Skip to main content
Meta Stack Exchange

You are not logged in. Your edit will be placed in a queue until it is peer reviewed.

We welcome edits that make the post easier to understand and more valuable for readers. Because community members review edits, please try to make the post substantially better than how you found it, for example, by fixing grammar or adding additional resources and hyperlinks.

68
  • 47
    /me is leaving a comment here so I'm pingable. I'm one of those elusive "system administrators" this talks about.
    – ArtOfCode
    Commented Feb 20, 2017 at 15:24
  • 39
    Good job everyone! Looks amazing. Smokey itself is already fantastic, and the automated flagging looks neat! I hope that the proposed change to the API makes it sooner than later.
    – Seth
    Commented Feb 20, 2017 at 15:33
  • 5
    "An interesting thing this graph shows is that time to deletion during spam hour was higher when we didn't cast any automatic flags. It was removed faster outside of spam hour." - Guessing this correlates with the time zones that moderators tend to be active, which is something we've seen before when it comes to how long spam lives when flagged.
    – Brad Larson
    Commented Feb 20, 2017 at 15:56
  • 66
    Charcoal team: excellent work! Thank you for all the effort you've put into this (and will continue to put in). This is freaking awesome.
    – Monica Cellio
    Commented Feb 20, 2017 at 20:35
  • 7
    And I'm very happy to see a public post about it here!
    – Jason C
    Commented Feb 21, 2017 at 2:48
  • 14
    @user3791372, As a general rule, spammers are lazy. Very few spammers will read this or dig into it more. The few that do are the ones that were already actively working to avoid detection anyway.
    – Andy
    Commented Feb 22, 2017 at 17:58
  • 54
    The 3rd graph is not a hat. That's a boa constrictor digesting an elephant.
    – Largato
    Commented Feb 22, 2017 at 23:30
  • 67
    This would be cool except for the fact that I JUST LOST 20 LBS IN LESS THAN 2 WEEKS WITH THIS NEW DIET! Click HERE to learn more!
    – Eaten by a Grue
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 6:14
  • 20
    @billynoah -1, your spam is too grammatically correct
    – angussidney
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 7:04
  • 6
    @fedorqui actually, we didn't think it through it that much, we just wanted to halve the number of spam flags required :) However, what you've linked there does reinforce our decision to go with 3 flags
    – angussidney
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 9:48
  • 17
    Great system & write up. One question; if SE are onboard with this, why do you need real user's accounts to flag things; couldn't they give Smokey an unrestricted account; or if that's problematic give it a few hundred designated accounts. That seems safer as it's then clear what's done by the bot vs a human, and avoids any risk of future misuse of this privilege (not that you would, but when talking of spam and security that option should be taken into account).
    – JohnLBevan
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 11:11
  • 6
    @JohnLBevan, Everything we do is done via the API. If there is a major problem, SE has the ability to see what is done using our application key. As for the unrestricted access, that seems more dangerous because someone needs to be able to use those credentials. Since Smokey is run by community members and not SE itself (like the Community User), that would mean a user has moderator (or higher) level access. We've been careful to build the system to not allow users with diamonds that ability to flag spam on their sites. We want to keep a human in the loop.
    – Andy
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 13:45
  • 6
    @JohnLBevan The maintenance of such a network would be challenging. We'd need multiple accounts for every site on the network (plus managing that every time a public beta launched) plus the required reputation needed to flag on each site. We'd spend more time managing the accounts than we would fighting spam.
    – Andy
    Commented Feb 23, 2017 at 14:12
  • 5
    @EJP Because the whole purpose of review audits is to test whether you are paying attention ... and in any case there is no link between review audits and Charcoal ...
    – DavidPostill
    Commented Feb 24, 2017 at 15:40
  • 5
    @SteveBennett Failing SE giving us special treatment in this regard, thats all we can do. Charcoal is a community effort, not affiliated with SE. So we have to operate within the boundaries of normal users, largely. We're also not "appropriating" human accounts in order to act, the users explicitly give us their permission to do so.
    – Magisch
    Commented Feb 27, 2017 at 8:56