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Maybe the amount of posts from yesterday was enough so Chris closed the party...
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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Yes, I'm concerned about having too many devastatingly bad questions staying too long time in the Q&A forum. But I'm concerned with not-so-bad questions auto-removed too early as well. So, my idea is: different kinds of abuse reports on questions should not be treated equally; they should come with different weights. I'll try to motivate it.
Yes, I understand it can further complicate the system and means extra work. However, weighted system is already applied to votes. So… Let me explain the situation with one particular kind of report, "Unclear or Incomplete" on questions.
As I can see, presently 3 reports on one question in all report categories. If this is spam or abuse or "not a question" or off-topic, this is pretty likely not wrong. Also, I don't think "Unclear or Incomplete" report should ever be ignored. Automatically closing the question on many such reports would blocks some pretty usual situation when an inquirer never really clarify the question, keeping silence or replying not to the point, plays absentmindedly.
But another typical situation with "Unclear or Incomplete" is: the answer is worth answering, but some clarifications are really required; an inquirer has a good chance to make the problem either clear and answerable, or demonstrate the inability to formulate it, but is not given a chance to do so, because the question is closed too early. Note that we don't see already posted reports, we just mark the question unclear hoping for further clarification, but not immediate removal of the question. Giving the "Unclear or Incomplete" report some less weight, for example, something like 1/3, would probably do the trick in a simplest way.
I'm tired of giving at least some answers or comments to help some inquirers who really deserve some help (which could be easy to give on some minimal clarification) but loose the questions and those answers and comments prematurely, before they get a chance to improve questions. At the same time, some never will clarify things. Just shifting balance a bit on this particular report could improve the acceptance of out answers and, hence, general usefulness of the forum.
(My previous question on related issue (on this forum) was: do the inquirers receive the answers on removed questions, which are not visible to other members? I'm afraid not. Is that so?)
—SASergey A Kryukov
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Good idea, Sergey!
My 5 cents to this statement:
Quote: I'm tired of giving at least some answers or comments to help some inquirers who really deserve some help (which could be easy to give on some minimal clarification) but loose the questions and those answers and comments prematurely, before they get a chance to improve questions. At the same time, some never will clarify things. Just shifting balance a bit on this particular report could improve the acceptance of out answers and, hence, general usefulness of the forum.
I'd suggest to write a help topic "How to improve question" which might be helpful for questioners in understanding what they do wrong. First flag "Unclear or incomplete" should effective a comment with link the mentioned topic. When another member will use "Unclear or incomplete" report, need to provide some extra info why the question is still unclear. Then 3 votes/reports will be enough.
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I also have a concern with giving at least some answer when the question gets closed very soon after my answer or even before I complete my answer and post it. The answer get lost for the public reading, and I don't think the inquirer gets it at all. When I can hope for some clarification, getting those clarifications is better, but at least some answer can be given. We wait for clarifications, but in vain. Another important thing is: when we report "Unclear or incomplete", we don't see how many reports are there.
I think requirements for comments could be unnecessary complication; giving weight of some 1/3 to "Unclear or incomplete" could be the simplest change and still do the trick. Other options of the report can also be weighted, of course.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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Quote: requirements for comments could be unnecessary complication
Not necessary (my professor's customary saying) 
Keep in mind that someone who'll want to report "Unclear or Incomplete" will see a comment with link to how-to-improve-question help topic. It might be more than effective method to avoid unfairly reporting
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Maybe. This is one of the possible options.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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You're right, Sergey. This is only one of the possible options... 
As i mentioned on the beginning of this discussion: i agree with you. I wanted to add my 5 cents only 
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Thanks for your comments, Sergey.
I would prefer that questions that have little effort put into them not be answered. I'd prefer they be immediately closed to free up space for those willing to stop for a few seconds and explain what they are after.
However, some people simply can't. We should teach them , or tease out the crux of their issue.
There are two issues here:
- Bad questions need to be made less-bad or removed
- If someone answers a question then the work put into the answer shouldn't be wasted.
I'm not sure partial weighting will help. It will just mean it will take more people to close the question. This will make it slower to act on (1) and will only lessen the likelihood of (2) (but won't remove the possibility).
One thing I have on my TODO is to stop a question being closed automatically if a hi-rep member answers it. This will fix #2. #1, however, still needs to be addressed. We've talked about templates, breaking up the question post into sections (question, what you've tried, code snippets), we've discussed interstitial "BEFORE YOU ASK" pages.
The only thing that will work is to have the forums show by example what a good question is, and the only way, in my mind, to do that is physically remove or "correct" poor questions, and to do it fast.
What would happen if we approached the issue from a different angle. What if we had a dedicated group of people whose sole job was to remove or fix bad questions? The hope is that high rep members wouldn't actually be exposed that often to questions so poor they are likely to be removed. It would also encourage more people to answer given that the quality of the questions would rise.
It would also make the Forum less friendly to beginners. And that is my fear, and maybe its a fear I need to get over.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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I think this is exactly the point: taking more people to close the question on "Not clear"; it's just based on my observation in real-life cases. Consider just this: the question is unclear or not a question at all (or spam). Don't just the formulations of the abuse types suggests that the actions on all of them should have different severity? Anyway, this is just the suggestion.
Preventing closing the question by having an answer (fix #2) by a high-reputation member is a very good idea, which I actually was thinking of. But probably you need to take into account that the answer can be given at the moment when number of reports already exceeded the threshold; I observe such situation from time to time. Also, such answer could later be removed (by its author, for example), so we will end up with the questions which should be removed by out current rules, removal was blocked by some answer, which is not available anymore…
I would be very careful with having "dedicated group of people" removing answers manually. First of all, it could be too boring too specialized activity, to be attractive enough. And it could make selection too subjective. I would suggest to be reasonably conservative and avoid sudden moves. But of course, my biggest concern is the quality of questions. I would really prefer seeing much less but much better ones. And I would really be interested to in growing reputation of this site.
Thank you,
—SASergey A Kryukov
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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov wrote: Don't just the formulations of the abuse types suggests that the actions on all of them should have different severity?
Yes. It may even be better to completely remove the "unclear / incomplete" and instead encourage people to downvote, then use the ratings to point moderators to questions that need attention (ie closing).
Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov wrote: I would really prefer seeing much less but much better ones
Totally agree.
cheers
Chris Maunder
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Probably it makes sense. Removing this item could be considered as a special case of weight equal to 0  , and it may encourage experts to add "please clarify" comments instead. At the same time, stronger abuse reports will remain valid.
However, I would suggest to consider the possibility of using weights or at least keep it in mind. The reason: different kinds of abuse have different degrees of severity due to their very nature.
—SASergey A Kryukov
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Couldn't you just sort of put a timer on it?
My first thought at reporting a question unclear or incomplete isn't to remove it, it's more off a message to the user that he/she needs to explain more.
(the fact that the question gets removed after x such reports is one of the reason's I rarely use that option)
We are here to help people, in my mind helping them express themselves and teaching them to ask a question in such manner that they will get an answer can be just as valuable as answering the question itself.
I know it's naive off me to think that every user can be thought or is willing to learn but I think if we give up entirely we lost a important part somewhere.
My suggestion would be more in the lines off:
- The report as unclear sends a mail to the user informing him that one or more people have marked his / her question as unclear and asking him / her to update the question with more information. (no idea if this happens right now or not? )
- After x amount of such reports the question becomes hidden for everyone except the OP (and maybe a dedicated group off members to help the OP in clarifying the question, they would need a list of such questions tho, something like the moderation queue I guess)
- After x amount of such reports and y amount of time if the question hasn't been updated, the question gets removed.
- Anyone wanting to help the OP in teaching how to ask a good question can do so in comments.
- If an actual answer (not a comment) has been posted to the question the question can no longer be removed (maybe just closed or something like that? )
I do see one problem with this and that the system can be "played" unless you can somehow determine if the edit is an actual edit or just a space added to prevent removal.
This is of course not something you can implement overnight, well maybe you can but please remember then it's 'desktop' with a 's', and make sure there is enough coffee
Tom
modified 27-Apr-15 15:52pm.
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Seeing the recent spam attack, I'd be willing to volunteer to serve as a protector.
I usually have time in the weekends to help with the attacks, seeing as in the weekends things usually go slower and I don't know how many protectors there are at the moment but dealing with this attack seems they have their hands full.
I don't mind sacrificing the odd hour or 2 on the weekends to help keep things clean.
As always it is up to you
On a side note: in a attempt to help clean things up in QA I went to delete the spam but couldn't (only report) I seem to remember I could delete questions at one point in time, did this change? (just asking to confirm I haven't lost my mind and am remembering things that never where  )
Tom
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Tom Deketelaere wrote: I seem to remember I could delete questions at one point in time, did this change?
Yes, this did change: due to abuse of this function, it was made Protector-only (also see the Privileges tab on the profile page).
The quick red ProgramFOX jumps right over the Lazy<Dog>.
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For me Sunday is NOT weekend so I could help protectors too without ruining it - so put me on the list too, if you need more...
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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You can add another volunteer to the list.
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Same with me.
What do you get when you cross a joke with a rhetorical question?
The metaphorical solid rear-end expulsions have impacted the metaphorical motorized bladed rotating air movement mechanism.
Do questions with multiple question marks annoy you???
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I hate to say it, but...I think we need to consider adding Captcha to QA posts.
One spammer with over 300 posts in two minutes? We can't fight that by hand - the DB caching is against us because even the deleted posts are still showing up as the whole of teh first coupel of pages of QA presently.
Anyone else think this might help?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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It will help against the bots, but probably will render QA unfriendly...
It is a very hard decision - but I would like to go on the other way...give some smart tool to the protectors...like close all post of a member, and the member, who got 3(?) messages in the QA reported as spam by any protector...also some kind of forced cache refresh...
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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Headshot on QA Moderation queue posts as well as well as message - over 82,000 posts in there at the moment, and that's just not practical to clear manually; not at a page-refresh per individual item of spam.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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82000 spams are rare, but CAPTCHA is there to stay...It is a really hard decision to make (fortunately not to us to do so)...Maybe it's time to wake Chris...
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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I sent him an email asking for assistance a while ago. Poor bugger...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OriginalGriff wrote: Poor bugger...
Yeah - strat your week like that is bad enough, but the weekend! It's just cruel...
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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What's wrong with limiting posts (number) from new accounts - or sending all posts from brand new accounts to moderation?
Peter Wasser
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts." - Bertrand Russell
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