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6

I do not like the idea of using fake / separate accounts for this. Philosophically, that breaks tradition: it allows whatever user controls the account(s) extra privilege over other users. Practically-speaking, it removes the cost of getting it wrong: everyone signing up for this does so with the understanding that they're still responsible for their actions, even if they allow those actions to be dictated to some extent by SD; they have their accounts to lose if they take that responsibility lightly.
– Shog9
Commented Mar 6, 2018 at 4:06
3

@Shog9 - That's actually a very convincing point of view... A good thing about a special user is that if it goes haywire there is only one user to ban (and presumably it would make it relatively easy to find all the damage it caused). I also imagined that such a user would have little other privileges (ie, it can't vote/answer/comment/etc) so it wouldn't be a useful account excepting for spam flagging. But the potential loss of accountability is a very good counterargument...
– Shadow
Commented Mar 6, 2018 at 4:24
1

@Shadow If the thing goes haywire, we have other ways of dealing with that. It'll get shut down very quickly by whoever notices, and if necessary we can revoke the API access tokens we have.
– ArtOfCode
Commented Mar 6, 2018 at 5:36
2

@Shog9 and Shadow, I continue to disagree; it would be cleaner with dedicated bots account, in the end the bot developers are always responsible (a random selection of 300 users is very hard to keep responsible), it's messy for moderators and it's gaming flags and badge (not that I care, but some do). Maybe yeah if instead the developers account were used but probably 1 bot account connected to a 1 single developers would be best, but I guess it is best we discuss this on another meta and concentrate on number on flags that SD should cast on this meta.
– Petter Friberg
Commented Mar 6, 2018 at 20:37
1

Ok, so you do want dedicated accounts, @Petter? I think that's something we'd have to be very, very careful with; the entire system is designed around individual responsibility, and a bot account separates that from any one individual. Try to focus on what problems such an arrangement would solve, and how we might reduce the risk of error or abuse.
– Shog9
Commented Mar 6, 2018 at 20:43
3

@Shog9 Yes either developer accounts (like Andy, comment bot) or 1 single bot account connected to developer profile (like BR, natty), the developer can't flag when bot does, this makes it clear for moderator what is going on (they know why flagged), the flag goes either to developer (merit) or to bot account, but this rule is not directly related to SD more a general rule. This random picking a user from a +300 users base seems messy and without merit.
– Petter Friberg
Commented Mar 6, 2018 at 20:48
3

To flag 5 times you just would need 5 developers (hence probably not a problem for SD), but yeah the users connected to bot account can't flag themself If the bot does a messy you just follow the developer link in profile and you will find out who is to blame and can fix stuff
– Petter Friberg
Commented Mar 6, 2018 at 20:49
2

Just for sake of argue, immagine you have 300 users and miss flag 300 times, that however would be only 1 miss flag per user (how would you blame that user?). This is not the case for SD but just trying to explain how the logic of responsibility fails, also since badges are a thing for some, what merit did these 300 users have?, how can a moderator easily identify that it was auto-flagged if they see random users (they can't even get experience on who is who)
– Petter Friberg
Commented Mar 6, 2018 at 21:09
1

I think you should write an answer, @Petter; there's a lot to unpack in those last two comments. While you're writing that, consider this: one bot would be insufficient. Quite possibly 5 bots would be insufficient. A user with 15 rep starts out with 10 flags and that doesn't increase significantly until there are hundreds of past helpful flags - so on a site with a spam problem you'd need a lot of bots. If you wanted to raise 5 flags/post on 40 posts a day, that'd be 200 bots minimum. Nevermind the crazy optics of even creating 200 network-wide sockpuppets.
– Shog9
Commented Mar 6, 2018 at 22:29
1

Naw, @FTP is right, I'm not thinking clearly here. 20 bots is still a problem, but less of one than 200.
– Shog9
Commented Mar 6, 2018 at 23:25
1

@Shog9 Fundamentally, allowing a bot to act on my behalf separates responsibility (mine) from control (bot's). If its actions cause me to be banned, I have no recourse, except to deactivate it, and apologize. I can't see how this is better than having dedicated accounts, where responsibility is placed directly on the developer, rather than implicitly so.
– jpaugh
Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 15:29
1

That is recourse, @jpaugh. You're using a tool - that doesn't absolve you of responsibility. In practice, if something went horribly wrong we'd probably disable both the tool and the folks using it until the problem could be sorted out. But as with Petter's concerns, this probably should be a separate discussion if we're discussing hypothetical situations.
– Shog9
Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 16:03
1

@Cerbrus Negative. Everyone who has SmokeDetector privileges. That's the list hardcoded into Smokey's config, available here on GH (plus all mods).
– ArtOfCode
Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 16:29
1

@Shog9 Yes, that is status quo; which is why I won't enable smoke detector, no matter how accurate it is.
– jpaugh
Commented Mar 7, 2018 at 16:40
1

I'm with @jpaugh on this. And if the SE interface asserts that user X has taken an action, other users should be able to trust this assertion. Currently, they can't. Something like en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot_policy would be far more transparent & accountable. 3rd-party bots shouldn't masquerade as human users for the sake of any CRUD operation except maybe retrieval. I'm disappointed SE considers it acceptable, let alone on this scale. Spam-fighting is important, but hardly justifies such a serious abuse of accountability as this.
– user136089
Commented Mar 8, 2018 at 0:03

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