Removable Rewards (2018-05-12)
Shorter Lists
I appreciate that my list has become much shorter, but this is because there are many other posts--by these same spammers--that are often unknowingly voted by the author of the post. I'd like to find a way to address those votes by the original post author.
The most unobtrusive way is to just post here and tag those voters, hoping they have alerts of some sort setup. The reality is, many people do not have these alerts today so that will have limited reach.
I don't even consider replying directly to the original post author an option, that's way over the line in my opinion.
Tweak the Algorithm
Another thought is to simply tweak my algorithm again. I've simply removed any comment with votes from the author of the original post. The intent of this was that these may actually be friends and followers and the author is willingly upvoting their comments. I think the reality is the author is being friendly and expressing thanks for an often supportive remark.
My thought is to explore the relationship history a bit deeper and look to see if the post author has upvoted the commenting account. If this was the first vote from the post author--and this account already meets my criteria for a comment--I think it would be reasonable to include those comments here.
I want to give the utmost respect to the original author, while recognizing that these sorts of comments will persist if authors unknowingly continue upvoting them. I want to remove all incentive for these comments and votes by post authors are one the main drivers of this behavior.
What do you think? Is it ever appropriate to suggest flagging comments with votes from the post author? Under what circumstances?
| link | author | rewards | hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| post | mopelola | $0.21 | 14 |
| post | syedshakil | $0.04 | 15 |
| post | jorgedr0id | $0.04 | 15 |
| post | doool | $1.02 | 3 |
| post | newsfeedworld | $0.02 | 23 |
| post | mianfahad2 | $0.06 | 4 |
| post | newsfeedworld | $0.02 | 5 |
| post | art-s | $0.08 | 8 |
| post | art-s | $0.08 | 9 |
| $1.57 | total |
oooo nice
Actually, I think flagging should be the last Last LAST solution, so if they're upvoted by the author it's more of a reason for you to not include them here.
Now, since you reply those comments with your @pleasestop replies, the original authors will find those replies and will stop upvoting them. If this goes on, I think you should work on finding the bad cases (where the author is also a scammer) manually if possible.
I believe leaving 100 people do harm unpunished (someone will eventaully punish them,) is better than giving someone innocent undeserved punishment by an algorithm. But that's only what I believe.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts.
It is exactly this sort of innocence these spammers are capitalizing on because this is far less true than we imagine. Many people see this literal spam as friendly compliments and have continued upvoting even after my reply has already appeared.
This all clearly underscores that this is no simple question.
That's the fearsome thing
I wish there's something like a white-list for legitimate people, but it's hard to do for a platform like this one. We'll see...