LTT Overwatch Resolution (Not a video game)

[AlTech]

The inspiration for this idea was actually from one of Valve's systems for CS:GO called Overwatch.......... (yes, I know it sounds really cringey but bear with me).

 

The idea behind this is to allow trusted members of the community with a lot of experience to determine whether or not a reported post actually requires moderation action.

 

Before I continue to explain, I felt like this would be a good idea to add since the LTT Beta site includes automatic moderation built in.

 

A random group of trusted members with experience would be selected to review reports submitted by the report tool.

 

The trusted members would not know which user was the suspect (the suspect's username would have to be hidden) and they would not be given any information other than the evidence.

 

The Moderation Team's time is precious and so having trusted people filter reports before a moderator needs to take action helps save time.

 

And it could be used to help train the Auto-moderation built into the LTT Beta site.

 

I copied CS:GO's overwatch system and modified it to give a mockup for what something like this system might look like.

 

The first major disruption thing should say The suspect posted.

I realize this mockup is a rush job but something in a similar format was what I had in mind.

 

Please consider this proposal and have a great day .

[lewdicrous]

3 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

A random group of trusted members with experience would be selected to review reports submitted by the report tool.

Mods²

[ARikozuM]

While this may sound like a great idea, I believe the current systems are better. We can simply stack reports for a single post rather than keeping an article live. 

[Rupe]

35 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

The idea behind this is to allow trusted members of the community

So not you then Aluminium.... 

Now that's what you call a savage burn

[GDRRiley]

I like it but I feel like we would have public mods and limited secret mods.

[Spotty]

34 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

The idea behind this is to allow trusted members of the community with a lot of experience to determine whether or not a reported post actually requires moderation action.

We already have this. Haven't you noticed whenever a post breaks the community standards there are 9 people posting redundant posts like "This is against the rules it will be locked/deleted" [rather than just hitting the report button and carrying on their way].

Basically you're just asking the community to work as mods without giving them the tools to enable them to act as mods.

What would happen if a mod is online and a post is reported, but there are no 'trusted members' to pass/fail the report on for the mods to see. If the mods see the reported posts before they're reviewed anyway, it defeats the purpose. In the end it just means that the time between a 'bad' post being made and appropriate action being taken will increase.

 

I don't think LTTs community content is as large as Steams, so it should be manageable with the existing report system and moderators without additional steps in the process.

Spoiler

PS. I see through your charade, @AluminiumTech Between this and

I know you really just want to mod the Tech News forum so you, and only you, can contribute to the WAN show news.  

/s

[AlTech]

56 minutes ago, Spotty said:

We already have this. Haven't you noticed whenever a post breaks the community standards there are 9 people posting redundant posts like "This is against the rules it will be locked/deleted" [rather than just hitting the report button and carrying on their way].

Basically you're just asking the community to work as mods without giving them the tools to enable them to act as mods.

What would happen if a mod is online and a post is reported, but there are no 'trusted members' to pass/fail the report on for the mods to see. If the mods see the reported posts before they're reviewed anyway, it defeats the purpose. In the end it just means that the time between a 'bad' post being made and appropriate action being taken will increase.

 

I don't think LTTs community content is as large as Steams, so it should be manageable with the existing report system and moderators without additional steps in the process.

  Hide contents

PS. I see through your charade, @AluminiumTech Between this and

I know you really just want to mod the Tech News forum so you, and only you, can contribute to the WAN show news.  

/s

This episode of WAN Show brought to you by AluniniumTech! The awesome and really chill guy who comes up with great ideas.

/joke

[Spotty]

2 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

This episode of WAN Show brought to you by AluniniumTech! The awesome and really chill guy who comes up with great ideas.

[Whiskers]

This isn't possible for two reasons, unfortunately.

 

First it isn't feasible on a technical level. The only way we could currently achieve this would consequently provide those users with almost full access to our reporting and warning systems (which is obviously out of the question). Second it would be at odds with the intended nature of the forum; that all users are equal. Although it sounds like a positive thing to provide longer-term members with benefits for their contributions over the years, this would result in some inherently negative repercussions. It would suggest that longer-term members are worth more / are more important than newer ones (a type of elitism which we have always been against).

[AlTech]

10 minutes ago, Whiskers said:

This isn't possible for two reasons, unfortunately.

 

First it isn't feasible on a technical level. The only way we could currently achieve this would consequently provide those users with almost full access to our reporting and warning systems (which is obviously out of the question). Second it would be at odds with the intended nature of the forum; that all users are equal. Although it sounds like a positive thing to provide longer-term members with benefits for their contributions over the years, this would result in some inherently negative repercussions. It would suggest that longer-term members are worth more / are more important than newer ones (a type of elitism which we have always been against).

Well then at the very least could this sort of system replace the current reporting system?

For example, you click on report and then this kind of screen shows up.

 

Cos the current reporting system is somewhat annoying as someone who reports things multiple times per day.

 

And also, the time taken from something being reported to being resolved is quite a while. Although I guess if the testing of the automated mod on the Beta site goes well it could be implemented on LTT main site.
 

Also, imho that last part isn't really elitism as this is how businesses generally treat long term customers better than new customers but okay.

 

Edit: I am fairly sure though that the idea in the OP could technically be implemented without giving full moderation privileges and access to warning and reporting system through an extension to IPS being written for the forum or something similar.

[AlTech]

1 hour ago, ARikozuM said:

While this may sound like a great idea, I believe the current systems are better. We can simply stack reports for a single post rather than keeping an article live. 

Not many people currently report content from what I've seen.

[Whiskers]

1 minute ago, AluminiumTech said:

Well then at the very least could this sort of system replace the current reporting system?

For example, you click on report and then this kind of screen shows up.

 

Cos the current reporting system is somewhat annoying as someone who reports things multiple times per day.

 

And also, the time taken from something being reported to being resolved is quite a while. Although I guess if the testing of the automated mod on the Beta site goes well it could be implemented on LTT main site.
 

Also, imho that last part isn't really elitism as this is how businesses generally treat long term customers better than new customers but okay.

Again, on a technical level it isn't feasible. The current reporting system is far too deeply integrated with the rest of the forum software to easily code and implement a replacement. It might be possible - but it would be a huge amount of work and would be a constant source of problems whenever we continue to update the forum software itself.

[Spotty]

12 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Well then at the very least could this sort of system replace the current reporting system?

For example, you click on report and then this kind of screen shows up.

 

Cos the current reporting system is somewhat annoying as someone who reports things multiple times per day.

I like the current reporting system. I always use the text box to put in a quip or joke to explain why the post should be deleted in an attempt to hopefully slightly brighten the day of whoever is the poor sod who has to read all the reports.

[AlTech]

1 minute ago, Whiskers said:

Again, on a technical level it isn't feasible. The current reporting system is far too deeply integrated with the rest of the forum software to easily code and implement a replacement. It might be possible - but it would be a huge amount of work and would be a constant source of problems whenever we continue to update the forum software itself.

And what of the auto mod system? Could that be brought to the main site?

 

Cos sometimes it's quite apparent that there aren't enough active mods.

[wONKEyeYEs]

22 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

Cos the current reporting system is somewhat annoying as someone who reports things multiple times per day.

Censorship should not be approached with zeal.

 

 

[Whiskers]

12 minutes ago, AluminiumTech said:

And what of the auto mod system? Could that be brought to the main site?

 

Cos sometimes it's quite apparent that there aren't enough active mods.

By and large if it couldn't be brought over to the main site we wouldn't be testing it on the beta site.

[AlTech]

Just now, Whiskers said:

By and large if it couldn't be brought over to the main site we wouldn't be testing it on the beta site.

Also, I know this is sort of hijacking this thread but could you take a look at the suggestion RyanVickers made in my revised Tech News posting guidelines feature suggestion thread? thanks.

 

You can feel free to lock this thread now and add to Declined suggestions post .

[Spotty]

2 minutes ago, Whiskers said:

By and large if it couldn't be brought over to the main site we wouldn't be testing it on the beta site.

Let me guess, the automated moderation system keeps censoring phrases like "DLC", "White man", "Titanfall", and "lag"...

[AlTech]

Just now, Spotty said:

Let me guess, the automated moderation system keeps censoring phrases like "DLC", "White man", "Titanfall", and "lag"...

Actually right now it's pretty decent at spam prevention. Idk if it automatically applies warnings though.

[LogicalDrm]

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

And also, the time taken from something being reported to being resolved is quite a while. Although I guess if the testing of the automated mod on the Beta site goes well it could be implemented on LTT main site.

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

And what of the auto mod system? Could that be brought to the main site?

 

Cos sometimes it's quite apparent that there aren't enough active mods.

 

I would like to know how you monitor that. But from what I've seen only earlye EU hours are really bad. But that also has natural explanation as its time between US people sleeping, AUS people being at work ad EU people waking up.

[AlTech]

1 hour ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

 

I would like to know how you monitor that. But from what I've seen only earlye EU hours are really bad. But that also has natural explanation as its time between US people sleeping, AUS people being at work ad EU people waking up.

A lot of stuff I report is either morning UTC+1 or late at night UTC+1

[colonel_mortis]

5 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Well then at the very least could this sort of system replace the current reporting system?

For example, you click on report and then this kind of screen shows up.

 

Cos the current reporting system is somewhat annoying as someone who reports things multiple times per day.

As in, let you select a reason for reporting, like Stack Overflow, rather than having a freeform text field that you enter a handful of words to the same effect? That will be coming with the auto moderation in the update that is coming soon (I hope, otherwise it will have to be delayed quite a bit), though I've not yet really thought about the categories etc.

5 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

And also, the time taken from something being reported to being resolved is quite a while. Although I guess if the testing of the automated mod on the Beta site goes well it could be implemented on LTT main site.

The automated moderation is not all that you think it is. It's just a set of rules that we can set up to say "if a post gets reported as bot spam by 3 different members, hide it and leave it flagged for moderator review". It almost certainly won't, at least for a while, be used for anything other than bot spam.

5 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Also, imho that last part isn't really elitism as this is how businesses generally treat long term customers better than new customers but okay.

 

Edit: I am fairly sure though that the idea in the OP could technically be implemented without giving full moderation privileges and access to warning and reporting system through an extension to IPS being written for the forum or something similar.

To add to what Whiskers has said, in theory an plugin could be written to allow that, but it would be a very big plugin, and as I'm sure you can see from the rate of progress on the beta site (almost zero despite an impending internal deadline for me releasing it) I quite simply don't have enough time to work on it (or any number of more pressing issues). As I'm the only person working on LMGifying the forum at the moment, that means that this won't get done.

Even if I did have loads of time or help though, this wouldn't be something that I think would be a worthwhile addition compared to the cost involved, because the time consuming part of moderation is not asking people to follow the tech news guidelines or moving topics out of general discussion, it's reading through 20 page long topics arguing about something vaguely tech related, making judgements on which posts should stay, be removed, or be issued with warnings, discussing the problem with the team, and writing up the warnings. None of those would really be solved by letting community members respond to reports, because the majority of posts in situations like that are not reported (we get a few reports for posts in the topic, then review the rest ourselves).

[vanished]

I'm going to propose 3 reasons why this doesn't make sense:

1. The kind of reports that could be handled by such a system are the ones we can deal with within seconds of noticing anyway.  It's only complex cases that get backlogged, and this wouldn't help with that.
2. The only users that would be trusted to deal with reports in any capacity are the existing mod team.  At the very least, there would be privacy concerns if other users were able to see what was reported, by who, and for what.  Beyond that, there would be the possibility of disqualifying reports when they shouldn't have due to not having enough information to make an educated decision.
3. I am going to guess that adding something like this would require a lot of development time, which best case uses up valuable time Mortis or whoever could have spent on something else, and worst case needs to be submitted to IPS, in which case it will never happen.

[colonel_mortis]

5 hours ago, VegetableStu said:

is there a verbose spelling required for it? (i.e. I have to spell out "bot" and "spam" somewhere, and not "botspam" nor "b0tsp@m"), or is it a checkbox?

 

(I realise this could be misued (3 users who dislike a user for a legit post just reports it for spam and causes it to be hidden globally), so if that's a possible thing maaaaaybe remove this comment. sorry ,_,)

You can check it out on the beta site, https://beta.linustechtips.com/, but it is just a radio selection for the reason for the report, as well as the existing freeform text box. We would take a very dim (and warning-heavy) view of people deliberately abusing a system like that to remove other members' posts, and everything will be reviewed by a human anyway, so I don't anticipate having problems with it.

[AlTech]

On 12/09/2018 at 8:02 PM, colonel_mortis said:

You can check it out on the beta site, https://beta.linustechtips.com/, but it is just a radio selection for the reason for the report, as well as the existing freeform text box. We would take a very dim (and warning-heavy) view of people deliberately abusing a system like that to remove other members' posts, and everything will be reviewed by a human anyway, so I don't anticipate having problems with it.

By the way, if mods take forever to inform a user they're not following the posting guidelines are we then allowed to tell the user that they're not and in what way(s) they're not?