@Machavity I'm not seeing any posts that are not part of a spurt of effort to post about the site, or were otherwise deleted by a moderator. There were at least two very small periods of time where multiple accounts posted answers, with only one outlier by the time I was looking at them. I'd go ahead and blacklist.
I am that 40k user. My apologies if that seems like junk. It really isn't. Can you tell me more about what's unacceptable about those questions and answers that I posed?
posted*
They are answering the question and actually helpful (which you could confirm with a user that has domain expertise).
@Machavity @Makyen - having the tag and answering questions about the particular developer tool seems absolutely the right use of the tag. I will concede that my coworkers may have gone overboard here in an attempt to post relevant content, but if the policy is to nuke everything to which a service is a legitimate answer, then we should get rid of everything related to AWS.
@AnirudhRamanathan The main thing about posting on SO is not to be spammy. I don't know what prompted the deluge, but we look for patterns and your coworkers seemed to be making one
Yeah, I just spoke with them - definitely agree that some of the answers violated the spirit of SO - mod nuking them makes sense. But I don't agree that all posts did that. If you asked someone with domain experience, they would tell you that stackoverflow.com/questions/30254523/sql-on-elastic-search/… is a legitimate answer.
I can ensure that there aren't any posts from our end that do that again, but this does seem a bit severe to me. Can you tell me what I can do to alleviate this?
You're not going to see any more deluges/spam from the domain, I can assure you of that. But the blacklist does seem counter-productive to legitimate answers. What can we do here?
@AnirudhRamanathan Blacklist just means Smoke Detector reports it's been posted, and we've seen a pattern of spam. It's up to users to flag it
We'll leave it in for now. If the posts stay clean, we'll downgrade it or remove it. There was too much spam today to not at least watch it. But we're not mindless flaggers either
:) likewise - thank you for your responses. It's way better to have a clear idea of what went wrong so that it can be addressed. A flurry of downvotes without comments and deleted answers don't quite tell me as much. If I step back from all of this, I must say this is an awesome project! I think a community the size of SO needs all the help it can get.
@AnirudhRamanathan Sorry I was absent for this conversation. I was called away shortly after my last message. Prior to you coming here, it was my expectation that we wouldn't report to SmokeDetector, or flag, some or all of your answers. I still need/needed to read through each one. We don't want to get rid of good content, but as has been said, the couple of waves of answers, all with links to the main domain, or the blog, basically all without disclosure of affiliation really look like spam.
However, it did appear that there could be legitimate posts about the product. It had been, and is, my intent to have what we either blacklist or watch not detect links to docs.rockset.com, as those appeared that they may be official documentation (assumed, I have not yet visited to check).
As has been mentioned, if a post was deleted by a moderator, only a moderator can undelete it. You'll need to custom flag any such post which you feel is legitimate with an explanation. I'd suggest linking this conversation, as it provides more context. If the post can be improved, I recommend editing the post prior to flagging for a moderator.
@Machavity Thanks. While I'm quite active at this point, I'm a relative newcomer to the project. There are lots of people that have made significant contributions.
Thanks for the response, and that makes sense @Makyen. @Machavity also clarified that. I think it's unfortunate that what I think were actual well meaning informative posts also got deleted as part of this, but I guess that's just because they were perceived as being part of the deluge. Will flag individual ones and provide context on those.
@Makyen but yes, point well taken on the other answers. I've let my coworkers know as well, so, no more of those will appear. Hopefully we can get the blacklisting removed at some point in the future. The meta-effect worries me is all.
and yes, docs.rockset.com is the official documentation
@AnirudhRamanathan I agree. Several looked like they could be good contributions, if the spam-like aspects were removed. That many of them did look like they could be edited into shape resulted in a much slower response from our project than what we normally do for obvious spam (i.e. there was little action until a few hours after initially being reported, while obvious spam is usually flagged an deleted within a minute, or less).
We, want good content. We want people with knowledge about software/situations which are being asked about to respond. That, reasonably often, means that the person responding is affiliated with the company that produces the software. That's great. The issue is that the primary purpose needs to be to have quality questions and answers which are beneficial to future visitors, not posts specifically promoting a product.
As we've all agreed, how this was done, and some of the content (certainly not all), was more focused on effectively promoting the product/company. I'm glad that's going to change. Thank you. It's fine for that promotion to be a byproduct of having good questions and answers, it just needs to not be the primary reason for people to be here.
There are some resources which I normally link people to who have been promoting. You might want to share these with your coworkers, or give them a digest of what the links say:
Thanks again for the patient explanation and the hard work that's ongoing here keeping SO (and SE) awesome :). Going to head out now! Later @Makyen @Machavity!
@Makyen Do you mind me asking a question? If an answer which is okay but has no disclosure. After I commented and the OP said no affiliation with the company in the comment (not in the answer). Is it counted as spam? I would like your expert opinion.
@AnirudhRamanathan See you later. Have a good night.
@scaaahu I'd want to see the actual situation, but if the user states there is no affiliation, we usually take them at their word, unless there is evidence contradicting it.
@scaaahu No, but if it's in a comment, then it's not unreasonable for you to edit it into the answer, if you choose. However, I wouldn't report the post or flag it just because disclosure is in a comment rather than the post, if it's otherwise decent content. Our overall goal is to have good content. If the user is willing to respond to comments and provide disclosure, that's a good thing. You can suggest that they [edit] it into the post, or do so for them.
If I did so for them, I'd mention in a comment that, another time, they need to put the disclosure in the post.
@Makyen Thanks for the response. It's much more complicated situation than I described here. I think I got your answer. I need to think about the whole thing. Thanks again.
@Machavity I'm inclined to move rockset\.com to the watchlist, with docs\.rockset\.com excluded. My impression is that there will be a real change in behavior. In anticipation of that change, my feeling is that it would be better to have future reports just in Charcoal HQ, rather than broadcast to other rooms, where people may be more willing to view posts more negatively, just because it's on the blacklist. What is your opinion?
@Undo, you joined the room. If you've read the last couple of hours of the transcript, and/or anything that's been passed around the SO moderators, what's your take on the above?
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, pattern-matching product name in body, pattern-matching website in body, +3 more (492): Where to Buy Spring Hall Health Keto by user1070184 on superuser.com
@tripleee That pattern looks like it's already caught by Potentially bad keyword in answer and Potentially bad keyword in body; append -force if you really want to do that.
@AJ I can really understand that. There has to be something going on specifically on your system. the changes that happen in the localStorage value are something that must be specifically targeted, or something resetting it to an older value.
@AJ Well, if you want, you could just change FIRE such that it restored the value whenever it was lost. It would eliminate the need for you to reenter it, but wouldn't help when you update to a new version of FIRE.
@AJ Looking back over things, the other possibility is that something in your network results in FIRE getting 401 responses from MS when trying to give feedback.
@tripleee That pattern looks like it's already caught by Pattern-matching website in answer, Bad keyword in answer, Bad keyword in body, and Pattern-matching website in body; append -force if you really want to do that.
@AJ If you want it to just stop, then you should be able to put setValue('metasmokeWriteToken', '[value of your token from localStorage]'); (the value without "[]") at line 1080. You can get the value that needs to go in that by running console.log(JSON.parse( localStorage['fire-user-data'] ).metasmokeWriteToken); in your browser console.
You should just be able to submit a new feedback, rather than clear and then resubmit. If you aren't going to have feedback, then you need to clear it. If you gave the feedback more than 24 hours ago, then it needs to be cleared. If the feedback was under 24 hours ago, you should just be able to give new feedback either in chat or on MS.
@AJ On an old post of mine which someone upvoted. "Interacted" is actually a bit strong. It's more: was reminded of having interacted with the second person in the past. :-)
I'm wondering why this watch command didn't take effect.
@Makyen That pattern looks like it's already caught by Potentially bad keyword in answer and Potentially bad keyword in body; append -force if you really want to do that.
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in body, no whitespace in body, no whitespace in title, potentially bad keyword in body, potentially bad keyword in title (255): hgjhghjgggjhggjhgjhjjgj by Людмила Кобзарь on ru.stackoverflow.com
[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, body starts with title and ends in url, pattern-matching product name in body, potentially bad keyword in body (393): Les mélanges naturels inclus dans cette by gerthrjgky on puzzling.SE (@Mithrandir)
