Ntopaz Antiabuse Report Nov. 2018-May 2019
I have gathered data on the amount of violations the platform has dealt with in these past few months. Authors that have violated the platform's posting guidelines will not are not mentioned. You can view the names on the Ntopaz Discord.
Disclaimer:
The data taken from Ntopaz Internal Records and Discord Server. Coordinators would comment on the post submitted through the platform and log it. The report is limited to what happens within the ntopaz frontend. Abuse posts that use the ntopaz tag but are not submitted using its frontend are not visible.
Legend:
Blue - Cases that have authors warned that their submissions do not follow Ntopaz Guidelines.
Orange - Cases where users have committed a second offense and 7 days inactivation
Gray - Cases where uses have committed a third offense and 30 days inactivation
Yellow - Cases of permanent blacklist. One can get blacklisted for creating many accounts or being toxic.
Blue: 70
Orange: 26
Gray: 14
Yellow: 299
Ntopaz does not promote the act of shaming users. It still does sanction users who have repeated committing offenses to its platform. They don't get to use the site and their votes taken, period.
The common ways Ntopaz can get a bad reputation from upvoting the wrong posts:
The automated curation system depends on the scoring of the post. Posts can get points from upvotes and comments using the frontend. Curators and coordinators have higher voting weights than the average user but this is not enough when the abuser uses many accounts.
The deadline for the top 10 posts of the day is decided once 12 nn strikes on Korean Time. An abuser can post a few minutes before the deadline and use many accounts to raise the score higher.
Unvotes on abuse posts don't happen on an instant. These have to be deliberated. Some authors have no established reputation as an artist outside the platform. This adds to the burden of proving the work is theirs.
The investigations can take days. It can involve waiting real owners to reply through another social media. This means the post can get past payout before confirmation that it plagiarized. This is the consequence of having due process at work.
Ntopaz Coordinators have discussions about suspected users a lot. These investigations happen. There's no need to make it known to everyone that antiabuse efforts are being carried out all the time.
There is a limit to the availability of the coordinators. We live different lives and have obligations outside the blockchain. Some abuse posts can get unnoticed due to lack of manpower and this is a reality.
Some abuse posts may contain the ntopaz tag and posted at a different frontend. These are not visible to ntopaz platform thus these posts are not sanctioned.
The platform has an average of 40-50 posts submitted daily. We have a decrease in activity since a lot of accounts are on blacklist. When you see an abuse post upvoted, it can get unvoted after a few hours or days. But only few ever get to run with the payout. Antiabuse efforts are in place and it is happening.
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Greetings @adamada!
Thank you kindly for providing a brief look at @ntopaz's procedures. I have noticed the progress the platform has made since its early days as @artisteem. Some may complain about the way they conduct business still, but they have come a long way.
The statistics you have shown here indicate fair amount of users do repeat offenses. It would appear that the vast majority of the offenders wind up on the blacklist. I noted the toxicity and multi-account criteria, and am curious about their percentages.
The summary of the review process at nTopaz should help other anti-abuse initiatives. Too often, reporters, etc. do not know what to expect from the staff at nTopaz. It is good to know that few makes it to payout when caught on time. Do you happen to know the stats on that as well?
As for the efficiency, that is something the owners of the platform would have to work out. I do encourage them to have representatives in contact with anti-abuse initiatives. Should @ntopaz not pull the votes on time, at least they can be demonetized.
There are other implications when it comes to your comment about low activities. Let's be optimistic for now.
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[utopian-moderator]
Taking into account abuse posts that got past payout would not paint a different picture. The platform's history of being careless at autocuration of the tag can accommodate more users that don't follow the guidelines over those that do. I gave up browsing those posts that ran through hundreds from the same accounts banned.
There was no real curator doing the upvotes in the past. That's something I am sure of.
As for toxicity, I could only recall one user that persisted posting low quality content and was in contempt when it was pointed out. It's a very rare case that someone bothers to talk back after being found out for their trash post.
What is the prognosis of ensuring quality content for nTopaz in the future?
For now, I can't put any definite certainty it's going to get better. Measures are constantly being discussed among team members. It's a community driven organization for the most part while ntopaz takes a back seat. Quality content will depend on the people using the platform and blocking out those that don't contribute to it.
I can tell for certain that suspicious accounts won't last long in the platform as soon as they realize there's no money in it. We see new names pop up weekly and multiple accounts. In most cases, once suspicion is present on an account, they'll just notice the lack of curator interaction as a symptom and subsequently decrease their activity.
We don't make a big fuzz about sanctions to users so it usually seems nothing is happening until they complain via dm or discord they have been penalized. Ntopaz wasn't built with antiabuse efforts in mind as exhibited from its past. Things just happen silently and that's what it's supposed to be. But for transparency's sake, anyone can look up the names of violators on Discord.
👆 this guy is criminal !
Thank you for your review, @enforcer48! Keep up the good work!
Great post! It is good to know that there are people working at the background to try minimize abuse on Steemit's platform and its associated dapps. Would you be able to expand on the statistics about reward distribution in nTopaz? For example, is there any patterns to nTopaz’ daily upvotes’ recipients? How do nTopaz’s staff members (curators and coordinators) perform in terms of frequency of receiving rewards, when compared to a regular user? More data and transparency in these areas might improve nTopaz’s reputation as an art platform.”
I look forward to your reply!!
No. That's on web dev level or SQL query which I have no access to.
It's found on the posting guidelines on the link at the bottom on the article. Whoever has the highest respect score gets to be in top 10.
There's token distribution monthly for their roles 3000 tokens but none of that happens if they are inactive. There's also upvotes for using the tag in their comments.
Thanks for the reply!
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Thank you very much for the detailed report @adamada. The nTopaz platform is a unique new project with a lot of challenges to be dealt but i strongly believe that it is a valuable tool for artists to be validated and rewarded for their hard work.
All the effort that is made is for the benefit of the whole community, to maintain a healthy environment, respectful, friendly, a harmonious environment. Thank you for this report @adamada, every effort brings rewards \O,
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Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by Adamada from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
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