I cleaned up the sub as much as I'm going to. Which wasn't much. Only the test post.
I decided to leave Konks post, because it does record some mod history. So maybe it is best left on the record.
I also decided to leave the ban appeals one. It may not be used or needed, but it does point out that nobody has ever even tried to appeal one.
I also changed the sidebar to make it clearer for a user what this place is.
Since it is the end of the month, we can just continue using this post until November, then make a new one with year/month in the title.
If we decide to wait for them to ask. We should reflect that in the guidelines. I feel like it would be a bit of a change from how we have been doing things. So a little mention that they can message the mods if they post some OC. I'm honestly not sure how to make it a short note while making it clear they don't need to ask every single time. Just until they get an OC flair. Because then we know they are OC posters.
If we decide on a trial period. We should come up with a minimum amount of posts/time passed for the OC flair to be awarded.
I've always found OC flair was very much something we had to try to checkout and keep an eye on ourselves. I know there have been a few that I tag with "oc?". Then I know to keep checking them a little closer to make sure its actually OC content.
I'm not sure it needs to be that formal. Just wait until they have at least one or two comments so we know it is a real person and not a bot or spammer.
Making guidelines would just bog it down, and very few of them ever message us anyway.
As long as we can see any comments, or if no comments at least a few posts and a few days old.
Otherwise, just keep doing as we have been.
It is only hours old accounts with no comments that I am concerned about.
I hear that a lot through-out Voat. That they get upset when someone posts content, but has little to no comments. There are a lot of times that I post content, and people are saying things in response to it, but I have nothing to add. I don't reply. I'm just not sure why commenting has so much weight to submitting content.
But I certainly get what your saying with a brand new account ect. I personally don't really care if they never comment though.
I don't really care if they comment or not. But when they do it shows they are real. If they don't, it is harder to tell. If they never comment but are more than a day old, with more than one post, they should be fine. But no comments and brand new account is often marketing, or not really the creator.
I saw this post flair. But I am not sure it is a good idea for us to give OC flair to hours old accounts.
I think we should wait until they have made some comments, or been around for a bit. Othrwise we may mistakenly give OC flair to marketers, or encourage spammers and marketing guys to try and impersonate OC.
I didn't flair it. But it does look like OC content. 2 dudes in front of a green screen. Do you have concerns about this one in particular? Or do you feel there needs to be a few posts and kind of a "trial" period before people get the OC flair as a general rule?
Oh I see what your saying. So its just a little better organized when your looking back at the posts. So there would be November 2016, December 2016, January 2017 ect. We post all of our mod stuff in the appropriate month. Thats actually a pretty good idea. I like that.
I was confused again.
When THC was talking about monthly posts, I thought he ment posts for users to leave feedback. Which would result in a lot of empty posts.
But after reading this comment it seems like the posts would be for us to talk in.
At first I thought that would be unnecessary, since we can sort this post by age. But it would be handy when trying to go back and see old conversations.
So that does sound like a good idea. If I'm understanding now.
But, I don't think we should premake them. It would put them out of chronological order with any user posts or other posts. I think it might be better for a user to be able to sort posts by date and have everything line up in the order that it happened.
You've confused me a bit. At the start you said we should keep 'it'. Then at the end you say you don't mind if I clean it up.
Which should I keep? I planned to keep anything discussion or user related. Just remove stuff that doesn't matter for anything. I don't think we would be accused of anything since the logs will show what is gone.
I think having biweekly or monthly posts would be too often and just lead to a lot of empty posts that would be more clutter hiding the more relevant posts. It's hard enough to get people talking when there is an issue to discuss.
Maybe do it every six months. Sooner if something comes up in between.
If you guys don't object, then later I am going to clean up the modtalk sub a bit by removing some of the posts.
That way it will only contain relevant information, and will make more sense to any users that come here.
I would leave all community discussion posts, and I will not remove the user post. But the test post, Konks post, and stuff like that just seems like unnecessary clutter.
I noticed the css was displaying the logo twice. Some of the recent Voat updates must have changed things.
I fixed that, but if you notice anywhere else that the css is misbehaving, let me know.
What browser are you using? I've checked with firefox and chrome and it appears for me.
Can you send me a screenshot so I can get a better look at what is happening?
How do we feel about this guy?
At first I thought it was a crappy review channel, and the comments on the account history look like a real user, so I ignored it. But I watched a couple of the vids, and it looks more like commercials disguised as reviews. All very positive, and providing links below on where to buy, with referral links
I am inclined to call it advertising, and ask the account to stop.
What do you guys think?
(From my phone). I see where your coming from, but the format seems very similar to all the other Top 3, 5, 10 tech videos I've seen. The links help when your shopping. Then your not trying to search for the stuff. I'm on my phone, so can't research this very well. Are the links affiliate links? Does he profit off people buying the items through his links? Not sure I see him doing anything wrong at this point.
That's how I saw it at first also. The format is an acceptable one.
But this seems to just be mimicking that. I have not found any negative, or neutral reviews. The bit.ly links to amazon pages are used for ad tracking. I think this guy is getting paid for referrals.
That seems a lot like shill-marketing to me.
Looking closer at the account. It was a normal user, with a decent posting history, up to about 3 months ago. then nothing for a couple weeks, and all product advertisments since then.
Did this guy sell his account to clever spammers?
Or is my bong making me paranoid?
I'm home now. So I can say this a bit better. These kind of videos never have negative reviews to them. Some channels simply like to specialize on the items you should buy. They don't show the ones not to buy. I'm not really seeing any issue with the videos. It also seems to cover an array of brands. So it doesnt seem like its pushing one thing in particular. Its close to advertisement, but I don't think I would call it that. I certainly use these videos to get a quick idea on whats popular with an item I haven't bought in a while. Then I go and find reviews on thoughs products. I'll certainly flag him, and keep a closer eye on it. But for now, I'm more in the camp of leaving it alone.
Oh right, and I totally forgot to let ya'll know about this as well. I had deleted the video. Provided the reason in the deletion and this user said he got no notification. I saw that CANCEL_CAT_FACTS had responded quickly and recently. So I asked for help to test this out. He made a test post, I deleted it. Notification was received. Actually, he responded to the notification he got, and it went to subverse mail.
It seems to be working. But, I figure we can document any complaints or issues with the system. Just in case there is an actual bug with the system.
Ya, everything got hectic at home. I'll try to let them know tomorrow, when I can actually word things properly. Because now I'm drunk. And so I'm done modding for the night. :D
Oh good, reading this stuff over, I didn't embarrass myself. Yay. (Always risky trying to do stuff when drunk) Anyways, in the announcement they made, they mentioned that they knew about this. Sounds like they plan to add the notifications when they can.
In this case the video is half commercial for the camera, and half commercial for the channel. So I think spam.
But not all give-aways are necessarily spam.
Responding to latest spam report with:
This does not appear to be spam. Please do not misuse the button.
Definition from sidebar: Spam being defined as irrelevant posts, chronic reposting, or advertising is not allowed in any capacity.
The 'Report Spam' button is for spam only. Excessive reposting. Content that does not meet the guidelines of the sub, ect. The submissions you reported are not considered spam. Further abuse of the 'Report Spam' button can lead to a ban.
With the feature implemented that allows us to provide a reason for deleting a submission, do we still feel it necessary to make a comment on a video before deletion? It seems like a redundant practice now.
I'm going to alter the sidebar a bit if you guys agree.
I will remove the section 'Popular Sites' And put it at the bottom but with more sites listed. There were not many alternatives to youtube when that was done. But there are some new ones now. It also removes it from the centre of the guidelines.
If they don't like your answer, and choose to ask the same question, only to not like the answer. I would have done the same thing. When I worked a phone job, I did the same thing. I have no idea what else your suppose to do. Only so many ways you can say the answer. This is on them. Not you.
@InnocentBystander said that they banned the user. When I talked to Atko about it sitting in deleted submissions, he didn't seem worried about that. But suggested I make a report with authorities. So I did.
Do we need to take any further action on the child porn post I deleted? With a post like that, does it need to be removed from the deleted submissions as well? Protect the site?
Ya, but in an effort to avoid the image of "lone-wolf modding", I like to make attempts at consensus. I've settled into the role now. But I also like to keep checking in to ensure I'm staying on the right course. We do well helping to keep ourselves working how the community expects us to. We a good team me thinks. :)
I've sent a message to waresha about the excess submissions from the same channel. I did not delete any of the content. But the warning has been sent. If it continues we will discuss further action.
Posting 4 similar videos from the same YouTube channel in a 2 hour period is considered spam. It suggests that you are trying to get traffic specifically to that YouTube channel. Its also filling up 'new' with very similar videos. Continuing to spam can lead to a ban from /v/videos.
You can spread the submissions out over a few days. Also submitting content from a different channel, or different topic would help.
Shortly after this there was another submission to the same YouTube channel 'The App Valley'. So it appears that there are multiple accounts looking to spam that channel. Do we start deleting them on site then?
7 'The App Valley' videos in the past 5 hours. Also, seems they are trying to change the names to make them less identifiable. My personal opinion is that its all spam now. I vote it gets nuked.
I'm heading out and won't have access for a little bit. When we hear from @THC , ya'll can feel free to take action on the posts. If not (depending on what THC thinks) I will clean it up when I get back.
The spam report button is for spam only. It is not for comments you disagree with. Abuse of the spam report button will lead to a ban. It is not the mods job to step in if your feelings get hurt.
Its been a long time since we've had a feedback post.
There are no current issues or problems that I am aware of, but a general feedback post could reassure that and help us stay open and in touch with the community.
Never hurts. Even if it seems calm and quiet, gives people an opportunity to let us know if there is a problem. It does seem over-due now that I think about it.
What are your thoughts on the codec.tv guys?
I think they are crossing into spam. It is all sock-puppet accounts, and they have been asked a few times to use direct links.
A final warning and then removals unless they directly link to youtube?.
Recent complaint about hurt feelings. I responded:
The user is not breaking any rules. It is not our job to protect anyones feelings. Its our job to keep /v/videos clean. Remove spam. Remove non-video content. But it is not, and will never be, our job moderate comments to ensure a safe place for people. Ignore comments you don't like. Downvoat them if you want.
No action will be taken against this user.
The tone might have had a bit more of an edge then I should have. But I'm getting rather annoyed by peoples inability to simply ignore words on the fucking internet. Sticks and stones...
User sweethoney44 is tagged as having been warned about reposting. He has reposted again today. Do we do another warning? Do we do a warning saying next time is a 1 month ban. Or do we do the 1 month ban? How do we want to proceed? I haven't touched the repost yet. (Come to think of it, I'll go tag it now). But I'll leave it up until we decide what action we should be taking.
I was searching all over for more info on why he had that tag. Couldn't find it. So I will warn him. Update the tag to reflect this is a final warning before action will be taken.
In regards to the recent spam reports we got. I responded with:
The report spam button is for spam only. Not to be used on comments you disagree with. Abuse of the report spam button can lead to a ban. Only use the "Report Spam" button for spam.
3 posts in the same comment tree within the span of 2 mins by an account that was 12 mins old. Seemed like spam to me, Didn't even pay attention to the message content.
I responded:
I can certainly see where your coming from. I don't know why the user chose to do it in 3 different posts. But in an effort to avoid censorship we try to focus on repetitive duplicate posts. Each post was unique. Had it gone much further, it would certainly warrant a warning. In situations where the posts are unique, it takes a bit more for us to consider it spam.
In regards to the recent message we received I responded with:
I appreciate the heads up. We generally try to keep a close eye on reposters. But that would be in the scope of /v/videos. So in the scope of /v/videos there has not been overtly blatant reposting. Though I show that the user has been warned about reposting in /v/videos before. Since that time, we have not run into issues with it. I will upgrade my own tag on the account to keep a closer eye on it.
So I have this user tagged as a potential spammer. I honestly forget who gave us the heads up, but someone did when the user started posting in /v/videos. I said I would keep an eye on it. They have never posted very good content, but it seems that they have now gone through the entire catalog of their videos and are starting to repost. I gave a warning and deleted the 2 most recent reposts. But further reposts from this user and I will be giving them the "final" warning before a 1 month ban.
These goodpranks.net posts are crossing the line into spam I think.
The site is an aggregator that just embeds content from elsewhere. The accounts are throw-aways/sock-puppets.
I think we should give them a final warning to use direct links, then begin removing any links to that site.
Your opinions?
I've only seen 2 posted in v/videos. We have told both that direct links are preferred and tagged the links. I think we should give the tags/warnings a bit more time, to see if they have an effect. Personally I think its a bit too early to give an ultimatum.
I just sent this message in response to the spam report.
I don't really consider that spam. I can see why you reported it, but looking at that users account shows they are a genuine user that has never advertised in past. I think they were just intending to give advice so I'm inclined to let it slide.
I thought it was kinda a joke. But then it was just a link to a site that was actually directly related to the video. I'm so sorry InnocentBystander... I dun fucked that up for ya.
This is not direct to YouTube. But how do we feel about the site that was used? Works fine on my phone. Seems to be pretty basic and just have the video. I haven't tagged it yet. Its the first time I"ve seen this site used.
The spam report button is for spam only. You do not use it for comments you disagree with. Further abuse of the spam report button can lead to a temporary ban.
naviathan has been warned. I have made it clear that further abuse of the spam report will be a temporary ban.
What are your opinions on the doxxing report?
It dies not seem to be doxxing to me. It does not connect any online identitys. And the guy in the video is public about what he does. Even made himself a tee-shirt with his face and name on it.
I don't think this meets the definition of doxxing.
The report spam button is only for spam. It is not for comments you disagree with. Do not misuse the spam report please.
He responded with
He was threatening physical violence on a Voat user. I guess that's perfectly OK for you but where I come from it's illegal. Yeah I do disagree with a user threatening other users.
I'm leaving it at that. But figured I would let you guys know as well. Just in-case it develops further.
I was going to mention this a bit later, but events have transpired. I'll be going on vacation in a week, for a little over a week. But, my modding vacation will be starting today apparently. My SSD just died. So I can no longer boot my PC.
When I get back from vacation, I should have the new SSD, and be up and running. Unfortunately, I won't be doing much modding till then. Because it's a god damn nightmare trying to do that on my phone.
I apologize. Seems like things are pretty active right now, and I was hoping I could help settle it down before my vacation.
One of you flaired this post, but I have gone and removed it. It is a discussion post not a video. Unless a discussion post slips past unnoticed and has a significant amount of voats/comments I believe we should be removing them.
That is what I have always been doing, so if either of you feel differently let me know. /v/videos will be used as a soapbox for discussions by a few if we don't. It also prevents people from being able to watch videos from the main page, and prevents VTV from picking them up.
Totally wasn't since it was first offence. (And we all know I've fucked up there before. :P) But the obvious dead stream spam makes sense to ban. Specially since they are clearly dummy accounts. If I see it again, I'll ban the dummy account too.
Oops. Fucked up and didn't comment on this deletion. Just finished deleting the other one, copy/paste my comment for this one. It didnt go through, out of habit I deleted the damn thing anyways. /sigh
Someone keeps posting dead links to ustream. I hope it stops, because it appears to be dummy accounts doing it. So it could be busy for a while.
Thats why I'm leaning towards a perma-ban. I think this is the first post since being un-banned and its an in-direct link. Here is the messages I sent him when lifting the ban.
1 Month /v/videos ban is over
Your one month /v/videos ban is over. Any further in-direct links will result in a permanent ban.
Welcome back.
fluxusp was banned for a month for repeated in-direct links. When I removed the ban I advised that any further in-direct links would result in a permanent ban. He has posted this. How do we feel about this?
When we lifted your one month ban, we told you that continuing to post in-direct links would lead to a permanent ban. One of the first posts that you submitted after your ban was lifted was another in-direct link. For that reason, you have received the permanent ban from /v/videos.
ECW has posted the same video 3 times in the past 3 days. He had already received a month ban for this action. Was warned that he would get a permanent ban if it continued. I just wanted to check in with you to make sure we are all on board with this action.
I understand why you label him a spammer. But he has not actually broken any of our rules.
I'll keep an eye on him, but we'll let the voats handle it for now. If he begins flooding the sub, or breaks any rules we'll do something then.
I've now warned dronelover twice about direct links. His response to my first warning leads me to believe he will just be ignoring me. If he gets a 3rd warning, I will then begin removing his indirect posts.
Just a head-up. I removed the falling snow from the css, since it is not winter any more. I also added a bug-fix to the css that had been causing some minor display issues.
That would be about half the posts right now depending on how you define politics. I kinda want to avoid using it until after the election.
If we did that, we should come up with a simple metric for what qualifies.
Or ditch "Trailer" and split news/politics. It always seems to be obvious when its a trailer. If its not very obvious, it tends to get a nebulous flair anyways.
I don't know about you guys, but I have given up on the new/politics flair. There's too much, and it gets confusing on what should be flaired.
Maybe we should edit it to just 'News' and use it for news brodcasts and news sites that host the video with an article?
I gave a warning to /u/phalynxphrine . It was just a couple minutes after posting the video that it had it's 2 upvoats. It also had 2 comments. 1 from phalynxphrine and 1 from menriel. Both accounts are the same age. It was an identical situation to the same submission posted in /v/music by phalynxphrine.
Is /u/menriel your account as well? It commented on both your submissions. The one you did in /v/videos and the one in /v/music. Using multiple accounts to up voat your content is voat manipulation. It is not allowed.
I did not see anything that needed a NSFW flair in that video. I did give it a Compilation flair though. We use NSFW for nudity. NSFL for when someone dies.
Thank you for the heads up though. Appreciate the submission!
It would be nice if when we marked it as read it showed that to the others that also got it. Then we would know if it has been handled.
But I guess it doesn't really hurt anything if they sometimes get multiple responses.
It shows we're paying attention anyway.
Hard to say. It's low on the ad scale since they are not asking for money and not directly advertising. The video itself is just music.
He is trying to promote the site in the comments and youtube description though. But since it is not a commercial site, I think it is closer to self-promotion than advertising.
I think in this case we should leave it since it got downvoted and it doesn't directly break the rules. Hopefully the downvoats will show him it is not wanted here.
But I am not sure of that opinion. Maybe @THC will see things clearer.
I almost agree. But I think we should warn him about it first.
Send him a pm saying that he has been doing it too much and next time will result in the temp ban.
Then if he still does, go ahead with it. I just don't think the ban should come as a surprise to him.
We have had to warn you constantly about posting direct links. You continue to ignore these warnings.
If you post another indirect link, you will get a 1 month ban.
Please post the direct links. Thank you.
Sent the warning. So next indirect link he posts will get him a month ban.
If I tally up my warnings to him, I would not be surprised to be over 10. But I will give him his last warning in a PM right now. Then his next Indirect Post will not be a surprise.
Sounds good. I know he has been warned about posting indirectly, but he has never been told that it may result in a ban. So I wanted that to be clear before hand.
Nobody should be surprised by how we respond.
Because it had upvoats and comments. It was also a real user as opposed to spammer.
I almost removed it, probably should have, but letting one slide that was hours old when I found it is not the end of the world.
I have no problem doing it. Just want to make sure I'm doing it right. Just going to make sure @InnocentBystander is okay with a month ban, then I'll move ahead with it. I'll put it in my calendar.
I don't normally care about spammers, but this guy does not seem to be a professional, so I was more hesitant.
I like the idea of the 30 day ban for him.
For other spammers we just permaban. But they are generally malicious users with sockpuppets.
This guy is different, and I am not sure what to make of him.
ECW does not care about the warnings. Yesterday, I had to delete that one video he reposts constantly, telling him to stop posting the video. I wake up today to find he just posted it again. How long do we play this game before we take further action? I feel like he has had plenty of warnings. He is ignoring them all.
Little bit of an update on this and also a new potential issue.
ECW mailed me to clarify his ban was just for /v/videos and then his last response:
Okay I apologize and understand.
So, hoping that works out.
New issue. fluxusp seems to have a similar issue. We have had to warn him so many times about direct links. I've had him tagged for a while. The warning was specific to posting rt.com links. He had gone on a spree a while back and I told him further posts to rt.com will be deleted. But he just posts indirect links to everything. He is told that direct links are preferred alot. Not sure its as big an issue as the reposting. But not entirely sure how we would want to handle it. If at all.
I saw it yesterday. I think we both deleted it at the same time.
I don't like the idea of banning a real user, but it may have come to that. I am thinking a ban, with a PM that says if he responds, and agrees not to do it again we will lift the ban.
Maybe wait to see what @THC thinks. He may have another idea, or confirm this one. I don't think we need to move quick in this case.
This may be the first non-puppet account we've had to ban.
So I tried to watch this video, but it keeps telling me I need a subscription to view it. Just wondering if this is happening to you as well. Wasn't sure if it was porn or not, so couldn't figure that out.
Basically trying to figure out if it just needs NSFW, indirect/dead, or to be removed.
Edit... jesus, lets add the link eh? That might help. I'm so tired this morning. lol.
It is definitely an indirect link at the least. I had to click twice before it got to the video, which I could not watch without an account.
I'm thinking this may be classified as spam/advertising since it links to a paid service. Though that's a bit grey.
It is an established user who has not done this before though, so maybe just a warning, not a removal this time.
It's a hard call. because it is not a watchable video, but is a genuine user.
At the lest, ask him not to link to that site again, and flair it indirect.
So I asked /u/khalbal124 about some of the videos hes been posting to the YouTube channel Definite Solutions. He says hes making them, so I flaired his videos as Original Content. But hes posting alot of these videos. I'm not sure of how much OC we are willing to accept before we start to consider it kind of spammy. I was going to send him a message, asking him to space them out a bit more. I just wanted to talk to you guys about it before I did anything though. As I'm not confident in our position on this. I really don't want him to take it the wrong way and not post anything anymore. I love that we get a bunch of Original Content coming here now.
Yes, its my channel, and yes you are right as i am sharing much post here from my channel, from now on i will be very careful about this.
Thanks for tagging me here so that i realized my mistake @violentlight
Also, have a look at the comments here. I gave a warning to the church nuts a while back, he just responded with this. Google translated :
God's testimony again is my responsibility , as to them like it or not , that is their problem , the incarnation of the Lord Jesus came , many people do not like him, but as the gospel spread throughout the world - level . All glory to God
My response was not very polite. Sounds to me like he is saying he doesn't give a shit what we or the users think. He is going to do what god compels him to do.
user ECW has been excessive reposting. I have given him a warning about it, so hopefully he stops. But this is a heads up to keep an eye out for it, and to let you know he has been warned.
Daughters Birthday stuff has been happening. So I've been extra busy. I've been kinda slacking. I will continue to be slacking for a few more days I think. Then after all the birthday goodness has settled down, I'll be back to wasting hours watching horrible videos.
Break out the new 'puppet-ban'? I can get behind that. We should be clear and upfront about it though.
Maybe someone (other than me) should make a new sticky. Explain this and the resulting bans as well as summarising what we learned from the last sticky etc.
To add on my last comment. I mean to ban any accounts posting AlmightyGod links this week as well. Removing the post, and banning the poster. Straight up shut it down this week.
Ya, I think we need to take a hard stance this week. See how they deal with it. Community didn't show much preference either way. So we take this action to try and quell this BS now. If the community wants to talk about it after we do this, I'm all for it.
For now though, mass ban them. Take these accounts away. See how dedicated they are to this.
Is this a focused effort to get one of their posts to the front page? Because this video is just like all the other ones. So why so many upvoats and comments in this one?
(Guess we missed this voat manipulation. This month is going to be annoying I think...)
@THC
These guys have been becoming more and more of a problem. They were warned a while back when they started submitting too much. They slowed. But they have been picking up speed again and now this.
Well, reposts that are have not been posted in a while are acceptable. But using an indirect link to do it is not. Youtube has at least 3 different links to each video. That's why so many others have no problem posting reposts. He could have also found another copy of it.
It is best for them to find another video when their link has already been used. Finding another link is ok if it has not been posted in a while. But using an indirect link to get around it is not something I am ok with.
I'm not sure when that video was posted last. I don't recognise it, so it may be ok. But maybe explain to him that inderect links are not the way to get around it.
Oh ya, if it links to a video thats part of a playlist, thats fine. But in this case, it just went to a list of the videos. You had no idea which video they intended for you to watch. It was just the list.
In the past, I've removed posts like these. They just point to a playlist or the channel, but not the specific video. I would tell them to post it again with the direct link.
I see this one already has the Nebulous Title flair. So are posts to a YouTube playlist okay then?
If it was a regular user making a genuine attempt to contribute, and first time they broke the rule, I think a warning is sufficient. But it depends on the situation. I think this user is probably one of the bot-slaves, so a firmer hand would have been acceptable.
I try to sound as friendly as possible when removing thoughs ones. Bots or not. (Who the hell knows whos actually a bot). But I don't give warnings. Because it doesn't link to a video. So when its just a channel or a playlist, it seems to break the idea of /v/videos. You have no idea what they were actually trying to share. So I remove them without warnings, but always ask them to post again to the video they intended to share.
Feels the same as a link to a page with no video. You just have no clue what they were originally trying to share.
It's an easy mistake to make. So I always assume it was unintentional. I hope my comments come across that way when I delete the posts.
I think that is fair treatment.
The reason I prefer warning when it seems like they are making a real attempt is because some people take removals in a very personal way. If they are a new contributor it can discourage them from contributing again. It is an irrational reaction, but still happens. As long as it is something that only happens occasionally then letting one slide once in a while does not hurt the queue.
I don't disagree with immediate removals, but letting some first time offences slide is also not a problem.
I think the comments by Vladimir_Komarov are 'spammish' but he has a legit reason for it and it not doing it indiscriminately. We should let it ride. I'm interested in the effect it will have on the bot/slaves.
I removed the other one. I left my reasoning there
Ya, I saw flickr as an image site too. But looked up if they hosted videos. Apparently they do. I mean... sort of I guess. Same player. Literally cannot tell the difference between the videos and the gifs on the site. Thats why I wanted you to weigh in.
Good call. There's safety in numbers when it's iffy. If it had been a regular user it would have been a harder call. Probably just a warning. But this one seems to be one of the bot-slaves so I'm not concerned.
So what do you think about the sticky feedback so far?
I think it has made a grey area even greyer. There are a number of views with no consensus between them. There are some things we can see with reasonable certainty, I think. Most people don't like the asian bot/slaves. They're receptive to the puppet bans. But at this point there is a split on just about everything else.
It's gonna need more time I think. Maybe let this one gather some more comments for a couple days, then a new sticky summing up the community feeling as best we can, and suggesting any ideas we get.
Then maybe Cunninghams Law will kick in and we can get some additional ideas on how to deal with it.
1 suggestion was pretty much what we are already doing now.
39101 subscribed to /v/videos. I'm not sure the general populace cares enough, or has any new suggestions for dealing with bots. At least at this time.
That is my thinking. We're not getting a large response. The response we do get seems to be mostly 'meh' by typical users. Mods, and politicly motivated types have a number of differing views, but no real solutions.
My personal feelings are that if they follow the rules, the rest should be up to the users. I don't believe we could accurately do removals or anything of that nature even if we wanted to. Having humans behind the account blurs any line you could set. None of those advocating removals have offered any answer to that.
I think we should let it ride as is for a few more days and see if anything new comes up. Then make a post reaffirming our current practices, plus reserving the right to hand out a 'puppet-ban' should the need arise.
I think if anything is to be done about them, other than downvoats, it needs to be at the admin level, site-wide.
The vibe I'm getting is the bots that start pushing out advertisements is the biggest fear.
There is some frustration with the Dailymotion "shills" posting content. But thoughs shills post a lot of content we don't get from anyone else. It also opens up another problem with Original Content posters if we start targeting shills.
The people who seem adamant against the bots tend to be talking site wide. From the responses in the sticky, it seems that we have less of a bot problem then the other System subverses. In a few of these discussions, they seem unable to talk about bots without bringing up the issues with other subverses. So a lot of that is entirely out of our control. There have been a couple good site wide suggestions made, but for /v/videos they just don't really apply.
So far though, I haven't seen much suggestions for us to change our current action. As I mentioned, most of the direct suggestions are implemented site wide and don't apply to our particular corner of Voat.
The absence of response can be telling as well. People might just not care. Majority of users may not have noticed the bots. We take care of the advertisement ones. The terrible ones get downvoated. Majority of the community just uses the frontpage and probably has no idea there is an influx of bots. Hell, we take down the image posts so fast, I doubt anyone knows how much of an influx we have had with that.
They're receptive to the puppet bans
Only problem with that so far has been that they are unable to really outline what they deem as actionable. They say we should ban the bad bots, but then they tend to go into site wide examples of what a bad bot is. I can't seem to find anything that relates to /v/videos besides the worry of advertising bots (which we already handle with deletion).
Definitely want to see what the sticky looks like after the weekend.
I just wanted to say thanks for being great co-mods. I have not been around as much lately. Some days I've only been checking in once or twice. That was due to a combination of holidays, and a new programming project that I can get a bit overly-focused on. I'm mostly back now, but the great thing is I doubt anyone ever noticed. You guys are right on top of things. It's nice to know that even if I am not around, nothing gets neglected.
I also wanted to say how impressed I am with Violentlight. You're very attentive to the new queue, and the way you speak when representing /v/videos is flawless in my opinion. You're a better spokesman than I. I sometimes talk too much, and I allow myself to get pulled into immature arguments. Not good when I am representing the sub.
I also like the fact that Violentlight seems to think a little differently than THC and I. With THC, we usually have the same view, though he tends to be more level-headed than I. But Violentlight often has a different, but compatible, view. That is great because it helps to round out our thinking, and sheds a little light from a different angle. That just makes us better.
Our latest spam report was shortly after I received a reply to a comment I made on a post I flaired dead link. Same user. Just wanted to point it out, because I'm not entirely sure what the user is going on about.
As I've been trying to catch up on my videos this morning, NeedleStacks been showing up in the comments for a lot of them. Calling them out as spammers. Perhaps they are. Perhaps they are not. But the evidence provided is nothing close to actionable. Guess they are trying to find the bots/spammers.
Content posted has been well within /v/videos rules. Thats why I'm confused as to why NeedleStacks is showing up in the comments of so many videos calling OP out for spamming. Even in the event that its a spam account, it didn't spam in /v/videos.
Ya I'm a little confused also. NeedleStack has a history of being a great user and dedicated mod. So I am exchanging PMs with her right now in order to sort this out. Seems she feels that any professional accounts should be banned. I can understand the view, but it's not how we do things. We judge the actions only, not the intentions. Hopefully I can come to an understanding with her. But even if I can't, she is not a trouble maker. She's just doing what she thinks is best.
I agree that even amalak should have a voice. But it's the frequentcy I have a problem with. He has been OK so far, but I don't think it will last. I think gauging the community so if he begins to spam us the way he spams /v/whatever, we can start removing them.
I am fine with one amalak rant pwr day. But we should be prepared for it to escalate.
I am not suggesting we do anything more than remove self posts at this point. But gauging the community opinion and having a plan in case it escaletes may be a good idea.
I'm not sure it would be a good idea trying to ask the community about a potential problem with a specific user.
He has been OK so far, but I don't think it will last
We can't really predict user actions. I'm all aboard asking the community what they want done with a problem that exists. But its too dangerous a game to try and stop a user before they even break the rules.
Vote manipulation is going to be an issue for us. We do not have the tools to come up with any proof. It has to be noticed really quickly after the content was submitted. Its a super tricky thing. I think it will be the biggest issue we have. Everything else is pretty easy to prove. We just point to the rules and you can see the rule was broken, regardless of how long the submission was posted. The community just would not be able to see the vote manipulation by the time they are investigating our action on it. Enough time would have passed that the votes would be reasonable.
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I think it would be a good idea to ask the community about the bot situation. I want to know their suggestions on handling it, and also what definition they would find acceptable to label a user a bot that we can take action on. Because bots or not, the videos get upvotes a lot times.
I am writing up a post for a sticky now. I will send you and @THC a copy to review before I post it.
As for amalak. I am going to include a section about that. If you two still think it doesn't need to be brought up yet, I'll remove it before posting. But I think it would help a lot to have a policy in place before this becomes a problem. That way we know how to act in a community approved way, and it will also act as a deterrent if they know there will be consequences.
I also wondered if his upvoats were legit. I have doubts, but there was a number of supporting comments. So who knows.
I think we are OK to nuke all future self posts by him. But what I thought to ask in the sticky is should we allow amalak at all. Even video posts. Users may feel that his posts are out of place here and do not belong.
I wonder if we should make a sticky. See how the users feel and define some rules about bots.
That way we are sure we are supported, and we can be more aggressive about turfing some bots. While still allowing some others.
The luanluan one is bad. It was one of the accounts posting images, and now the 'can not suggest title'.
We could also use the sticky to get some feedback on other issues as well. Such as how tolerant we should be of amalak and manhood posts that are not just an ad.
I have told amalak twice now not to make self posts. If he continues, we should begin removing them.
It's easy to know its him. The post will have a rambling incoherent title, be anti-jew and posted by a sock-puppet.
If he links an actual video, then fine. But the self-posts filled with news articles and political rants are not.
I am beginning to think someone is testing/trolling us with the image posts. I have been removing most with an explanation and referring them to /v/gifs. I left one up today to get downvoated as a demonstration that it is not welcome here.
If this is a troll, be aware that someone may be trying to stir drama.
I kind of hid it, but my rt.com link was actually a link to an example post. It has a mixture of YouTube and instagram links. So was just wondering if we prefer the links directly to YouTube, with multiple submisisons. Or if we are fine with the link to a rt.com page with multiple videos in the link.
It this case, it is a direct link to the source. There is a more direct link at youtube.
But it is an RT video, since they are the source, I would consider it a direct link.
It's not always crystal clear, but the idea is straight to video is best, source of video is also good. But a rehosted video that displays a page full of other stuff is 'indirect'.
I jumped into this post without consulting with you guys first. Sorry, but I find when these things come up it is best to make our stance known quickly. People have a tendency to assume the worst so I wanted to share our view before things got rolling in the wrong direction.
Fortunately it was something we have discussed before, so I knew how you felt.
I don't think we would have a problem with the anti- censorship types. If we consulted the community first, and only went after manhood, not after any specific topic, I think we would be fine.
But if you feel it is better to wait a bit, that works for me. I just noticed he has begun a new tactic of Voat manipulation, and since it has gotten results here, I am pretty sure he is going to keep it up.
I think we should make a sticky about taking a hard stance against any and all manhood related posts.
It has become clear that he is using a bunch of sockpuppets to upvoat his posts now. Check /v/whatever for proof of that.
I think we should begin removing all videos that are posted by manhood pupets, even if they get uovoated. We can not tell when the voats are legit or not, and considering recent behaviour, I think it is safe to assume many are not.
But because this is not normal actions, we should make a sticky first and be sure the community agrees.
So in regards to our most recent mail. I'll be honest, I never made the connection that it was always posts to the same account on Dailymotion. The only thing I ever noticed is that most of the time they are reposts. But, I don't really think this falls into our job description.
Does Dailymotion pay for content? Would this be making the user money?
What are your thoughts on this latest mail we received? I don't think banning a user for this should even be on the table. But is a discussion required with the user at all?
To expand on this a little. I think we run into this situation alot with YouTube as well. It's not really something we can (or should) do much about. I think for thoughs who this truly bothers, they can downvoat. Not sure there is much other action to be taken.
I gave a warning to this user here. We should keep an eye on them. I feel their posts are spam due to the frequency, and the advertising nature of them.
Hopefully he listens to the warning, but if not I think we should remove future violations by him.
So are we just treating the specific video type [from the YouTube account The Church of Almighty God] as the spam? Because they seem to be posting them using a ton of different accounts. I've been trying to find a common one since we have seen so many of them as of late. But most of them are from a variety of accounts.
The link you provided was deleted, so I'm not sure of the specific user your referring to.
I completely agree btw. They have been increasing in frequency and they never get the upvoats to warrant it.
Here is what I wrote to the guy so you know what has been said :
"Ok, enough. This has become spam with how often you're posting these videos.
Advertising is not allowed. Does not matter if you are selling a physical product, or a religion. Advertising is not allowed and the amount you are posting is reaching spam levels even if it wasn't advertising.
I won't remove this one, but I will begin removing your videos if you keep it up.
If you want to occasionally post a video about religion that is informative, or interesting, go ahead. But you are posting too much, and it is just propaganda/advertising.
Please slow it down, and try to find videos that people would actually want to watch."
The account I linked to (i forgot the name) had a number of the videos, so I specificly called him out. But you are right, there are other accounts. It seems to be 1 or 2 people doing it with multiple accounts.
When they use one account, it is simple, warn, then delete. But it is a little more grey area when they make new accounts since we have a 'warn first' policy. For now, I am hoping the warning will work. I told him he could post on the topic, just not so often, and to not try to 'sell' it.
If they keep it up using a string of alts, then we may need to ban all videos from the 'church of god'.
For today, warnings I think are enough. But if it continues, then I think we should just start removing all 'church of god' videos. But we should talk it over first if it comes to that.
Anyone else able to see this link?. I could when it was first posted, now I can't. Saw a comment saying they can't see it in Canada (that would be me as well) or Europe. USA able to see it?
Ya, I totally get that I came in after the fact. Thats kinda what I'm saying though. From my point of view (having never had to deal with the spam from manhood) it doesnt look like its spam EDIT: now. I've seen a few cases in the comments with copy/paste spam. But ultimately, while I've been a mod, it hasn't been too bad.
So it certainly looks like you guys did a great job at curbing the spam.
Thats all I ment about
perhaps we should think about resetting our policy on deleting all manhood content
Just as a perspective of someone who didn't have to deal with all the previous spam.
So there was a manhood video posted and it got a bunch of upvoats. Then in the comments, pretty much any response from manhood was flagged as spam. I still don't understand why all the manhood stuff is getting deleted. But as far as I could see, the responses seemed to be legitimate. It's a manhood video so the responses warrant mentioning manhood. I won't be removing any of them, because it's not spam to me. But if a manhood video can get this many upvoats, perhaps we should think about resetting our policy on deleting all manhood content. If it gets spamy I will have no problem deleting them. But I do not see the videos very often. We always talk about letting the voats decide, and the videos fit within our guidelines. Most of the comments do as well.
The comments I do delete are the advertisement ones just copy/paste trying to advertise the debates. I see thoughs as spam. But some of the comments that get deleted are legitimate responses that just so happen to come from one of the accounts that has spammed before.
I saw all the reports. Got ready to start removing, and then got confused when I saw them.
Manhood is learning.
The post was upvoated, so it stays. The comments are on topic, so I don't think we should remove them. They are not copy/paste, and are actual responses to comments. The ones where he mentions "manhood101.com" could be considered spam still, but it is a grey area. The others do not break any rules.
I think we should leave them. The users upvoated the post, and he stayed in that posts comments, so the users asked for it.
I'd like to hear @THCs view, but I think we should let it pass this time. I'm just afraid it will encourage him.
But its our job to sort out whats spam and whats not. I'm just questioning the blanket deletion policy that we have on it right now.
I've only come into this after-the-fact. I assume you have been dealing with alot of this before I showed up. But having not been around for all that, I have only seen a very small portion of stuff that appears to actually be spam. It was one of the reasons I had deleted that comment (that started some controversy). It looked very similar to the manhood spam that we were deleting on site. So I just assumed that was our policy.
I guess I'm just uncomfortable with treating content differently based on the user.
I guess I'm just uncomfortable with treating content differently based on the user.
I don't think we are. Manhood used to dump a bunch of copy/paste advertising of his site. In unrelated posts. That was spam, and regardless of who does it, it gets removed, after a first time warning. The only mistake in the minor-controversy was that there was no warning. All users get the same treatment, which is why we are leaving the manhood posts this time, since they mostly do not break any rules. His repeated mentions of the 'manhood101.com' is spammy and rides the border, but I'm willing to let that go for now.
I'm just questioning the blanket deletion policy that we have on it right now.
The blanket deleting is only for his copy/paste and blatant advertising, because he has been warned about it already. That would be the same for any user doing the same things. He is doing things differently this time though.
We have no rule against it. Legally it means nothing to us, we are not hosting the video and have no obligation to check the copy-rights. It is up to that site to deal with.
I'm fine with leaving it up to voats. But you would probably want to work on the warning. I'm not sure how I would word it, since it seems like a gif to me.
I can not get it to load either. My guess is that it probably was working, then stopped.
I flaired it with dead-link. If I am wrong, someone will probably tell us.
Thats what I thought. But I wanted to make sure before I started flairing the hell out of everything. lol. I'll continue on my flairfest unless someone else suggests otherwise. :D
We marking anything that is from a news channel as news? Example. Or is the News/Politics flair more for things that are breaking news, big events type stuff?
Thats kind of the lines I was thinking. How would we handle a post of a non-porn video, but it was hosted by pornhub? The site seemed to be leaning alot more towards porn then not. While I can see the argument made for liveleak having extreme content, it generally doesnt show up in the ad videos on the side. Liveleak also has a default adult filter on it that you would have to turn off to see the more extreme side of the site. While this site was just showing everything up front. To the point that the majority of the comments are not about the video itself, but the nature of the site.
This post is a repost, hosted by a site with NSFW videos on the side. Someone tried to tag us all in it for a NSFW flair because of the other videos showing up on the site.
First problem I have is that I never got the message. He tagged me right. I just never got any notice for it. I was reading the comment section when I saw his comment asking for the flair.
Second problem, I was going to flair it a repost before I saw the request for a NSFW flair. The site thats hosting seems to be a terrible site for phones as well. I have the NSFW flair on it right now, but should the post just be removed?
I did not get a ping either. A bug, hopefully just a one off.
I don't think we should remove it 9hr later when it did get upvoated. But if it had been caught soon it may have been worth removing. How long ago was it posted before? I saw that video, but did not recall seeing it before.
This count as a video? Its borderline Zunox Principle. I've been taking down alot of Zunox Principle lately though, so was wondering what @InnocentBystander@THC thought before I did anything to this one.
I'm not sure. I saw it also, I thought right away it was a gif. Loaded very slow, shit quality.
But then I remembered what I said during the Zunox incident, and it does have a stop/play and ability to skip around.
The line between gif and video is getting very blurred. I personally would consider it a gif. But I can see how a user might argue it. @THC your ideas?
Oh ya, the webm's are good quality. Its just been used as a gif replacement of sorts. I wasn't sure. Webm's have sound and you can move around the video, so I think they are fine. Just wanted to make sure I hadn't missed a discussion on it.
I am having second thoughts about the background. I noticed my browser was chugging sometimes. Seems doing that can be resource intensive for some browsers. We may still be able to do it with scrolling though. And that will probably be less choppy anyway.
I have been thinking about tweeking the flair. I have flaired the posts in /v/videosModTalk to demonstrate.
These colours contrast better for visibility in day mode. They also group the flair 'types' together. orange=bad, blue=topic, green=oc etc..
I also dropped the 'audio' from 'Audio/Music' tag since we very rarely get audio, and it seems a bit misleading to label a music video with audio in the name, since it is more than just audio. Especially when it is something like a parody video.
I also left out DIY. It is a reasonable category, but it is rarely used. I think we could use the spot for something better.
I suggest a 'News/Politics' Tag. It would be of more use to users I think. Some people come here for those things, other want to avoid them. A flair would help them both. It could be used on anything that is a news report or vlog/political rant.
Nebulous Title flair is a little tough to read with the current color scheme on night mode. The black text doesn't contrast very well with the brownish-yellow background.
Not sure if its cuz I'm in nightmode, but Repost is a little low. Its going into the border so you cant see the bottom of the 'p'.
Was the audio flair for when they posted something with a static background and just talked over it?
I would hope that a video would be obviously News/Politics from the title. Even in the event of someone making original content news or politics with a nebulous title, it would actually be flaired 'Original Content'. So if its a political or news video with some weird title that you can't figure that out from, the post would probably get a 'Nebulous Title' flair instead of a 'News/Politics' flair. Just seems a little bit redundant if they are titled correctly.
The audio was for a few times we had videos that were just talking over a background.
The idea of flairing is so you don't always have to read through the titles to find what you are looking for. Titles are not always clear even when you do read them.
I am not intending to flair it as a bad thing. Just as a category like music or compilation.
OC is still oc. But with the flair we could loosen up on nebulous when with the flair it gives an idea of what it is.
If we go that route, I think that would be good practice. But only when it becomes clear what it is. If it is still unclear or very bad title even with the flair, then I may still mark it nebulous.
Actually, looked at the others as well. Original Content, Compilation, Dead Link, Repost. They all sit a little too low in the border and get the bottom part of the word cut off.
The extended title is the best. But they don't always do that. And I see the idea with searching. But since search is fucked anyway, I don't mind if they replace it with something descriptive. It would seem strange to me to flair it nebulous when it has an accurate and descriptive title, even if it doesn't match the original.
I see your point. Idealy I would like to see your example as ' The Day After Tomorrow - movie'.
I Will no longer flair any that keep the original title. But I don't think we should flair it when they change the title to something that is more descriptive.
Sometimes the videos on YouTube can have very useless titles that might not be the videos original title anyway.
Pretty much the same as you. But I will sometimes flair it when it uses the original name, if the original name is really bad. Meaning it gives you no idea what the video is.
I have noticed a few tagged though that I wouldn't have. I figure it can be a bad title as long as it gives some idea of what to expect.
Do you think I should stop tagging when it matches the original? I guess I can see why the poster would use it. But I would still prefer that add something to the title to give us a clue of what it is.
Icic. I was just trying to have the terrible search feature be useful, since I'm telling people to use it to avoid reposts. I'll avoid the flair if it matches original title.
I've just been looking for the title compared to the content. So if the original title was nebulous, I flaired it nebulous as well. I've just been acting on the rules on the side, and the definition of nebulous. I am still trying to get into the established tempo ya'll have.
I don't have facebook. So that might be why its asking for my email. I don't know. Thats why I wanted to check. I saw the upvotes, figured someones able to watch it. Wasnt sure if they were signing in to do so though.
I don't have Facebook or anything like that. And I tried it in an incognito window to be sure. But it still worked.
That is confusing.
But for future reference if we get a video that requires signing in I would comment asking them to use a more open site in the future, or rehost the video on YouTube or liveleak.
We don't actually have a rule against it. It's more of a common sense thing. I would expect something like that to get downvoated. But so far it has never come up.
I removed one of these submissions before, as it seemed to me to be a poorly crafted advertisement for the channel. Do we agree with that assessment? Or do these stay up.
I agree with the 'poorly crafted' part. But I don't think it is an advertisement.
I think it falls under the 'self promotion' sitewide Voat rule.
The account has only posted his stuff which I think is crappy OC.
I don't think we should remove it this time. Voats will sink it. But a warning, with a link to the sitewide rules is a good idea.
But we don't remove just because it is a shit video. If he had posted other things unrelated to himself, then I don't think he is really breaking any rules. It is kinda spammy, and crap. But it is not a clear violation of any rule except the self promotion.
Usually we deal with that by explaining the rule and asking them to post other stuff as well. If they ignore us, we have decided to do nothing about it for now
Since it is often OC, and we don't want to chase away OC.
In this case I don't mind if he was chased away since it is crap. But we need to stay consistent.
So my opinion is: warn him about the self promotion rule, link him to the sitewide rules. Then forget about him. Let the voats handle it.
The only judging I do is if it is clearly something most people would consider shit, then I just don't bother to flair it. I leave it to another mod to flair, or ignore. If I get asked to flair it I would.
You point is correct, and we should try to stay consistent. But I think it is better for /v/videos if the tag OC does not become associated with borderline spammy ad-ish videos.
No, I was just mentioning it being poorly crafted, because it is lol. But I would never remove a video based on its quality or lack-thereof. Was just wondering if it counted as advertisement. So it technically is an advertisement because self-promotion is the same thing with a different name. But I'll leave it alone then.
So a quick summary of my error, I should have gave a warning.
But my confusion does lie with
Spam - Spam being defined as irrelevant posts
Because to me, that sounds like its saying a comment that has nothing to do with the video, or does not expand conversation about the video would be spam. So I'm just looking for clarification on what this part of the guidelines is trying to say.
I'm all good with just letting anything go in the comments. I really couldn't care less what is said there. I was only acting based on that single line in the guidelines.
As of right now, based on some discussions about my deletion, I will only be deleting a comment as spam if its repeatedly posted (copy/paste) throughout /v/videos and or the site.
This gets a little more tricky for me as I have a proven to have a bad eye for spotting manhood spam. But if I miss it, you guys will find it.
Sounds like you have the idea now. For comments we should try to be as hands off as possible. Even if it is not on topic.
If his post had not been copy/paste it would have been worth a warning but not a removal.
But since it is copy/paste it is removable. Just warn for first offences, then remove any repeated.
Other than manhood warnings have always worked, so far.
But what would I be warning for if it was not copy/paste? If its not a copy/paste post, then it wouldn't be spam. If I'm warning someone, what would I say? Careful, your post looks like it could be copy/paste in the future?
Thats why I'm confused. If comments that have nothing to do with the video are allowed, then why would I give that post a warning if it wasn't copy/paste.
A comment like that, that has nothing to do with the post or videos, is spam. So I would have replied asking him to put his comment in a more appropriate place. But I would not remove it, even on a second offence. It is against the rule but it's not a huge deal, and we try to keep a light touch.
But copy/paste elevates it to a higher level. One that is worth removing, after being warned.
It's not that we allow comment spam, its just that we do not like to remove comments from genuine users, so we will ignore minor violations. But still let them know it is not wanted, and breaks the rules.
Okay. Got ya. Totally got the scope of the rule then.
I totally fucked up deleting first and not warning. That was totally my bad. I would apologize to him, but I doubt that would do any good. Hes made his mind up about me already, and I'm okay with that.
The rule does mean what I thought it ment, I simply applied it wrong as per my first point.
This reply helped me get the scope of this rule entirely. Random off topic stuff gets warnings. We try to stay the hell out of comments while keeping it from being a spamfest disaster house.
Thank you. My mind is finally at ease with this issue.
You see, thats why I was confused. I thought it was kinda default that non-videos would be removed. Thats why I assumed that the rule for spam was referring to comments.
I have been playing with the css to add thc's idea of an animated background. Turns out it is very simple, we can just use a gif as the background. I have put an example here in videosMotTalk. But you can probably see the problem. It looks like crap, is choppy, and is distracting. This can probably be fixed by using a better gif. But I have not found one yet.
So if you can find a better gif to use, or if you have a better idea, let me know. We'll also want falling snow soon, if we use this idea.
Now I get it. I only set it to show in daymode. I'll add it to nightmode once the bugs are worked out and we find a better image.
Try changing to daymode and checking it.
Oh that makes sense. Ya, its working in daymode. That would probably make it alot more complicated, as you would have to find both a day and night version of the same gif.
This is probably the best option for now. I don't like the idea of removing posts of well intentioned users.
But people need to start looking. When it was posted less than an hour before, it is annoying.
I think we may need to start cracking down on the reposts. Flair has been enough until recently, but it is getting worse. How about deleting a repost of something less than 24hrs, if we catch it early?
Thoughts?
It definitely seems like we have had an influx of reposts. If its within 24 hours, I'm not sure who could argue with them getting a deletion. But, should there be a comment limit that protects a repost? As we have seen, sometimes the repost becomes the popular one before we get a chance to do much about it.
If there is a decent conversation, or high upvoats, then it should be left, I think.
But if it has < 5ish voats and no more than 2 comments, might be a good time to get rid of it.
In the event of duplicate posts by 2 users at practically the same time, how do I tag that? I feel like choosing to tag 1 with repost, is choosing which one is going to get more attention.
I saw that also. First time they have been that close that I saw. I wouldn't tag either, since it was not a repost when they posted it. Voats tend to sort out the one with the better title.
Do we respond to spam reports that are not spam? Give them a heads up that we saw it, but determined it was not actually spam?
There is a report that is clearly not spam. So obviously leaving it alone. Just wasnt sure if we also respond to the reporter so they know it was looked at.
Oh, that looks like the one I was looking at. Whats the deal with manhood then? Just looked like a troll to me. But I've never heard of him before ya'll started mentioning the 'perks' of being a mod. lol.
He's a spammer troll. He's behind the 'debates' spam and the "you're a whinny sissy faggot" posts with pics or videos. "manhood101" is the website he promotes. I nukes his spam on sight. He is 99.4% of the spam here. If it is an actual comment, leave it. But if it links to manhood crap or is just copy/paste then delete it.
He uses alts, just have a look through the history and they are easy to spot.
So this one was tagged NSFL. Is that because of the potential death? When I watched it, I saw some blood. But ultimately figured it was minor. I'm sorry I'm all over the place asking tons of questions. I'm just trying to make sure that I'm being a mod consistent with how the subverse has already been handled.
Guess I'm just asking what ya'll figure would make something NSFL.
Is there somewhere I have to go to check for "reported spam"?
When they don't post a direct link, its simply a reminder, or is it a first time reminder and further action with repeated offenses?
Thanks @THC@InnocentBystander for the help here. I want to be able to help the team. Don't want to hinder it. So please don't worry about telling me I'm doing something wrong.
Reported spam shows up in your inbox. We all get a copy of it.
Usually first time warning is enough. If they continue to offend removal may become an option, but consults with another mod first. Unless it's spam. Just nuke that on sight.
Well /u/Violentlight is the new mod here. Thanks for coming on board to help out. If you have any questions just ask. Any time you want to talk to the mods as a group just make a new comment here and ping us all.
Most of the job is adding flair to posts and removing manhood spam. On top of that any ideas you have for improving the sub are welcome. We're currently trying to increase engagement, Contributions, and OC.
Keep a light touch with moderation, Here's something I wrote a while ago. That is not a set of rules though, just my ideas. Discussion on it is always open.
Both THC and I practically live here, and will answer any questions.
So I actually do have a question. With posts like this one, would it need a NSFW flair? Due to the nudity? I know I've seen THC say that educational videos don't need that flair. But is everyones work going to be okay with nudity, even if its educational?
I would not personally consider it nsfw, but I can understand how others may disagree. I think by 'world' standards that would be ok, but maybe not in some areas.
Maybe THC has a better answer. I'm ambivalent about it.
I made a few more changes to the css with help from /u/lllllllllll.
What do you think of the changed wording of the sidebar?
For a time-line I am thinking of testing the changes in /v/VideoModTalk until we choose a new mod. Then change the css in /v/videos when we add the mod. Put up a sticky to announce them together.
we'll leave the current sticky up until it change for OCF. Then have the new mod announcement for next saturday. Does that seem like a good plan?
I am impatient, so I put together some CSS for /v/videos. It is just a modified version of /u/lllllllllll's modified version of Cashmere. But it is better than default.
You can view it at /v/CrazyTheories. Let me know what you think, and if I should put it up in /v/videos.
This will hold us over until Konk comes up with something better.
Edit:
I added it here also so that some users can get a preview when they visit the sticky.
Edit 2 :
I also edited the sidebar. I put my proposed changes up in here. If you think it is an improvment I will add it to /v/videos also. I trimmed it for lengh as users did not seem to be reading it all. And a few other minor changes.
Edit 3:
Just discovered the logo only seems to show with chrome, and the banner is only animated with Chrome.
Will have to look into that later. Done enough this morning.
OK, sounds like a plan. I'll start working on a post tonight. I'll send you a copy to edit/add stuff, before I post it.
And if we get someone moved up to slot one, I think it should be you. I have occasional asshole moments, so it may be better for /v/videos to be represented by you.
That seems like a good plan. I had figured to make a sticky asking them about it first. But a general call for applicants may be a good idea. The problem with 'popularity contests' though is sometimes you end up with drama-types or people who want it for the wrong reasons. If someone we are not comfortable with receives the most upvoats, some may be upset with us for not choosing them.
That's probably not going to be a significant problem though.
But if we end up with Pandabill as a mod I will blame you :b
What do you think about adding another mod? AJ and Konk are only around intermittently. Which is fine, but it would be nice to have a 3rd daily user. I think THC and I have things covered for the most part, but I will on occasion disappear for a few days or week at a time. And I assume the same with THC.
A 3rd daily visitor would give us some redundancy.
A while back /u/Violentlight expressed an interest. He seems to visit daily, comments in /v/videos often, and is much better natured than I am :)
It is probably possible. Unlikely to be simple though. I'm not sure if it would be needed often. If we comment early, and are correct, upvoats should keep us visible. If we get there late it would be helpful, but if it caused any real problems people would still find it.
That may be a good idea to suggest for Voat devs though. It would sure help with rule enforcement by giving a good alternative to deleting that may appeal to other mods..
I just looked into that user a bit. I remember him, he made me suspicious earlier with that YT shit. There is definitely shady activity, probably a spam account. You should make a report on /v/ReportSpammers.
I tag them with "Amateur Voat Enhancements" to keep track of everyone.
user who I believe to be re-posting videos after deleting them
I thought I saw a couple videos that were reposts, but when I looked for the original link I could not find one. I thought it was just my bad memory :)
The voats are theoretically possible, so you are right we can not prove that. And the advertising is subtle enough to make it grey area. But I think his intentions were pretty clear.
I'll edit my response.
Someone have a look at this post and let me know what you think. I replied there with my view.
I think it is spam because the guy makes a sales pitch in the video description on youtube, and seems to have manipulated the voats since I found it at 12mins old with 9 upvoats. And its a shit video. Even great videos don't take off that fast without help.
There was a user that posted a link to chutterI told them to not do that again and instead link to the video. I told them they could put a link to chutter in the comments if they wanted, but to post a video directly.
I just wanted to make sure we are on the same page, as I plan to remove any new ones if they ignore it.
I thought I had posted here right away to tell you. But I just noticed when I got home that the message didn't go through. Didn't mean to confuse you :)
I reverted the CSS to default. I've been getting more complaints lately and even Atko sent me a PM. So I have reverted it to default, but still has the flair. Once Konk has some time then we can add his css.
I posted here when I reverted, but I think the post got lost during a 'checking your bits' and I didn't notice until now.
As far as mis'titled posts, we do already ask that titles accurately reflect the video and in those cases I think we should reserve the right to remove it. The abortion video was bullshit, it was titled
I agree. The one I saw had got a lot of attention and had actually spawned some reasonable comments, so I left it.
I forgot there was a graphic. That would probably be fine as a nsfl.
Thats true, but sometimes people see the NSFW and click expecting boobies. It's horrifying to then find a septic abscess exploding or something.
Are you talking about the abortion video
No it was one of the race baiting videos. The title said it was migrants in europe or something, but the footage was old and from somewhere else. a flair for 'false title' or something might be handy for those cases.
So, about flair. We had a post where the title was bullshit, a user asked me to add some flair to it, but we do not have flair for 'bullshit' so maybe we should add something like that. Also should we add a NSFL tag to go with the NSFW?
And hows your plan for user flairs going THC? If you can make a list of types, I can help write the CSS for it.
Edit: I changed the text colour on the current flair to make it easier to read. I also cleaned up the CSS. Somewhere in the process of css updates it looks like some of the newer ones got lost. If you remake them THC have a look at the current css and use it as a template.
We can also use images, or change the size if you want.
Yay! Konk is alive.
So a few things. Now that we have more than two we should keep the convorsations here so we can all see. Please include "@THC @Konk@InnocentBystander" at the top of all messages, otherwise it will be hard to keep in the loop.
Konk, how frequently do you plan to be around? What aspects do you want to help with? and you seem to know CSS, do you have a reasonable sense of taste? That is something I lack, so if you want to get involved, or even take over, you are welcome to it.
In terms of frequency. I'm on Australian time, and I do work and study during the day but I'll be here to catch a break from that during the day. But I should be around mostly at nights, which, if you're American, is probably when you're most likely sleeping.
I'm still a little unsure about how to mod here on Voat, as it seems to be a little different to Reddit as there is no mod/spam queue, or whatever.
Is the Voat API open? I mod a sub mostly by myself on Reddit with about 15,000 subs and I use AutoModerator to notify modmail of new posts and posts with reports. It's made moderating content so much easier. I have a Raspberry Pi that I've run a Reddit bot off before (post scheduler), so maybe that's something that can be done here.
As for CSS. I am a little tied up with work and coursework but, I'm pretty passionate about it so I would probably like to help out, if you'd allow me the pleasure of doing so. I come from a creative background (design, music, etc), so I feel like I have a good eye, but of course I would suggest we use a temp sub to work on CSS before going live in /v/Videos so we can all have input into it. But, that said, i don't want to come in and step on any toes, either. You've done a great job so far.
Thats good. I'm pacific(GMT -8), THC is mountain(GMT -7). So it will be good to have someone doing spam checks on the other side of the clock.
I'm still a little unsure about how to mod here on Voat, as it seems to be a little different to Reddit as there is no mod/spam queue, or whatever.
Ya it's still in development. Users can tag us in a reply to the spam to let us know. So just check your inbox and respond to reported spam, or question. Not much shows up other than the Manhood trolls. But occasionally there is a confused or odd user.
Is the Voat API open
Yes it is.
As for CSS ... I'm pretty passionate about it ... come from a creative background
You're hired. I'm a programmer so I have been learning it this last week to help out, but I am no good with design or taste. I've got some up for now, so take your time. I'll help out in any way, just ask. I have /v/CrazyTheories (A near dead sub) and /v/videosModTalk to test css in. I can mod you in them if you'd like.
I've seen the tags, though it seems that you and @THC habe beaten me to the punch so far, haha.
As for CSS ... I'm pretty passionate about it ... come from a creative background
What's my starting salaray? Haha. Awesome, my usual process is to do a photoshop mockup and then try to recreate that in sub, so I'll work on a mockup for criticism and we'll take it from there!
I've seen the tags, though it seems that you and @THC habe beaten me to the punch so far
Get used to that. 9/10 times I follow a spam report, or go to add flair, THC has already been there. I have responded to spam that was less than a minute old, and still been too late :)
THC seems to have some kind of spidey sense for it.
I'll work on a mockup for criticism and we'll take it from there!
Perhaps, and this goes on with the other posts, we need a hard set on No Porn, Spam and Doxing, but politics and gore more of a guideline rather than a rule, for example:
Guidelines
Politics - Whilst allowed, political videos, including satire and videos relating to any former or present political figure are better suited for /v/politics/v/politicalnewsvideos or /v/politicalhumor
Gore - Videos containing excessive blood due to extreme violence are better suited for /v/gore and /v/WTF/
Rules
No Spam - Spam being defined as irrelevant comments or post titles
No Porn - If you have to ask yourself or someone else, it's probably porn.
No Doxing - Zero tolerance for doxing or posting of any private information at all. Will result in the OP being banned.
Hey, as I said in the PM, I apologise for the late response, I've been mostly offline for personal reasons but I'm back now.
I very much agree with keeping things as user curated as possible. Videos about politics are still videos, and if the users are voating them up, then it's what the users want. Of course, if the entire sub is over run with political videos, then perhaps at that point we redirect content to a more suitable sub, but I don't see that happening.
such as leaving a moderator comment suggesting that future politically driven videos be posted in a better suited alternative
This is a good solution. It allows for more awareness of more suitable places to post without silencing the discussion.
Wouldn't surprise me if there is a way to switch the background. But that is a lower prioraty at the moment. I got the button fixed, and the code cleanish, so I'll add some "your work here" labels then put it up.
Ya I noticed that also, and I think you are right about the problem. But it is still usable on the phone, so I think it is ok to leave for now.
There is a problem with the discuss submit button though. It moves to the wrong place in the comments.
Once that is done, I'll clean the script up and then see if I can get any user feedback.
I've got much of the css together. I used /u/llllllllll's entry as a banner for now. I am thinking replace the text sub name with an image, and replace the Voat logo with a video-goat mascot.
Have a look when you get time and let me know what should be changed/added/moved/etc?
@THC
I have a user asking about becoming a mod. Since we have no plan in place, I can not give him any straight answers. Maybe we should plan something.
Maybe we should make a post here for mod applications and link to it in the sidebar. Replace the 'rules feedback' link since that post has been dealt with.
Then give it some time to see who applys.
I can't picture how that would look. But it is simple enough to try, so I will.
And about having all posts the same colour, I am glad you feel the same. It just seemed to look better that way to me. Also if you go to the comments you will see I have the top level comment one colour, but then all its children are a different color from it, but same as each other.
I think it is easier to separate comments that way. What do you think?
I commented out the line of CSS that forces night-mode. We had a question and a complaint about it. People can only get a daymode by disabling all CSS. They can still put it in nightmode now, but also have the option of day again.
Also I added the background to the CSS on /v/crazyTheories and it seems to work well. The 'grainyness' doesn't really show through, but otherwise seems fine. Tonight/tomorrow I will have time to put more effort into the CSS. Maybe we can have an image-free version ready for use by the end of the weekend. I will make a lighter version (though still darkish) for daymode users.
Looks like the results are in. It's a cluster-fuck. While we did get some extra visitors from /v/protectvoat, it is still pretty clear that it is not a supported move. Sorry stoic, we can not mod you.
But, I would really like it if you stuck around. There are other non-mod things you can do to help out around here. If you build some trust with the community and show that you are a positive force around here, then we can re-examine the issue later and see if the users feel differently then.
The first surge of feedback was all positive, so I don't think you were rejected. There is just too much mistrust right now, and some people seem to only see stoic as "the guy from shegate". Given time maybe that will fade, and can be replaced with "That guy from /v/videos that helps out a lot and does good things for the community"
I don't know, maybe I'm optimistic or naive.
I am going to wait a bit before announcing that, I'd like to hear from THC before making anything official, and I'm also interested to see more convorsation on the issue as it allows me to better understand what users think and why they think it.
Well, maybe we should just go ahead and remove the politics rule. Seems we are not going to be able to tackle other issues until we wrap that up. I had hoped for a few days, to give any scared off users a chance to add input. But there is nothing new coming in, so I don't see the point anymore.
If you agree then change the sidebar when you read this, then I will edit the sticky.
@THC@stoic (I'd at the others as well, but their inbox is going to explode if I do)
I've had another hidea. But I think it's a good one this time.
We make rules, and guidelines. Rule violations result in removal of posts. But guideline violations are punished by users with downvoats.
We have no spam/gore/porn as rules.
Then make have the community make a list of things they would rather not see. eg politics/religion
If it violates the guideline, we flair it, then let the community deal with it.
If it worked like that and someone posted a campaign video or a sermon, they would get destroyed quickly with downvoats because the flair draws attention.
But if it was a jon oliver video, and a good one, it would do well anyway.
That is a great idea. I am putting a lot of though into community building. I think the best way to get the community to make the decisions, is by getting it more engaged with the sub. If they begin to think of it as theirs, instead of just somewhere they visit, then they will make an effort to better it, and take an interest in how it is run.
Your flair idea fits that better than anything I have come up with. Building more conversation in the comments is the best I've got so far.
For the background what I meant was you would have to get someone else to tell you if it would look good or not. Things that look nice to me often turn out to be horrible looking to others. I can make many things, but I can't design shit.
I like the background idea, but I am not good with cosmetics. Your best to get that advice from someone else. I saw the nightmode part. But the background of selected posts shows up white, making the text hard to read. Everything else seems to work. But there might be another value to change for that.
Ok, the new sticky is up. Have a look at it and let me know if I need to make any edits. Also Stoic should probably make a reply to it and introduce yourself. Many already know who you are, but not everyone does.
Sounds like a plan. I'll write it up when I get home.
BTW, did you see my post on /v/protectvoat? The hate against us was already dieing off before I posted it, but after it the last of the animosity has disappeared. I wasn't sure if they would react as they did, or if they would just think I was pathetic. But I took a chance and it seems to have gone well.
I figured if they could see things from my perspective they might understand what we are trying to do.
My only concern would be the fact that he and the other mods of askvoat have only very recently parted ways and things are still quite tense regarding the moderation over there and I would hate to drag more possible negative attention over here as it is un-needed and unwarrante
I think that issue can be dodged with a post asking the users. If it is a problem, they will let us know and we can abort. Users don't seem to have a problem with mods having a bad idea, as long as we do not follow through if they say no.
I don't think we need to go as far as clearing it with Atko
You're probably right. I was unsure how he felt about us selecting new mods. I looked through the original post for mods but found nothing, so it's probably fine. I agree that I think atko does not want to be involved. He has more important things to do.
As for the CSS, I think it's great your adding to it rather than wait on me. Those tags help a lot. Don't worry about stepping on my toes.
Now I guess I should make a post about stoic. Not sure how to post it though. I would prefer to leave your current sticky up for a few more days. But if I link to it in the sidebar it will not get much attention from regular users.
I think I will wait until I get home to write it. I hate my phone for this type of thing. Maybe I will cut and paste some of the current sticky into it, then make it the new sticky covering that, stoic, and asking for more feedback on the rules.
We're thinking to make a combined sticky. It will have the current info, ask about you, and a couple other things. So I don't think we need to wait. When I get home from work I will write it up.
So try to check in somewhere around 5:30 pacific time to add a reply to tell users a bit about yourself and any goals for the sub.
I ran into a post by him on reddit. I don't visit there often anymore but I was curious if they were talking about Voat.
He got booted as a mod on /v/askvoat because he thought users should get their say over /u/she.
His history as a mod was to have a light touch, and not upset users. He seems to share many of our views, is experienced, and is a name known for being opposed to she style modding.
We need a third mod. Konk will probably still show up, but may not be any more active than AJ.
The only downside to stoic I have seen is that he created /v/disagree button which I do not agree with. But I feel it is just a misguided attempt to do something he thought would be good.
Let me know what you think. If you agree, then we should put it to the users for their response, and then clear it with atko
@THC, Just know that me becoming mod might draw unnecessary drama to the sub (due to disagreebutton) and I left Voat a week ago because I felt and still feel skeptical about us being able to turn this ship around to reason.
While the drama around you is mixed, mostly due to disagree button, I don't see that as a big issue. If the users do not want you, they will say so when we ask.
I do feel that sub was a mistake though. I think your intention was to undo brigading damage. But it only fed to it.
That would be something you would need to talk about to the users as I am sure they will ask if we put up a post about you getting modded.
We try to have user support for all decisions. So if they did not accept you, we will not mod you.
I think at the core, you are the type of mos they want though. So it is worth looking into.
I was thinking about transparency and feedback. Since we can not leave a reason for removal yet, maybe we should set up an alt-sub with self posts that contain a link and the reason for removal. Then link to it somewhere in the sidebar.
Then they can understand why we did it, and let us know if we made a mistake.
Another idea to explore or am I too high?
Edit: Or simpler still, just create a post here and list all removals there.
Sometimes it's hard to be the grownup in a daycare center. It will get better.
I was unable to put it into words until now. But knowing others feel that way too makes it easier to swallow I think.
The good news though is our popularity seems to have stopped plummeting. If we're lucky maybe this whole thing will be good for gathering attention, and getting us the feedback we need.
More good news, it's a slow day at work for me. I took a look at the css and have started experimenting with a mock-up based on your ideas. Nothing to show yet though. Probably weekend for that.
I was trying to think of something in the future that could actively engage the community
Once the rules are dealt with, that should be our next priority. Get the users more involved, get them to take ownership of the place. There has not really been cohesive community here in past. I am hoping we can stimulate the growth of one. But then, I was also hoping we would have other more personable mods to handle that end while I quietly toiled away in the background on mundane tasks.
I do wish that our other mods were here to be able to gather a little more input on the mod level of things.
I am with you there. I kinda wonder if they showed up, saw their inbox and noped the fuck outta here.
For the most part if feels like most jumped the gun on lynching us..
That's also what I am thinking. some of the more recognised 'spokespeople' have/are coming around. It may work out well if they continue to generate conversation, but ease off with the pitchforks. Our user-base has been on its own for quite a while and seems to have grown passive. Many seem uninterested in getting involved, so if these guys can generate constructive feedback I'll welcome it.
The volume until now has been too high and is just drowning out a lot of feedback though. I really think that a few more days of discussion should make it clearer.
Well yesterdays crowd seems to have been 25% for and 75% against the rule. So clearly is is something to consider. But we have two obstacles to deal with first.
We should inform Atko before removing it. If he says no, then we will need to rally the community and be 100% sure it is what they want.
Second. I think we should leave it as is for a day or two at least. We are still getting input, nobody seems upset with an unenforced rule, and that poll, while relevant, should not be seen as definitive since it was open to abuse and worded poorly. While I am can see that some vocal people want the rule gone, I have no idea how many of them are concerned with /v/videos and how many are more interested in the politics and games.
I think our biggest problem is accurately gauging the community. This is a fairly passive user base, I wish they would get more involved. Most of the vocal people yesterday and today are coming from posts on /v/protectvoat. While some of them are surely /v/videos users as well, not all are.
I am afraid that we will charge ahead and remove the rule, only to find we pissed of the regular user base.
The only idea I have is to give it some more time to become clear. I will support this if things still look the same in a couple days. I think the unenforced rule we have no is a good compromise for a short time.
Your current ideas and wording of the rule are an improvement. But I think we can make it more clear still. I believe I know where the line is now, but I can see the rule still being misread. I believe your idea to handle them with warnings and only remove in extreme cases after two or more mods agree is a great approach.
But with the current rule it does leave questions about satire such as John Oliver videos. I would like to have something that is more bullet-proof. Something that makes it clear that only the hard politics such as campaigning, debates, or direct looks at party politics, are not allowed.
Leaving the rules as they are now for a week or so, following up violations with warnings/discussion, and then reexamining the wording later with input from the community is my suggestion for now.
That looks good to me. Maybe add a footer that says we will be gathering feedback and are open to suggestion. Make a link to a new "feedback for rules" post. Or something. I expect most of the backlash is just going to die down now that it turned out we are not hitler. So I think we may get some more balanced general feedback from regular visitors.
Maybe it's time to start acting like we are the only mods here. AJ seems to show up only intermittently. While I consider him the 'ranking' mod and will defer to him on most things, I do not think we should wait until he stops by next since we have no idea when that will be.
The same may also be said about Konk. When he shows up, he will have the same input as us. But it may be best to move on without him for now.
I think it may be a good plan for you to put up a welcome post sooner rather than waiting. Reassure the users, and let them hear from someone who is not me. We also need to figure out how to best get the users opinions. The current poll up is enough to convince me that the users may not be as clearly 'for it' as I thought. But it has also be heavily gamed as many of the voters are not regular users.
I think letting the sticky I just put up gather some opinions for today should be enlightening. Then maybe another poll or something tomorrow or in a few days when there is less 'buzz'. If both polls match, then it would be good evidence the rule is not wanted.
And if the rule is not wanted, then we're in a bit of a pickle. We will need to talk to Atko at that point. My feeling is that if it becomes clear that it is not wanted by the users, we should get rid of it. But this is a default sub. We are not top mods, Atko is. I get the feeling that Atko wants the rule.
At this point it seems like the complainers are mostly people who are not contributors to the sub and are just trying to rope us into the 'evil mods vs. users' controversy.
But we should do some homework to figure out if that is the case, or if users really are against the rule. I am unsure what would be the best method for that though. A poll is often manipulated but may give us a start. But it would be nice to have something more accurate.
If the rule turns out to be supported, then I will announce it and take the heat as I don't plan to be the 'good cop' around here anyway.
If the rule is not supported then we should get rid of it, but we should talk to Atko first as it seems he was looking for mods who would keep it. Ultimatly though I feel users should get their way even if it means going against Atko.
Most of those look good to me, except the spam one. It seems too ambiguous with that wording. Maybe giving fleshing it out would make it simpler. something like :
No Spam - Spam being defined as irrelevant posts, chronic reposting, or advertising.
People don't always know that they are irrelevant, but they do know when they have been posting the same crap everywhere, or are trying to advertise.
That sounds like a good idea. Maybe make a post that introduces us, reassures them that there will be no significant rule changes and ask/beg for designs and images. Maybe even a goat with a camera as a custom mascot.
I agree about the colours. I just leave Voat on nightmode all the time.
So somebody (not me) should make a post like that once we hear from AJ and Konk.
A couple other things we should figure out :
Are there more mods coming? If not should we take the sticky down?
Do you want to be modded on here as well? I was going to add everyone but then I thought they may not want their user page cluttered.
Should we alter the 'no politics' rule to be a little more clear, or leave it vague? 'political' things get posted and upvoated here often, so I am a little unsure of where the line is.
What do we want to do with the CSS? I am a programmer and can help with the scripting. But I should never ever be allowed to design. So if someone else can provide the vision, I will try to create it.
If I understand right we are now the 4 mods of /v/videos. Am I missing anyone?
I made this sub as a substitute for modmail. We can communicate as a group here.
So maybe we should start out by everyone checking in and saying what role they plan to fill.
I plan to do mostly 'maintenance'. Delete spam, rule violations, answer questions or concerns. I am not much of a contributer, kinda poor at it to be honest. But I creeped through some of your histories and it seems that others can fill that role.
I do have a few issues we need to discuss already. Drama doesn't take long to start :(
We had a popular post that linked to a liveleak video. In the comments that could be reached through that page, the perpetrators personal information was posted. This was reported as doxxing. I told them that Liveleak had a report button and to use that instead of reporting here.
My reasoning was that Liveleak is an accepted regular site here. They have a system in place to handle things like that, and the link did not go directly to the comments. It linked to the video and required another click to show comments.
Did I make the right call?
Also, We got a request to remove an old post that contained personal information. I went to delete the post, but the delete button does not show. I don't know why. Can someone help? It just links to a deleted video, and makes a claim against this persons real name in the title, so I think it should be removed. But how?
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
I cleaned up the sub as much as I'm going to. Which wasn't much. Only the test post.
I decided to leave Konks post, because it does record some mod history. So maybe it is best left on the record.
I also decided to leave the ban appeals one. It may not be used or needed, but it does point out that nobody has ever even tried to appeal one.
I also changed the sidebar to make it clearer for a user what this place is.
Since it is the end of the month, we can just continue using this post until November, then make a new one with year/month in the title.
Sound good?
Violentlight ago
Sounds good.
Violentlight ago
Anyone able to get the video working? Loads some of the page, but the video wont load for me.
@THC
Violentlight ago
If we decide to wait for them to ask. We should reflect that in the guidelines. I feel like it would be a bit of a change from how we have been doing things. So a little mention that they can message the mods if they post some OC. I'm honestly not sure how to make it a short note while making it clear they don't need to ask every single time. Just until they get an OC flair. Because then we know they are OC posters.
If we decide on a trial period. We should come up with a minimum amount of posts/time passed for the OC flair to be awarded.
I've always found OC flair was very much something we had to try to checkout and keep an eye on ourselves. I know there have been a few that I tag with "oc?". Then I know to keep checking them a little closer to make sure its actually OC content.
@InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
@THC
I'm not sure it needs to be that formal. Just wait until they have at least one or two comments so we know it is a real person and not a bot or spammer.
Making guidelines would just bog it down, and very few of them ever message us anyway.
As long as we can see any comments, or if no comments at least a few posts and a few days old.
Otherwise, just keep doing as we have been.
It is only hours old accounts with no comments that I am concerned about.
Violentlight ago
I hear that a lot through-out Voat. That they get upset when someone posts content, but has little to no comments. There are a lot of times that I post content, and people are saying things in response to it, but I have nothing to add. I don't reply. I'm just not sure why commenting has so much weight to submitting content.
But I certainly get what your saying with a brand new account ect. I personally don't really care if they never comment though.
@THC
InnocentBystander ago
I don't really care if they comment or not. But when they do it shows they are real. If they don't, it is harder to tell. If they never comment but are more than a day old, with more than one post, they should be fine. But no comments and brand new account is often marketing, or not really the creator.
@THC
Violentlight ago
Agreed
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
I saw this post flair. But I am not sure it is a good idea for us to give OC flair to hours old accounts.
I think we should wait until they have made some comments, or been around for a bit. Othrwise we may mistakenly give OC flair to marketers, or encourage spammers and marketing guys to try and impersonate OC.
Violentlight ago
I didn't flair it. But it does look like OC content. 2 dudes in front of a green screen. Do you have concerns about this one in particular? Or do you feel there needs to be a few posts and kind of a "trial" period before people get the OC flair as a general rule?
@THC
InnocentBystander ago
I believe this one is probably legit. But we don't know if it was actually them that posted it, or a marketer.
For now it is not an issue, but it can be abused. So this is more a preventative action rather than dealing with an existing problem.
Violentlight ago
Oh I see what your saying. So its just a little better organized when your looking back at the posts. So there would be November 2016, December 2016, January 2017 ect. We post all of our mod stuff in the appropriate month. Thats actually a pretty good idea. I like that.
@InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
@THC.
I was confused again.
When THC was talking about monthly posts, I thought he ment posts for users to leave feedback. Which would result in a lot of empty posts.
But after reading this comment it seems like the posts would be for us to talk in.
At first I thought that would be unnecessary, since we can sort this post by age. But it would be handy when trying to go back and see old conversations.
So that does sound like a good idea. If I'm understanding now.
But, I don't think we should premake them. It would put them out of chronological order with any user posts or other posts. I think it might be better for a user to be able to sort posts by date and have everything line up in the order that it happened.
Does that make sense, or am I still confused?
InnocentBystander ago
You've confused me a bit. At the start you said we should keep 'it'. Then at the end you say you don't mind if I clean it up.
Which should I keep? I planned to keep anything discussion or user related. Just remove stuff that doesn't matter for anything. I don't think we would be accused of anything since the logs will show what is gone.
I think having biweekly or monthly posts would be too often and just lead to a lot of empty posts that would be more clutter hiding the more relevant posts. It's hard enough to get people talking when there is an issue to discuss.
Maybe do it every six months. Sooner if something comes up in between.
@Violentlight
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
If you guys don't object, then later I am going to clean up the modtalk sub a bit by removing some of the posts.
That way it will only contain relevant information, and will make more sense to any users that come here.
I would leave all community discussion posts, and I will not remove the user post. But the test post, Konks post, and stuff like that just seems like unnecessary clutter.
Violentlight ago
Ya, as long as it isn't anything pertaining to modding the actual sub. Decisions made, discussions about issues ect. But test posts ect sounds good.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
Check this post are you guys able to watch the video? I think it requires an account, but I want to be sure it's not just an error affecting only me.
Violentlight ago
I can watch it. I'm running an ad-block though. That might be doing it.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
I noticed the css was displaying the logo twice. Some of the recent Voat updates must have changed things.
I fixed that, but if you notice anywhere else that the css is misbehaving, let me know.
Violentlight ago
Now I'm not seeing the logo at all.
InnocentBystander ago
How about now? I was messing with it for a bit because I had found another issue. It should be fixed now though. Let me know if it's not.
Violentlight ago
Still looking the same for me. No logo.
InnocentBystander ago
Sorry, I just saw that you already sent me a screen shot.
Violentlight ago
Its all good, was working on another one. But that ones okay?
I'm on Chrome.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC
Ok, the problem was because I fixed day mode but didn't check night mode.
I fixed it(again). It should be working fine in both now.
Violentlight ago
Working for me. Good job. :)
InnocentBystander ago
Ya. I see the problem now.
I was in day mode, and forgot to check night mode. It works fine in day, I just need to add a tag for night as well.
InnocentBystander ago
What browser are you using? I've checked with firefox and chrome and it appears for me.
Can you send me a screenshot so I can get a better look at what is happening?
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
How do we feel about this guy? At first I thought it was a crappy review channel, and the comments on the account history look like a real user, so I ignored it. But I watched a couple of the vids, and it looks more like commercials disguised as reviews. All very positive, and providing links below on where to buy, with referral links
I am inclined to call it advertising, and ask the account to stop.
What do you guys think?
Violentlight ago
(From my phone). I see where your coming from, but the format seems very similar to all the other Top 3, 5, 10 tech videos I've seen. The links help when your shopping. Then your not trying to search for the stuff. I'm on my phone, so can't research this very well. Are the links affiliate links? Does he profit off people buying the items through his links? Not sure I see him doing anything wrong at this point.
@THC
InnocentBystander ago
@THC
That's how I saw it at first also. The format is an acceptable one.
But this seems to just be mimicking that. I have not found any negative, or neutral reviews. The bit.ly links to amazon pages are used for ad tracking. I think this guy is getting paid for referrals.
That seems a lot like shill-marketing to me.
Looking closer at the account. It was a normal user, with a decent posting history, up to about 3 months ago. then nothing for a couple weeks, and all product advertisments since then.
Did this guy sell his account to clever spammers?
Or is my bong making me paranoid?
Violentlight ago
I'm home now. So I can say this a bit better. These kind of videos never have negative reviews to them. Some channels simply like to specialize on the items you should buy. They don't show the ones not to buy. I'm not really seeing any issue with the videos. It also seems to cover an array of brands. So it doesnt seem like its pushing one thing in particular. Its close to advertisement, but I don't think I would call it that. I certainly use these videos to get a quick idea on whats popular with an item I haven't bought in a while. Then I go and find reviews on thoughs products. I'll certainly flag him, and keep a closer eye on it. But for now, I'm more in the camp of leaving it alone.
@THC
Violentlight ago
Oh right, and I totally forgot to let ya'll know about this as well. I had deleted the video. Provided the reason in the deletion and this user said he got no notification. I saw that CANCEL_CAT_FACTS had responded quickly and recently. So I asked for help to test this out. He made a test post, I deleted it. Notification was received. Actually, he responded to the notification he got, and it went to subverse mail.
It seems to be working. But, I figure we can document any complaints or issues with the system. Just in case there is an actual bug with the system.
@THC
Violentlight ago
Ya, everything got hectic at home. I'll try to let them know tomorrow, when I can actually word things properly. Because now I'm drunk. And so I'm done modding for the night. :D
Violentlight ago
TIL that the subverse mail does not notify us that there is something in it. Thats... no good.
@THC
Violentlight ago
Oh good, reading this stuff over, I didn't embarrass myself. Yay. (Always risky trying to do stuff when drunk) Anyways, in the announcement they made, they mentioned that they knew about this. Sounds like they plan to add the notifications when they can.
@THC @InnocentBystander
Violentlight ago
Certainly glad I asked then. :)
@InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
@Violentlight
That seems reasonable to me.
Violentlight ago
Giveaways count as advertisement? This feels advertisey, but figured I would get your opinions on it as well.
@THC
InnocentBystander ago
In this case the video is half commercial for the camera, and half commercial for the channel. So I think spam.
But not all give-aways are necessarily spam.
Violentlight ago
Ya, seemed a little extra ad like. Specially since I know Go-Pro likes these kind of sites. I'll leave it alone till @THC weighs in.
InnocentBystander ago
Responding to latest spam report with:
This does not appear to be spam. Please do not misuse the button.
Definition from sidebar: Spam being defined as irrelevant posts, chronic reposting, or advertising is not allowed in any capacity.
Violentlight ago
Jesus fucking christ the chinese church spammers are annoying as fuck. Why did they decide to come back? God damnit...
Thanks for listening to my rant. :P
@THC
Violentlight ago
Responded to the recent spam reports.
@THC
Violentlight ago
Responded to recent spam report.
@THC
Violentlight ago
With the feature implemented that allows us to provide a reason for deleting a submission, do we still feel it necessary to make a comment on a video before deletion? It seems like a redundant practice now.
@THC
InnocentBystander ago
@THC
I don't see it as being necessary any more.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @ViolentLight
I'm going to alter the sidebar a bit if you guys agree.
I will remove the section 'Popular Sites' And put it at the bottom but with more sites listed. There were not many alternatives to youtube when that was done. But there are some new ones now. It also removes it from the centre of the guidelines.
Violentlight ago
Cool man.
InnocentBystander ago
I'm aware of what Tar is about. But I don't think he was the one downvoating, and he seemed to get it after my second comment.
I just wanted to make sure I wasn't coming off as hostile or dickish.
I have a way of unknowingly offending people sometimes.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @ViolentLight
Am I being an asshole here?.
I keep repeating the same thing because it answers their questions. But I realised it may seem like I am being a dick.
Your thoughts?
Violentlight ago
If they don't like your answer, and choose to ask the same question, only to not like the answer. I would have done the same thing. When I worked a phone job, I did the same thing. I have no idea what else your suppose to do. Only so many ways you can say the answer. This is on them. Not you.
Violentlight ago
What do we think of these type of posts? I had to delete the first one that was posted because the video no longer worked.
@THC
InnocentBystander ago
I'm not a fan. The sub is for direct links. Flair them, and ask him to use direct links
Violentlight ago
So... is @Megad3th spamming with multiple accounts? @I_Care_Maybe @Nobody_Cares_Anyway
The front page just got flooded. By these three. Same videos.
@THC
InnocentBystander ago
Yes they are and future removals/bans is warranted.
That is spamming. Using sock-puppets does not change anything.
Violentlight ago
They just keep posting. So I've banned them. GustinBieber I'm not 100% sure on yet. So I've left that one alone for now.
@InnocentBystander @THC
Violentlight ago
Add @GustinBieber to that list.
@InnocentBystander @THC
Violentlight ago
What trumps what? NSFW, or Original Content?
@THC
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander said that they banned the user. When I talked to Atko about it sitting in deleted submissions, he didn't seem worried about that. But suggested I make a report with authorities. So I did.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC
When I said he was banned, I meant in the sub.
I have not heard back.
Violentlight ago
Oh... my bad
Violentlight ago
I did indeed.
InnocentBystander ago
@Violentlight
I PMed Atko, and that user is banned.
Violentlight ago
Excellent, ty
SaneGoatiSwear ago
@innocentbystander and violent, quick question (as i look through an empty mod log on all three pages
no bans, no removed comments/submissions.
so um. does this convo plus that = atko removed submission, ban history?!?
Violentlight ago
Are you looking in the /v/videos mod logs, or the /v/videosmodtalk mod logs?
Violentlight ago
You live! ;)
@InnocentBystander said he was contacting the admins. I'm heading to bed now. Let us know what they say. I'll check back tomorrow.
Violentlight ago
Do we need to take any further action on the child porn post I deleted? With a post like that, does it need to be removed from the deleted submissions as well? Protect the site?
@THC @InnocentBystander
Violentlight ago
In addition, I reported the incident to www.cybertip.ca
@THC @InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
That's a good question. I hadn't thought about it being in the logs.
I'll PM the admins about it.
Violentlight ago
I have responded to the latest spam report:
@THC @InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @ViolentLight
I have responded to the latest spam report and asked him not to abuse the button.
Violentlight ago
I replied to his post. Apparently just as you sent him mail. @THC
Violentlight ago
Ya, but in an effort to avoid the image of "lone-wolf modding", I like to make attempts at consensus. I've settled into the role now. But I also like to keep checking in to ensure I'm staying on the right course. We do well helping to keep ourselves working how the community expects us to. We a good team me thinks. :)
@InnocentBystander
Violentlight ago
Its all good. I was just really hesitant to act before your input. :) Thanks for cleaning it up for me.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @ViolentLight
I toggled off the sticky now. It seems pretty clear from the silence that users are content.
Violentlight ago
Not hearing from @THC , you think its okay if I go and clear them out now? I don't want to leave them more then the day. @InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
Actually, THC just showed up. :)
InnocentBystander ago
Ya, I think it's fine. We're not always going to have all of us around. So we will have to make the call with just two of us sometimes.
Violentlight ago
I've sent a message to waresha about the excess submissions from the same channel. I did not delete any of the content. But the warning has been sent. If it continues we will discuss further action.
@THC @InnocentBystander
Violentlight ago
Shortly after this there was another submission to the same YouTube channel 'The App Valley'. So it appears that there are multiple accounts looking to spam that channel. Do we start deleting them on site then?
The user who posted this new one is ShashaGreey
@THC @InnocentBystander
Violentlight ago
7 'The App Valley' videos in the past 5 hours. Also, seems they are trying to change the names to make them less identifiable. My personal opinion is that its all spam now. I vote it gets nuked.
@THC @InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
I agree. The volume makes it spam. The sock-puppets used to get past restrictions makes it malicious.
Removals are warranted.
Violentlight ago
I'm heading out and won't have access for a little bit. When we hear from @THC , ya'll can feel free to take action on the posts. If not (depending on what THC thinks) I will clean it up when I get back.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @ViolentLight
In case you're wondering, I'm going to push the feedback sticky off until either tomorrow or Saturday, I've not had a chance to put it together yet.
Violentlight ago
Responded to recent spam report:
@THC @InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
I already responded. I was unable to post here because I went into a dead-zone, until now.
Oh well, he'll really get the point then :)
InnocentBystander ago
@ViolentLight
OK, I'll write something up tonight or tomorrow. Then sticky it for a few days or a week.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @ViolentLight
Its been a long time since we've had a feedback post.
There are no current issues or problems that I am aware of, but a general feedback post could reassure that and help us stay open and in touch with the community.
What do you guys think?
Violentlight ago
Never hurts. Even if it seems calm and quiet, gives people an opportunity to let us know if there is a problem. It does seem over-due now that I think about it.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @ViolentLight
What are your thoughts on the codec.tv guys?
I think they are crossing into spam. It is all sock-puppet accounts, and they have been asked a few times to use direct links.
A final warning and then removals unless they directly link to youtube?.
Violentlight ago
Indeed. I have tagged them all as well. Will begin removing the posts. I know I've personally told them to post direct links a few times now.
@THC
Violentlight ago
Recent spam report response:
@THC @InnocentBystander
SaneGoatiSwear ago
it was a test. you can call off the dogs silly goat.
Violentlight ago
I put all my responses here for visibility. It allows there to be a record of our modding.
SaneGoatiSwear ago
i understand the function of this sub.
i am also putting my response here for visibility. it allows there to be a recording of my intent.
Violentlight ago
Recent complaint about hurt feelings. I responded:
The tone might have had a bit more of an edge then I should have. But I'm getting rather annoyed by peoples inability to simply ignore words on the fucking internet. Sticks and stones...
@THC @InnocentBystander
Violentlight ago
User sweethoney44 is tagged as having been warned about reposting. He has reposted again today. Do we do another warning? Do we do a warning saying next time is a 1 month ban. Or do we do the 1 month ban? How do we want to proceed? I haven't touched the repost yet. (Come to think of it, I'll go tag it now). But I'll leave it up until we decide what action we should be taking.
@THC @InnocentBystander
Violentlight ago
Update - Message sent:
@InnocentBystander @THC
InnocentBystander ago
I can not remember the details of the last warning, so I would suggest another warning that he will get a temp ban if he does it again.
If you can remember the details, and he was clearly warned for this behaviour, then a temp ban now would be fair.
Violentlight ago
I was searching all over for more info on why he had that tag. Couldn't find it. So I will warn him. Update the tag to reflect this is a final warning before action will be taken.
@THC
Violentlight ago
In regards to the recent spam reports we got. I responded with:
@InnocentBystander @THC
Violentlight ago
Update.
Received a response:
I responded:
@InnocentBystander @THC
InnocentBystander ago
Good response.
Violentlight ago
In regards to the recent message we received I responded with:
@InnocentBystander @THC
InnocentBystander ago
I had also replied saying we would look into it. But I am at the end of my workday and have not had a chance. Seems like you've got it covered though.
Violentlight ago
So I have this user tagged as a potential spammer. I honestly forget who gave us the heads up, but someone did when the user started posting in /v/videos. I said I would keep an eye on it. They have never posted very good content, but it seems that they have now gone through the entire catalog of their videos and are starting to repost. I gave a warning and deleted the 2 most recent reposts. But further reposts from this user and I will be giving them the "final" warning before a 1 month ban.
Violentlight ago
Oops, forgot to tag you in this one too @THC
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
These goodpranks.net posts are crossing the line into spam I think.
The site is an aggregator that just embeds content from elsewhere. The accounts are throw-aways/sock-puppets.
I think we should give them a final warning to use direct links, then begin removing any links to that site.
Your opinions?
Violentlight ago
I've only seen 2 posted in v/videos. We have told both that direct links are preferred and tagged the links. I think we should give the tags/warnings a bit more time, to see if they have an effect. Personally I think its a bit too early to give an ultimatum.
@THC
InnocentBystander ago
Fair enough. It's the throwaway nature of the accounts that makes me think spammer. If it was a real user I wouldn't care.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @ViolentLight
I just sent this message in response to the spam report.
Violentlight ago
You know what... I'm Canada Day drunk. I'm gonna stop modding tonight.
Violentlight ago
I thought it was kinda a joke. But then it was just a link to a site that was actually directly related to the video. I'm so sorry InnocentBystander... I dun fucked that up for ya.
Violentlight ago
Oh fuck. I just deleted it. Fucking eh
Violentlight ago
This is not direct to YouTube. But how do we feel about the site that was used? Works fine on my phone. Seems to be pretty basic and just have the video. I haven't tagged it yet. Its the first time I"ve seen this site used.
@InnocentBystander @THC
Violentlight ago
I have responded to the spam reports.
naviathan has been warned. I have made it clear that further abuse of the spam report will be a temporary ban.
@THC @InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
I'll send him a message explaining that then.
@violentlight
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @violentlight
What are your opinions on the doxxing report?
It dies not seem to be doxxing to me. It does not connect any online identitys. And the guy in the video is public about what he does. Even made himself a tee-shirt with his face and name on it.
I don't think this meets the definition of doxxing.
Your thoughts?
Violentlight ago
I just finished the video. I did not see anything that would suggest doxxing.
@THC
Violentlight ago
Looking at the comments he has now made on the video. I think hes just butt-hurt.
@THC
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander
In response to the latest spam report I sent
He responded with
I'm leaving it at that. But figured I would let you guys know as well. Just in-case it develops further.
InnocentBystander ago
He put up a post about it.
I have responded, but feel free to join the conversation if you've got anything to add.
Violentlight ago
I've returned from my trip. My computer has been repaired. It also has a new processor and a fancy new cooler for the processor :)
@InnocentBystander @THC
InnocentBystander ago
Nice. Welcome back, I hope you enjoyed your trip.
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander @THC
I was going to mention this a bit later, but events have transpired. I'll be going on vacation in a week, for a little over a week. But, my modding vacation will be starting today apparently. My SSD just died. So I can no longer boot my PC.
When I get back from vacation, I should have the new SSD, and be up and running. Unfortunately, I won't be doing much modding till then. Because it's a god damn nightmare trying to do that on my phone.
I apologize. Seems like things are pretty active right now, and I was hoping I could help settle it down before my vacation.
Good luck.
InnocentBystander ago
No worries. @THC and I have faced manhood alone, and won. So we'll survive.
Have a good vacation.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
One of you flaired this post, but I have gone and removed it. It is a discussion post not a video. Unless a discussion post slips past unnoticed and has a significant amount of voats/comments I believe we should be removing them.
That is what I have always been doing, so if either of you feel differently let me know. /v/videos will be used as a soapbox for discussions by a few if we don't. It also prevents people from being able to watch videos from the main page, and prevents VTV from picking them up.
Violentlight ago
That was me. Will do.
Violentlight ago
Totally wasn't since it was first offence. (And we all know I've fucked up there before. :P) But the obvious dead stream spam makes sense to ban. Specially since they are clearly dummy accounts. If I see it again, I'll ban the dummy account too.
@InnocentBystander
Violentlight ago
Oops. Fucked up and didn't comment on this deletion. Just finished deleting the other one, copy/paste my comment for this one. It didnt go through, out of habit I deleted the damn thing anyways. /sigh
Someone keeps posting dead links to ustream. I hope it stops, because it appears to be dummy accounts doing it. So it could be busy for a while.
@InnocentBystander @THC
InnocentBystander ago
Meh, it's obvious from the title that it was spam, so I don't think it's a problem.
Ya this new wave of spammers is annoying. But like the rest, they will move on soon enough. Or change tactics.
Violentlight ago
So you okay with a perma-ban still then? Just want to make sure before I follow through with it.
Violentlight ago
Thats why I'm leaning towards a perma-ban. I think this is the first post since being un-banned and its an in-direct link. Here is the messages I sent him when lifting the ban.
@InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
A perma-ban would be fair. So I don't object.
Violentlight ago
fluxusp was banned for a month for repeated in-direct links. When I removed the ban I advised that any further in-direct links would result in a permanent ban. He has posted this. How do we feel about this?
@InnocentBystander @THC
Violentlight ago
It is done.
@THC @InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
Maybe a 60 day ban. I'd rather avoid perma-bans except in extreme cases, and classic spammers.
@THC?
Violentlight ago
He already got a 1 month ban. He was told it would be permanent if he continued to spam after I lifted that 1 month ban. This one is permanent.
Violentlight ago
ECW has posted the same video 3 times in the past 3 days. He had already received a month ban for this action. Was warned that he would get a permanent ban if it continued. I just wanted to check in with you to make sure we are all on board with this action.
@InnocentBystander @THC
Violentlight ago
InnocentBystander ago
I'm ok with it. A look through his history shows he's a serial reposter. That's spam, and he's had many warnings.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @ViolentLight
I have replied to AOUs spam report with this :
Violentlight ago
I've now warned dronelover twice about direct links. His response to my first warning leads me to believe he will just be ignoring me. If he gets a 3rd warning, I will then begin removing his indirect posts.
@THC @InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @ViolentLight
Just a head-up. I removed the falling snow from the css, since it is not winter any more. I also added a bug-fix to the css that had been causing some minor display issues.
InnocentBystander ago
That would be about half the posts right now depending on how you define politics. I kinda want to avoid using it until after the election.
If we did that, we should come up with a simple metric for what qualifies.
Violentlight ago
Or ditch "Trailer" and split news/politics. It always seems to be obvious when its a trailer. If its not very obvious, it tends to get a nebulous flair anyways.
@InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @ViolentLight
I don't know about you guys, but I have given up on the new/politics flair. There's too much, and it gets confusing on what should be flaired.
Maybe we should edit it to just 'News' and use it for news brodcasts and news sites that host the video with an article?
Violentlight ago
Use it more as a breaking/new news type deal? So if its a current event it would get the news flair. If its old news we ignore it?
Tons of politics in here, so I agree about dropping that.
InnocentBystander ago
I was thinking all news. videos where we watch news anchors and reporters, or if it is a news site that has an article and video.
Links are examples of what I mean.
I'm open to suggestion or other ideas though. I just don't want to deal with the politics part any more.
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander
I gave a warning to /u/phalynxphrine . It was just a couple minutes after posting the video that it had it's 2 upvoats. It also had 2 comments. 1 from phalynxphrine and 1 from menriel. Both accounts are the same age. It was an identical situation to the same submission posted in /v/music by phalynxphrine.
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander @THC
Sent a message explaining the NSFW flair.
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander
Sent a message advising we don't have a "Podcast" flair.
InnocentBystander ago
So did I
:)
Violentlight ago
Your too fast damnit! :P
InnocentBystander ago
Sorry, I'll work on it.
It would be nice if when we marked it as read it showed that to the others that also got it. Then we would know if it has been handled.
But I guess it doesn't really hurt anything if they sometimes get multiple responses.
It shows we're paying attention anyway.
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander @THC
Where does this fall on the advertisement scale?
InnocentBystander ago
@THC
Ok, now it's changing. He's posting more. I'm going to send him a message. If that doesn't end it then we begin removing.
Sound good?
Violentlight ago
Agreed. Hes tagged.
InnocentBystander ago
Hard to say. It's low on the ad scale since they are not asking for money and not directly advertising. The video itself is just music.
He is trying to promote the site in the comments and youtube description though. But since it is not a commercial site, I think it is closer to self-promotion than advertising.
I think in this case we should leave it since it got downvoted and it doesn't directly break the rules. Hopefully the downvoats will show him it is not wanted here.
But I am not sure of that opinion. Maybe @THC will see things clearer.
Violentlight ago
fluxusp has received a one month ban for posting another indirect link. It is in my calendar.
@THC @InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
@Violentlight
I almost agree. But I think we should warn him about it first.
Send him a pm saying that he has been doing it too much and next time will result in the temp ban.
Then if he still does, go ahead with it. I just don't think the ban should come as a surprise to him.
Violentlight ago
Sent the warning. So next indirect link he posts will get him a month ban.
@InnocentBystander @THC
Violentlight ago
If I tally up my warnings to him, I would not be surprised to be over 10. But I will give him his last warning in a PM right now. Then his next Indirect Post will not be a surprise.
@THC
InnocentBystander ago
Sounds good. I know he has been warned about posting indirectly, but he has never been told that it may result in a ban. So I wanted that to be clear before hand.
Nobody should be surprised by how we respond.
Violentlight ago
Agreed.
Violentlight ago
I agree, and will do so if @InnocentBystander is also on board.
Violentlight ago
Link
Violentlight ago
Why would we let a GIF stay up in videos?
@InnocentBystander @THC
InnocentBystander ago
Because it had upvoats and comments. It was also a real user as opposed to spammer.
I almost removed it, probably should have, but letting one slide that was hours old when I found it is not the end of the world.
InnocentBystander ago
But in past it has always been professional spam types.
Have any 'real' users like this been banned?
Either way, I like the 30 day ban. On the off chance that he is just confused or something.
Edit: ha.. I replied to the wrong one of your comments. But I guess it doesn't matter.
Violentlight ago
I have no problem doing it. Just want to make sure I'm doing it right. Just going to make sure @InnocentBystander is okay with a month ban, then I'll move ahead with it. I'll put it in my calendar.
InnocentBystander ago
Fire away with the ban. We all agree.
I don't normally care about spammers, but this guy does not seem to be a professional, so I was more hesitant.
I like the idea of the 30 day ban for him.
For other spammers we just permaban. But they are generally malicious users with sockpuppets.
This guy is different, and I am not sure what to make of him.
So, 30 day ban seems good to me.
Violentlight ago
It would be my first ban. So is that something I just have to remember to unban a month later? Or is there a timer I set ect?
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander @THC
ECW does not care about the warnings. Yesterday, I had to delete that one video he reposts constantly, telling him to stop posting the video. I wake up today to find he just posted it again. How long do we play this game before we take further action? I feel like he has had plenty of warnings. He is ignoring them all.
Violentlight ago
Little bit of an update on this and also a new potential issue.
ECW mailed me to clarify his ban was just for /v/videos and then his last response:
So, hoping that works out.
New issue. fluxusp seems to have a similar issue. We have had to warn him so many times about direct links. I've had him tagged for a while. The warning was specific to posting rt.com links. He had gone on a spree a while back and I told him further posts to rt.com will be deleted. But he just posts indirect links to everything. He is told that direct links are preferred alot. Not sure its as big an issue as the reposting. But not entirely sure how we would want to handle it. If at all.
@InnocentBystander @THC
InnocentBystander ago
I saw it yesterday. I think we both deleted it at the same time.
I don't like the idea of banning a real user, but it may have come to that. I am thinking a ban, with a PM that says if he responds, and agrees not to do it again we will lift the ban.
Maybe wait to see what @THC thinks. He may have another idea, or confirm this one. I don't think we need to move quick in this case.
This may be the first non-puppet account we've had to ban.
Violentlight ago
Oh ya, no need to rush anything. Definitely wanted to discuss it first.
Not sure why he is so insistent on posting a handful of the same videos.
InnocentBystander ago
I'm also puzzled by it. I just can't see a motivate. I wonder if he is reading his mail.
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander
So I tried to watch this video, but it keeps telling me I need a subscription to view it. Just wondering if this is happening to you as well. Wasn't sure if it was porn or not, so couldn't figure that out.
Basically trying to figure out if it just needs NSFW, indirect/dead, or to be removed.
Edit... jesus, lets add the link eh? That might help. I'm so tired this morning. lol.
Thanks. :)
InnocentBystander ago
It is definitely an indirect link at the least. I had to click twice before it got to the video, which I could not watch without an account.
I'm thinking this may be classified as spam/advertising since it links to a paid service. Though that's a bit grey.
It is an established user who has not done this before though, so maybe just a warning, not a removal this time.
It's a hard call. because it is not a watchable video, but is a genuine user.
At the lest, ask him not to link to that site again, and flair it indirect.
Violentlight ago
So I asked /u/khalbal124 about some of the videos hes been posting to the YouTube channel Definite Solutions. He says hes making them, so I flaired his videos as Original Content. But hes posting alot of these videos. I'm not sure of how much OC we are willing to accept before we start to consider it kind of spammy. I was going to send him a message, asking him to space them out a bit more. I just wanted to talk to you guys about it before I did anything though. As I'm not confident in our position on this. I really don't want him to take it the wrong way and not post anything anymore. I love that we get a bunch of Original Content coming here now.
@InnocentBystander @THC
khalbal124 ago
Yes, its my channel, and yes you are right as i am sharing much post here from my channel, from now on i will be very careful about this. Thanks for tagging me here so that i realized my mistake @violentlight
InnocentBystander ago
Thanks for the contributions, and for understanding violentlights concerns. Just space them out a little, and we have no other issues.
We're very happy that content creators like you share their stuff here.
InnocentBystander ago
We should use that as our slogan.
:)
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
Just a heads-up. I removed the modlog links from the sidebar text since they have their own window now.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
Also, have a look at the comments here. I gave a warning to the church nuts a while back, he just responded with this. Google translated :
My response was not very polite. Sounds to me like he is saying he doesn't give a shit what we or the users think. He is going to do what god compels him to do.
Violentlight ago
Ya, that was a bit... aggressive. :P
InnocentBystander ago
Well, I did start out very polite.
But I woke up a little cranky, and his responce of "I'll do what I want" kinda set me off.
I feel better now though :)
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
user ECW has been excessive reposting. I have given him a warning about it, so hopefully he stops. But this is a heads up to keep an eye out for it, and to let you know he has been warned.
Here is the post where it was pointed out.. He reposts some other videos also, but the 'male feminist' is the most common one.
Violentlight ago
I'll tag him. And delete any further reposts from him.
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander
Daughters Birthday stuff has been happening. So I've been extra busy. I've been kinda slacking. I will continue to be slacking for a few more days I think. Then after all the birthday goodness has settled down, I'll be back to wasting hours watching horrible videos.
Sorry if you've felt a bit busier lately.
InnocentBystander ago
No problem.
InnocentBystander ago
Break out the new 'puppet-ban'? I can get behind that. We should be clear and upfront about it though.
Maybe someone (other than me) should make a new sticky. Explain this and the resulting bans as well as summarising what we learned from the last sticky etc.
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander
To add on my last comment. I mean to ban any accounts posting AlmightyGod links this week as well. Removing the post, and banning the poster. Straight up shut it down this week.
InnocentBystander ago
Don't remove the old posts. They are dead anyway and were already let go. But ban all the accounts. THC is putting together a list.
Violentlight ago
No no, I have no reason to go back. :D
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander
Ya, I think we need to take a hard stance this week. See how they deal with it. Community didn't show much preference either way. So we take this action to try and quell this BS now. If the community wants to talk about it after we do this, I'm all for it.
For now though, mass ban them. Take these accounts away. See how dedicated they are to this.
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander
Wtf happened here?
Is this a focused effort to get one of their posts to the front page? Because this video is just like all the other ones. So why so many upvoats and comments in this one?
(Guess we missed this voat manipulation. This month is going to be annoying I think...)
InnocentBystander ago
@THC
These guys have been becoming more and more of a problem. They were warned a while back when they started submitting too much. They slowed. But they have been picking up speed again and now this.
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander @THC
I just had to share this one. I feel like I'm not fully understanding what is being said or something.
All started with the typical request for a direct link...
I'm going to go pour myself another cup of coffee, and re-read what happened. Perhaps it will make more sense then. lol
InnocentBystander ago
Well, reposts that are have not been posted in a while are acceptable. But using an indirect link to do it is not. Youtube has at least 3 different links to each video. That's why so many others have no problem posting reposts. He could have also found another copy of it.
It is best for them to find another video when their link has already been used. Finding another link is ok if it has not been posted in a while. But using an indirect link to get around it is not something I am ok with.
I'm not sure when that video was posted last. I don't recognise it, so it may be ok. But maybe explain to him that inderect links are not the way to get around it.
Violentlight ago
That makes sense. Still fits the definition.
Violentlight ago
Oh ya, if it links to a video thats part of a playlist, thats fine. But in this case, it just went to a list of the videos. You had no idea which video they intended for you to watch. It was just the list.
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander @THC
In the past, I've removed posts like these. They just point to a playlist or the channel, but not the specific video. I would tell them to post it again with the direct link.
I see this one already has the Nebulous Title flair. So are posts to a YouTube playlist okay then?
InnocentBystander ago
No, you'd be right. I was in a hurry and did not have time to check it properly. I flaired it because of the title, but missed the playlist.
Violentlight ago
Just wanted to make sure I wasn't acting like some kinda rogue mod tearing through /v/videos. lol. Whew.
InnocentBystander ago
If it was a regular user making a genuine attempt to contribute, and first time they broke the rule, I think a warning is sufficient. But it depends on the situation. I think this user is probably one of the bot-slaves, so a firmer hand would have been acceptable.
Violentlight ago
I've already removed it.
I try to sound as friendly as possible when removing thoughs ones. Bots or not. (Who the hell knows whos actually a bot). But I don't give warnings. Because it doesn't link to a video. So when its just a channel or a playlist, it seems to break the idea of /v/videos. You have no idea what they were actually trying to share. So I remove them without warnings, but always ask them to post again to the video they intended to share.
Feels the same as a link to a page with no video. You just have no clue what they were originally trying to share.
It's an easy mistake to make. So I always assume it was unintentional. I hope my comments come across that way when I delete the posts.
InnocentBystander ago
I think that is fair treatment.
The reason I prefer warning when it seems like they are making a real attempt is because some people take removals in a very personal way. If they are a new contributor it can discourage them from contributing again. It is an irrational reaction, but still happens. As long as it is something that only happens occasionally then letting one slide once in a while does not hurt the queue.
I don't disagree with immediate removals, but letting some first time offences slide is also not a problem.
Violentlight ago
Thats a good point.
InnocentBystander ago
Are you talking about the 'spam' or the gif-like post?
I already removed the gif-like one before I saw this comment. Sorry. But I felt since it was one of the bot-slaves, a firm hand was justified.
I can let them slide if you feel that's better.
Violentlight ago
Some are noticing already.
@InnocentBystander
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander @THC
At what point is this comment history spam?
AND (Thats right folks. 2 topics. 1 post. HES A MAD MAN!)
Some content was posted that I would consider GIF-like. But that damn scrubber is on it, making it a real grey area. Thoughts?
InnocentBystander ago
I think the comments by Vladimir_Komarov are 'spammish' but he has a legit reason for it and it not doing it indiscriminately. We should let it ride. I'm interested in the effect it will have on the bot/slaves.
I removed the other one. I left my reasoning there
Violentlight ago
Ya, I saw flickr as an image site too. But looked up if they hosted videos. Apparently they do. I mean... sort of I guess. Same player. Literally cannot tell the difference between the videos and the gifs on the site. Thats why I wanted you to weigh in.
InnocentBystander ago
Good call. There's safety in numbers when it's iffy. If it had been a regular user it would have been a harder call. Probably just a warning. But this one seems to be one of the bot-slaves so I'm not concerned.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
So what do you think about the sticky feedback so far?
I think it has made a grey area even greyer. There are a number of views with no consensus between them. There are some things we can see with reasonable certainty, I think. Most people don't like the asian bot/slaves. They're receptive to the puppet bans. But at this point there is a split on just about everything else.
It's gonna need more time I think. Maybe let this one gather some more comments for a couple days, then a new sticky summing up the community feeling as best we can, and suggesting any ideas we get.
Then maybe Cunninghams Law will kick in and we can get some additional ideas on how to deal with it.
Violentlight ago
61 replies.
26 were mods responding.
35 were user response.
21 unique users.
4 are okay with bots.
2 are not okay with bots.
4 are okay with some bots. (Discrepency is because a few responses did not state opinions on bots)
4 suggestions were for site wide implementation. (Out of our hands)
3 suggestions for /v/videos.
2 were agreeing with the idea of a puppet ban.
1 suggestion was pretty much what we are already doing now.
39101 subscribed to /v/videos. I'm not sure the general populace cares enough, or has any new suggestions for dealing with bots. At least at this time.
@THC
InnocentBystander ago
That is my thinking. We're not getting a large response. The response we do get seems to be mostly 'meh' by typical users. Mods, and politicly motivated types have a number of differing views, but no real solutions.
My personal feelings are that if they follow the rules, the rest should be up to the users. I don't believe we could accurately do removals or anything of that nature even if we wanted to. Having humans behind the account blurs any line you could set. None of those advocating removals have offered any answer to that.
I think we should let it ride as is for a few more days and see if anything new comes up. Then make a post reaffirming our current practices, plus reserving the right to hand out a 'puppet-ban' should the need arise.
I think if anything is to be done about them, other than downvoats, it needs to be at the admin level, site-wide.
Violentlight ago
Could not agree more.
The vibe I'm getting is the bots that start pushing out advertisements is the biggest fear.
There is some frustration with the Dailymotion "shills" posting content. But thoughs shills post a lot of content we don't get from anyone else. It also opens up another problem with Original Content posters if we start targeting shills.
The people who seem adamant against the bots tend to be talking site wide. From the responses in the sticky, it seems that we have less of a bot problem then the other System subverses. In a few of these discussions, they seem unable to talk about bots without bringing up the issues with other subverses. So a lot of that is entirely out of our control. There have been a couple good site wide suggestions made, but for /v/videos they just don't really apply.
So far though, I haven't seen much suggestions for us to change our current action. As I mentioned, most of the direct suggestions are implemented site wide and don't apply to our particular corner of Voat.
The absence of response can be telling as well. People might just not care. Majority of users may not have noticed the bots. We take care of the advertisement ones. The terrible ones get downvoated. Majority of the community just uses the frontpage and probably has no idea there is an influx of bots. Hell, we take down the image posts so fast, I doubt anyone knows how much of an influx we have had with that.
Only problem with that so far has been that they are unable to really outline what they deem as actionable. They say we should ban the bad bots, but then they tend to go into site wide examples of what a bad bot is. I can't seem to find anything that relates to /v/videos besides the worry of advertising bots (which we already handle with deletion).
Definitely want to see what the sticky looks like after the weekend.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
I just wanted to say thanks for being great co-mods. I have not been around as much lately. Some days I've only been checking in once or twice. That was due to a combination of holidays, and a new programming project that I can get a bit overly-focused on. I'm mostly back now, but the great thing is I doubt anyone ever noticed. You guys are right on top of things. It's nice to know that even if I am not around, nothing gets neglected.
I also wanted to say how impressed I am with Violentlight. You're very attentive to the new queue, and the way you speak when representing /v/videos is flawless in my opinion. You're a better spokesman than I. I sometimes talk too much, and I allow myself to get pulled into immature arguments. Not good when I am representing the sub.
I also like the fact that Violentlight seems to think a little differently than THC and I. With THC, we usually have the same view, though he tends to be more level-headed than I. But Violentlight often has a different, but compatible, view. That is great because it helps to round out our thinking, and sheds a little light from a different angle. That just makes us better.
So, thanks.
Violentlight ago
Hey thanks. I'm just glad its all working out. :)
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander
Our latest spam report was shortly after I received a reply to a comment I made on a post I flaired dead link. Same user. Just wanted to point it out, because I'm not entirely sure what the user is going on about.
InnocentBystander ago
You mean NeedleStacks report?
I've sent them a message to get more details. The report seemed to be nothing but NeedleStack is a known good user so I will get to the bottom of it.
Violentlight ago
As I've been trying to catch up on my videos this morning, NeedleStacks been showing up in the comments for a lot of them. Calling them out as spammers. Perhaps they are. Perhaps they are not. But the evidence provided is nothing close to actionable. Guess they are trying to find the bots/spammers.
Content posted has been well within /v/videos rules. Thats why I'm confused as to why NeedleStacks is showing up in the comments of so many videos calling OP out for spamming. Even in the event that its a spam account, it didn't spam in /v/videos.
InnocentBystander ago
Ya I'm a little confused also. NeedleStack has a history of being a great user and dedicated mod. So I am exchanging PMs with her right now in order to sort this out. Seems she feels that any professional accounts should be banned. I can understand the view, but it's not how we do things. We judge the actions only, not the intentions. Hopefully I can come to an understanding with her. But even if I can't, she is not a trouble maker. She's just doing what she thinks is best.
InnocentBystander ago
I agree that even amalak should have a voice. But it's the frequentcy I have a problem with. He has been OK so far, but I don't think it will last. I think gauging the community so if he begins to spam us the way he spams /v/whatever, we can start removing them.
I am fine with one amalak rant pwr day. But we should be prepared for it to escalate.
I am not suggesting we do anything more than remove self posts at this point. But gauging the community opinion and having a plan in case it escaletes may be a good idea.
Violentlight ago
@THC
I'm not sure it would be a good idea trying to ask the community about a potential problem with a specific user.
We can't really predict user actions. I'm all aboard asking the community what they want done with a problem that exists. But its too dangerous a game to try and stop a user before they even break the rules.
Vote manipulation is going to be an issue for us. We do not have the tools to come up with any proof. It has to be noticed really quickly after the content was submitted. Its a super tricky thing. I think it will be the biggest issue we have. Everything else is pretty easy to prove. We just point to the rules and you can see the rule was broken, regardless of how long the submission was posted. The community just would not be able to see the vote manipulation by the time they are investigating our action on it. Enough time would have passed that the votes would be reasonable.
-
I think it would be a good idea to ask the community about the bot situation. I want to know their suggestions on handling it, and also what definition they would find acceptable to label a user a bot that we can take action on. Because bots or not, the videos get upvotes a lot times.
InnocentBystander ago
I am writing up a post for a sticky now. I will send you and @THC a copy to review before I post it.
As for amalak. I am going to include a section about that. If you two still think it doesn't need to be brought up yet, I'll remove it before posting. But I think it would help a lot to have a policy in place before this becomes a problem. That way we know how to act in a community approved way, and it will also act as a deterrent if they know there will be consequences.
InnocentBystander ago
I also wondered if his upvoats were legit. I have doubts, but there was a number of supporting comments. So who knows.
I think we are OK to nuke all future self posts by him. But what I thought to ask in the sticky is should we allow amalak at all. Even video posts. Users may feel that his posts are out of place here and do not belong.
InnocentBystander ago
I've also noticed the large increase in bots.
I wonder if we should make a sticky. See how the users feel and define some rules about bots.
That way we are sure we are supported, and we can be more aggressive about turfing some bots. While still allowing some others.
The luanluan one is bad. It was one of the accounts posting images, and now the 'can not suggest title'.
We could also use the sticky to get some feedback on other issues as well. Such as how tolerant we should be of amalak and manhood posts that are not just an ad.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
I have told amalak twice now not to make self posts. If he continues, we should begin removing them.
It's easy to know its him. The post will have a rambling incoherent title, be anti-jew and posted by a sock-puppet.
If he links an actual video, then fine. But the self-posts filled with news articles and political rants are not.
Violentlight ago
Noticed your warning to him in his last post. Will try to keep an eye out for it. Thank you.
InnocentBystander ago
It could be. Hard to tell at this point. I wanted to give a heads up just in case.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
I am beginning to think someone is testing/trolling us with the image posts. I have been removing most with an explanation and referring them to /v/gifs. I left one up today to get downvoated as a demonstration that it is not welcome here.
If this is a troll, be aware that someone may be trying to stir drama.
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander @THC
We cool with rt.com? Or is that considered an indirect link?
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander
I kind of hid it, but my rt.com link was actually a link to an example post. It has a mixture of YouTube and instagram links. So was just wondering if we prefer the links directly to YouTube, with multiple submisisons. Or if we are fine with the link to a rt.com page with multiple videos in the link.
InnocentBystander ago
It this case, it is a direct link to the source. There is a more direct link at youtube.
But it is an RT video, since they are the source, I would consider it a direct link.
It's not always crystal clear, but the idea is straight to video is best, source of video is also good. But a rehosted video that displays a page full of other stuff is 'indirect'.
At least, that's my understanding.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @ViolentLight
I jumped into this post without consulting with you guys first. Sorry, but I find when these things come up it is best to make our stance known quickly. People have a tendency to assume the worst so I wanted to share our view before things got rolling in the wrong direction.
Fortunately it was something we have discussed before, so I knew how you felt.
It will be nice to see how users feel though.
InnocentBystander ago
The problem with that is he learns. He would just slow down how quick he upvoats it.
InnocentBystander ago
I don't think we would have a problem with the anti- censorship types. If we consulted the community first, and only went after manhood, not after any specific topic, I think we would be fine.
But if you feel it is better to wait a bit, that works for me. I just noticed he has begun a new tactic of Voat manipulation, and since it has gotten results here, I am pretty sure he is going to keep it up.
InnocentBystander ago
@thc @violentlight
I think we should make a sticky about taking a hard stance against any and all manhood related posts.
It has become clear that he is using a bunch of sockpuppets to upvoat his posts now. Check /v/whatever for proof of that.
I think we should begin removing all videos that are posted by manhood pupets, even if they get uovoated. We can not tell when the voats are legit or not, and considering recent behaviour, I think it is safe to assume many are not.
But because this is not normal actions, we should make a sticky first and be sure the community agrees.
Your thoughts?
Violentlight ago
Definitely something that I would like to hear from the community. Want to know what their thoughts are on it.
InnocentBystander ago
If @thc agrees, I will make a sticky tonight, and we will see.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
Just a heads-up, I added a link to VTV in the side bar. It is a 'rEddit.tv' for Voat, setup by go1dfish.
Violentlight ago
I'm fine with that. But if I'm being honest. I have a hard time determining the difference between the videos.
Violentlight ago
That was my mindset on it as well. Didn't feel like our role for the subverse.
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander
So in regards to our most recent mail. I'll be honest, I never made the connection that it was always posts to the same account on Dailymotion. The only thing I ever noticed is that most of the time they are reposts. But, I don't really think this falls into our job description.
Does Dailymotion pay for content? Would this be making the user money?
What are your thoughts on this latest mail we received? I don't think banning a user for this should even be on the table. But is a discussion required with the user at all?
InnocentBystander ago
I'm with THC, that is not our job. If the user does not like the practice he should contact Dailymotion about it. We are not the host.
Did you reply to him? I will answer him if nobody else has.
Violentlight ago
I did not reply.
Violentlight ago
To expand on this a little. I think we run into this situation alot with YouTube as well. It's not really something we can (or should) do much about. I think for thoughs who this truly bothers, they can downvoat. Not sure there is much other action to be taken.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
I gave a warning to this user here. We should keep an eye on them. I feel their posts are spam due to the frequency, and the advertising nature of them.
Hopefully he listens to the warning, but if not I think we should remove future violations by him.
Violentlight ago
@THC has not weighed in on this one. Would like to know what he thinks since it does not appear that the warning has done much.
Violentlight ago
So are we just treating the specific video type [from the YouTube account The Church of Almighty God] as the spam? Because they seem to be posting them using a ton of different accounts. I've been trying to find a common one since we have seen so many of them as of late. But most of them are from a variety of accounts.
The link you provided was deleted, so I'm not sure of the specific user your referring to.
I completely agree btw. They have been increasing in frequency and they never get the upvoats to warrant it.
InnocentBystander ago
Here is what I wrote to the guy so you know what has been said :
"Ok, enough. This has become spam with how often you're posting these videos.
Advertising is not allowed. Does not matter if you are selling a physical product, or a religion. Advertising is not allowed and the amount you are posting is reaching spam levels even if it wasn't advertising.
I won't remove this one, but I will begin removing your videos if you keep it up.
If you want to occasionally post a video about religion that is informative, or interesting, go ahead. But you are posting too much, and it is just propaganda/advertising.
Please slow it down, and try to find videos that people would actually want to watch."
InnocentBystander ago
The account I linked to (i forgot the name) had a number of the videos, so I specificly called him out. But you are right, there are other accounts. It seems to be 1 or 2 people doing it with multiple accounts.
When they use one account, it is simple, warn, then delete. But it is a little more grey area when they make new accounts since we have a 'warn first' policy. For now, I am hoping the warning will work. I told him he could post on the topic, just not so often, and to not try to 'sell' it.
If they keep it up using a string of alts, then we may need to ban all videos from the 'church of god'.
For today, warnings I think are enough. But if it continues, then I think we should just start removing all 'church of god' videos. But we should talk it over first if it comes to that.
Violentlight ago
@THC @AJ @InnocentBystander @Konk
Anyone else able to see this link?. I could when it was first posted, now I can't. Saw a comment saying they can't see it in Canada (that would be me as well) or Europe. USA able to see it?
InnocentBystander ago
I can't see it through an american vpn, so I marked it 'dead link'. It probably got taken down.
Violentlight ago
Ya, I totally get that I came in after the fact. Thats kinda what I'm saying though. From my point of view (having never had to deal with the spam from manhood) it doesnt look like its spam EDIT: now. I've seen a few cases in the comments with copy/paste spam. But ultimately, while I've been a mod, it hasn't been too bad.
So it certainly looks like you guys did a great job at curbing the spam.
Thats all I ment about
Just as a perspective of someone who didn't have to deal with all the previous spam.
Violentlight ago
@AJ @Konk @InnocentBystander @THC
So there was a manhood video posted and it got a bunch of upvoats. Then in the comments, pretty much any response from manhood was flagged as spam. I still don't understand why all the manhood stuff is getting deleted. But as far as I could see, the responses seemed to be legitimate. It's a manhood video so the responses warrant mentioning manhood. I won't be removing any of them, because it's not spam to me. But if a manhood video can get this many upvoats, perhaps we should think about resetting our policy on deleting all manhood content. If it gets spamy I will have no problem deleting them. But I do not see the videos very often. We always talk about letting the voats decide, and the videos fit within our guidelines. Most of the comments do as well.
The comments I do delete are the advertisement ones just copy/paste trying to advertise the debates. I see thoughs as spam. But some of the comments that get deleted are legitimate responses that just so happen to come from one of the accounts that has spammed before.
InnocentBystander ago
I saw all the reports. Got ready to start removing, and then got confused when I saw them.
Manhood is learning.
The post was upvoated, so it stays. The comments are on topic, so I don't think we should remove them. They are not copy/paste, and are actual responses to comments. The ones where he mentions "manhood101.com" could be considered spam still, but it is a grey area. The others do not break any rules.
I think we should leave them. The users upvoated the post, and he stayed in that posts comments, so the users asked for it.
I'd like to hear @THCs view, but I think we should let it pass this time. I'm just afraid it will encourage him.
Violentlight ago
But its our job to sort out whats spam and whats not. I'm just questioning the blanket deletion policy that we have on it right now.
I've only come into this after-the-fact. I assume you have been dealing with alot of this before I showed up. But having not been around for all that, I have only seen a very small portion of stuff that appears to actually be spam. It was one of the reasons I had deleted that comment (that started some controversy). It looked very similar to the manhood spam that we were deleting on site. So I just assumed that was our policy.
I guess I'm just uncomfortable with treating content differently based on the user.
InnocentBystander ago
I don't think we are. Manhood used to dump a bunch of copy/paste advertising of his site. In unrelated posts. That was spam, and regardless of who does it, it gets removed, after a first time warning. The only mistake in the minor-controversy was that there was no warning. All users get the same treatment, which is why we are leaving the manhood posts this time, since they mostly do not break any rules. His repeated mentions of the 'manhood101.com' is spammy and rides the border, but I'm willing to let that go for now.
The blanket deleting is only for his copy/paste and blatant advertising, because he has been warned about it already. That would be the same for any user doing the same things. He is doing things differently this time though.
Violentlight ago
We dont have any policy on cams right? Not sure how that works out legally, so was just checking.
@InnocentBystander @THC @Konk @AJ
InnocentBystander ago
We have no rule against it. Legally it means nothing to us, we are not hosting the video and have no obligation to check the copy-rights. It is up to that site to deal with.
Violentlight ago
I'm fine with leaving it up to voats. But you would probably want to work on the warning. I'm not sure how I would word it, since it seems like a gif to me.
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander @AJ @Konk
To me, this is a gif with sound. But wanted your opinions on it before I removed it.
InnocentBystander ago
I do not count it as a video since there is no start/stop/rewind.
But I agree with THC. it blurs the line. I think a warning is good enough.
Violentlight ago
I can't get this to load. But there are comments on it. Does it load for anyone else?
@THC @InnocentBystander @Konk @AJ
InnocentBystander ago
I can not get it to load either. My guess is that it probably was working, then stopped.
I flaired it with dead-link. If I am wrong, someone will probably tell us.
Violentlight ago
Thats what I thought. But I wanted to make sure before I started flairing the hell out of everything. lol. I'll continue on my flairfest unless someone else suggests otherwise. :D
Violentlight ago
We marking anything that is from a news channel as news? Example. Or is the News/Politics flair more for things that are breaking news, big events type stuff?
@THC @InnocentBystander @Konk @AJ
InnocentBystander ago
Yes, that is what I had in mind. THC has the same plan I do.
Violentlight ago
Thats kind of the lines I was thinking. How would we handle a post of a non-porn video, but it was hosted by pornhub? The site seemed to be leaning alot more towards porn then not. While I can see the argument made for liveleak having extreme content, it generally doesnt show up in the ad videos on the side. Liveleak also has a default adult filter on it that you would have to turn off to see the more extreme side of the site. While this site was just showing everything up front. To the point that the majority of the comments are not about the video itself, but the nature of the site.
@InnocentBystander
Violentlight ago
Says its Original Content. Looking at past submissions makes it hard to confirm. What do?
@InnocentBystander @THC
InnocentBystander ago
I wondered about it also so I skipped it. But they have replied now saying it is. So I believe it, for now.
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander @THC @AJ @Konk
This post is a repost, hosted by a site with NSFW videos on the side. Someone tried to tag us all in it for a NSFW flair because of the other videos showing up on the site.
First problem I have is that I never got the message. He tagged me right. I just never got any notice for it. I was reading the comment section when I saw his comment asking for the flair.
Second problem, I was going to flair it a repost before I saw the request for a NSFW flair. The site thats hosting seems to be a terrible site for phones as well. I have the NSFW flair on it right now, but should the post just be removed?
InnocentBystander ago
I did not get a ping either. A bug, hopefully just a one off.
I don't think we should remove it 9hr later when it did get upvoated. But if it had been caught soon it may have been worth removing. How long ago was it posted before? I saw that video, but did not recall seeing it before.
Violentlight ago
20 hrs ago.
Violentlight ago
This count as a video? Its borderline Zunox Principle. I've been taking down alot of Zunox Principle lately though, so was wondering what @InnocentBystander @THC thought before I did anything to this one.
InnocentBystander ago
I'm not sure. I saw it also, I thought right away it was a gif. Loaded very slow, shit quality.
But then I remembered what I said during the Zunox incident, and it does have a stop/play and ability to skip around.
The line between gif and video is getting very blurred. I personally would consider it a gif. But I can see how a user might argue it.
@THC your ideas?
Violentlight ago
Exactly, the fact that you can skip around made me hesitate. Speaking of which, are webM's considered videos here?
Edit: What did you say during the Zunox incident?
InnocentBystander ago
The Zunox discussion
We may need to re-define the zunox principle to make the difference clearer.
The webm videos I have seen are decent enough. So I think they are fine. But I am not that familiar with them, so I may be missing something.
Violentlight ago
Oh ya, the webm's are good quality. Its just been used as a gif replacement of sorts. I wasn't sure. Webm's have sound and you can move around the video, so I think they are fine. Just wanted to make sure I hadn't missed a discussion on it.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
Hey, I don't seem to be able to add flair. Is it working for you guys?
Edit: Ignore me. I'm a moron. I had css disabled and didn't realize it.
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander @THC
Ya'll able to see the video here? Just takes me to the site, but not a specific video.
InnocentBystander ago
It seems to be a bad link. This is probably a good time to remove it and let the user know to repost with a working link.
I'll let you handle it since you caught it.
InnocentBystander ago
I don't think that would make a difference.
InnocentBystander ago
I am having second thoughts about the background. I noticed my browser was chugging sometimes. Seems doing that can be resource intensive for some browsers. We may still be able to do it with scrolling though. And that will probably be less choppy anyway.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
I have been thinking about tweeking the flair. I have flaired the posts in /v/videosModTalk to demonstrate.
These colours contrast better for visibility in day mode. They also group the flair 'types' together. orange=bad, blue=topic, green=oc etc..
I also dropped the 'audio' from 'Audio/Music' tag since we very rarely get audio, and it seems a bit misleading to label a music video with audio in the name, since it is more than just audio. Especially when it is something like a parody video.
I also left out DIY. It is a reasonable category, but it is rarely used. I think we could use the spot for something better.
I suggest a 'News/Politics' Tag. It would be of more use to users I think. Some people come here for those things, other want to avoid them. A flair would help them both. It could be used on anything that is a news report or vlog/political rant.
Your thoughts?
Violentlight ago
Nebulous Title flair is a little tough to read with the current color scheme on night mode. The black text doesn't contrast very well with the brownish-yellow background.
InnocentBystander ago
Should be fixed now.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
I have changed the css for the main sub now. So if you notice and flair is mis-tagged that is why. Should be ok though. 'News' has been added.
Violentlight ago
Also, the color choice for NSFW is perfect. Its my favorite of all the changes.
Violentlight ago
Not sure if its cuz I'm in nightmode, but Repost is a little low. Its going into the border so you cant see the bottom of the 'p'.
Was the audio flair for when they posted something with a static background and just talked over it?
I would hope that a video would be obviously News/Politics from the title. Even in the event of someone making original content news or politics with a nebulous title, it would actually be flaired 'Original Content'. So if its a political or news video with some weird title that you can't figure that out from, the post would probably get a 'Nebulous Title' flair instead of a 'News/Politics' flair. Just seems a little bit redundant if they are titled correctly.
InnocentBystander ago
The audio was for a few times we had videos that were just talking over a background.
The idea of flairing is so you don't always have to read through the titles to find what you are looking for. Titles are not always clear even when you do read them.
I am not intending to flair it as a bad thing. Just as a category like music or compilation.
OC is still oc. But with the flair we could loosen up on nebulous when with the flair it gives an idea of what it is.
Violentlight ago
Alrighty. Prioritize Political over Nebulous. Works for me.
InnocentBystander ago
If we go that route, I think that would be good practice. But only when it becomes clear what it is. If it is still unclear or very bad title even with the flair, then I may still mark it nebulous.
Violentlight ago
Actually, looked at the others as well. Original Content, Compilation, Dead Link, Repost. They all sit a little too low in the border and get the bottom part of the word cut off.
Edit @InnocentBystander
I need more coffee. I can't even reply to the right post anymore...
InnocentBystander ago
I changed the border and font size. Does it look ok now?
Violentlight ago
Looks good now. :)
Violentlight ago
Why is this NSFL?
@THC @InnocentBystander @AJ @Konk
InnocentBystander ago
The guy licks shit out of cows ass.
That seems pretty NSFL to me.
Violentlight ago
Hes blowing air in there to make the cow shit. Something that is more common then I would hope. But alrighty.
InnocentBystander ago
I understood that. I still felt like retching. Not something I enjoy seeing. Maybe I'm being too sensitive?
Violentlight ago
Not my definition of NSFL. But maybe I'm not sensitive enough.
InnocentBystander ago
Good. Seems like we are all on the same page now.
InnocentBystander ago
The extended title is the best. But they don't always do that. And I see the idea with searching. But since search is fucked anyway, I don't mind if they replace it with something descriptive. It would seem strange to me to flair it nebulous when it has an accurate and descriptive title, even if it doesn't match the original.
InnocentBystander ago
I see your point. Idealy I would like to see your example as ' The Day After Tomorrow - movie'.
I Will no longer flair any that keep the original title. But I don't think we should flair it when they change the title to something that is more descriptive.
Sometimes the videos on YouTube can have very useless titles that might not be the videos original title anyway.
InnocentBystander ago
Pretty much the same as you. But I will sometimes flair it when it uses the original name, if the original name is really bad. Meaning it gives you no idea what the video is.
I have noticed a few tagged though that I wouldn't have. I figure it can be a bad title as long as it gives some idea of what to expect.
Do you think I should stop tagging when it matches the original? I guess I can see why the poster would use it. But I would still prefer that add something to the title to give us a clue of what it is.
Violentlight ago
Icic. I was just trying to have the terrible search feature be useful, since I'm telling people to use it to avoid reposts. I'll avoid the flair if it matches original title.
InnocentBystander ago
The search does not work well even when titles are accurate.
I tell people to use Google with site:Voat.co/v/videos in the search box. It seems to work better.
Maybe I should add that to the sidebar somewhere.
Violentlight ago
Ya, I'm going to stop telling people to search to avoid reposts, and just tag it a repost. There is just no reliable way to do it.
Edited: Phone Voat is hard Voat
InnocentBystander ago
Most of the time that's what I do as well. I think THC has also given up on messaging them over it as well. It just happens too much.
Once in a while I will still comment and suggest the Google site search just so people are aware of it.
Violentlight ago
I've just been looking for the title compared to the content. So if the original title was nebulous, I flaired it nebulous as well. I've just been acting on the rules on the side, and the definition of nebulous. I am still trying to get into the established tempo ya'll have.
Violentlight ago
So OC flair?
Violentlight ago
I'm unable to even see the video without signing up (which I'm not going to do). Anything special done about these kinds of posts?
Edited, cuz I'm stupid and links are hard.
InnocentBystander ago
Did you link the right post? I get a YouTube link that works even when I don't sign in.
Violentlight ago
No I did not. Cuz I'm stupid.
My bad
InnocentBystander ago
I am able to watch it without signing in. And it is getting some upvoats so I think others can watch it.
@THC can you look and see if it plays for you?
Violentlight ago
I don't have facebook. So that might be why its asking for my email. I don't know. Thats why I wanted to check. I saw the upvotes, figured someones able to watch it. Wasnt sure if they were signing in to do so though.
InnocentBystander ago
I don't have Facebook or anything like that. And I tried it in an incognito window to be sure. But it still worked.
That is confusing.
But for future reference if we get a video that requires signing in I would comment asking them to use a more open site in the future, or rehost the video on YouTube or liveleak.
We don't actually have a rule against it. It's more of a common sense thing. I would expect something like that to get downvoated. But so far it has never come up.
Violentlight ago
Ya I figured. I was probably more curious if it was happening to everyone. I have no idea why it would be happening to me though. lol.
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander @THC @AJ @Konk
I removed one of these submissions before, as it seemed to me to be a poorly crafted advertisement for the channel. Do we agree with that assessment? Or do these stay up.
InnocentBystander ago
I agree with the 'poorly crafted' part. But I don't think it is an advertisement.
I think it falls under the 'self promotion' sitewide Voat rule.
The account has only posted his stuff which I think is crappy OC.
I don't think we should remove it this time. Voats will sink it. But a warning, with a link to the sitewide rules is a good idea.
But we don't remove just because it is a shit video. If he had posted other things unrelated to himself, then I don't think he is really breaking any rules. It is kinda spammy, and crap. But it is not a clear violation of any rule except the self promotion.
Usually we deal with that by explaining the rule and asking them to post other stuff as well. If they ignore us, we have decided to do nothing about it for now Since it is often OC, and we don't want to chase away OC.
In this case I don't mind if he was chased away since it is crap. But we need to stay consistent.
So my opinion is: warn him about the self promotion rule, link him to the sitewide rules. Then forget about him. Let the voats handle it.
Violentlight ago
On the note of OC content then. Does it get a OC flair, or Nebulous flair?
InnocentBystander ago
While technically OC. I'm not going to mark shitty OC. It gives OC a bad name.
Nebulize it.
Violentlight ago
But then we are judging the quality of the content are we not? We would then have to decide the value of the content to label it with an OC flair.
InnocentBystander ago
Well, sort of I guess.
The only judging I do is if it is clearly something most people would consider shit, then I just don't bother to flair it. I leave it to another mod to flair, or ignore. If I get asked to flair it I would.
You point is correct, and we should try to stay consistent. But I think it is better for /v/videos if the tag OC does not become associated with borderline spammy ad-ish videos.
Violentlight ago
No, I was just mentioning it being poorly crafted, because it is lol. But I would never remove a video based on its quality or lack-thereof. Was just wondering if it counted as advertisement. So it technically is an advertisement because self-promotion is the same thing with a different name. But I'll leave it alone then.
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander @Konk @AJ
Alrighty, seems I started some controversy. Apologies for that.
To get the ball rolling, it was this part of the guidelines that confused me. So figured we could work on some rewording.
Its been explained to me that this line is suppose to mean: Don't post non-video content
So perhaps...
Violentlight ago
So a quick summary of my error, I should have gave a warning.
But my confusion does lie with
Because to me, that sounds like its saying a comment that has nothing to do with the video, or does not expand conversation about the video would be spam. So I'm just looking for clarification on what this part of the guidelines is trying to say.
I'm all good with just letting anything go in the comments. I really couldn't care less what is said there. I was only acting based on that single line in the guidelines.
As of right now, based on some discussions about my deletion, I will only be deleting a comment as spam if its repeatedly posted (copy/paste) throughout /v/videos and or the site.
This gets a little more tricky for me as I have a proven to have a bad eye for spotting manhood spam. But if I miss it, you guys will find it.
@THC @InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
Sounds like you have the idea now. For comments we should try to be as hands off as possible. Even if it is not on topic.
If his post had not been copy/paste it would have been worth a warning but not a removal.
But since it is copy/paste it is removable. Just warn for first offences, then remove any repeated.
Other than manhood warnings have always worked, so far.
Violentlight ago
But what would I be warning for if it was not copy/paste? If its not a copy/paste post, then it wouldn't be spam. If I'm warning someone, what would I say? Careful, your post looks like it could be copy/paste in the future?
Thats why I'm confused. If comments that have nothing to do with the video are allowed, then why would I give that post a warning if it wasn't copy/paste.
InnocentBystander ago
A comment like that, that has nothing to do with the post or videos, is spam. So I would have replied asking him to put his comment in a more appropriate place. But I would not remove it, even on a second offence. It is against the rule but it's not a huge deal, and we try to keep a light touch.
But copy/paste elevates it to a higher level. One that is worth removing, after being warned.
It's not that we allow comment spam, its just that we do not like to remove comments from genuine users, so we will ignore minor violations. But still let them know it is not wanted, and breaks the rules.
Violentlight ago
Okay. Got ya. Totally got the scope of the rule then.
Thank you. My mind is finally at ease with this issue.
@THC @InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
You've got it.
InnocentBystander ago
Well, it's in the title. Videos. I don't think it needs to be added to the spam rule. We will allow non-video content if it is related to video.
Can you link to the controversy so I know what you mean.
Violentlight ago
You see, thats why I was confused. I thought it was kinda default that non-videos would be removed. Thats why I assumed that the rule for spam was referring to comments.
My controversy
InnocentBystander ago
You were mostly right. The only mistake you made was deleting a first offence.
Warn only the first time, unless it is an extreme case. But on second offences then delete.
Violentlight ago
Your so right. I definitely should have gave a warning. Blah.
InnocentBystander ago
No worries. You're still doing better than me when I started. I managed to piss off the entire site. At least you only pissed off one guy. :)
Voxxxxy ago
u still crying like a faggot sissy bitch moron behind your mommy's keyboard? LOLOLOL! U MAD? :)
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander @Konk @AJ
Is it a Repost if its better quality then the first one?
Violentlight ago
Now its deleted. Dafuq just happened?
@THC @InnocentBystander @Konk @AJ
InnocentBystander ago
The user deleted it.
Violentlight ago
Ya I know. Wasnt sure why though. Was better quality. Wish he kept it up.
InnocentBystander ago
Good question. I'm not sure.
Violentlight ago
@InnocentBystander @THC @Konk @AJ
This post is blocked in my country. Is that just me, or is that happening for everyone now?
InnocentBystander ago
It is not blocked for me. At the moment I am using a US based IP.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight
I have been playing with the css to add thc's idea of an animated background. Turns out it is very simple, we can just use a gif as the background. I have put an example here in videosMotTalk. But you can probably see the problem. It looks like crap, is choppy, and is distracting. This can probably be fixed by using a better gif. But I have not found one yet.
So if you can find a better gif to use, or if you have a better idea, let me know. We'll also want falling snow soon, if we use this idea.
Violentlight ago
Hmmm, I don't see the animated background.
InnocentBystander ago
what browser do you use? and do you see the leaves at all?
Violentlight ago
I turned off the extention. Was still unable to see any leaves or anything. Looks the same on this end.
InnocentBystander ago
That's odd.
I'll have to dig into this. I'm not sure what the cause is. Can you send me a screenshot? There could be other things missing, or off.
Violentlight ago
Screenshot
InnocentBystander ago
Nightmode! :)
Now I get it. I only set it to show in daymode. I'll add it to nightmode once the bugs are worked out and we find a better image.
Try changing to daymode and checking it.
Violentlight ago
Oh that makes sense. Ya, its working in daymode. That would probably make it alot more complicated, as you would have to find both a day and night version of the same gif.
InnocentBystander ago
It may be possible to use the same one in both. It just depends on the colour scheme.
So if you happen to come across any leaf gifs that may work, for either or both, let me know.
Violentlight ago
Chrome, with the Voat Enhancement addon you suggested.
InnocentBystander ago
And you are looking in /v/videosModTalk? Not regular /v/videos.
It is working for me in chrome (with the addon) and Palemoon.
Are there any reddish leaf like blotches at all, even if they are not moving?
Violentlight ago
Yup, looking in /v/videosModTalk . I'm not seeing anything different there.
Violentlight ago
I had just woke up. Deleted the spam. Forgot to reply to it before deleting it. Oops.
@THC @InnocentBystander @AJ @Konk
InnocentBystander ago
This is probably the best option for now. I don't like the idea of removing posts of well intentioned users.
But people need to start looking. When it was posted less than an hour before, it is annoying.
@Violentlight
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Violentlight @Konk @AJ
I think we may need to start cracking down on the reposts. Flair has been enough until recently, but it is getting worse. How about deleting a repost of something less than 24hrs, if we catch it early?
Thoughts?
Violentlight ago
It definitely seems like we have had an influx of reposts. If its within 24 hours, I'm not sure who could argue with them getting a deletion. But, should there be a comment limit that protects a repost? As we have seen, sometimes the repost becomes the popular one before we get a chance to do much about it.
InnocentBystander ago
If there is a decent conversation, or high upvoats, then it should be left, I think.
But if it has < 5ish voats and no more than 2 comments, might be a good time to get rid of it.
Violentlight ago
@AJ @Konk @InnocentBystander @THC
I took off the repost flair on this one because the beginning seems like a repost, but about 30seconds in its a dude talking about the event.
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander @Konk @AJ
In the event of duplicate posts by 2 users at practically the same time, how do I tag that? I feel like choosing to tag 1 with repost, is choosing which one is going to get more attention.
This one was posted seconds before
this one was posted
Interestingly, the second one got more upvotes. I assume because its titled more accurately.
So, I could tag the second one a repost and it would probably still remain the more successful.
I'm probably putting too much thought into this...
InnocentBystander ago
I saw that also. First time they have been that close that I saw. I wouldn't tag either, since it was not a repost when they posted it. Voats tend to sort out the one with the better title.
Violentlight ago
Ya, I didn't feel like it was a fair repost tag since neither would have known. Cool beans.
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander @Konk @AJ
Do we respond to spam reports that are not spam? Give them a heads up that we saw it, but determined it was not actually spam?
There is a report that is clearly not spam. So obviously leaving it alone. Just wasnt sure if we also respond to the reporter so they know it was looked at.
InnocentBystander ago
Usually I just ignore it if it is not spam. But sometimes I comment. Which post? I just removed one that was a manhood video link.
Violentlight ago
Oh, that looks like the one I was looking at. Whats the deal with manhood then? Just looked like a troll to me. But I've never heard of him before ya'll started mentioning the 'perks' of being a mod. lol.
InnocentBystander ago
He's a spammer troll. He's behind the 'debates' spam and the "you're a whinny sissy faggot" posts with pics or videos. "manhood101" is the website he promotes. I nukes his spam on sight. He is 99.4% of the spam here. If it is an actual comment, leave it. But if it links to manhood crap or is just copy/paste then delete it.
He uses alts, just have a look through the history and they are easy to spot.
Violentlight ago
Will do. Thank you.
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander @Konk @AJ
Just wondering what made this one a 'Compilation'.
InnocentBystander ago
Good question. Must have been THC that marked it. My guess is that it was a mistake. I removed it.
Violentlight ago
Since I'm new, I'm hesitant to make changes to something someone else has already done.
I'm going to start making the changes to the stuff that seems super obvious. Just let me know if I'm ever accidentally stepping on anyones toes.
InnocentBystander ago
No worries. If you're not sure, just ask. If you are sure, go ahead.
We all make mistakes sometimes.
Violentlight ago
@THC
I can still see this video Its not a dead link for me.
InnocentBystander ago
Ignore my last reply. It is restricted by country.
Violentlight ago
So we have a flair for that? lol. Canadians can see the link apparently.
@THC @InnocentBystander
InnocentBystander ago
It's gone for me. Try it again in a bit. Maybe it just went down.
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander @Konk @AJ
So this one was tagged NSFL. Is that because of the potential death? When I watched it, I saw some blood. But ultimately figured it was minor. I'm sorry I'm all over the place asking tons of questions. I'm just trying to make sure that I'm being a mod consistent with how the subverse has already been handled.
Guess I'm just asking what ya'll figure would make something NSFL.
Violentlight ago
That would be really helpful. Would love a cheat sheet.
Don't even know how to "distinguish" myself.
Violentlight ago
@THC @InnocentBystander Oh right, what kind of time limit are we looking at for something to count as a repost? Week, Month?
Violentlight ago
Is there somewhere I have to go to check for "reported spam"?
When they don't post a direct link, its simply a reminder, or is it a first time reminder and further action with repeated offenses?
Thanks @THC @InnocentBystander for the help here. I want to be able to help the team. Don't want to hinder it. So please don't worry about telling me I'm doing something wrong.
InnocentBystander ago
Reported spam shows up in your inbox. We all get a copy of it.
Usually first time warning is enough. If they continue to offend removal may become an option, but consults with another mod first. Unless it's spam. Just nuke that on sight.
Violentlight ago
I appreciate that. I welcome any and all advice you got. So don't hesitate. Helps me figure out wtf I'm doing. lol
InnocentBystander ago
@Violentlight
I find it helps to have the plugin from /v/AVE, that way I can tag the users so I remember them.
Violentlight ago
Excellent. Setting that up now. That will help alot.
InnocentBystander ago
@Violentlight @THC @AJ @Konk
Well /u/Violentlight is the new mod here. Thanks for coming on board to help out. If you have any questions just ask. Any time you want to talk to the mods as a group just make a new comment here and ping us all.
Most of the job is adding flair to posts and removing manhood spam. On top of that any ideas you have for improving the sub are welcome. We're currently trying to increase engagement, Contributions, and OC.
Keep a light touch with moderation, Here's something I wrote a while ago. That is not a set of rules though, just my ideas. Discussion on it is always open.
Both THC and I practically live here, and will answer any questions.
Violentlight ago
@THC @AJ @Konk @InnocentBystander
So I actually do have a question. With posts like this one, would it need a NSFW flair? Due to the nudity? I know I've seen THC say that educational videos don't need that flair. But is everyones work going to be okay with nudity, even if its educational?
InnocentBystander ago
I would not personally consider it nsfw, but I can understand how others may disagree. I think by 'world' standards that would be ok, but maybe not in some areas.
Maybe THC has a better answer. I'm ambivalent about it.
Violentlight ago
Well thanks for the position.
Hope I'm able to help lighten the load a bit for everyone.
InnocentBystander ago
Done.
Yes, that should not be too hard. If I can figure out the animation problem. Still only works for chrome. That's a good idea.
InnocentBystander ago
I made a few more changes to the css with help from /u/lllllllllll.
What do you think of the changed wording of the sidebar?
For a time-line I am thinking of testing the changes in /v/VideoModTalk until we choose a new mod. Then change the css in /v/videos when we add the mod. Put up a sticky to announce them together.
we'll leave the current sticky up until it change for OCF. Then have the new mod announcement for next saturday. Does that seem like a good plan?
InnocentBystander ago
@AJ @Konk @THC
I am impatient, so I put together some CSS for /v/videos. It is just a modified version of /u/lllllllllll's modified version of Cashmere. But it is better than default.
You can view it at /v/CrazyTheories. Let me know what you think, and if I should put it up in /v/videos.
This will hold us over until Konk comes up with something better.
Edit:
I added it here also so that some users can get a preview when they visit the sticky.
Edit 2 :
I also edited the sidebar. I put my proposed changes up in here. If you think it is an improvment I will add it to /v/videos also. I trimmed it for lengh as users did not seem to be reading it all. And a few other minor changes.
Edit 3:
Just discovered the logo only seems to show with chrome, and the banner is only animated with Chrome.
Will have to look into that later. Done enough this morning.
AJ ago
No problem
InnocentBystander ago
OK, sounds like a plan. I'll start working on a post tonight. I'll send you a copy to edit/add stuff, before I post it.
And if we get someone moved up to slot one, I think it should be you. I have occasional asshole moments, so it may be better for /v/videos to be represented by you.
InnocentBystander ago
That seems like a good plan. I had figured to make a sticky asking them about it first. But a general call for applicants may be a good idea. The problem with 'popularity contests' though is sometimes you end up with drama-types or people who want it for the wrong reasons. If someone we are not comfortable with receives the most upvoats, some may be upset with us for not choosing them.
That's probably not going to be a significant problem though.
But if we end up with Pandabill as a mod I will blame you :b
InnocentBystander ago
@AJ @Konk @THC
What do you think about adding another mod? AJ and Konk are only around intermittently. Which is fine, but it would be nice to have a 3rd daily user. I think THC and I have things covered for the most part, but I will on occasion disappear for a few days or week at a time. And I assume the same with THC.
A 3rd daily visitor would give us some redundancy.
A while back /u/Violentlight expressed an interest. He seems to visit daily, comments in /v/videos often, and is much better natured than I am :)
Let me know what you think.
AJ ago
I'd bump that up to /u/Atko
I'll give my tentative blessing and hold the giant hammer ready to swing :)
AJ
InnocentBystander ago
It is probably possible. Unlikely to be simple though. I'm not sure if it would be needed often. If we comment early, and are correct, upvoats should keep us visible. If we get there late it would be helpful, but if it caused any real problems people would still find it.
That may be a good idea to suggest for Voat devs though. It would sure help with rule enforcement by giving a good alternative to deleting that may appeal to other mods..
InnocentBystander ago
I think it is possible. But I am not sure what you mean. A sticky that leads to an existing comment thread? or something else?
InnocentBystander ago
I can't tell you how glad I am to have someone that covers his ass and keeps me in check :)
InnocentBystander ago
Very professional. Remind me to stay on your good side :)
InnocentBystander ago
I just looked into that user a bit. I remember him, he made me suspicious earlier with that YT shit. There is definitely shady activity, probably a spam account. You should make a report on /v/ReportSpammers.
InnocentBystander ago
Chrome, firefox, opra, or maybe other
PM me the username and I'll watch them also.
InnocentBystander ago
I tag them with "Amateur Voat Enhancements" to keep track of everyone.
I thought I saw a couple videos that were reposts, but when I looked for the original link I could not find one. I thought it was just my bad memory :)
InnocentBystander ago
Seems a good way to go.
The voats are theoretically possible, so you are right we can not prove that. And the advertising is subtle enough to make it grey area. But I think his intentions were pretty clear.
I'll edit my response.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Konk
Someone have a look at this post and let me know what you think. I replied there with my view.
I think it is spam because the guy makes a sales pitch in the video description on youtube, and seems to have manipulated the voats since I found it at 12mins old with 9 upvoats. And its a shit video. Even great videos don't take off that fast without help.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Konk
There was a user that posted a link to chutterI told them to not do that again and instead link to the video. I told them they could put a link to chutter in the comments if they wanted, but to post a video directly.
I just wanted to make sure we are on the same page, as I plan to remove any new ones if they ignore it.
Konk ago
Ah, Chutter. Was that the guy making his own reddit clone that required all links to be approved by him personally? Lol. Yeah, remove that crud.
InnocentBystander ago
I just went ahead and modded @Konk here. So feel free to mess with the css here if you want to test anything.
Konk ago
Cheers mate. I'll throw what I have on here now.
Keep in mind, I'm figuring it out as I go lol, I'm no means great at css. For posterities sake, here's the current css.
My net is playing up, and I can't access a bunch of websites, including my own site where I'm hosting the images so yeah, blah.
~~~
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Konk
Should we add flair for trailers, used for both movies and games? And maybe one for bullshit titles. 'Misleading Title' or something similar.
Konk ago
@InnocentBystander @THC
Trailers, Misleading Title and Vague Title seem good to me. Maybe a "Commercial" flair?
InnocentBystander ago
Commercial would be nice, but it seems we're at the max now. I guess a limit of 10 is good or I'd not be able to remember them all :)
Konk ago
Audio and Music could be combined. Would Compilation get used much?
InnocentBystander ago
@THC
I think combining audio/Music is a good idea. Compilation actually gets used a reasonable amount.
Konk ago
Alrighty, sounds good!
InnocentBystander ago
I thought I had posted here right away to tell you. But I just noticed when I got home that the message didn't go through. Didn't mean to confuse you :)
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Konk
I reverted the CSS to default. I've been getting more complaints lately and even Atko sent me a PM. So I have reverted it to default, but still has the flair. Once Konk has some time then we can add his css.
I posted here when I reverted, but I think the post got lost during a 'checking your bits' and I didn't notice until now.
Konk ago
@THC @InnocentBystander
I apologise for not having my CSS completed yet.
Konk ago
@THC @InnocentBystander
Cheers peeps. I've started working on the css, just working on the header at the moment, I'll link you when I've made some decent headway.
InnocentBystander ago
Not a problem. Don't feel rushed. Default is fine for now. We don't get paid, so there are no deadlines.
wontonsoups ago
u mad faggot sissy bitch retard? LOL! :)
InnocentBystander ago
I agree. The one I saw had got a lot of attention and had actually spawned some reasonable comments, so I left it.
I forgot there was a graphic. That would probably be fine as a nsfl.
InnocentBystander ago
Thats true, but sometimes people see the NSFW and click expecting boobies. It's horrifying to then find a septic abscess exploding or something.
No it was one of the race baiting videos. The title said it was migrants in europe or something, but the footage was old and from somewhere else. a flair for 'false title' or something might be handy for those cases.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Konk
So, about flair. We had a post where the title was bullshit, a user asked me to add some flair to it, but we do not have flair for 'bullshit' so maybe we should add something like that. Also should we add a NSFL tag to go with the NSFW?
And hows your plan for user flairs going THC? If you can make a list of types, I can help write the CSS for it.
Edit: I changed the text colour on the current flair to make it easier to read. I also cleaned up the CSS. Somewhere in the process of css updates it looks like some of the newer ones got lost. If you remake them THC have a look at the current css and use it as a template.
We can also use images, or change the size if you want.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Konk @InnocentBystander
Yay! Konk is alive.
So a few things. Now that we have more than two we should keep the convorsations here so we can all see. Please include "@THC @Konk @InnocentBystander" at the top of all messages, otherwise it will be hard to keep in the loop.
Konk, how frequently do you plan to be around? What aspects do you want to help with? and you seem to know CSS, do you have a reasonable sense of taste? That is something I lack, so if you want to get involved, or even take over, you are welcome to it.
Konk ago
@THC @Konk @InnocentBystander
Ahh gotcha!
In terms of frequency. I'm on Australian time, and I do work and study during the day but I'll be here to catch a break from that during the day. But I should be around mostly at nights, which, if you're American, is probably when you're most likely sleeping.
I'm still a little unsure about how to mod here on Voat, as it seems to be a little different to Reddit as there is no mod/spam queue, or whatever.
Is the Voat API open? I mod a sub mostly by myself on Reddit with about 15,000 subs and I use AutoModerator to notify modmail of new posts and posts with reports. It's made moderating content so much easier. I have a Raspberry Pi that I've run a Reddit bot off before (post scheduler), so maybe that's something that can be done here.
As for CSS. I am a little tied up with work and coursework but, I'm pretty passionate about it so I would probably like to help out, if you'd allow me the pleasure of doing so. I come from a creative background (design, music, etc), so I feel like I have a good eye, but of course I would suggest we use a temp sub to work on CSS before going live in /v/Videos so we can all have input into it. But, that said, i don't want to come in and step on any toes, either. You've done a great job so far.
Looking forward to working with you guys :)
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Konk @InnocentBystander
Thats good. I'm pacific(GMT -8), THC is mountain(GMT -7). So it will be good to have someone doing spam checks on the other side of the clock.
Ya it's still in development. Users can tag us in a reply to the spam to let us know. So just check your inbox and respond to reported spam, or question. Not much shows up other than the Manhood trolls. But occasionally there is a confused or odd user.
Yes it is.
You're hired. I'm a programmer so I have been learning it this last week to help out, but I am no good with design or taste. I've got some up for now, so take your time. I'll help out in any way, just ask. I have /v/CrazyTheories (A near dead sub) and /v/videosModTalk to test css in. I can mod you in them if you'd like.
Konk ago
@THC @InnocentBystander
Throw me in as GMT+9:30 then :)
I've seen the tags, though it seems that you and @THC habe beaten me to the punch so far, haha.
What's my starting salaray? Haha. Awesome, my usual process is to do a photoshop mockup and then try to recreate that in sub, so I'll work on a mockup for criticism and we'll take it from there!
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @Konk
Get used to that. 9/10 times I follow a spam report, or go to add flair, THC has already been there. I have responded to spam that was less than a minute old, and still been too late :)
THC seems to have some kind of spidey sense for it.
Sounds good.
Konk ago
Perhaps, and this goes on with the other posts, we need a hard set on No Porn, Spam and Doxing, but politics and gore more of a guideline rather than a rule, for example:
Guidelines
Politics - Whilst allowed, political videos, including satire and videos relating to any former or present political figure are better suited for /v/politics /v/politicalnewsvideos or /v/politicalhumor
Gore - Videos containing excessive blood due to extreme violence are better suited for /v/gore and /v/WTF/
Rules
No Spam - Spam being defined as irrelevant comments or post titles
No Porn - If you have to ask yourself or someone else, it's probably porn.
No Doxing - Zero tolerance for doxing or posting of any private information at all. Will result in the OP being banned.
InnocentBystander ago
You're a little late to the party :)
Things were resolved pretty much how you suggested.
Konk ago
Ah sorry about that, I seem to have missed all the drama!
Konk ago
Hey, as I said in the PM, I apologise for the late response, I've been mostly offline for personal reasons but I'm back now.
I very much agree with keeping things as user curated as possible. Videos about politics are still videos, and if the users are voating them up, then it's what the users want. Of course, if the entire sub is over run with political videos, then perhaps at that point we redirect content to a more suitable sub, but I don't see that happening.
This is a good solution. It allows for more awareness of more suitable places to post without silencing the discussion.
I very much agree with your line of thought.
InnocentBystander ago
Wouldn't surprise me if there is a way to switch the background. But that is a lower prioraty at the moment. I got the button fixed, and the code cleanish, so I'll add some "your work here" labels then put it up.
InnocentBystander ago
Ya I noticed that also, and I think you are right about the problem. But it is still usable on the phone, so I think it is ok to leave for now.
There is a problem with the discuss submit button though. It moves to the wrong place in the comments.
Once that is done, I'll clean the script up and then see if I can get any user feedback.
InnocentBystander ago
I've got much of the css together. I used /u/llllllllll's entry as a banner for now. I am thinking replace the text sub name with an image, and replace the Voat logo with a video-goat mascot.
Have a look when you get time and let me know what should be changed/added/moved/etc?
InnocentBystander ago
You can write it if you'd like. I am wrestling with the css right now.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC I have a user asking about becoming a mod. Since we have no plan in place, I can not give him any straight answers. Maybe we should plan something.
Maybe we should make a post here for mod applications and link to it in the sidebar. Replace the 'rules feedback' link since that post has been dealt with. Then give it some time to see who applys.
Your thoughts?
InnocentBystander ago
I can't picture how that would look. But it is simple enough to try, so I will.
And about having all posts the same colour, I am glad you feel the same. It just seemed to look better that way to me. Also if you go to the comments you will see I have the top level comment one colour, but then all its children are a different color from it, but same as each other.
I think it is easier to separate comments that way. What do you think?
InnocentBystander ago
As usual, that's a good idea. More OC would be good, and that may help motivate some.
InnocentBystander ago
I think you've got it covered. I'll read it after you post and let you know.
And I had planned a day version anyway so that's no problem.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC
I commented out the line of CSS that forces night-mode. We had a question and a complaint about it. People can only get a daymode by disabling all CSS. They can still put it in nightmode now, but also have the option of day again.
Also I added the background to the CSS on /v/crazyTheories and it seems to work well. The 'grainyness' doesn't really show through, but otherwise seems fine. Tonight/tomorrow I will have time to put more effort into the CSS. Maybe we can have an image-free version ready for use by the end of the weekend. I will make a lighter version (though still darkish) for daymode users.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @stoic
Looks like the results are in. It's a cluster-fuck. While we did get some extra visitors from /v/protectvoat, it is still pretty clear that it is not a supported move. Sorry stoic, we can not mod you.
But, I would really like it if you stuck around. There are other non-mod things you can do to help out around here. If you build some trust with the community and show that you are a positive force around here, then we can re-examine the issue later and see if the users feel differently then.
The first surge of feedback was all positive, so I don't think you were rejected. There is just too much mistrust right now, and some people seem to only see stoic as "the guy from shegate". Given time maybe that will fade, and can be replaced with "That guy from /v/videos that helps out a lot and does good things for the community"
I don't know, maybe I'm optimistic or naive.
I am going to wait a bit before announcing that, I'd like to hear from THC before making anything official, and I'm also interested to see more convorsation on the issue as it allows me to better understand what users think and why they think it.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC
Well, maybe we should just go ahead and remove the politics rule. Seems we are not going to be able to tackle other issues until we wrap that up. I had hoped for a few days, to give any scared off users a chance to add input. But there is nothing new coming in, so I don't see the point anymore.
If you agree then change the sidebar when you read this, then I will edit the sticky.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @stoic (I'd at the others as well, but their inbox is going to explode if I do)
I've had another hidea. But I think it's a good one this time.
We make rules, and guidelines. Rule violations result in removal of posts. But guideline violations are punished by users with downvoats.
We have no spam/gore/porn as rules.
Then make have the community make a list of things they would rather not see. eg politics/religion If it violates the guideline, we flair it, then let the community deal with it.
If it worked like that and someone posted a campaign video or a sermon, they would get destroyed quickly with downvoats because the flair draws attention.
But if it was a jon oliver video, and a good one, it would do well anyway.
InnocentBystander ago
That is a great idea. I am putting a lot of though into community building. I think the best way to get the community to make the decisions, is by getting it more engaged with the sub. If they begin to think of it as theirs, instead of just somewhere they visit, then they will make an effort to better it, and take an interest in how it is run.
Your flair idea fits that better than anything I have come up with. Building more conversation in the comments is the best I've got so far.
InnocentBystander ago
Do you want me to mod you here so you can use this sub to test css?
InnocentBystander ago
I always go with minimalist because it's the only thing I can design that will still look reasonable to others.
InnocentBystander ago
For the background what I meant was you would have to get someone else to tell you if it would look good or not. Things that look nice to me often turn out to be horrible looking to others. I can make many things, but I can't design shit.
InnocentBystander ago
I like the background idea, but I am not good with cosmetics. Your best to get that advice from someone else. I saw the nightmode part. But the background of selected posts shows up white, making the text hard to read. Everything else seems to work. But there might be another value to change for that.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC @stoic
Ok, the new sticky is up. Have a look at it and let me know if I need to make any edits. Also Stoic should probably make a reply to it and introduce yourself. Many already know who you are, but not everyone does.
Stoic ago
On that sticky: I'm Dutch and it's 2:45 AM so I'm going to sleep soon. I wont be able to be active in that sticky for ~10 hours.
InnocentBystander ago
No problem. We will have to leave it a while before we see any real feedback anyway.
InnocentBystander ago
Something just clicked in my brain. You said before that atko told you we could add mods in his message to you. Was there any other guidance or tips?
His entire message to me was 'you've been added'. I didn't even know what he was talking about until I got the mod invite.
Granted he probably thought (as I did) that I was just going to be a minor background helper.
InnocentBystander ago
Sounds like a plan. I'll write it up when I get home.
BTW, did you see my post on /v/protectvoat? The hate against us was already dieing off before I posted it, but after it the last of the animosity has disappeared. I wasn't sure if they would react as they did, or if they would just think I was pathetic. But I took a chance and it seems to have gone well.
I figured if they could see things from my perspective they might understand what we are trying to do.
InnocentBystander ago
I think that issue can be dodged with a post asking the users. If it is a problem, they will let us know and we can abort. Users don't seem to have a problem with mods having a bad idea, as long as we do not follow through if they say no.
You're probably right. I was unsure how he felt about us selecting new mods. I looked through the original post for mods but found nothing, so it's probably fine. I agree that I think atko does not want to be involved. He has more important things to do.
As for the CSS, I think it's great your adding to it rather than wait on me. Those tags help a lot. Don't worry about stepping on my toes.
Now I guess I should make a post about stoic. Not sure how to post it though. I would prefer to leave your current sticky up for a few more days. But if I link to it in the sidebar it will not get much attention from regular users.
I think I will wait until I get home to write it. I hate my phone for this type of thing. Maybe I will cut and paste some of the current sticky into it, then make it the new sticky covering that, stoic, and asking for more feedback on the rules.
What do you think? And you too @stoic?
Stoic ago
I'd leave the current sticky up for another day or two and then post something about me potentially being added.
InnocentBystander ago
We're thinking to make a combined sticky. It will have the current info, ask about you, and a couple other things. So I don't think we need to wait. When I get home from work I will write it up.
So try to check in somewhere around 5:30 pacific time to add a reply to tell users a bit about yourself and any goals for the sub.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC
What do you think about adding /u/stoic as a mod?
I ran into a post by him on reddit. I don't visit there often anymore but I was curious if they were talking about Voat.
He got booted as a mod on /v/askvoat because he thought users should get their say over /u/she.
His history as a mod was to have a light touch, and not upset users. He seems to share many of our views, is experienced, and is a name known for being opposed to she style modding.
We need a third mod. Konk will probably still show up, but may not be any more active than AJ.
The only downside to stoic I have seen is that he created /v/disagree button which I do not agree with. But I feel it is just a misguided attempt to do something he thought would be good.
Let me know what you think. If you agree, then we should put it to the users for their response, and then clear it with atko
Stoic ago
@THC, Just know that me becoming mod might draw unnecessary drama to the sub (due to disagreebutton) and I left Voat a week ago because I felt and still feel skeptical about us being able to turn this ship around to reason.
InnocentBystander ago
While the drama around you is mixed, mostly due to disagree button, I don't see that as a big issue. If the users do not want you, they will say so when we ask.
I do feel that sub was a mistake though. I think your intention was to undo brigading damage. But it only fed to it.
That would be something you would need to talk about to the users as I am sure they will ask if we put up a post about you getting modded.
We try to have user support for all decisions. So if they did not accept you, we will not mod you.
I think at the core, you are the type of mos they want though. So it is worth looking into.
InnocentBystander ago
I was thinking about transparency and feedback. Since we can not leave a reason for removal yet, maybe we should set up an alt-sub with self posts that contain a link and the reason for removal. Then link to it somewhere in the sidebar. Then they can understand why we did it, and let us know if we made a mistake.
Another idea to explore or am I too high?
Edit: Or simpler still, just create a post here and list all removals there.
InnocentBystander ago
@THC
Part of a message I just got :
I was unable to put it into words until now. But knowing others feel that way too makes it easier to swallow I think.
The good news though is our popularity seems to have stopped plummeting. If we're lucky maybe this whole thing will be good for gathering attention, and getting us the feedback we need.
More good news, it's a slow day at work for me. I took a look at the css and have started experimenting with a mock-up based on your ideas. Nothing to show yet though. Probably weekend for that.
InnocentBystander ago
Once the rules are dealt with, that should be our next priority. Get the users more involved, get them to take ownership of the place. There has not really been cohesive community here in past. I am hoping we can stimulate the growth of one. But then, I was also hoping we would have other more personable mods to handle that end while I quietly toiled away in the background on mundane tasks.
InnocentBystander ago
I am with you there. I kinda wonder if they showed up, saw their inbox and noped the fuck outta here.
That's also what I am thinking. some of the more recognised 'spokespeople' have/are coming around. It may work out well if they continue to generate conversation, but ease off with the pitchforks. Our user-base has been on its own for quite a while and seems to have grown passive. Many seem uninterested in getting involved, so if these guys can generate constructive feedback I'll welcome it.
The volume until now has been too high and is just drowning out a lot of feedback though. I really think that a few more days of discussion should make it clearer.
InnocentBystander ago
Well yesterdays crowd seems to have been 25% for and 75% against the rule. So clearly is is something to consider. But we have two obstacles to deal with first.
We should inform Atko before removing it. If he says no, then we will need to rally the community and be 100% sure it is what they want.
Second. I think we should leave it as is for a day or two at least. We are still getting input, nobody seems upset with an unenforced rule, and that poll, while relevant, should not be seen as definitive since it was open to abuse and worded poorly. While I am can see that some vocal people want the rule gone, I have no idea how many of them are concerned with /v/videos and how many are more interested in the politics and games.
I think our biggest problem is accurately gauging the community. This is a fairly passive user base, I wish they would get more involved. Most of the vocal people yesterday and today are coming from posts on /v/protectvoat. While some of them are surely /v/videos users as well, not all are.
I am afraid that we will charge ahead and remove the rule, only to find we pissed of the regular user base.
The only idea I have is to give it some more time to become clear. I will support this if things still look the same in a couple days. I think the unenforced rule we have no is a good compromise for a short time.
InnocentBystander ago
Your current ideas and wording of the rule are an improvement. But I think we can make it more clear still. I believe I know where the line is now, but I can see the rule still being misread. I believe your idea to handle them with warnings and only remove in extreme cases after two or more mods agree is a great approach.
But with the current rule it does leave questions about satire such as John Oliver videos. I would like to have something that is more bullet-proof. Something that makes it clear that only the hard politics such as campaigning, debates, or direct looks at party politics, are not allowed.
Leaving the rules as they are now for a week or so, following up violations with warnings/discussion, and then reexamining the wording later with input from the community is my suggestion for now.
InnocentBystander ago
This sounds pretty reasonable to me. It is pretty much what I believe the users want. If we're wrong, we'll hear about it :)
InnocentBystander ago
That looks good to me. Maybe add a footer that says we will be gathering feedback and are open to suggestion. Make a link to a new "feedback for rules" post. Or something. I expect most of the backlash is just going to die down now that it turned out we are not hitler. So I think we may get some more balanced general feedback from regular visitors.
InnocentBystander ago
Maybe it's time to start acting like we are the only mods here. AJ seems to show up only intermittently. While I consider him the 'ranking' mod and will defer to him on most things, I do not think we should wait until he stops by next since we have no idea when that will be.
The same may also be said about Konk. When he shows up, he will have the same input as us. But it may be best to move on without him for now.
I think it may be a good plan for you to put up a welcome post sooner rather than waiting. Reassure the users, and let them hear from someone who is not me. We also need to figure out how to best get the users opinions. The current poll up is enough to convince me that the users may not be as clearly 'for it' as I thought. But it has also be heavily gamed as many of the voters are not regular users.
I think letting the sticky I just put up gather some opinions for today should be enlightening. Then maybe another poll or something tomorrow or in a few days when there is less 'buzz'. If both polls match, then it would be good evidence the rule is not wanted.
And if the rule is not wanted, then we're in a bit of a pickle. We will need to talk to Atko at that point. My feeling is that if it becomes clear that it is not wanted by the users, we should get rid of it. But this is a default sub. We are not top mods, Atko is. I get the feeling that Atko wants the rule.
Anyway, let me know your thoughts on this.
InnocentBystander ago
I was just about to post a sticky to that effect. Read it and let me know if you think there should be any changes.
InnocentBystander ago
@AJ @THC[ +2 ] @Konk
Well more potential drama.
At this point it seems like the complainers are mostly people who are not contributors to the sub and are just trying to rope us into the 'evil mods vs. users' controversy.
But we should do some homework to figure out if that is the case, or if users really are against the rule. I am unsure what would be the best method for that though. A poll is often manipulated but may give us a start. But it would be nice to have something more accurate.
If the rule turns out to be supported, then I will announce it and take the heat as I don't plan to be the 'good cop' around here anyway.
If the rule is not supported then we should get rid of it, but we should talk to Atko first as it seems he was looking for mods who would keep it. Ultimatly though I feel users should get their way even if it means going against Atko.
AJ how did you deal with this kind of thing?
InnocentBystander ago
Most of those look good to me, except the spam one. It seems too ambiguous with that wording. Maybe giving fleshing it out would make it simpler. something like :
No Spam - Spam being defined as irrelevant posts, chronic reposting, or advertising.
People don't always know that they are irrelevant, but they do know when they have been posting the same crap everywhere, or are trying to advertise.
BTW what timezone are you in?
InnocentBystander ago
I lied. I can't set it private. Well I can, but all that does is prevent it from showing on all.
I don't mind it being public though, gives the sub some transparency. Just use PMs for anything personal/private.
InnocentBystander ago
Sure.
I can make this sub private and then invite the mods.
InnocentBystander ago
That sounds like a good idea. Maybe make a post that introduces us, reassures them that there will be no significant rule changes and ask/beg for designs and images. Maybe even a goat with a camera as a custom mascot.
I agree about the colours. I just leave Voat on nightmode all the time.
So somebody (not me) should make a post like that once we hear from AJ and Konk.
A couple other things we should figure out :
Are there more mods coming? If not should we take the sticky down?
Do you want to be modded on here as well? I was going to add everyone but then I thought they may not want their user page cluttered.
Should we alter the 'no politics' rule to be a little more clear, or leave it vague? 'political' things get posted and upvoated here often, so I am a little unsure of where the line is.
InnocentBystander ago
@AJ @THC @Konk
What do we want to do with the CSS? I am a programmer and can help with the scripting. But I should never ever be allowed to design. So if someone else can provide the vision, I will try to create it.
InnocentBystander ago
Good stuff. I just sent her a message explaining that there was nothing I could do :)
InnocentBystander ago
@AJ @THC @Konk
If I understand right we are now the 4 mods of /v/videos. Am I missing anyone?
I made this sub as a substitute for modmail. We can communicate as a group here.
So maybe we should start out by everyone checking in and saying what role they plan to fill.
I plan to do mostly 'maintenance'. Delete spam, rule violations, answer questions or concerns. I am not much of a contributer, kinda poor at it to be honest. But I creeped through some of your histories and it seems that others can fill that role.
I do have a few issues we need to discuss already. Drama doesn't take long to start :(
We had a popular post that linked to a liveleak video. In the comments that could be reached through that page, the perpetrators personal information was posted. This was reported as doxxing. I told them that Liveleak had a report button and to use that instead of reporting here.
My reasoning was that Liveleak is an accepted regular site here. They have a system in place to handle things like that, and the link did not go directly to the comments. It linked to the video and required another click to show comments.
Did I make the right call?
Also, We got a request to remove an old post that contained personal information. I went to delete the post, but the delete button does not show. I don't know why. Can someone help? It just links to a deleted video, and makes a claim against this persons real name in the title, so I think it should be removed. But how?