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15

How would you propose we get the moderators of each of the 172 sites involved more than a main meta post?
– Mithical
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 9:35
Of course. If individual sites have an issue with this, absolutely we'll work with them to find the best solution - whether that's off entirely, at current levels, or something else. The decision on that needs to be a community decision, though, not mod-only. The debate about bot accounts is ongoing.
– ArtOfCode
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 9:36
Re: other accounts - that's essentially sockpuppeting, no? Who owns these accounts? That's essentially casting a flag with a sock and then manually flagging with your main account, which is pretty much a no-no.
– Mithical
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 9:36
3

@Mithrandir I can't understand your first comment? You will need to contact each moderator on each site (teacher lounge for example), regarding second comment is not 1 account (SD) casting 5 flags with other accounts?
– Petter Friberg
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 9:39
2

@PetterFriberg the difference is that in one case you have five people vouching for Smokey, in the other you have Smokey vouching for himself. Another option would be to have the devs vouch for Smokey by giving it a special privileged account, but that hasn't seemed necessary.
– John Dvorak
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 10:36
11

@JohnDvorak I prefer Smokey vouching for himself, since it's it casting flags, it's more clear/transparent for moderators and you avoid the free flag/free badge idea. You do not need dev support, just setup flagging accounts.
– Petter Friberg
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 10:45
5

@PetterFriberg: each account would need to get at least 15 rep to be able to flag. I'd rather see experienced users vouch for a tool, than a tool with the power of 5 users vouching for itself.
– Cerbrus
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 10:48
3

@Cerbrus not to mention that the latter is against the Rules As Written.
– John Dvorak
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 10:51
4

@Cerbrus, you have 215 users now casting random flags on random site, I doubt the overview would be different. We are already trusting Charcoal to keep an eye on things, more then we trust 1 of those 215 random users.
– Petter Friberg
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 11:35
1

Do note that bot's casting flags by them self is not new atleast not on Stack Overflow Can a machine be taught to flag Non-Answers and post comments on them automatically?
– Petter Friberg
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 11:43
27

I really like the idea of having Smokey accounts to both remove the badge incentive (yes that's a thing for some people) and communicate clearly to mods where the flags are coming from.
– Monica Cellio
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 14:08
2

Brad's comment is easily countered when you consider the fact that moderators have the ability to automatically delete content unilaterally, which is even more powerful than what this entails. The only difference is that moderators get elected (and many moderators have come from such organized chatrooms, so it's not like these are completely untrustworthy users compared to saints/white knights)
– TylerH
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 15:38
1

If the concern is really that strong re: badges and flag count / stats, then frankly we should probably talk about this behavior getting set to 100% accuracy threshold and rolled into the Community user and monitored by devs and CMs instead of users.
– TylerH
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 15:40
3

@TylerH We'd love to do that, but it's SE dev time. There have been a couple efforts to do that; they've all fizzled out. It's not worth integration for the benefit over what we have now (especially if we could reliably nuke spam <10s after creation)
– Undo
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 15:53
2

Found it myself. Some users are downvoting spam manually. That's not affected in any way by autoflagging, be it more flags, less flags, or no flags. To quote Rory Alsop, I see no problem here at all
– Undo
Commented Mar 5, 2018 at 21:56

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