Is it okay to ping an earlier SmokeDetector spam-R/A report (like, 30 mins to an hour) with a "Still alive" comment to bring attention to it? A user in the Tavern doesn't seem to think so.
(I've seen cigien, Spevacus, Makyen and OAP doing it, so I guessed it was OK)
@Ollie That would depend on the specific chat room's rules/culture. It's certainly fine to do it in this room (since that's what this room focuses on).
@Makyen In accordance with the SmokeDetector Comment Guidance is it considered helpful to leave feedback such as this leaving it for an Administrator to clean up? --- Q: Should I remind people not to post spurious messages or should I not bother?
@Rob We don't have a restriction to not do that. We would, however, appreciate that the user then goes to the MS report and deletes the comment on the MS report which was automatically created for them as a result of replying to the SD message.
A possible option to reduce the hassle of having to go to MS might be to link to the SD comment instead of replying to it (unless this idea also adds stuff to MS)
@EkadhSingh-ReinstateMonica Correct, just linking doesn't create a comment on MS. However, just linking would make it a bit harder for humans to act on the "Still alive" message than if an actual reply is used. An actual reply will highlight the message to which you're replying and allow viewers to just jump to it within the current chat page, assuming it hasn't rolled-off. A link would require them to open a transcript page.
A (nother) option: Add a button next to the FP, TP, and NAA buttons to send a "Still alive" message, without creating an MS comment. Is that possible, @Makyen?
@tripleee I don't find that rude at all, or to be precise, it's eminently "repairable" by Charcoal standards. The user used the f-word to describe a misuse of a data type, which hardly seems enough grounds for a TP, and certainly not enough to blacklist the user.
@EkadhSingh-ReinstateMonica Agreed, if it's going to be permanently useful then it can stay (and be a reply), if it's only good for a few minutes (and it would only be a matter of time, a few more minutes when it would be acted on then it really needs to be egregious). Certainly some of the random "Hey how's it going smoky" (sic) comments are unnecessary, and have resulted in the commenting privilege being revoked (without warning).
@Ollie Not without changes to SD. It would be possible to create the chat message and then delete the feedback on MS. Having a button to create such a message in FIRE is something I've considered and is on the list of "maybe that would be helpful".
OTOH, it's not needed all that commonly and I don't really want to encourage people to be posting those all the time. In other words, those messages are helpful when there's really been an "extended" time pass, but having a button to do it would likely result in people posting those all the time, or just at the drop of a hat, which would be substantially less helpful.
Personally, at this point, I generally use a bookmarklet to create my "Still alive" messages.
Overall, I'd much rather see functionality added to FIRE which made it more clear which posts still needed action, so such messages became (mostly) superfluous, at least for those using userscripts. Some changes along those lines have been prototyped, other changes have been thought about, but not yet implemented/tested.
a nice alternative would be if we could have a dashboard of "still alive" posts, probably with filtering to avoid displaying ones with all-FP or some-FP feedback
@tripleee I wasn't considering anything all that elaborate (e.g. user adjustable filtering). I've mostly just been considering displaying additional FIRE buttons just above the chat input area for reports which have received TP feedback and are not "complete" (i.e. not enough feedback and/or not deleted). One of the substantial considerations is that "complete" is not all that easily determined given that people sometimes give tpu feedback to things which shouldn't be deleted (e.g. vandalism).
I've got something along the lines of showing "completed" status (using different icons for the FIRE button and different de-emphasizing styling for the report; still needs work, basically a complete re-write of the WebSocket handling), but if the buttons were in a dashboard, then there would definitely need to be a way for, at least, the user to be able to manually move icons out when the post doesn't actually need more action and the combination of feedback and status don't make that clear.
@Ollie An invitation has been sent. The invitation should have resulted in sending an email to the email account registered with GitHub. I haven't tried it, but you should be able to see the invitation here (based on this SO answer).
I've been meaning to ask, what's the number in the brackets after the reasons? I thought it was some kind of id for the different reasons, but that doesn't seem to fit. Some kind of weight indicating how "spammy" a post is?
there is sometimes significant overlap so occasionally FP posts get quite high weights (up to around 300) because the "this is obviously crap" reasons pile up
@cairdcoinheringaahing It should know. A brief check indicates users are stored in the notification list by user ID number, which are converted to username at the time the notification is sent, if the user is in the room.
@SmokeDetector tp- While this is a (very low quality) legitimate question, the contents of the post that was reported is incoherent enough that I think it should be blocked at the system level. The edit to add at least one complete sentence to the title would be FP.
@tripleee This probably wouldn't be too hard to throw together in MS, since MS already has deletion data, flag data, and feedback. I can give it a shot later this week if you could stick it in an issue so I don't forget? I was gonna take a stab at #868 anyways, so I've been setting my dev env back up.
@cigien @Makyen I meant to ping you on this, since you gave fp feedback. Is my feedback reasonable, or should it be fp because it was posted (presumably) in good faith?
@cigien I'm... a bit ambivalent on that one. It's at a quality level where I don't have a problem with it being deleted nor blocked by a system. I primarily went with FP because it did appear to be an attempt at actually asking and didn't fall into the categories of "spam" or R/A (from SE's POV). My feeling is more of "yes, it should be blocked, but SmokeDetector isn't the tool which should be used to do that blocking."
Yeah, I guess so. I've wished for SD's scope to be expanded to also filter for quality, and that influenced my decision here. I think you're right though; it's not the right tool for the job, so co-opting it for that purpose is not fruitful. I see no malice/bad faith in that user's post, but if they post another few questions like that, the quality ban will kick in, which is the right tool. I'll change the feedback. Thanks.
@gparyani Yeah, there's quite a few tools in that project. (It's only on SO, and not network wide though, right?). I've considered getting involved with that, but I've been hesitant because ... well, I get too involved in things if I'm not careful :/
@thesecretmaster One mechanism for implementing that, using existing code, is that some other chat rooms (such as The Tavern) have a 5 minute delay before posting Charcoal reports that haven't been handled; maybe that's a good starting point for what should hit the 'Needs Moar' dashboard.
In The Tavern old reports and their Feedback get sent to the Chimney, and they are rather good at not deleting reports that don't have enough feedback; maybe they use a script / tool; as opposed to manually checking all the time. ...
