Donmai

Possible Rating Vandalism

Posted under General

evazion said:

Unless I'm reading the code wrong, they can? It looks like it started as admin only in 2011 but later changed to Janitor+, then changed to Mod+ last year.

I don't see a button or a checkbox for it on the ban interface from an account page; dunno if it's buried somewhere else. help:users claims we can't. But I'm not a code reader.

Did a wave of bans.

On that note, it's worth revisiting the mandatory week-long lurking period for new members. People really don't need to be editing things the instant they join, and it curbs chronic vandalism such as the current situation.

Hillside_Moose said:

Did a wave of bans.

On that note, it's worth revisiting the mandatory week-long lurking period for new members. People really don't need to be editing things the instant they join, and it curbs chronic vandalism such as the current situation.

Sounds good to me, since they don't get immediate upload or commenting permissions either. And with this sort of thing, it seems pretty much a necessity - why allow people who can't upload the ability to edit ratings and all?

If I read this correctly, we should disallow users to change the rating within 1 week of signing up, right?
Maybe also lock other things while we're at it. Users already can't remove tags during the first week, but that's it, anything else can be changed as long as it is not locked.

Looking at the help:users page, I'd lock the following to a week-long probationary period:

  • Edit the tags, rating, source, and parent fields on posts. The rating cannot be changed if the post is rating-locked.
  • Revert to previous post versions or undo them.
  • Create, edit, revert, and delete translation notes if the post is not note-locked.
  • Create and edit pools.
  • Add and remove posts from pools, and reorder the posts in a pool.
  • Create and edit wiki pages.
  • Create and edit artist entries.
  • Send and receive DMails.

He waited three days before coming back after his first ban. Then four days after that, then three days until today. He's already proven he has the patience to wait. All it would do is make him create his next batch of throwaways beforehand before he waits another week.

It only takes a few minutes to register dozens of accounts, you can do it just as fast as you can type usernames/passwords. It's less work than doing the tag edits themselves.

Requiring email confirmation for new accounts would be more effective. Every site has to deal with abuse. Everybody. But few handle it by locking new users out of everything. That's way heavy-handed and punishing for the vast majority of people who sign up to contribute in good faith.

If reverting a single guy's casual vandalism is too much work then that speaks more to a lack of effective mod tools than anything else.

Updated

evazion said:

Requiring email confirmation for new accounts would be more effective. Every site has to deal with abuse. Everybody. But few handle it by locking new users out of everything. That's way heavy-handed and punishing for the vast majority of people who sign up to contribute in good faith.

If someone is signing up in good faith to actually contribute, then they have enough faith to wait for editing rights just like they would for every other right that's barred from new users.

I've always found it weird that new accounts couldn't upload or comment, but they could edit tags. If nothing else it's just closing an exploitable loophole.

FWIW I've come to think the other restrictions on new users were bad ideas too. They were lazy solutions and I think they've driven people away and made the community grow increasingly stagnant over the years.

I can think of plenty of things we could do before resorting to a blanket ban. Require a confirmed email address before making edits. Blacklist disposable email addresses. Blacklist signups from Tor IPs and known proxies. Block people from making multiple accounts with the same IP. Set an evercookie after banning someone so if they make a new account they're immediately rebanned.

Purge inactive mods, and promote more who pay attention to the forums so we always have people on duty to respond quickly. Build mod tools to make mass reverting the edits of a list of users fast and easy. And make sure mods are informed about the tools at their disposal too, I bet more than a few weren't aware they could IP ban people.

There are so many things we could try before saying "fuck it, new users can't upload, can't comment, can't vote, can't tag edit, can't do anything." I think it's overly restrictive to limit everyone because of one guy, especially when situations like this are fairly infrequent.

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