@M.A.R. Probably a very good summary

Of course it is. I typed it myself.

a reference sketch "we are Charcoal, we kill spam" boilerplate introduction message would be useful, but I guess that doesn't have to happen here and now

@Andy That's not very helpful then is it?

Proposed Guidance:

1. Don't worry about a single mismanaged spam post. A single instance of spam isn't going to bring a site to its knees.
2. Posts on meta should provide context around Smoke Detector/Metasmoke, *if* we are throwing links to the communities. This context allows users to understand our goals of reducing spam on the network, shows what we've seen, and why we are proposing changes.
3. Discussions in chatrooms are good, but limit the appearance of ganging up in site rooms.

I don't really think this has much to do with us

the primary issue was people mishandling spam. It doesn't take charcoal to realize such a mistake. I disagree that we need to put ourselves any more in the spotlight at all.

Make sense? I don't think those are huge changes at all. But, someone is free to tell me I'm wrong :)

@DavidPostill offering people you don't know advice they didn't ask for is in itself an abrasive act. It doesn't matter if you smile while telling a stranger they're wrong about something. If I walked up to you on the street and said, "Hey, just a bit of friendly advice when picking out clothing try to make sure the shoes match the belt because yours don't." It wouldn't make any different how nicely I said it, I'd still be rude.

curse you apostrophe!

:33227221 No, the site is knees

@Ryan If I was a traffic controller and started waving a sausage one day instead of my sign, I'd sure like some people to tell me about it

@Magisch you keep saying this. Please show me where in the moderator terms that I signed it tells me how to manage spam. Please show me any validation from a top level SE person explicitly saying not to do what I did. Because your link says, "You don't need to." It doesn't say, "Do not ever do this"

I am very sorry, but I have a meeting I need to run to. I'll return.

@Ryan Ask yourself what locking a post does

Then ask yourself what the site's interest is regarding a spam post

I don't think this discussion isn't going to be fruitful, I think we've all made our points

Lets drop this discussion, its not going anywhere

Handling spam is a large part of moderator duty. Maybe its a failing on SE's part of not having clear enough guidelines, but that was a major blunder.

We're on the verge of circular talk here

dang, lots of discussion this morning

@Ryan I think that is way over the top. I offer advice (in the form of comments) to many many people every day that I don't know. That is exactly what comments are for. I don't see posts in chat rooms as any different. Please feel free to disagree.

I think I'll just refer to MSE for future incidents. A CM or Employee telling people they're wrong probably has a different credence then me doing it.

@Magisch only if they disagree at first?

So you'll get no more unsolicited advice from me.

@Magisch last I checked I didn't see a diamond next to your name, so in point, as was stated, show a little respect for the site you visit, if that isn't blunt enough or if you feel like GD.SE is to extreme for you then so be it, bottom line and to end, if you see an issue, be courteous and ping us.

@Magisch perfect, thank you

I found politely (I was trying to, anyways) giving advice to be more respectful and less blunt then opening a MSE post outlining to hundreds of viewers someone's mistake. But maybe that assumption was incorrect.

Oh boy. This escalated to what it shouldn't have escalated to.

Let's talk about ice cream.

!!/lick

The best cold thing in the world.

@Ferrybig licks ice cream cone

@SmokeDetector hey that's mine

All this drama turns me away from flagging spam.

@Ferrybig Makes popcorn ;p

And where are spammers and Smokey distractions when you need 'em?

I think I'll take a couple days off from this room

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer: How to integrate reward video in unity editor for android platform by FGL_Rozek on stackoverflow.com

sd k

Well well

what is the cause of this drama?

Hugs FGL_Rozek

That escalated quickly...

@CaffeineAddiction Honestly, I have no idea

@M.A.R. Ugh, spammers smell worse than spammers.

Sometimes people don't like to admit they made a mistake ...

I've already taken a vacation recently, and frankly, it helped me immensely.

@CaffeineAddiction 2 causes, spam that was locked instead of deleted (for future investigation) and a meta post to remove inline images (because they were used for spam)

@JanDvorak I've already become too good at lying to myself about enjoying something to need a vacation

@Undo If you read this, you may want to read the above discussion

@M.A.R. Stockholm syndrome? TIL this room is just a bunch of poor guys holding each other hostage.

But skip my messages.

They're not my best messages.

@JanDvorak Every single chatroom and site is like that, innit

And yeah, I'm starting to like you

Thanks.

But don't push your luck. ಠ_ಠ

seemed like vader came in here, yelled at someone for not having a diamond and then left

so confused

Confusion is better than disheartenmentment

The Ruby chat is a pretty nice place.

Disheartenation?

What the hell is the noun?

If a mod wants confrontation to be held in a public place, let us hold future confrontations in a public place.

@JanDvorak Charcoal HQ is too. Most of the times.

Almost always.

It is indeed

Lightening up the mood

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer: ChaCha20 pycrypto pycryptodome by mokracipka13 on stackoverflow.com

tpu- by tripleee

Backoff received of 10 seconds on request to questions/130034;128723?site=mathematica at 14:34:10 UTC

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer: As a new freelancer, how can I improve my communication with the clients? by Shah Md. AfsarUddin Shamim on freelancing.stackexchange.com

I'm technically on vacation, but anyone want to give me a synopsis of whatever happened last night?

oh, this is easy.

@Magisch Just don't claim to represent the room, ever. You're free to do whatever you want, but don't bring up our name unless we actually agree with it (and agree that it's something worth debating with outside folks)

Assuming I'm reading everything here right.

@angussidney yeah, some unicode stuff still isn't ironed out.

UTF-* is hard.

@Undo I had a funny question on a test, one of those with multiple choices:

good grief, wish I was awake for that.

Sorry for everything that happened earlier. I'm afraid that some people got a little heated. Both sides were wrong here. Lessons for everyone.

unicode in python is ... not fun

python 3.0 has better support though

@Kyll 8, unless there's funny business involved in which case it's somehow 10 and everything else expects 16 for everything third character and everything is on fire.

Due to today's events, I'll take a vacation from this room until next monday. I'll decide whether I'll return or not then.

No worries, that's reasonable.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported question: Java ClassLoder Why? by SteveMina on stackoverflow.com

Seems I missed a lot in that 45 minute meeting. Sorry I had to run everyone.

I was sleeping, so we're in the same boat.

Doesn't look like anything really bad happened

I'm not entirely sure what to take from this

I do wish we could filter out NSFW images, but I'd rather a few folks take the calculated risk of seeing them than to drop them completely for <x-rep users on a site like GD

Understood. What do you think of the gas-mask idea?

@JanDvorak don't be so defensive, be diplomatic, and don't gang up on people. Primary take aways probably.

@hichris123 Thanks. I'll try my best.

I can remember that we also had a wave of NSFW messages on SO, but because images were blocked there, they were links instead. Many people still clicked on the images and looked at them, even after the post was deleted. there was even a meta made about it

I have an idea - the userscript should block inline images only for posts opened through a SmokeDetector link. Thoughts?

Also, here's an idea: Make a userscript to block images on Smokey-reported posts.

... beat me to it

@JanDvorak A little bit better: Hide images until we check with metasmoke whether it's been reported or not.

Should be a sub-50ms check, probably won't even notice

That'd let it block them on organically-seen questions.

@Undo Only if metasmoke was that quick

My idea was that SD would just put an argument into the URL. Checking on every post might be taxing for MS - but checking only if an image is present sounds good, even if the delay is higher.

@JanDvorak Could also be solved using the document.referer , that saves some space in the messages

@Ferrybig A quick tes/no check should be sub-10ms easily.

don't forget network delays

@Undo Actually...doesn't Microsoft, or Yahoo or Facebook have an API that lets you check for nudity or sexual content. That might be something that could be checked.

@Andy if so, it should be integrated into SE at upload time.

I'll look into it this afternoon and see if I can find information.

If I were SE, though, I'd want data on how many NSFW pics it'd actually block before developing it

@Andy Sounds like it'd have a bunch of false positives, but maybe CV has gotten good enough in the last few years.

MS records 175 cases of inline images

@JanDvorak How many tps?

@Andy While we're at it, block images of code.

@Undo that would be my concern - it's very easy to get false positives. One of the guys over on Sec.SE has done some work in this area. I could ask him for stats if you need

@Undo If I'm remembering correctly, one of them is really accurate and used by the FBI in child porn investigations. Like I said, I'll do some research this afternoon

@RoryAlsop I suspect that the images SO sees would be fairly okay, other sites might be harder.

@Andy ah, that'd make sense.

@Andy sadly, I think it's still got a lot of manual in there

I'm sorry, it's 175 true positives. It's 467 across all feedback types.

Was this post given incorrect feedback? metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/post/45107

It's on Anime.

No one knows anything about that site

Rofl

It did get mod-nuked, though. Maybe SDMS should support an "IDK" feedback type?

@JanDvorak IDK = fp

@Kyll That's what I disagree with

IIRC if there's any doubt, it's fp

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, link at end of body, link following arrow in body, pattern-matching website in body: Pure Cambogia Ultra and Pure Life Cleanse by user129212 on security.stackexchange.com

tpu- by Ferrybig

Advantages of not being present for drama: ability to analyse it later on.

so, lessons for everyone:

If you're going to go to other sites and advise people on how to deal with spam, that's awesome but make sure you're doing it diplomatically.

That means provide context: who are you, who are we, why are you there, what you think was a mistake, and what you think should have been done.

It means phrase yourself passively, as in "I think that this was a mistake" instead of "you did this wrong".

It means assume good faith: very rarely will you find someone handling spam wrong maliciously. Assume that either the handler wasn't aware of the process (provide them with links, phrase passively - see above) or they had a reason to go against it (phrase passively, see above, so that they can say "actually, it wasn't a mistake because X).

Would "what you did has the serious drawbacks that ..." be okay?

@ArtOfCode And whether 'we' are even involved.

What did they do?

Never did figure that one out

@JanDvorak Try to avoid "you", if possible. It feels accusatory, even if it isn't. Also try to avoid exaggeration - are they really serious, or could you just say "drawbacks"? Try "what happened here has the drawbacks that...".

Discuss actions, not people.

Understood.

@Undo not entirely sure, had something to do with locking a spam post

Might write this into our behavior wiki page

Much as I dislike strict policy, it can be useful to have a standard and reference point to refer to

naa- by tripleee on As a new freelancer, how can I improve my communication with the clients?

@ArtOfCode search back for Magisch saying "wtf" sometime on Friday

but it was fairly undramatic until he approached Ryan in chat about it

um, nothing really there actually, but the post was locked so we could not close it

so this one I guess metasmoke.erwaysoftware.com/post/45001

I'd like to see the timeline on that, but Ryan is pretty sane

edited and locked apparently while Ryan was looking into what exactly to do with it but in the end deleted within 6 minutes, so really nothing to get worked up about

It did confuse the hell out of this room's denizens, though.

who then approached the mod in a less than ideal way, IIUC?

I'm on hearsay, though, so feel free to tell me I'm wrong.

Yeah, the tone of the approach was a little aggressive. Mods got a little bit annoyed about it.

Seems like that's what happened

I've heard about an apology, though, and that it wasn't accepted?

!!/lick

@RegisteredUser licks ice cream cone

Feedback on this new guidance, anyone?

Restart: API quota is 7454.

@ArtOfCode (comma after "continued to expand" maybe?)

indeed

other than that, good stuff

thanks for summarizing

@ArtOfCode looks good

it would be nice if there was a "we are charcoal" thing we could link to in such situations, so perhaps the above could be remodeled to work as a link target when explaining who we are? or perhaps there could be a separate "welcome to charcoal" for that?

"we are charcoal ... resistance is futile ... prepare to be assimilated"

@tripleee that should probably be a new page... or, we have a GH Pages site.

@CaffeineAddiction yeah, that

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in body: deleted deleted deleted deleted deleted deleted by Greg Dan on meta.stackexchange.com

Okay, I need something to do, so I'm gonna work on a GH Pages site for us. What should it look like?

@SmokeDetector vandalism

I don't have enough rep on meta to revert it

@ArtOfCode Seems good to me.

@tripleee I do :D

things I learned today ... only 300 rep is needed on a sight to get SD mod perms

@CaffeineAddiction soft guideline, not a hard limit

there might be a 200-rep user who's awesome at moderation

there are quite a lot of 20k users who have no idea what they're doing

20k and no clue? that sounds improbable

Go visit SO, there are plenty of them :)

More likely they have a clue, they just ... aren't ... interested in public welfare, should I say it this way?

People who are only interested in answering will gain rep quickly, but won't ever use the moderation tools and don't know what to do with them.

@JanDvorak aka "no f's given"

Backoff received of 10 seconds on request to questions?site=stackoverflow at 16:12:29 UTC

@Magisch mind emailing me? hello@artofcode.co.uk

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer: Travelling to South Africa - Questions about Cash, Travellers Cheques and Credit Cards by Mr James on travel.stackexchange.com

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer: What are the ways to keep the birds away from airfields? by dog on aviation.stackexchange.com

tpu- by ArtOfCode

@ArtOfCode I think it needs #1 (paraphrased, maybe) from here

yep

done

@ProcessedMeat WTF is high quality spam?

@Glorfindel bacon

@ArtOfCode done

ta

yay 1.4.1 has fixes :)

Backoff received of 10 seconds on request to questions/89858;89858?site=rpg at 17:29:33 UTC

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body: Is there a workaround for creating dynamic LOAD XML LOCAL? by daryl h on stackoverflow.com

@SmokeDetector f

@Undo how long did you say it took Smokey to process a post? 3-4ms?

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Offensive answer detected: How can Vincent appear in the scenes at the end of Pulp Fiction by vincenth8r2014 on movies.stackexchange.com

Fun fact for today: if you write all our spam tests out vertically at size 36, they'd be as tall as the One World Trade Center.

At size 72, they're over a kilometre tall.

with or without word wrap

is Processed Meat a bot?

@CaffeineAddiction yes, yes it is

@CaffeineAddiction one line

oh, one big string ... got it

@ArtOfCode Been a while since I looked, but that sounds low

that's what I was thinking

just the figure that came to mind

might have been 30ms

Maybe

Charcoal has a GH Pages website. Comments are welcome.

gives us a description of what Smokey is to link to, and a description of how it works to link to

@ArtOfCode Nice.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Shortened URL in answer: Descent of flatness from algebras to monoids by Math lover on mathoverflow.net

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Shortened URL in answer: An $F$-open set, which is affine, is an affine $F$-variety by Math lover on mathoverflow.net

tpu- by DavidPostill on Descent of flatness from algebras to monoids

tpu- by DavidPostill

^^^ multiple identical spams by the same luser - we can expect more ...

@ArtOfCode Noice

@hichris123 So, it has come to this.

@JanDvorak Hehe, why would that be TP?

It feels like a child commenting on a show.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer: Backlog planning with Jira core by jwold on stackoverflow.com

@ArtOfCode Where'd this useful tidbit of information come from?

@Andy random calculations

@Andy A bored mind

"hey I wonder how many spam checks we have"

32 size 36 chars to an A4 sheet. A4 is 0.297m long. 57214 chars in findspam.py.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at end of answer: How to make Python strings version agnostic by Esdras Suy on stackoverflow.com

naa- by ArtOfCode

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Blacklisted user: Developing Event Receivers in Sharepoint 2016? by user61405 on sharepoint.stackexchange.com

Backoff received of 10 seconds on request to questions/35700;35700?site=skeptics at 20:05:04 UTC

Backoff received of 10 seconds on request to questions/130055;130050?site=mathematica at 20:05:21 UTC

Backoff received of 10 seconds on request to questions/15255;28263?site=emacs at 20:05:34 UTC

This user asks a follow-up question as an answer to his own question: stackoverflow.com/questions/40317785/…

derp

TIL they rebuilt WTC

as OWTC instead

@EricLeschinski Are they talking to themselves?

@M.A.R. It would appear so ;p

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Mostly non-Latin answer, repeating characters in answer: Daily Avg in SQL by فيصل الشرآري on stackoverflow.com

tpu- by Jan Dvorak

@SmokeDetector k

naa- by DavidPostill

I take it I'm being disagreed with?

@JanDvorak 2 to 1 in your favour ;p

Thanks :-)

Yeah, that's a k. Gibberish, in another language.

not gibberish ... google translate worked for me ... still not an answer though

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer: Oracle SQL select all fields except by Dudu Markovitz on stackoverflow.com

naa- by ByteCommander

@SmokeDetector why

@DJMcMayhem Post - Contains 4 unique characters

It has been edited during the grace period.

Ah

Restart: API quota is 5269.

Backoff received of 10 seconds on request to questions/585192;585196;585034;585194;585205;585206;585099;585187;585209;585210‌​?site=ru at 22:00:26 UTC

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword with email in answer: How I retrive a lost password without changing or resetting it by Jonathan May on apple.stackexchange.com

tpu- by ByteCommander

@SmokeDetector tpu-

(no FDSC on this computer >.>)

tsk tsk

@ByteCommander E: Broken roaming Profile

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer, repeating characters in answer: How can I calculate calculate two internal angles of a quadrilateral given the lengths of both diagonals and two opposite sides? by megan on math.stackexchange.com

tpu- by ArtOfCode

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Manually reported answer: Installation issue of Windows Server 2016 on Workstation 12.5 by Muhammad Akbar on superuser.com

tpu- by DavidPostill

@SmokeDetector why

@Undo Post manually reported by user DavidPostill from metasmoke.

oh, the answer

@Undo was spamming pirated software ...