remove topics when there's not many replies, and they are pointless. Otherwise, I'll lock them, but if they are out of my jurisdiction I'll ignore the report, and allow another moderator with permission to lock it to deal with it.

I'd rather get to the point where we are removing these trash threads than simply just locking them. It's better to do that when they don't have any replies, and before they become a problem. There's several threads asking the exact same question or generic statement. I'm pretty sure they look down the page, and take inspiration from previous threads, and can't think of their own content so just use already existing content.

Majority of these threads will incite vague answers for the pretext of making a thread asking some information are going to turn into spam megathreads. These are not created for the purpose of getting some insight or starting a proper discussion. They are made in order to spam for these bounties and thus they are made by the spammers themselves.

I have previously suggested a decent suggestion in this thread. Auto-lock threads after 25 pages because these OPs never return to address the replies nor do they want to discuss the points. These threads are as good as getting an "Abandoned" tag in front of them in the front page.

I don't think it's easy to get rid of spam megabreads, because in my opinion a good thing will sometimes be brought to a spam discussion, and I often find it. I think there needs to be a new solution about this.

It seems to me that after a short discussion, for example on page 2-3, you can already close the thread. Hang the lock. I am sure the one who asked the question has already received an answer to his question.
Another thing, when the discussion is some interesting news or events. There is of course, 10 pages and lock threads.