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On comment spamOn comment spamPosted Jul 29, 2010 1:59 UTC (Thu) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266)Parent article: On comment spam
If moderation for new accounts is chosen, you could allow users of old accounts in good standing to see the not-yet-moderated comments (with a different-colored border to make it obvious that they are currently hidden), and also allow them to approve the comment.
This would lighten a lot of the burden on the moderators, and also allow for faster response to legitimate comments (they would not have to wait for a moderator to become available; there should be a lot more legitimate users in good standing than moderators). The fast approval in particular should lessen a lot of the friction of "your comment has been held for moderation, and will be posted whenever someone on a different time zone feels like looking through the backlog instead of watching a movie".
To avoid discussions going into a black hole, posting a reply should also automatically approve the parent comment.
This idea only helps with the legitimate comments "caught in the net"; but I feel causing the least amount of friction to legitimate comments is more important for the health of the LWN community. I will braindump ideas on what to do to non-legitimate comments on another comment.
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On comment spam Posted Jul 29, 2010 2:40 UTC (Thu) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] You might want to be careful about both of those suggestions, since they're potentially open to abuse. A spammer could set up an apparently legitimate account, post valid comments with it for long enough to get moderation privileges, and then use it to approve spamming sockpuppets. You could probably come up with some way of removing the spamming accounts in bulk, but a dedicated spammer could make it hard. And making any reply to a message in moderation count as a positive review would be problematic because there are some people who will reflexively respond negatively to spam/troll messages, which would have a perverse effect in this case. If you want to take advantage of the existing users to find spam, it would probably be better to give paid subscribers a "report as spam" button by each message. The site software could filter the reports so operators wouldn't get multiple reports for a single message. You could even add a layer of sophistication so that messages that got multiple spam reports- or reports from known reliable reporters- would generate a higher priority message.
On comment spam Posted Jul 29, 2010 3:09 UTC (Thu) by cesarb (subscriber, #6266) [Link]
> A spammer could set up an apparently legitimate account, post valid comments with it for long enough to get moderation privileges, and then use it to approve spamming sockpuppets.
In that case, it reverts back to what we have now: the comment appears, people report it, and some moderator removes it. The "wait for moderator approval on posts from a new account" is just an extra layer. Which is why my suggestion makes it very biased towards allowing the comment to appear.
All this is not intended for troll comments, which are a diferent sort of creature. And the people who see the spam comments and thus reply to them could be the same people who could see a "do not allow this to appear, it is spam" button, so they would not feel a need to answer (the negative reaction would be mostly directed towards obliterating the spam comment with that button).
Making the comment be approved if a child comment is posted is to avoid conversations is a way to avoid "restricted" conversations that only some people can see. If a conversation starts, it should become visible. If the original post turns out to be spam, again the moderators can remove it as they already do.
I believe the spam problem is not yet bad enough to risk damaging the community with overly agressive filtering.
Finally, I posted my "report as spam" ideas in a separate (and less organized) comment.
On comment spam Posted Jul 29, 2010 8:17 UTC (Thu) by michaeljt (subscriber, #39183) [Link]
> A spammer could set up an apparently legitimate account, post valid comments with it for long enough to get moderation privileges, and then use it to approve spamming sockpuppets.
If only subscribers are allowed to approve comments (and spamming subscriptions can be cancelled without a refund) then that would quickly become expensive for the spammers. It might be a good way to support the site!
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