[meta] Moderation Frustration [closed]

asked 2015-03-13 04:47:08 -0500

jcuenod

626 ●8 ●18 ●43 http://www.rekindle.co...

updated 2015-03-27 15:46:18 -0500

randomuser

5021 ●12 ●45 ●82 http://blog.randomuser...

Okay, I asked a while ago about moderator approval for everything so I get the spam mitigation stuff and that AskBot is too retarded to support a simple karma test but this is quite frustrating.

Today I posted an answer. I then realised I had not included something useful so I wanted to edit it - no edit option because it's not posted yet. So I decided to write another answer and merge them later. This involved copying stuff off a webpage, adding a link, blah blah blah. I click answer question, close several tabs that I had opened as a reference only to arrive back at the original page to find my answer has been rejected because I "should edit my question". So now I've lost an answer that would have been useful and have to wait to rewrite it.

Closed for the following reason not a real question by cobra
close date 2015-03-13 05:48:15.422379

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We're just now wrapping up an update to askbot ( see the footer, "Powered by Askbot version 0.7.51" !). The moderation experience should be much better for all involved now. Something will be written up soon on the subject, probably for https://fedoramagazine.org .

randomuser ( 2015-03-27 15:51:16 -0500 )edit

Just before the update, I had 170 "phantom posts" in my moderation queue. Suddenly, shortly after the update, batches of them started showing up, all of them weeks old. I simply approved them all and for the first time since I became a moderator, my queue is actually empty. Finally!

sideburns ( 2015-03-27 16:05:52 -0500 )edit

That might not happen going forward, but if we do keep seeing phantom posts, we found a way to clean them out :)

randomuser ( 2015-03-27 16:31:27 -0500 )edit

Right now, it claims that I have 3855 flagged posts. Checking, there's more than a page worth. I suspect that I'm going to end up approving users, not posts.

sideburns ( 2015-03-27 17:44:49 -0500 )edit

Wait it out, we're still working on it. The end result will be that "new users" will be moderated, and we'll use the "Approve user and posts" button in the mod view to acknowledge that the new user is a real person and allow them to carry on. There will be some extra work upfront as obviously not new users get their status changed, but I think that between us moderators we'll get it down to something manageable quickly. For today, it's probably best to ignore the moderation queue, there are things happening behind the scenes to clean it up.

randomuser ( 2015-03-27 18:42:31 -0500 )edit

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answered 2015-03-13 05:47:32 -0500

cobra

flag of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

6497 ●20 ●71 ●149 http://www.immortalgee...

We don't like having to do the moderation in this way any more than you like to suffer it, but just coming here and whinging about it doesn't help either. You need to realise that the moderation team are all volunteers, they give their time freely to support the Fedora project and Fedora users. The software that runs this site has limitations that are being addressed, but until we're free of stupid spammers and the site software receives updates, we're all caught in this same set of problems.

Anyhow, I'm closing this question off. While you clearly have frustrations, this question isn't achieving anything and it's not contributing to the pool of knowledge about Fedora.

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It is a genuine meta frustration though and I think that saying "the underlying software doesn't support it" is not dealing with the problem. I take it there's a reason we aren't using the stackexchange platform? Granted this is not contributing to the pool of knowledge about Fedora but it's a meta question which, come to think of it, is another shortcoming of askbot.

jcuenod ( 2015-03-13 06:02:28 -0500 )edit

Yes, I acknowledge your frustration, as I did above. Yes there are reasons we don't use the stackexchange software - I vaguely recall something to do with licensing being mentioned, but I can't remember specifically. We believe there are software changes planned. Is there more you think the moderation team could do to make this better? I doubt that there is.

cobra ( 2015-03-13 06:14:54 -0500 )edit

I think the thing I'm wanting to be done is to have the question asked (maybe in public is also what I'm after), "Is Askbot the best solution to what we're trying to do?" (because I can't imagine that we can't come up with a better option). I appreciate that you're volunteering your time but I'm also volunteering to answer questions - when there is a high barrier of frustration, I'm disinclined to help people and I'm sure you don't get swamped with requests to become a moderator (aka, join the team of human spam filters).

jcuenod ( 2015-03-13 06:31:59 -0500 )edit

@jcuenod StackExchange isn't permissively licensed and redistibutable. We have the same requirements for community facing infrastructure as for packages. The askbot update should come along in the next week or two - it needs testing. As for your "edit your question" rejection - that doesn' sound like one of the moderator-initiated reject reasons; could you have hit askbot's built-in limitation of one answer per question per user? I can see where that'd be frustrating for someone with a thought-out plan like you, but a lot of folks will just jump straight to the text box at the bottom to reply to anything and it would destroy the Q&A format of the site.

randomuser ( 2015-03-13 08:39:21 -0500 )edit

@randomuser, might be worth trying deactivating moderation again unless you have been seeing a lot of spam lately

mether ( 2015-03-13 08:44:28 -0500 )edit

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[meta] Moderation Frustration [closed]

Closed for the following reason not a real question by cobra
close date 2015-03-13 05:48:15.422379

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[meta] Moderation Frustration [closed] edit

Closed for the following reason not a real question by cobra close date 2015-03-13 05:48:15.422379

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[meta] Moderation Frustration [closed]

Closed for the following reason not a real question by cobra
close date 2015-03-13 05:48:15.422379