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We're Waging War on Spam!

almost 8 years ago from , sometimes Maxwell

Thousands of stories and comments get posted to Designer News every day, and unfortunately spam/offensive content has become increasingly evident. We’ve taken note and heard your requests, and today we’ve got a solution for you to help report it!

Report Story

If you see a story that falls under Unacceptable Content:

  1. Go to the story page in question (/stories/story-to-report)
  2. Click the drop icon to the right of the story title
  3. Your browser will prompt you, “Report this story to moderators?”

Report Comment

If you feel a comment disobeys our cardinal rule Be Nice:

  1. Find the comment in question
  2. Click the flag icon below the comment (next to Reply)
  3. Your browser will prompt you, “Report this comment to moderators?”

Report User

If you feel a user’s actions falls under Inappropriate Activity:

  1. Go to the user profile page in question (/users/1/user-to-report)
  2. Scroll to bottom of page
  3. Click, Report this account (next to “joined X months ago”)
  4. Your browser will prompt you, “Report this user to moderators?”

Moderator

Last but not least, for anyone that would like to help us even further by becoming a Moderator, send me an email! - max@designernews.co.

Thanks in advance, your help is much appreciated!

Remember, be nice. Or else. :)

Reporting Tools

22 comments

  • Ed AdamsEd Adams, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

    Thank you. I don't want to sound ungrateful but this is very long overdue. I'm just glad this is here now.

    31 points
    • Andrew WilkinsonAndrew Wilkinson, almost 8 years ago

      We agree. Sorry it took so long!

      11 points
    • Joshua TurnerJoshua Turner, almost 8 years ago

      Hopefully they're also putting in some vote manipulation detection.

      I can't count the number of spam posts I've seen with no comments, but 10 upvotes within a couple hours.

      1 point
      • Andrew WilkinsonAndrew Wilkinson, almost 8 years ago

        We're trying to figure out how to best implement something.

        1 point
        • Taylor Van OrdenTaylor Van Orden, almost 8 years ago (edited almost 8 years ago )

          1. Same IP address vote multiple times on the story = only 1 vote counts. Could be implemented for stories that have greater than 5 or 10 votes or greater than X votes / hour to prevent harmless / random roommate situations.

          2. Detect and ban or prevent users' votes from counting who have multiple accounts and use these accounts to vote on their own stories. Unlike reddit where there are actually some good reasons to have multiple accounts, DN is closely tied to real identity and no one should have more than one account, hypothetically. Again could be implemented in certain situations.

          3. If a story gets X votes in the first 1 or 2 hours, see where these votes are coming from. ie: if they are all landing from a link from direct link (ie: email, external source), start hiding the votes. A majority of votes should come from the DN homepage, or the user should arrive at the link from the homepage. I may be making too many assumptions here (apps or people using API externally??)

          Just some thoughts. I'm going to play designer in this scenario and ignore all problems with how the code actually works, who is going to do the work, and how much time it will take, and who will pay for it.

          1 point
  • Bill Columbia, almost 8 years ago

    Great news. Could you guys add title attributes to the icons for the hash and flag symbols? Would be nice to see the title of the action to be performed on hover!

    3 points
  • Cody IddingsCody Iddings, almost 8 years ago

    Please let people know when you delete posts, comments, or ban their account. Me and my colleagues had "banned" accounts and we all had no idea why.

    1 point
  • Max LindMax Lind, almost 8 years ago

    Quick thank you to everyone who reached out re: becoming a mod! Overwhelmingly great response, working through all the emails this morning. :)

    1 point
  • Ike KuIke Ku, almost 8 years ago

    Great news Andrew. I have one point to mention. Recently my account was banned for unknown reasons and I didn't knew about that for a while because in common I reader, not writer. Don't know how it works now but It'll be great to email about blocking accounts, posts etc. and requiring moderators to mention reasons when they block something.

    0 points
  • Shaun AndrewsShaun Andrews, almost 8 years ago

    Have you heard of Akismet? It's not just for WordPress spam—it works for all spam. Get in touch with us. We can help stop the SPAM

    0 points
  • Catalin CimpanuCatalin Cimpanu, almost 8 years ago

    And I see moderators also have a textbox near the ban button. That will also come in handy.

    0 points
  • Chris Cheshire, almost 8 years ago

    I hope all the posts flagged as spam are being entered into some sort of naive bayes classifier so in the end we won't have to flag them ourselves ;)

    0 points
  • Taulant SulkoTaulant Sulko, almost 8 years ago

    This will be very handy!

    0 points
  • ChrisArchitec t, almost 8 years ago

    On the story tip, did you consider adding a downvote option so low quality/spammy posts could just naturally drift down? Personally I find the urge to just downvote weak posts and hope that others wouldn't upvote...and the community is pretty strong and seems to take care of stuff usually (by not paying attn)

    0 points
    • Tyrale BloomfieldTyrale Bloomfield, almost 8 years ago

      I like to see the community naturally sift the low-quality content. Things of low value will float down. I'd rather not see a downvote. It would be used just because users disagree with the perspective.

      Keep things positive.

      3 points
      • Connor Tomas O'BrienConnor Tomas O'Brien, almost 8 years ago

        I think there's a way to do it without that necessarily happening. One of the most interesting implementations is on Reddit, where posts that receive a high volume of downvotes, but that hit a certain threshold of upvotes, are marked 'controversial'. It becomes a user choice whether to engage with those kinds of posts, and prevents a situation in which contentious posts are simply pushed out of view.

        0 points
        • Tyrale BloomfieldTyrale Bloomfield, almost 8 years ago

          I see your perspective, but Reddit has no motto that even approaches "Be nice. Or else." If it even had a tagline it would be more along the lines of "Post anything until the news coverage gets too large, then we will take it down."

          0 points
  • ChrisArchitec t, almost 8 years ago

    this is a big step (mainly due to the added workload! yikes!) but also part of growing community. I gotta say I'm surprised tho - I follow the new threads daily as they pop up and haven't really noticed glaring examples of spam posts? Maybe I'm being fooled into thinking some of the lower quality posts are actual users with weak shares....

    0 points
  • Bilal KhettabBilal Khettab, almost 8 years ago

    Great job, I wondered why this hasn't existed before.

    Thanks for the effort

    0 points
  • Russ BrownRuss Brown, almost 8 years ago

    Well played DN

    0 points