Much Ado About Spamming

[Noel Carboni]

Frankly, this business of reporting spam here and hoping an Admin will follow-up seems a bit silly.

I really feel for the Adobe Admins who must continually track the spam thread here and go actively delete posts based on the reports.

Here's an idea...

What if when someone reported a post as spam using the existing [Report Abuse] button it was immediately removed from display and put on a list for Admin review?

Then, even if no Admin ever followed-up, the spam would just be off the forum as quickly as possible.

The forum software could even track the number of reports and suspend an account automatically if a member hit a spam count threshold.

You would then essentially have the members who care about the quality of the forums ALL actively fighting spam at once.

About the only downside I can think of is that someone could report perfectly legitimate posts as spam, thus abusing the [Report Abuse] system.  The Admin could just ban such members (or simply remove their ability to squelch spam) based on a history (a few times?) of doing that.

Yes, I realize this involves engineering new functionality into the Jive forum software.  But that shouldn't be something to be avoided!

-Noel

[Noel Carboni]

Jochem van Dieten wrote:

The threshold for that currently is 4 reports. I do not know if that threshold is configurable.

So you're saying that if 4 separate people report abuse (spam) on a given thread, the post will disappear on its own?

That's excellent!

So - everyone - if you see spam, hit the [Report Abuse] button.  As a group we have the ability to blast it almost as soon as it appears.

-Noel

[pwillener]

Unfortunately in the Flash Player forum there are only two regulars.  This means spam will remain visible until someone with higher power intervenes.

Also, we have been told to flag only one message of a spammer.  Question: if four users flag one message of a multi-message spammer, will all other spam posts also disappear?

Today is a quiet day, but on some days the Flash Player forum is hit with 20-30 spam posts; therefore the question.

[Jacob Bugge]

So far, in this case, http://forums.adobe.com/people/dailyonmegavideo, which will hopefully be gone when you read this, there are 47 posts, each of which would need 4 Report Abuse clicks by different natives, a total of 188 clicks over a number of forums (4 posts in Print Design), probably with some overkill leading to more (folk) clicking.

I have (only) reported it once in the Spam tread, with a link to the poster.

[Noel Carboni]

No doubt the ability to report spam centrally is important.

But in the vein of my original post, and assuming the forum software could be changed to allow it, why not have an accumulation of individual spam reports count against a user and hide all their posts?

The whole concept of forums is to have the user community interacting with one another.  This would be just another form of interaction.

And I still the the 4 should be reduced to 1 if at all possible.

-Noel

[Claudio_González1]

The button you are talking about is called Report Abuse, not Report Spam, and we have been told that about once a day a person uses it by mistake -probably because it is dangerously close to the Reply button. What would you say if all your posts were hidden just because four different people pressed the Report Abuse in one of your messages, willingly or unwillingly?

[Noel Carboni]

First off, it takes a deliberate second operation after [Report Abuse] is pressed - you have to fill out a whole new screen, which can easily be canceled.  So I doubt anyone is reporting abuse by simply pressing the wrong button.  Clearly YOU'RE not pressing the wrong button much or you'd know that.

You might want to research your facts a bit more before commenting.

But I will agree people can make mistakes.  They might even do it on purpose.

That's why I have already laid out the recourse for excessive or improper abuse reporting above.  The automatic removal of posts on abuse reporting should be something the mod or admin could disable on an individual basis.  That way a malicious user - or an excessively fat fingered one - would stop being able to "disappear" other people's posts.

And as far as your specific question...  If I ever were to misbehave and actually abuse the forum, I should hope the post would be deleted!  Amazingly enough, in 6K posts I haven't had one disappear, or even be reported as far as I know.  So I guess not that many people are making the kinds of mistakes you're describing.

-Noel

P.S.,

Claudio González wrote:

The button you are talking about is called Report Abuse, not Report Spam

And your point is?  Please go back and carefully re-read this thread.  No one has implied otherwise.  Spam is as blatent a form of abuse as I can think of.

[Claudio_González1]

Noel Carboni wrote:

...

Claudio González wrote:

The button you are talking about is called Report Abuse, not Report Spam

And your point is?  Please go back and carefully re-read this thread.  No one has implied otherwise.  Spam is as blatent a form of abuse as I can think of.

That you might get all your posts hidden just because some people don't like tour tone or your language. Although I see that you have now changed this to one message.

[Noel Carboni]

Details matter, Claudio.

I did edit the post because it didn't convey the message I was trying to get across, but at no time did I say anything abusive.  I'm sorry if you don't like the tone of the debate.  Feel free to step out of it if you like.  Frankly, I haven't liked what you've been saying about the Admin doing an insufficient job of managing spam either, and I let you know, but I wouldn't consider stooping to underhanded means to eliminate your posts.

Funny thing is I'm here in this very thread to try to help solve just that problem.

Someone reporting abuse inappropriately would be a self-solving problem.  They themselves would get zapped by the Admin or moderator for abusing the report abuse feature.

-Noel

[Claudio_González1]

I give up. It's tiring to have to deny things that I haven't said, once and again and in more than one thread. In this particular case:

• I haven't said anywhere that you have been abusive, simply because you haven't.
• I haven't said anywhere that Admin is doing an insufficient job of managing spam -moderators can also delete messages, and they certailny do, anonymously and for free.
• The thought that you might feel tempted to eliminate my posts for whatever means hasn't even crossed my mind.

The field is yours, but it would be a good thing if you quoted a person  instead of putting words in his/her mouth -or messages, to be more  precise.

[Noel Carboni]

Ever hear the phrase "perception is reality"?

You have been making implications in the spam thread for a while now that the Admin hasn't been getting the job done quickly enough.  I'm sorry if I misinterpreted that and some other commentary from you as implying he wasn't doing a good job.  If I interpreted it that way, perhaps others have too!  I like to think I'm not too far out on the fringe when it comes to reading comprehension.

I think it's clear we all want the forums to work better and have less spam.  Let's not bicker.

-Noel

[Claudio_González1]

Not arguing any longer; just giving you something to think about.

Admin is not responsible for the ancient software Adobe has chosen to manage these forums and refuses to update, but has to suffer it. It is not his fault that it is so vulnerable to spam attacks.

Spam attacks have become more violent lately, perhaps because the software is so vulnerable, and we see forums that get so cluttered with spam that it is difficult to see where the legitimate messages. Perhaps if enough people complain about this, Admin may have better arguments to convince Adobe that at least a software update would be necessary.

Would it be too far fetched to think that this could possibly be another reading of the situation?

[Claudio_González1]

And perhaps you may want to read carefully the last paragraph of this message, written by someone who should know...

http://forums.adobe.com/message/3661976#3661976

[Noel Carboni]

Complaining here is just preaching to the choir, IMO.

Maybe we should be writing letters to the Adobe CEO?  We all think these forums are more valuable than apparently he does.

-Noel

[mytaxsite]

Noel Carboni wrote:

Complaining here is just preaching to the choir, IMO.

Maybe we should be writing letters to the Adobe CEO?  We all think these forums are more valuable than apparently he does.

-Noel

Is it our business to make these forums spam free and fast!  If adobe don't think about the business value of its assets then I don't think we should keep going at it here day after day.  It is up to them to look after their business assets.

I hear that Microsoft wants to buy out Adobe so perhaps they might be able to run these forums efficiently.  The question at present we should be asking is:  Are these forums providing solutions to our problems when using Adobe Products?  If the answer is yes then who cares if there are 6,000 spam messages a day or not.

To be frank, I am not bothered at all about spam because it doesn't affect my viewing and reading of solutions to Dreamweaver problems.  I am still using CS4 but I want to know if it is likely to improve my productivity by upgrading to CS5.5?  I need to make the decision by the end of this month while there is still a discount available to new upgrade purchases.

Are you drafting a letter for us to use as a template to send it to the CEO of Adobe?  Presumably, we can send these letters to our local Adobe Offices unless there is an email address somewhere to send it to USA.

[the_wine_snob]

I can state with certainty, that Adobe does appreciate the work that is being done in the product forums, by users. Whether the recognition is as strong, as it could be, I cannot say. However, they do know of and appreciate the efforts.

Now, I personally hope that MS does NOT buy Adobe, but then I am a status quo sort of guy. I do, however, feel that the Adobe forums could be improved, and along the lines of many other threads.

Over the decades, I have seldom seen product improvement coming from such acquisitions. This could be that in major software corporations, there is an established hierarchy, and all product managers wish to protect THEIR kingdoms. They have tenure, know the power-structure, and how to play the game, so the newer acquisitions often end up in some corporate backwater. This has been true, even when Adobe (a company that I support with my many purchases, and one which I respect) has acquired some other software companies. On the Adobe front, about the only "success story," that I can recall was with Aldus PageMaker, but that was so very long ago. Though I was a MacroMedia user, I did not see the problems, that many others reported with that acquisition. Still, many power-users did, and still complain. I assume that they all have very valid points, that were just lost on me, and I am not only talking about the merging of the old MacroMedia forums.

OK - off the soapbox, at least for now.

Hunt