I have made a decision to alter and/or remove various restrictions on Voat. I’ve thought a lot about this and it’s something both @Atko and I believe needs to be reevaluated.
Voat has always had a problem with spam. @Amalek would spam posts and hijack the new queue making it unusable. MH101 and then later @SaneGoatiSwear would hijack comment pages making them unusable. The rules Voat uses were put in place in to combat this behavior. They are old rules, mostly remaining unchanged from the initial versions of this site. Most, if not all, of the rules were in direct response to spam attacks. It was never Voat’s intention to limit non-spam accounts, but this is what has happened as an indirect result of these rules.
Voat will not keep in place a system that permanently limits a segment of users from debating and conversing. This isn’t Free Speech as I see it or as I want it.
Voat will shortly be going live with a new code base, and I want to have a new system designed and ready for when this happens, so I am posting this announcement to get feedback from the community.
The main areas of concern:
- Commenting restrictions on negative CCP accounts that aren't spamming their comments
- Limiting any account that spam comments
TL;DR
We need to allow unpopular opinions while preventing comment spam.
How do we do it?
All options are on the table
https://voat.co/v/announcements/1330806
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10246470? ago
:D
Spam is an issue and we don't want it overrunning the website. But at the same time you're right, these restrictions have been inhibiting people who have done nothing wrong but share too many unpopular opinions, and it isn't in the spirit of Voat.
We should consider what tools we have available. The /v/ReportSpammers community is very hard-working and dedicated to keeping Voat free of spam, and it is a community very capable of growing. Spam is against Voat's rules; accounts that spam get permanently banned from the website. We determine that accounts are spamming by responding to user reports against specific accounts, evaluating their comments / submissions, and then deciding if they have indeed spammed. If they have, you eventually ban them. I think that's the basic process.
Waiting for a spammer to accrue negative CCP is actually relatively slow. What we could do instead is this: if an account receives spam reports, and one of the trusted community members in /v/ReportSpammers marks the report as actual spam, then upon that marking the account could be restricted until such time as you or someone else is able to review the reports and ban the guilty users.
As far as I am aware this follows the same process as right now, except it will not restrict any account's commenting ability based on CCP, only on confirmed spam reports. As I understand it this should restrict guilty accounts much faster than negative CCP would have, without restricting non-spam accounts. All we require is a sufficiently large and trusted report marker section of the community, and then the awareness of the Voat community at large to place spam reports instead of downvotes in the first place.
The community at large can vote on who they want / trust to mark reports as actual spam, and we can keep those who have been doing a perfect job already (@Cynabuns namely. I'm sure @NeedleStack would do well also).
I can adjust anything I've written above for feasibility reasons but I think some interpretation of this will work for Voat well without punishing the innocent.
SexMachine ago
I like this idea, actually was about to suggest something similar, give someone trusted a limited admin account to restrict accounts that have been reviewed and revealed to be posting spam.
Maybe even have an automatic limiter in place for new accounts that are posting 20+ comments/links within an hour to be reviewed as well.
10246743? ago
The best part about this suggestion is that whoever is doing the marking will still be accountable the way that all Voat mods are. Every action they take will be logged publicly for the community to see. If ever there is a "Spam Flagger" who steps out of line, remove them and replace them with someone else. Very simple, and no one innocent has to suffer.