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IMHO it will stop those trigger-happy members...However it may call for a UI separation so no report by mistake could be possible...
Skipper: We'll fix it.
Alex: Fix it? How you gonna fix this?
Skipper: Grit, spit and a whole lotta duct tape.
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Negatory rubber duck,
There's a bigger issue on the road to better code here and I believe it's not going to be solved by adding baggage to the claims area of the site air terminal. First, I suspect the greatest aggrevation for cp server maintenance reinstaters is having to make judgments without bias.
Secondly, this so-called problem is really only a Q&A thing. I would suggest starting to fix it by reevaluating the point system. I for one see a lot of Answer that doesn't even rise to the level of Comment. This after half a year of silence, having done a few months of service doing Answer that was actual code.
To that point, what ever happened to code? Most of todays answer is link? Granularity increase there. This is BIG. Whoa, I'll stop being foolish right there.
THAT, as the first adjustment to the point system, would be a more fruitful place to begin altering the business.
To recap: Negative, leave it alone ...
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I agree with most that there will be an overall net benefit. I quite like Oz's suggestion of publishing it after the account is closed to minimise retaliation (which happens anyway based on assumptions).
Perhaps an email to anyone reporting an account when it is finally closed so they can retract ... although I wouldn't fancy that with the current wave of baba-spammers around 
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Net positive.
Accountability is important, and there may be retaliation by the person getting reported, but since I'd wager it takes more than one vote to nuke an account, one person retaliating wouldn't have too much effect. The only problem I see with this, is say if I were to go on a joy ride and looking for what are obvious spam accounts to report (say on a good day I get 5) for a week or so, and all of them individually retaliate on me (right or wrong doesn't matter) then I nuked.
So, I see the best solution to this is to have a simple check and balance. Let's say John Doe reports an account that's bogus for John Smith. Then any vote for John Smith against John Doe's account will have no effect. This would make it impossible to retaliate and rely on the community to remove an account, without there ever being a one-to-one consideration.
Of course, this can be abused too if a spammer creates and account and starts randomly voting on crap to stop people from voting against him, but it's a better check than nothing and you can put a limit on the amount of votes per day to help. And of course his votes will be public, so there's that as well.
Jeremy Falcon
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First, Yes, It should be public. If abuse report can't be justified, it shouldn't be reported else you are misusing the power.
Second, As MaxiMillen said already, banning of account or even a message should not be just depend on number of reports it received if it is that way currently as it is wide open of misuse by creating dummy account to take revenge.
Ideally, current rep of user reporting and user being reported should be considered to get weighted result. What it means is some senior member must be reported by few heavyweights or good amount of normal members to get banned.
Thanks
Thanks,
Milind
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It's a win-win (pardon the BS bingo), IMHO:
- Reporters will likely use more discretion when reporting abuse.
- Potential abusers will likely use more discretion for fear of being seen in the Hall of Shame.
/ravi
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The retaliation problem some people are worrying about is already around.
But I believe it might rather get lowered since the retaliators are getting named aswell.
Pressing a button is so much easier than standing for your opinions.
As an addition I vote for a field where you can have to add your "Reason for reporting" (Not for spam).
Not just because some reports are a complete mystery to me, but also because having to add a motivation might also stop a few itchy fingers.
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Chris, my 2c worth:
Accountability is good, although retaliation is bad and could well be pernicious. If a party retaliates, then it sort of confirms the bad report. The real potential problem is buddies who retaliate or even creating new accounts for the purpose.
A better mechanism might be to allow a reporter the option to be publicly shown, but always store who reports for admins to see.
A lot will depend on the relative workloads created:
- How much effort and inconvenience is it now to restore an account now?
- How about dealing with retaliation, especially as it might be somewhat hidden?
- Maybe a reasonable compromise would be a more flexible system where any account with high rep is harder to remove (perhaps only after manual confirmation) and low rep accounts, not so much
- Do you currently tap over-zealous reporters on the shoulder? How much effort would it be to do so?
Only last week I reported someone with high rep for spamming. In that instance, you intervened and read them the riot act. I removed the links on S&A after a nudge from Nelek, but I don't believe there's a mechanism for me to withdraw my actual report on the user (I believe you reduced his abuse report count). I don't think I was trigger-happy, and I was glad it got resolved. I have no problem with my name being seen on a report and anything short of concerted retaliation isn't likely to bother me. I'm not here for rep points!
If you want a hard Yes or No, then I'd say give it a go.
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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PhilLenoir wrote: I removed the links on S&A after a nudge from Nelek,
It was not a nudge. It was just a suggestion to avoid reports of people that doesn't read the full thread and reach Chris' intervention.
Back to the question, I agree with some of your thoughts, that's why I suggested some ideas below (we posted with 1 min difference  )
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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LOL, great minds?
Nudge = suggestion in Britslang!
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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Not so positive in proposed traduction to german
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Then I apologize for implying to our German contingent that you beat me black and blue! 
In any case, I was appreciative of the suggestion and did not feel coerced. It was exactly the right thing to do.
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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Reports are always stored and viewable by admins.
PhilLenoir wrote: allow a reporter the option to be publicly shown
This defeats the purpose
PhilLenoir wrote: How much effort and inconvenience is it now to restore an account now?
Almost none.
PhilLenoir wrote: How about dealing with retaliation, especially as it might be somewhat hidden?
This is the main issue for me. Retaliations will be far and few, and we will see them. A retaliatory vote will result in account closure, which could then incite the person to create sock puppets and go on a voting rampage. We can nuke the reports and close the account but then they may just keep popping up.
ie. No different to what we have now anyway.
PhilLenoir wrote: - Do you currently tap over-zealous reporters on the shoulder? How much effort would it be to do so?
We do. It has not been working consistently though.
PhilLenoir wrote: I don't believe there's a mechanism for me to withdraw my actual report
No there isn't. We could add this, but not sure if it would help.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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What about my suggestions below this message? I would like to know your opinion
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Chris,
How about this as an idea? Instead of the "strength" of someone's report being based on current rep points, how about a separate (and possibly hidden?) counter that records the validity of their previous reports. It would work something like this:
- I report a user, my "reporting strength" is recorded against that user
- If the member reports are successful, my "reporting strength" goes up, if unsuccessful it goes down
- If found guilty over over-zealous reporting, my reporting strength goes down
- Members with longevity and/or high rep points must have more points against them for a ban to be successful, possibly requiring manual confirmation from a restricted subset of members
I can see that, with the amount of spam we've had lately, it might be easy to get high "reporting strength", requiring some tuning of the sensitivity. If this counter is kept hidden it would prevent "farming" as no one would know their own score. It would mean that a very large number of puppet accounts would be required to put an existing account under threat.
You've spent a great deal of thought on this and I'd be more than happy to "give you my proxy". I very much support the concepts of openness that you advocate, but I'm also painfully aware of some of the pitfalls of human nature. Programmers should be inured against review and criticism, but sometimes ....!
Life is like a s**t sandwich; the more bread you have, the less s**t you eat.
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Thanks for your thoughts.
The huge issue, though, is that abuse has come from members who have otherwise reported along the consensus.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Although I would have no problem being it public, the biggest danger at all is revenge.
But... if done I would do it in combination with other things (some already commented in previous posts)
1) Add some kind of weight to the reports (based on reputation and activity on the site) as in the reputation system. The older a member and the higher the reputation, the more weight of his reports to youngsters and the more reports needed before closing his/her account.
2) Add some kind of limitation on new accounts based on time and activity but not in reputation. It is very easy to join, subscribe newletters, vote up things give some easy answers in QA and "voila" you have 500 or 1000 rep points is very short time. That way puppets would be harder to grow and to be used, still not impossible but there is a lot of lazy people out there.
3) If reports public first after account nuked (as in QA posts), then I would add a report-counter always visible (at least for the reported user). That way a legitime user could inform the staff in the B&S if suspects something is going wrong. Spammers and abusers are usually nuked fast, cases like Nagy go over the time.
If we combine #3 with #1 then it could be like "number of reports - % to get nuked". I mean if 150 points to be nuked then...
80 of 150 report points by 8 users (reporters are "high level")
30 of 150 report points by 20 users (reporters are "low level" - probability of puppets revenge very high, still time to react)
4) I think it could be a good idea to add a "2nd chance" timeout as well, i.e. a user get some "abuse" reports due to polemic discussions. If (let's say) 6 months get by without any report, the counter goes back to 0. As I said in #3 real abusers and spammers get nuked quite fast, so that would just protect legitime users (Nagy's case as example another time).
Taking this points in consideration I think all other positive aspects of making it public stay, but some security is granted to the people trying to keep CP a nice site with quality contents.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
modified 12-Jan-15 15:10pm.
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Why introduce a completely different voting system only to report users/messages which should not belong to CodeProject?
If you want to have a open and transparent voting system, then why not start with the Q&A and articles as well where everyone can see who has given a particular vote (be it positive or negative).
I see a lot of opinions in this thread where people support the transparency. But please keep in mind that these are the bunch of matured and dedicated members of this site. Not every user of your 10 million user base would think same.
What about having a group/setting where you can specify if you want to have your name openly published that you have reported a particular user. That way you are providing the users with an option where they can chose if they want to keep their vote private or public.
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Manas Bhardwaj wrote: What about having a group/setting where you can specify if you want to have your name openly published that you have reported a particular user. That way you are providing the users with an option where they can chose if they want to keep their vote private or public.
Then 90% of the users would not set it and remain private, keeping the current problems.
If done, it should be done for all (as you say with the votes in the articles). That's the only way, retailation and too fast reporters (what actually is the problem) can be englobed.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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Manas Bhardwaj wrote: Why introduce a completely different voting system only to report users/messages which should not belong to CodeProject?
We aren't. We're simply making the reporter public. This is exactly the same code we use on Quick Answers for reporting questions and answers.
Manas Bhardwaj wrote: If you want to have a open and transparent voting system, then why not start with the Q&A and articles as well where everyone can see who has given a particular vote (be it positive or negative).
It's not about votes (ie ratings). It's about spam/abuse reports. One is an opinion; the other is about protecting the site and the community. Very different.
Manas Bhardwaj wrote: What about having a group/setting where you can specify if you want to have your name openly published that you have reported a particular user
This defeats the purpose.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I agree with public accountability.
Retaliation is of course a concern, though I think some minor additions should minimize it. I'm envisioning a scenario of "Marc votes to ban SpammerX", which is publicly reported. SpammerX creates another new account and votes to ban Marc. To prevent/minimize this, maybe only expose the list to people who have >1k rep (arbitrary number, something low but high enough that you cant get it in a couple of days, but regular visitors will see it, or a minimum account age in addition to rep).
Or something similar to minimize retaliation.
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Chris Maunder wrote: if an account is closed due to a member or members reporting that account, a list of all those who reported the account will be shown.
I have reported a reasonable number of messages as either abuse or spam. I think that I did it properly and did not abuse the privilege. I figured that administrators had access to my activity and if I did something wrong I would hear about it.
I know that some people don't like being classified in such a manner. Some people who advertise black magic, UFC PPV or male enhancement pills consider themselves in the right to do so anywhere they please. Retribution for these folks is not limited to account deletion on CP.
If you make the above info public, I won't likely do any of the spam/abuse maintenance any more.
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
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H.Brydon wrote: If you make the above info public, I won't likely do any of the spam/abuse maintenance any more.
Out of interest: why? Because you fear retribution by the black magic spammers? (And no, I'm not being facetious). I think you over estimate the amount they care.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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[Response made by private email message...]
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
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My virtual two-cents is: try it, and see what happens. If the outcome is more dysfunctional for CP as a whole: revert, or change again.
«What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning» Werner Heisenberg
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