[Suggestion]Idea to Simplify Moderation and streamline threads

[Equ1N0X]

Recently, some nice things have come to MMOwned through Apoc's work, such as the nifty experience bars which beyond looking nice help people judge a user more efficiently than by rep and post count. While this can be expected of any community as it grows, MMOwned's level of post quality has gone down, the population keep's growing, and with so few moderators Any reasonable person understands that they can't get every Single post that should be removed. On top of this, it is partly the member's duy as is now to remember there is report button and inform moderators of problem threads or posts.

Due to google's searching methods and their influence on the internet, it is not a viable solution to have what many other sites do which is a "users can downrate a post, eventually it is deleted at X posts", however I have been thinking of a patch to help improve the situation. This system is designed to streamline the forums, reduce the need for human moderators [which in beign human have workload limitations] and at the same time improve overall post quality and weed out problem users.

The plan as it came into my mind consists of three stages
1) User input
2) Automatic infractions
3) Feedback on infractions/bans via auto PMs or Automatic penalties beyond infractions


rough model:

1) After publicizing the report feature more, the report screen would be modified to allow users to, apart from comments, mark down "check-boxes" for common rule violations such as "post farming", "spam", "Flaming Original poster", "Repost thread", etc etc. Posts that have been reported would have other than the normal data for Having a header, post title, post, and signature, a Tally for how many times each common reason had been flagged. upon reaching a certain threshold for a single reason, Second stage would kick in.

2) The thread or post which triggered the threshold would have a notice [possibly a graphic similar to the Totm nomination ribbons] attached to it to let others know this was a violation and why, and [will explain in a second] the user will receive a proto-infraction.

What I mean is that rather than giving infractions directly towards a ban, to avoid abuse of the system, each user will have a record of kidns which lists each violation the system has found one of their posts for], with a different point value assigned to each violation, for example:

This chart, visible to users, would help them get an idea of what they have done to receive the infraction
[AUTO] (link to thread) | Spam[ Post Farming ] | [.25]
[AUTO] (link to thread) | Flaming[unreasonable harassment of another user] | [.5]

Each new update to this chart, resembling the current infraction chart, would trigger a notification like a profile message or PM does.

Upon a user's count of violation posts adding up above a value [which on scale of quarte rinfraction half infractions for auto infracs would be near 3 in my opinion] They would recieve actual infraction point towards a ban and the User would recieve a Notification of their infraction to send a cease and desist message.

3) Rather than sorting through hundreds of reports searching for actual violations and seeing multiple reports int he same thread, moderators would only have a list of posts which have been flagged multiple times, reducing the volume of work necessary and allowing them to do more in less time.

Finally, with each PRoto-infraction-> Infraction conversion, an Auto PM / Notificationw ill be sent to the user.



Other variants off this i have pondered are:

Auto-Squelch: Silence users, preventing them from making new posts for a certain time, if many of their posts posted in a short time interval pass the threshold within a certain amount of time
Rather than Automatically filtering based on number of reports towards infractions, post tallies and triggers would be used to prioritize threads to be reviewed by a human moderator.

[SPOILER]Hide Post: Without Deleting a post, a post which has passed over the threshold will have the user's Avatar, Experience/levels and other blocks at the top, as well as the signature hidden, and the post therefore will attract less attention, making it easier to skim over it and find relevant posts that pertain to the thread in question rather than many irrelevant repeat comments, such as a 500th "Does not work" in order to more quickly find a post int hat thread which really is useful and helps someone make the program/exploit work, something invaluable in larger threads.[/SPOILER]
User Flags: Users who accumulate a certain number of actual infractions form the automatic system will have reports sent to moderators to review the decisions and possible issue more serious penalties than light infractions form the auto system :stage3:
[made in this model light to account for potential abuse]

Finally, information of users about this system would help make it more often used and more effective.


I am not perfect, and while i took some time to think about this, it is very likely someone else will have suggestions/variations. Ideas, comments concerns thank you.

[Confucius]

Interesting, I think there should also be some way to punish people who use this system on posts that don't break any rules to reduce amount of work for the mods.

[Equ1N0X]

@Confucious: You bear the logic of your namesake.
I considered the possibility that this could be abused to a cerain degree and compensated by making auto infractions worth less than what a moderator would give, but to punish abusers of the system would at its most rely on detection of large amounts of use by a single user and review of the reports they sent by a moderator, but this is why the threshold would require multiple users to report the same post, as there are not many users with multiple accounts now, any coordination to intentionally infrc a person's post would leave evidence on a level akin to rep trading.

[Confucius]

hmm, yeah it would be pretty obvious wouldn't it?

[KuRIoS]

if you dont think that the mods do a good enough job then its your fault, at the moment there are 2 outstanding reports for the entire forums. So if you believe that the there are threads that should be looked at, use the report feature.

[The Maffyx]

I don't know much about how many reports go through and what the mods have to deal with but I did see one thing I liked. I liked the idea of being able to "rate" a post such as the ones that are off topic or are redundant. So that you can easily see the helpful posts. The idea of being able to say downrate those to hide them makes sense to me, although it is abused say on youtube I think it would be good here. If that was implemented I think that if a user gets his post hidden or whatever that it doesn't count towards his post count. This will cut down on people spamming for post counts. In theory anyways. The only way I can see that being abused is where if someone doesn't like another person they could get a bunch of people to downrate their posts or something, but if that's the case the "downratee" could report that as harassment I suppose. Just my two cents on the suggestion.

[ClearFlare]

People actually use the Report feature? Sounds like nerds who got beat up in school to me. Plus, this idea fails to being with because all you have to do is get some buddies and report posts with the same reasons.

The mods do fine as it is. Quit bitching.

[The Maffyx]

People actually use the Report feature? Sounds like nerds who got beat up in school to me. Plus, this idea fails to being with because all you have to do is get some buddies and report posts with the same reasons.

The mods do fine as it is. Quit bitching.

Yea people do, how else would the mods know what threads have stuff that need to be taken care of in them?

[Apoc]

I think what would work better; is a 'rank per post' type thing.

Users can 'downrank' a post, and eventually at some point it will be hidden. (Upranking a post won't have any effect on the post)

Obviously this can be abused, but I think it would be a good feature.

As Kur said though; we current have (5 now) only a few reports for the entire site open. We handle reports quickly as they come in. If the members of the site want it to be clean, they can help us by reporting the post. We usually take care of the reports within 3 hours at the most.

I'll look into the post rating system though.

[ClearFlare]

Yea people do, how else would the mods know what threads have stuff that need to be taken care of in them?

I feel like im in elementary school all over again.

[Kaido Marahu]

Pardon me if I'm Necroing this post.
In order for either systems (both suggested and current) to work at all, the user base needs to contribute more effectively, its simple really.. Otherwise the Mods don't really know where the trouble areas are fast enough.

whereas it is a good idea, it gets a little complicated for a replacement of an easier, and equally as affective system.