In 4chan-ish speak (or whatever)
Be me
Working. Look at clock, damn gotta run
Get up, about to leave, forgot I have to run vote manipulation bans
It's fine, they are ready to run, won't take long
Get first batch setup, double check it, looks good, execute the code
Get second batch setup, double check it, wait, a parameter is off
Think to myself, hmmmm, what was that parameter set to in the first batch?
Go look at the first batch again, parameter is wrong, interesting.
I wonder what that did.
Go look, yeah, banned a bunch of people I shouldn't have.
I'm going to be so late now.
No code to unban people, have to write it real quick.
15 minutes later, ready to go, execute code, great, everyone was unbanned. Feel like superman.
Finish rest of bans
Leave 45 minutes after I should have
Sometime later, check Voat on phone, make sure it's not down (you know, we have a thing with that).
Have 20 triilion unread messages. Oh no. What now.
Voat is going full rage goat about bans.
Try to answer as many messages as possible. It's a warzone. Usually is after every round though, so expected
Check Voat again later, saw ping in a random submission
It said a long time goat was banned. That's weird.
Started thinking how did that goat get banned?
Why would they be farming? They can't be downvoting can they?
Recall that Dan guy got banned on Reddit for up farming. Definitely possible.
Maybe power users are into that kind of thing?
Think to myself, Voat is weird.
Sometime later, still curious, log on computer, bring up ban data
Wait a second, that goat was in batch 1
I'll fix that. Fixed.
Look over it once again, find two more
Fix them.
Check a few users who've messaged. They still got served the ban hammer. Lol a little
Think we are good now.
Still thinking about what the goats said in the warzone thread
One user said we should have an appeal process
Process we use now is old as hell
Coded to kill farms with no mercy
Written for survival during the sanegoat days
That was years ago. Reminisce what is was like for a minute. Damn I'm getting old.
Yeah, maybe we should update this
So, that was how the bans went down from my side. Thought it was entertaining enough to break the ice for what follows:
I can't allow manipulation, in any way. If the votes aren't true, I can't put my name on it. Manipulation of votes was why I left Reddit in the first place. I take it seriously. I also need to define what we look for without giving away our playbook (I have to think about this a bit).
I'll double check vote manipulation bans, that is totally reasonable. I hate banning people for manipulation, so if a ban wasn't right, I'll fix it.
Conclusion:
We are going to have to add an appeal process for vote manipulation.
You guys have better ideas anyways, so how should we do this? What should the process be?
Let's just design it from scratch. And while we are at it… should subverse bans be appealable? Do we need to write new code for this?
Suppose we can just use PMs though.
Let's make it better.
Someone told me Voat loves stickies.
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WORF_MOTORBOATS_TROI ago
People were asking for a clear definition of what qualifies as vote manipulation because they didn't even know what they might have done that could have been interpreted that way. Imagine getting pulled over for driving 35 on a road without speed limit signs
I think some clarification about that would go a long way. It's unnerving thinking you were following the rules and then getting a ban or a warning that doesn't tell you what you were doing wrong.
european ago
Don't upvote thw same thing twice.
Ina_Pickle ago
My home has 3 Voat users and only 1 IP address. How the heck am I supposed to know hoe my husband and teen are voting on their accounts?
Octocopter ago
I believe Putt has stated that IP is not used in tracking brigading, it is pattern recognition stuff, so at least you should be fine on the IP part. As for the rest good point.
Planetoftheclown ago
"Pattern recognition stuff", you mean like fairy tales and unicorn magic? I really don't have a horse in this game other than to know that a lot of people were banned in a very Redditesque fashion.
Octocopter ago
Like most sane people I am in the boat of "can we get answers" or "what constitutes manipulation and how can you tell". From what I have noticed from some interactions the most vitriolic about the situation are those that feel threatened about their manipulation. However to be fair there are people who love this site and are mildly lashing out because they don't want it degrading.