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.
Howie ago
p0ssum in not an innocent. He hates all Voaters.
No one has named a single innocent yet.
I don't think they exist.
10275053? ago
I proposed that there was a potentially innocent group affected by this system, and it is conceivable that these restrictions could be applied to non-spamming users. My argument is founded on this potentiality. What some people dispute is that the restrictions should apply to only spammers, and there are arguments that can be made for that. My proposition seems to have failed in the case of dealing with non-spamming shit-disturbers, for moderator action seemed to be the only solution without downvotes being able to restrict comments.
So I'm not even sure anymore. Inaction may be wisest, but I suspect we are going to try something at least once to see if some system could be better. Of course if whatever is tried fails, I am certain Voat will revert back to what we have now.
Howie ago
In theory you can have non compliant users in your midst. Look at the Innuit in the Canadian Nunavut territory as an ideal.
In an ideal world I wish Africans and Native Americans could still be left in peace to live a life off the land the way things were for thousands of years.
The trick is how do you coexist with people who don't share your values and consider you their sworn enemy.
It seems like we are going to be disarmed, and then risk being banned if we use the downvoat button too frequently to add insult to injury.
Because we are a tiny minority on the web. It's going to go planet of the apes around here real fast most likely.
A whole bunch of moderator action is the last thing I'd like to see. Anywhere that has much of a mod presence, is not somewhere I like to spend much time in.
Guess I'll have to be ready to do battle once the new system kicks in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MB3inHJO2FM
10279891? ago
As I've said, if whatever new system kicks in is worse for the community than what we have now we will surely revert. Mod action won't come into play, as it shouldn't. Excessive downvoting will only earn a ban if it is actual brigading -- and hopefully a more accurate depiction of what that means will be released sometime soon.
Howie ago
I appreciate the work you guys are doing to make Voat less expensive.
But making Voat into some kind of administrative minefield seems gay.
"Excessive downvoting" sounds like something thats ripe for abuse.
Once you release your downvote fatwas, the enemies of Voat are going to use them against legitimate users.
Anything that is manual is mod action, and there's quite a bit of it here already.
I get that there is an admin and mod distinction from the insider's POV.
But won't regular users experience changing of rules and bans based solely on downvoats as "mod action."
I've been active on these type of forums for over 5 years, and I would say "brigading" is just some buzzword that gets thrown around.
I hope brigading doesn't become an official concept on Voat. As far as I can tell, it's not even a thing.
10361040? ago
These are just my words and interpretations / phrasings and expectations. Nothing I say is formal and it should not be treated as such. Downvote brigading is downvote brigading; that's all I meant by "excessive downvoting", and like I said, we will be given more insight into exactly what constitutes brigading, I am sure.
When you have a user going through all 19 pages of someone's comment history and downvoting every comment such that they go from 1000 CCP to 0 in a day, it is downvote brigading and users who do that will be banned from Voat (as far as I can tell, anyway; users have been banned for "Vote Manipulation" already. Perhaps only users who do this with bots are banned. I don't know for sure).
That's an extreme case but I don't think Putt looks for anything less than that level of manipulation because, with the current system, it allows a single user to debilitate other users. That's probably part of why he wants to try another system.
Howie ago
I'm lost already. This is all very depressing from a users standpoint. By definition the word brigading means people acting in concert.
I don't understand how one highly committed angry sperglord can be accused of brigading.
He's just one user.
How long would that even take in minutes.
Wouldn't that take days?
Maybe I don't want to know how the Voat sausage is made.
Thanks for taking all your time to answer, how is preview.voat going?
10361547? ago
I believe that is the traditional meaning: multiple users collaborating to do as I described. Perhaps my "lone wolf" example is simply vote manipulation. It is certainly a confusing topic and I assure you that any actions taken against non-bot accounts will come with more clarification than I have been able to supply. You should not be depressed; normal users should not be affected by vote manipulation bans, I suspect.
No, it could be done in one day if the user / bot was dedicated. Plus at present 1000 comments cannot even be accessed, only 475 or something (25 comments/page X 19 pages) but that's still a large hit to take from only one user, and I think it is against the rules but it might only be against the rules if multiple bots are used. I don't frankly know.
Pretty well. We're on the third environment (one more to go after this one) and a rather damaging bug was found, which is good (better to find it now than after the Port!). Things are proceeding nicely. Many of Voat's usability issues should be solved after the Port.