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GOTD FORUM - MODERATION ISSUES

(18 posts) (8 voices)

Started 3 months ago by HappyPerson
Latest reply from Archangel

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HappyPerson

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Hello,

I posted two comments for today's GiveAway, Watwermark Express. Unfortunately, only one of my comments (the later one) was posted and, by itself and without the background context of my first comment, it looks ridiculous and meaningless.

It is my (as well as others GOTD users') expectations, I'm sure, that the GOTD Moderators should read our comments carefully and be perceptive enough to post all comments submitted by its users, so as not to leave important information off of the GOTD comment/forum site. It is GOTD's responsibility and obligation to make sure that it posts all users' comments in a way that makes sense and in a way that provides complete information, and not just to post users' comments in a meaningless and nonsensical fashion, for this lessens GOTD's professional credibility with respect to moderating these forums.

Thank you for your time,
Happy Person

Posted 3 months ago #
GMMan

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First of all, welcome to the forums, HappyPerson. We hope you will find valuable information here.

Regarding the moderation of comments on the Giveaway page, you must know that the mods are quite busy and can't sit in front of the computer moderating comments all day. Also there are not very many mods (a handful of them, about 7, I'm guessing), so some comments can slip. Mods look for interesting info and non-repeated posts to approve (not saying that your posts were uninteresting or repeated), so some less interesting ones would get the slip. Also, there may be the spam filter, if it thinks that your comment is spam (it happens).

Think of GAOTD's comment moderators not as just one group. They are actually in separate locations, and their approval criteria differs from each other. Also, the mods are not "obligated" to approve all comments. They will filter out some and might ignore others simply for the lack of time to read through all of the posts.

Regarding the meaningless and nonsensical fashion, comments are listed according to time of posting, so intermediate messages may appear in between existing comments. The comments are not grouped according to author.

To comment moderators: please expand on the comment system, adding or correcting information I have written here (because I'm not personally a mod, but from gathered info from the forums, this is what I can piece together).

P. S. Don't write in ALL CAPS.

Posted 3 months ago #
Whiterabbit-uk

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Actually, the giveaway comments page is only moderated by a few people, BuBBy plus one other I believe.

The moderators that you see on the forums do not moderate the comments page (apart from BuBBy).

We had the same problem with the game giveaway comments page a while back where moderation was only happening a couple of times a day, so I volunteered to moderate those comments but do not do the applications forums because I'm not qualified enough to moderate the comments as I don't know enough about most of the applications given away.

WR

Posted 3 months ago #
watcher13

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That's part of the problem, Happy. Just from my point of view, GOTD needs more moderators and probably needs to be more actively involved, itself. There's little in the way of official, across the board standards. The GOTD team, to me, just seems to let a handful of dedicated and conscientious volunteer moderators bear the brunt of this on their back. They get the blame because, like Atlas, they're asked to hold the world on their shoulders. Occassionally, they have to slump a little and the world shakes.

On the other hand, GOTD does one thing to help with moderation and that's more likely the source of your problem. They subscribe to a pay spam filter, one with a complex algorithm and a pretty good reputation. But no spam filter is perfect, and because it's propiatary, the company won't say exactly what it hits on. The only thing we have any clue on is that too many links will cause a post to get filtered out. We don't even know how many. 3 or 4 is usually safe, especially if spaced out. And that's all we know. In fact, our conscientious moderators often rescue legitimate posts from the spam filter. They can even provide feedback to the company on bad filtering, similar to identifying false hits to an anti-virus provider, but few of the overworked moderators have much time for that.

So, it's quite possible you just got caught by the spam filter. Why? Often, we just can't say.

Posted 3 months ago #
GMMan

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Actually, watcher, I think they use Akispam, it's standard on Wordpress and is free. I also think the PHP files are open (editable, not open source), but I'm not certain.

Posted 3 months ago #
watcher13

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Member

Pretty much, GM, although they've changed the name to Akismet. As to whether they pay for it, welllllllll.... It's not free for commercial use. I assumed that they did. To quote a cultural icon, Sgt. Schulz, "I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know NOTHING!" :)

But where I was going with that was that it's not a homemade spam filter where GOTD sets the parameters, but a service - like a free anti-virus - where the provider sets the parameters. Akismet submits everything to it's web service, which uses a complex algorithm which is not shared with the users. So, it's all a matter of trust. It may support some direct editing, but the user doesn't have complete control.

http://akismet.com/faq/

Posted 3 months ago #
Ashraf

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Akismet is an excellent anti-spam service. It is usually very accurate.

Posted 3 months ago #
notblocklox

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Moderator

Hi and welcome HappyPerson.

Sometimes it is helpful to use the "search" tool.
There are already some threads with a similar question in the forums, and the answers will not be different today.

Here are only 2 examples:

moderators are relatively normal people
I read every comment

Let me point it out again, the admins and moderators are volunteers! They are not 24/7 sitting in front of a giant bin filling it with our comments. Well that does not answer the question, why there are only a few moderators - apparently too few.

graylox

Posted 3 months ago #
watcher13

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Member

The point of confusion Lakjin (Ashraf) is that nobody can be clear about what will and won't pass the filter. Bubby has been quite informative of what his standards are, but other than the general knowledge that too many links get filtered out, the rest is guess work. I'll have to defer to Bubby about that. He said it was probably the best, but I gathered he felt it was slightly unpredictable. I know he's been nice enough to occassionally rescue a comment from the spam bin.

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/forums/topic/5742#post-60197

Also, it's possible Askimet has problem days of it's own. I don't any service works perfect every day.

Posted 3 months ago #
Ashraf

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Oh. Good point watcher. From my experience, anything more than 4 links is marked as spam (hence why I don't list more than 1 or 2 free alternatives now).

Posted 3 months ago #
Archangel

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Happy came and explained why his/her comment that was posted wouldn't make sense to people reading the comment section. Is it a problem,,,,,,,,,yes and everyone knows it. Will it get "Fixed"? Probably not.

Archangel

Posted 3 months ago #
HappyPerson

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Member

Hi all, thank you very much for everyone's valued feedback. I think I now have a much better understanding of how the GOTD moderation process operates.

In my case, though, I only had three links in my first message, so according to the Spam Filter criteria, it should not have been blocked or deleted. In fact, my first comment had the famous "awaiting moderation" message displaying below it. That's why I was curious as to why the second comment (and not the first) was posted.

That's why I believe that it may have been a case where the GOTD moderator may have thought that my two comments were unrelated (even though I clearly mentioned my first comment in my second comment, which was posted) or that the order of the postings was somehow not important.

In summary, I realize and very much appreciate that the GOTD moderators are only a handful of hardworking, dedicated people, and that more folks are needed to help out with this endeavor. I genuinely do appreciate and value everyone's contributions, and so I would like to give a heartfelt thanks to everyone at GOTD.

I simply have one simple request - When the moderators do read our comments (assuming that the Spam Filter does not block our feedback) please post our comments in the correct order (i.e., the first one 1st and the second one 2nd, etc.), especially if our multiple posts are related to one another. That way, it will benefit everyone.

Again, many thanks to all for your valuable hard work and efforts on our behalf.

By the way, if I am interested in volunteering to help out with the weekend (i.e. Saturday and Sunday) GOTD Software Comments Forum, whom should I contact? Thank U.

Sincerely,
Happy Person

Posted 3 months ago #
Archangel

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Thanks for creating this thread but in all fairness, yours is not the first thats why I posted what I did. I'm not trying to be negative but some of us posted comments with no links at all and they were rejected (in the past) so please don't take it personal. If only 2 people are going thru the comments section (that is the ones that pass whatever automated filter) then I agree that somebody does need some help. Then you run into the problem of finding someone that will view them objectively! See what I mean?

Posted 3 months ago #
watcher13

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I think we need to be tolerant of newbies here. They would not normally draw any conclusions on what has been dealt with here before. Sure, searching for the topics is an excellent idea. But it might just not occur to someone new. That's why they call them newbies. :) (No offense happy. I just mean new to our little corner of the world, not new to computing.)

That's why I often complain about the lack of information about how things work around here. We can put a newbies objections to rest fairly quickly, IF we know what to tell them. Some of the vets are well intentioned, but think that everyone else knows what they know. Yet, sometimes, the commnunity can't even agree on the particulars. I have no idea why GOTD is surrounded by so much guesswork and speculation.

Posted 3 months ago #
Archangel

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You took my last post wrong watcher13. What I was trying to get across was to address Happyperson and let him/her know that it wasn't personal towards them and that even you and I had problems with our comments coming through too (a while back). It had absolutely nothing about being new or not using the search function.

I re read my post and see that it may be taken the way you did little buddy but that wasn't my meaning thats why I wanted you and the others to know what I meant. In other words "I think we need to be tolerant of newbies here" doesn't apply. Thanks for your post though watcher13 because others may have thought the same way.

Posted 3 months ago #
watcher13

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Well, I meant what I said as a general statement, anyway. It's consistent with many of the things I've said here before, and Happy even said that he had a better understanding of how the system works now that we provided some explanations. That's generally how I think we should handle such posts, and I've said so before.

BTW, at 6' 4", 265 I'm not sure how much I qualify as a "little buddy". :)

Posted 3 months ago #
RosnSC

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"BTW, at 6' 4", 265 I'm not sure how much I qualify as a "little buddy". :)"

At that size, nope..."little buddy" doesn't cut it...lol. In some areas, though, you might be dubbed as 'Tiny'...(chuckle).

Sue

Posted 3 months ago #
Archangel

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Wow that is big (compared to 5' 4" and 150 lbs) Again that is a friendly term I call people I like or qualify. This is getting off top and funny so I'll leave it alone ROTFL.

Posted 3 months ago #

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