Donmai

Approvals confusion...

Posted under General

MikeTheV said:

Let me put this into layman's terms for you: They wrote an algorithm that judges people based on their likes, which ultimately determines what gets approved and not. How far removed is that from Terry Gilliam's vision of the future?

Can you propose a better indicator of the types of images a person enjoys, and is therefore most likely to approve, than the things they upload and favorite?

fossilnix said:

Can you propose a better indicator of the types of images a person enjoys, and is therefore most likely to approve, than the things they upload and favorite?

Except this little algorithm doesn't factor in their uploads - just their faves. The whole lack of activity part is kind of the point of this thread...

How about just give active members all around those permissions lol? Fuck faves and fuck scores (in their favorites). *They're* the ones guaranteed to go through the queue and actually get some shit done. I mean, just look at you lol. *You* don't have approval permissions, while someone like kurohanna *does*. You don't find that messed up even in the slightest?

Not to mention, this system is hilariously easy to exploit, no? All you gotta do is hop on TOR, fix up a new account and just fav a shitload of images that have scores upwards of 20 or something. With that, according to the system, you are worthy to pass judgment! See, I *could* do that, but instead I'm here talking about it. :/ It's all...really, really base.

He's got a point. Favorites really shouldn't be factored into this at all. They're too easy to set up and exploit as Mike said.

Just my 2 cents, but I'd think it'd be smarter to base the criteria on uploads, flags and appeals. Those are all things that actually have a real impact on the site and someone with good records on all those would be a better approver than one based on favorites while also ensuring they're more likely to be active.

MikeTheV said:

Except this little algorithm doesn't factor in their uploads - just their faves. The whole lack of activity part is kind of the point of this thread...

Please re-read Type-kun's explanation of the algorithm, I think you missed parts:

Type-kun said:

  • 400 uploads is selected randomly
  • 400 favorites is selected randomly
  • selected posts are combined into one big set, and post scores are analyzed
  • 50th percentile of the analyzed scores (aka median score) must fall between 3 and 10.

The system does take into account uploads. It also doesn't reward based on favoriting (or uploading) popular images, it rewards for borderline images. Which Type-kun also explained:

Type-kun said:

New approvers were recruited with the intention of filtering borderline art, on the premise that we have enough people to approve obviously good (10+ score) stuff.

I think that the restructuring of site permissions last year demonstrated that approval permissions aren't a badge of honor awarded to users who've put enough work into the site. It's given to users with the specific trait of being able to take a stance on borderline art. Decoupling approval permissions from user level means that there are users who can be trusted to approve art, but haven't demonstrated trustworthiness in other areas (moderating the forum, making lots of good uploads, etc). As well as users who are skilled in other areas, but not in filtering. And since the system chooses the users it considers at random, that means there are also users who would make good approvers but just haven't been picked yet.

Personally, I don't care who is or isn't an approver as long as they aren't approving bad posts.

I do find the lack of activity from some approvers concerning, but it's not because they aren't uploading, it's because they aren't approving. I thought the approvers list was pruned every month?

BrokenEagle98 said:

Well, that's just the automated system... the Admins can always manually add or remove that privilege...

But are they? The table evazion posted doesn't really speak volumes of such...initiatives.

It still comes off as really clumsy, if not outright fucked up. :<

It's literally no different than appointing a new forum mod who just registered and made a single post, based off of that one post. And if there's one thing I noticed....ARE admins manually appointing approvers?

Don't know of "appointing" but definitely demoting.
One thing is simply due to lack of activity and I reported 4 Janitors to Albert. 3 of them showed activity since then, so I don't know if albert has contacted them.

In my case, I simply wrote an application to albert and it was accepted (and I personally think that this is better than selecting randomly).

Provence said:

Don't know of "appointing" but definitely demoting.
One thing is simply due to lack of activity and I reported 4 Janitors to Albert. 3 of them showed activity since then, so I don't know if albert has contacted them.

In my case, I simply wrote an application to albert and it was accepted (and I personally think that this is better than selecting randomly).

I always wondered, but is Albert the only one who can appoint?

MikeTheV said:

I always wondered, but is Albert the only one who can appoint?

Technically any Moderator+ can appoint approvers, but given Albert's seemingly kinda specific criteria for what he wants to see in an approver I've never done it. I've seen a couple other Moderators promote users, but pretty sparingly. So it's generally the admins that "push the button." I was going to just link to a list of approvers that shows their "invitor" but the user search page can still only search by user level and not account flags.

fossilnix said:

help:users doesn't say who can grant or remove special permissions. It should be updated.

It says under Moderator, "Promote and demote users (up to Janitor level)." That's carried over to "apply or remove the approver flag." I'm not sure how to clearly word it for the layman or I'd change it.

OOZ662 said:
but the user search page can still only search by user level and not account flags.

Well technically it already can search by user flags, but it's unindexed and slow, so the params are kept hidden. You can still search manually though.

OOZ662 said:
Technically any Moderator+ can appoint approvers, but given Albert's seemingly kinda specific criteria for what he wants to see in an approver I've never done it.

Kinda specific my ass. That automatic algorithm is practically a random lottery.

MikeTheV said:

Kinda specific my ass. That automatic algorithm is practically a random lottery.

I don't know how many results it returns each run before filtering down to ten, but I get a feeling it's a bit less than 495,398.

If you don't want to wait for the automatic process, instead of sitting around and complaining you might want to take the active route like some people in this thread already have. I've never manually promoted anyone (and I probably won't at least for quite a while as I don't see myself as a good judge of that sort of thing as mentioned above), but I've also never had anyone contact me about it. That's the first step in getting somebody to look at you if you don't want to wait for the server to do it or for a staff member to happen across you in a promotional mood.

Updated

OOZ662 said:

I don't know how many results it returns each run before filtering down to ten, but I get a feeling it's a bit less than 495,398.

If you don't want to wait for the automatic process, instead of sitting around and complaining you might want to take the active route like some people in this thread already have. I've never manually promoted anyone (and I probably won't at least for quite a while as I don't see myself as a good judge of that sort of thing as mentioned above), but I've also never had anyone contact me about it. That's the first step in getting somebody to look at you if you don't want to wait for the server to do it or for a staff member to happen across you in a promotional mood.

In my defense, I *did* actually contact albert lol. It was an unfavorable outcome, sure, but I still thought it fair and never brought it up again. From his response, I simply assumed he had high standards that I haven't met yet. Then I learn about this little automatic promotion system.

I know this whole thing sounds like "Me, me me!", but as you can see...I'm not the only one who noticed this. :/

I'm not a fan of double-necro-posting, but I just discovered something of an annoyance...

I looked through some of my deleted stuff, and noticed (fairly recent) that a few images....didn't even HAVE any moderator reviews! Despite high scores and favs...

So yeah. :/ This current system....reaaaaally not working out. :X People who couldn't give two shits are getting approvals permissions...

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