Not signed in (Sign In)

Vanilla 1.1.9 is a product of Lussumo. More Information: Documentation, Community Support.

Community: "Spam Deflection"

Bottom of Page

51 to 87 of 87

  1. <
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. >
  1.  
    @Harry: but by top I could well mean the top 100, not top 14. I didn't expect that anyone would actively try to determine ABC's identity. Please don't speculate here since that would lead to no good.
  2.  
    @Harry: "because it's funny". I think that humour at the expense of someone else is pretty low humour, and precisely what we are trying to avoid.
  3.  

    I'm not speaking for the moderator collective here, but I'm personally in favor of adopting Andrew Stacey's broader notion of spam, with respect to flagging criteria. That is, if a post is very off-topic, I don't see a problem with flagging it as spam. This is in the interest of keeping the signal-to-noise ratio reasonably high. You should definitely use discretion, though.

    If I'm not mistaken, Bill Dubuque's answer to this question is the deleted post that yielded most of the current long discussion. It is related to the above paragraph, because the answer was over 95% off-topic noise. I genuinely appreciate Bill's mathematical contributions here, but I would prefer if he broadcast his artful wordplay somewhere else.

    • CommentAuthorAndy Putman
    • CommentTimeAug 5th 2010 edited
     
    +1 to Kevin's excoriation of mean-spirited humor. When I was younger (probably around Harry's age), I found such things amusing. However, I grew out of it at some point, and I suspect that Harry will as well. I think this is especially true given that (in my experience) most trolls are either very confused or bitter and unhappy. I think it is particularly unseemly to make fun of such people.

    I also vote in favor of adopting Andrew Stacey's broader notion of spam.
    • CommentAuthorMariano
    • CommentTimeAug 5th 2010
     

    Hmmm. That was pretty much the definition of spam I was using. I guess I can drop it and readopt it. :)

  6.  
    @Scott: the community should be the judge of what is "off-topic noise" or allowed humor -- not you. The moderators should have not allowed that vengeful spam flagging to stand. As it is, now some very good mathematicians who would would have otherwise joined MO refuse to do so because they think that MO folks are completely lacking a sense of humor (among other issues). When announcing MO, I explicitly added a link to that post in addition to a bunch of other strong mathematical posts to show that MO does have a sense of humor - never imagining that it might get marked as spam by some vengeful juveniles searching my old posts for the weakest one on which to enact "punishment". Imagine my embarrassment when I had to try to explain what happened after the link to that post became stale. As I said above, local actions can have global consequences. By permitting that abusive act to stand, MO has lost the respect of some mathematicians who could have made important contributions - despite my best efforts to convince them otherwise. I think it is important that the moderators realize the consequences of their (in)actions on such matters. Moderation is not something that's taught at Berkeley or anywhere else. Rather, it's learned in the school of hard knocks - after much experience. Welcome to the school of hard knocks. Hopefully you do learn from its lessons. That is absolutely essential if you wish MO to grow beyond the Secret Blogging Old Boys Network.
    • CommentAuthorMariano
    • CommentTimeAug 5th 2010
     

    Bill, terms like abusive, juvenile, vengeful, sordid affair, cohort &c simply do not help at all... :/

    To be honest, if someone picks flagging a MO post, out of the myriad of possibilities available, to be abusive, vengeful and sordid, well... can't we just giggle a little bit, marvel at his/her utter lack of imagination and almost heart-warming naïveté, and pass on to more interesting matters?

  8.  
    +1000 Mariano!

    Bill, I don't think you're winning friends or converts like this. All you're doing is showing us that you have pretty thin skin and a big chip on your shoulder.

    Does yelling insults at people ever change their minds?
  9.  
    @Mariano: Sorry, if you don't like the truth then don't listen. Abuse is abuse. I'm sad to see the moderators allow it simply because the perp has high rep. As I stressed above, the real issue is not the "spam punishment" but the character assassinations by ABC which the moderators have allowed unchecked. The sad part is that ABC doesn't realize just how much damage he has done to his career already - despite my best efforts to tell people to forget about it. Perhaps they would have if ABC hadn't resorted to his old ways and attacked me as soon as I joined MO. I never expected anyone to hold a grudge for two years. Hopefully others can learn from this experience even if ABC refuses to do so.
  10.  
    @Andy: You're completely missing the point: ABC has the chip - not I. I never said one bad thing about ABC (or anybody) before he launched his attacks here. If you knew me from other forums you would realize how laughable your "thin skin" remark is.
  11.  
    @Bill : Given the way you comport yourself here on meta, I don't think anyone is hurting their career by getting fed up with you. This whole business is getting tiresome and distracting. As I said above : will you PLEASE take this somewhere more appropriate?
  12.  
    @Andrew: The point of sharing my experiences above was to try to give some constructive feedback on what I believe to be very serious issues - issues that I've seen lead to the downfall of other math forums. But, alas, I'm having a hard time being taken seriously since ABC has already done so much damage to my rep. So I'll leave it at that. Hopefully ABC will mend his ways.
  13.  
    @Bill, I suspect I share common experiences with most MO users in this respect: I have no idea what damage to your reputation you've suffered, and if it weren't for you bringing it up all the time I wouldn't have contemplated it.

    I suspect I agree with many when I use "close as spam" to indicate we've come to the conclusion that the user is attempting to clog-up MO with information not relevant to the forum, i.e. a systematic attempt to disrupt. That could be commercial spam or simply frequent disruptive posts. I believe this is a common interpretation of spam -- my spam filter chucks away Nigerian-style scams, posts with deliberate trojan attacks, Viagra adverts, etc. But yes, perhaps we should have a discussion as to what exactly "spam" should mean. If it doesn't mean what I use it to mean, I think we'll need to revise the options for closing threads, as we'd be missing a key option. Perhaps "not a real question" would be the next best option, although sometimes these posts contain real questions, ones that are deliberately not suitable for MO.
  14.  
    @Ryan : I believe that what Bill is referring to is not voting to close threads as spam, but flagging responses as spam/offensive.
  15.  
    Yes, Andy is correct. I stress again that I was merely trying to give some examples of how bad things can get without explicitly specified policies, active moderation etc (even ABC publicly acknowledged such problems in the other forum where our dispute took place a couple years ago - which had mimimal and highly inconsistent moderation and no publicly stated policies whatsoever).

    If MO is not following the SO policies then I think it is high time that MO explicitly specifies its policies, and that the mods make it clear that abuse will not be tolerated lightly. If my rep has taken a hit for bringing these matters to light then so be it. To me that is a small price to pay to get these issues addressed now before they lead to bigger problems down the road for MO. And, at the very least, I hope that my revelations will help prevent ABC from similarly abusing a more junior member who may not be in a position to speak up against such injustices.
  16.  

    Andy is right: the SE guidelines mentioned above are for flags, which I take to mean the "flag" link next to the "close" (or "reopen") link. On the couple of occasions when I have flagged a post as spam, I would like to believe that the "spamness" was not subject to interpretation, and any ill consequence my flag could have on the spammer are wholly deserved.

    When it comes to closing questions as spam, on the other hand, a liberal interpretation of what is considered spam is fine, as "closing as spam" should have no lasting effect on the person posting the question. (Someone more knowledgeable about the inner workings of the site can correct me if I'm wrong.)

    As for deflecting "spam" to math.SE, I really don't think that is a good idea. We are not trying to undermine them and if we think of a question as "spam", then chances are they would too. It's a different story for questions deemed "too localized", for example. I think the best course of action towards questions we feel are inappropriate for MO is to close them, after offering some explanation and, if appropriate, links to other sites. But if someone insists on asking inappropriate questions, despite the community's objection, then it is fair to ask the moderators to intervene.

  17.  

    Here is a description of how the spam/offensive flags work. Closing a question, whatever the reason, has no effect on reputation.

  18.  
    @François: Indeed, I mentioned those SO threads in my first post in this thread. I had presumed that we were supposed to be following the SO policies on such matters since there is no MO policy stating otherwise. But at least one MO person thinks otherwise. Hopefully the mods will clarify the matter.
  19.  

    For the record, I think that applying SO policies here is generally a bad idea.

  20.  
    @Harry: Please keep in mind that some of the key design decisions made in the software design process may have been intimately connected to the SO policies. While it may seem like good sense to tweak the SO policies here and there, that has to be done very carefully to be sure that one understands the possible ramifications throughout the software platform. E.g in the case at hand, SO may have specified such a strict policy for spam etc. because there is no way for the platform to easily deal with the abuse that is possible with a more liberal policy. Not to mention that they probably have much more experience dealing with matters involving abuse and gaming of the system. So one shouldn't be so quick to dismiss their policies without careful analysis.
  21.  

    I would have to agree with Harry on this. In fact, the nature of the banter in some of the comments associated to the meta.stackoverflow questions which Bill Dubuque linked to in his first contribution to this discussion is precisely the sort of thing we are trying hard to keep away from MO.

  22.  
    @Jose: The links I gave are the actual links from the SO FAQ on such matters. What is the "nature of the banter" that you refer to and how does that relate to the issue at hand?
  23.  

    Bill, the SO policies do not necessarily apply to MO. This does not mean that the SO policies are bad, but that MO deals with a very different community. The MO policy standard is to keep the rules and guidelines short and simple. Since there have been too few incidents of abuse of the spam/offensive flags (one of which is you were the unfortunate victim) we have not yet felt the need for official guidelines on their use.

  24.  
    @François: I have not yet seen any official reply as to what the MO policy is, have you? I think it is rather naive to presume that we are better behaved than SO so that we needn't worry about such issues. These and related issues have ultimately led to the demise of every other math forum I've known. I spoke up only because I don't want to see MO make the same mistakes.
  25.  

    Bill: Can you honestly tell me you see nothing inappropriate (for a site such as what we are trying to build here) in, for instance, the following exchange?

    CW before I downvote, will ya? – Ladybug Killer Jul 22 at 14:20

    @LadybugKiller: sorry, i thought i had checked it – Kip Jul 22 at 14:23

    @Lady: while you are free to downvote for any reason you want (even no reason), I think downvoting because it's not CW is unfair. There are LOT of FAQ questions that are not CW including one by Jeff Atwood (that gave him 850 rep) – Kop Jul 22 at 14:23

    @Kop: We all know that Jeff is a cheater. I don't care about fairness, I downvote at will. Besides that I haven't downvoted. So stay cool. – Ladybug Killer Jul 22 at 14:26

    meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/58034/… – Kop Jul 22 at 14:28

    @Kop @Kip: stop trying to destroy my brain, will you? – Popular Demand Jul 22 at 17:45

    @Pip: Is there something left to destroy? – Ladybug Killer Jul 22 at 17:48

  26.  
    @Jose. I don't follow you. How are those remarks relevant to the matter at hand? Are you surprised that some SO users might make random comments to an SO FAQ question on policies? Is that supposed to imply that said policies are bad?
  27.  
    This has gotten way off topic. It seems that there seems to be a good solution to this. For the particular question mentioned in the first post of this thread, it seems that suggesting the rework the question and post at MSE might be the best solution seeing as it is =not an unreasonable question just not the right level (this is solution should take into account Who is posting the question). a happy marriage of AStacey and Kbuzzards solutions (as well as others i have forgotten).

    Please note that i did not mark the question as spam, and usually do not flag things as such.

    Perhaps we should close this thread unless there is still something on point to discuss. This question was specifically about redirecting questions to more appropriate places.

    @Bill: I am sorry that i used the word spam that has clearly gotten you thinking about this other issue. APutnam is right here, this is not the appropriate thread. Although, to have a consensus on how to use the flags is a good idea.
  28.  

    Bill: The existence of those remarks means that such discourse is condoned in the site. I would imagine that this is a direct consequence of the site's policies. After all, what are policies for, if not to determine the sort of interaction one wants in the forum? That being the case, and since I would not like to see such discourse in MO, I do not think that those policies are to be emulated here. That's all I meant.

    • CommentAuthorVP
    • CommentTimeAug 5th 2010
     

    A somewhat belated comment on the best target for redirecting spam:

    spam >/dev/null

  30.  

    @Jose: I don't buy that argument. There are likewise plenty of existing comments on MO that we certainly wouldn't want people to think are condoned here. It should come as no surprise that perhaps a few disgruntled SO people - perhaps those adversely affected by those very policies - might feel the need to grumble in the Q&A FAQ thread on the policy. I don't see any correlation between that and the value of said policy.

  31.  

    My interpretation of "close as spam" is that the author is more interested in asking new questions than digesting answers/response to their existing ones. When one writes a referee report for an article, pointing out a false or facile statement, and then later receives a request from another journal to referee the same article where the statement has been left unchanged, one is tempted to conclude that the author simply doesn't care about content, merely about communicating their excitement or fervid enquiry. In the particular case of the coset question, I was swayed by my reading of an earlier (non-)question raised imprecisely and cavalierly by the same user.

  32.  

    NOW WE SEE THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE SYSTEM

  33.  

    This "Secret Blogging Old Boys Network", which I have seen mentioned above, does not seem to have overly affected the penetrating responses and wisdom given by the likes of W. B. ("Bill") Johnson, nor the interesting viewpoints evangelized by Dmitri Pavlov, nor the diligent industry of Jonas Meyer, nor the astute analyses provided by users such as Greg Kuperberg or Brian Conrad or Fedja (Nazarov?).... But perhaps these facets of MO are not being counted for sampling purposes when we come to foundations for rhetoric.

  34.  

    @Yemon: I don't get the reference.

  35.  

    Harry: it's from Monty Python and Holy Grail. The obligatory youtube link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o76WQzVJ434

  36.  

    Incidentally, that came to mind when I was reading the third post, but I, for some reason, thought of the holy hand grenade scene.

  37.  

    @Yemon: Have you ever been a member of another virtual mathematical community that has died? If so then perhaps you might be more sympathetic to some of the issues that I raise. Bootstrapping the community is always the easy part because usually the founding members already share common values and strong communication channels from their prior interactions. However, as the community grows and develops much more diversity then one immediately confronts many of the issues that I raised. Whether or not the community succeeds in the long run usually depends heavily on how such issues are addressed. At least that's my experience after having been involved in many such forums over a few decades.

51 to 87 of 87

  1. <
  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. >
Back to Discussions Top of Page