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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KingoftheMolePeople ago
Remove restrictions from Negative accts. Put in place a Spam button. Once an account has X number of Spam button reports, acct restrictions go into effect. To prevent abuse, if the restrictions are refuted("I am not spamming"), upon investigation, anyone found to be abusing the Spam button faces consequences, from restrictions themselves to a full on site ban.
10246632? ago
I have suggested this in the past, and I think it is close to the best solution. However, as you've identified, people can abuse the button, meaning innocent people can very easily be shut down if ten or so people cooperate to "report them for spam". Notice how you've said "if the restrictions are refuted" -- well who refutes them? A team of trusted community members, surely -- Putt can't do it himself. Well, if we're going to have a team on Voat dedicated to flagging spam reports as real or not (we have this already, by he way, with /v/ReportSpammers, and they do fantastically) then we might as well alter their approach. Instead of applying restrictions after X number of reports, apply restrictions after the "refutation team" has flagged the report as legitimate spam. That way no innocent account will be wrongly restricted (unless the refutation team messes up, but they will be accountable for that, it will be easier to keep track of, and historically they've been good at not messing up as far as I can tell.).
9347723491 ago
ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT, are you fucking high?
ForgotMyName ago
Let's call them "mods". Let's collude with them to influence the content on the site. Let's call ourselves "reddit."
10248364? ago
@9347723491 the only power these people would have would be to assist with the process of spam-flagging. You two realize that with Voat's system we cannot ever possibly become reddit? All moderator actions are logged publicly. You can't just ban users or comments without others being able to see it or know. The flagging of spam is something we already do in order to ban spammers; this would just remove the necessity for negative CCP restrictions and consequently we would need more people doing the flagging. If said people flag something as spam that is not spam, we will all know and that person will be removed.
Colluding with the flaggers to influence site content? How exactly would that be done? They have no power to influence content.
9347723491 ago
ABSOLUTELY FUCKING NOT, are you fucking high?
10248390? ago
Copypasta, really? How about you make an argument for why this is bad so I can explain to you why your argument is a non-issue? These people will have no real power and anyone can replace them if they don't do their janitoriral job properly.
9347723491 ago
my time is valuable, unlike yours.
you never answers my question regardless...therefore you lose
captainstrange ago
Because PeaceSeeker is a faggot shill whos trying to push this idea for his other shill friends to game the community like they do on redshit.
10248888? ago
Nothing I have said gives any user any real power; I am simply a student of engineering who understands how to produce a functional system. We need people to flag (transparently) to increase efficiency, especially if this method is going to replace negative CCP restrictions. It's possible none of this will come to fruition at all. I'm just putting forward suggestions that I have been able to justify. There is nothing wrong with my suggestions as there are axiomatic checks and balances in place to prevent corruption or abuse.
captainstrange ago
As a means of moderation it will be used to attack reputations and ignore people who haven't even been found to be spamming or not. I could see it working for people who have spammed, especially if we're looking to avoid those people. But even when I was a total noob to voat it wasn't hard to recognize people like sanegoat for the shills they are.
As a suggestion goes it was a worthy effort.
10249176? ago
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Either reports are accurate and thus deemed true, or they are false and ignored.
captainstrange ago
Its because we shouldn't trash people like some shit watchlist before they have been 'convicted'. Thats the idea I'm against. How you got "he against transparency" from that is anyones guess.