Possible Rating Vandalism

evazion said:

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 agree with this. Some of the already implemented restrictions and some of the newly proposed restrictions only annoy legitimate users that registered because they thought something was wrong or missing and they wanted to correct it. Surprise - they can't. They might even have lurked for months before, so saying they should first get to know the site makes no real sense.

At the same time it doesn't stop dedicated vandals. They just have to wait a few days until the restrictions on new accounts are automatically lifted.

albert said:
How about this: rating (and maybe include source and parent in this) changes require some sort of secondary confirmation step. Maybe a CAPTCHA. Gold+ accounts wouldn't have to deal with this step. It might be enough to deter vandals but wouldn't stop honest editors from making changes.

I think it's better to require a captcha for the first n changes (with n something like 10-25?).
This doesn't prevent people registering in good faith from contributing immediately. It also doesn't bother already existing users.

On the other hand it makes waiting until all restrictions are automatically lifted impossible, because the captcha will be required for the first n changes no matter whether they are attempted immediately after account creation or an arbitrary amount of time later.

Also accounts under captcha restrictions shouldn't be able to make changes with the danbooru API.

evazion said:

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.

SD-DAken said:

I agree with this.

I don't. If someone is going to be turned away by something as small as a week long mandatory lurking period then they probably weren't going to stick around for years as a significant contributor. Vandals on the other hand I could see easily discouraged by having to wait a week before vandalizing a few dozen posts before that account gets banned, their changes are instantly undone and they have to start all over with another week of waiting.

It doesn't stop it, but it goes a long way in seriously slowing down malicious activity. Regardless of any other measures that may be put in place I think this is one that should stay.

Maybe we could do an automatic rating lock on posts older than 1-2 years for anyone under Gold or Platinum status? Between that and a short waiting period for new users (anyone who walks away because they're waiting a week to comment or edit post tags isn't going to contribute positively - much less fr years) we could solve the bulk of the rating or tag vandalism without adding a more obtrusive captcha system to editing certain tags or ratings.

Granted that's also likely to work, but it might discourage people from making changes I'd it's a significant number.... and if it's anything less is unlikely to discourage vandals.

Or maybe this certain vandal and his work puppets can be dealt with as usual. This has happened before and NWF Denim and Apollyon dealt with those cases pretty quickly. All we need are those mod tools that albert thought he implemented.

You know, this actually brings forth another issue - tag and score vandalism. I've been seeing it happen more and more often. Scores would get lowered en masse depending on the uploader and/or artist, and useless tags would be added in where they don't belong.

Along with ratings, we got any tangible solutions for this?

Hoobajoob said:

I don't. If someone is going to be turned away by something as small as a week long mandatory lurking period then they probably weren't going to stick around for years as a significant contributor.

Not necessarily turned away, but it's a bad first impression. You registered and the first thing you notice is that you still can't do anything (at the moment you can still do at least something, but with some of the proposed changes you basically can't do anything for a week).

Vandals on the other hand I could see easily discouraged by having to wait a week before vandalizing a few dozen posts before that account gets banned, their changes are instantly undone and they have to start all over with another week of waiting.

It doesn't stop it, but it goes a long way in seriously slowing down malicious activity. Regardless of any other measures that may be put in place I think this is one that should stay.

But it doesn't necessarily slow them down that much at all.
Assume this:
Account A registered 26.09.
Account B registered 27.09.
Account C registered 28.09.
...
Account A used for vandalism on 03.10. -> Account gets banned.
Account B used for vandalism on 04.10. -> Account gets banned.
Account C used for vandalism on 05.10. -> Account gets banned.

Note that you can't ban B and C in advance because they are most likely registered by a different IP.
I can't speak for all ISPs, but at least the ones I know will only give you a static IP if you pay for it, which means basically everyone is on a dynamic IP. This means you get a new IP automatically on every disconnect / reconnect of your DSL modem or in most cases also automatically after 24 hours. So all these different accounts will be registered by different IPs (Most likely a similar IP-Range, but you can't block whole IP ranges without blocking thousands of users.) And that's not even taking proxies etc. into account.

MikeTheV said:

You know, this actually brings forth another issue - tag and score vandalism. I've been seeing it happen more and more often. Scores would get lowered en masse depending on the uploader and/or artist, and useless tags would be added in where they don't belong.

Along with ratings, we got any tangible solutions for this?

Score vandalism is interesting, because it can only be done by Gold+, am I right? Also voting should only be possible with the same account every 30 days (I think this was/will be changed to 90 days) I think. Usage of sock puppet accounts should be difficult in this case, because you'd have to pay for these accounts.

About the last paragraph: @SD-DAken
Not quite. If you are a super voter, even users who are below Gold level can vote with +3 or -3.
I don't think that this is a big issue in this case, but maybe there is^^?

How do you differentiate score vandalism from genuine "I don't like this artist"?

MikeTheV said:

You know, this actually brings forth another issue - tag and score vandalism.

Is score vandalism even a thing?

I mean, score is just a subjective popularity contest that doesn't serve much purpose beyond telling you how much other people like a picture. If people downvote the score on a post then it's because they don't like the picture for whatever reason and the score system is serving it's purpose. The only people that can vote are those that donate money to the site or are a significant contributor. By definition it can't really be vandalized unless some weirdo dumps hundreds of dollars into sockpuppet accounts just to see near useless numbers get lower/higher. Even then it'd still be a net gain for danbooru.

Provence said:

About the last paragraph: @SD-DAken
Not quite. If you are a super voter, even users who are below Gold level can vote with +3 or -3.
I don't think that this is a big issue in this case, but maybe there is^^?

Hey, welcome back.

Scores are only for popularity, but aren't they also factored in for some floggings purposes as well as the subsequent reappraisal period? It's seemed to me that a popular post will me readily be reapproved than one with a low or negative score.

Provence said:

About the last paragraph: @SD-DAken
Not quite. If you are a super voter, even users who are below Gold level can vote with +3 or -3.
I don't think that this is a big issue in this case, but maybe there is^^?

It's only a problem if it was easy to create an account and manipulate it in a way that it is much more likely to be chosen for super voter privileges. In this case one could create one or more such accounts and use them for manipulation, but I have no idea if this is even feasible.

Type-kun said:

How do you differentiate score vandalism from genuine "I don't like this artist"?

Well, down-voting every single post by a certain artist (or up-voting for that matter) is not really useful for the community.
MikeTheV hinted above that there are also cases where posts have been down-voted not because of the image itself or because of the artist or copyright, but apparently only because of the person who uploaded the image. If that's really the case then that's just plain stupid.

Also like Jarlath already mentioned, post score is likely considered if a post gets flagged whether it is likely to be reapproved. And (average) score is afaik a factor for user promotions / demotions, so you could possibly hurt certain users by doing this.

Besides, albert did once punish/ban an user because they've taregeted one single user.
It's not like this has never happened^^

Provence said:

Besides, albert did once punish/ban an user because they've taregeted one single user.
It's not like this has never happened^^

I'm pretty sure I've had posts down voted because I'd uploaded them, so it's not like the petty Internet shit-stirrers don't exist here.

I'd be looking for a pattern with a sudden spate of voting on a post up or down, within the same few hours by the same block of people or within a very short period (bot-based) .

Type-kun said:

How do you differentiate score vandalism from genuine "I don't like this artist"?

Yep lol, that's the other thing. Maybe someone just really, really doesn't like a particular style. Overall, score vandalism - if it can even be called that - is much, much lower on the totem pole of problems.

There's an artist with over 600 pictures on this site of which I have downvoted around 90%, on account of the fact that I genuinely think them to be awful. So that exact scenario does happen.

MikeTheV said:

Yep lol, that's the other thing. Maybe someone just really, really doesn't like a particular style. Overall, score vandalism - if it can even be called that - is much, much lower on the totem pole of problems.

I know that sometimes in the past, I'd have like 20 of my just-posted posts all downvoted, all being different artists and styles. Though, I'm pretty sure it was the guy who got warned to stop doing that.

When a supervoter downvotes your posts as soon as they're uploaded though (Granted, I'm definitely sure it was because they didn't like the art), it basically crucifies the popularity of an image, as I find people are colored by the scores of a post. Low score and they'll avoid a picture they might like, high score and they'll jump on the bandwagon with others even if they don't particularly love the image.

kuuderes shadow said:

There's an artist with over 600 pictures on this site of which I have downvoted around 90%, on account of the fact that I genuinely think them to be awful. So that exact scenario does happen.

Damn, you must really have hated that artist, because that seems like a lot of work to go in post by post and downvote everything for like half an hour.

kuuderes_shadow said:

There's an artist with over 600 pictures on this site of which I have downvoted around 90%, on account of the fact that I genuinely think them to be awful. So that exact scenario does happen.

Flagging would've been more effective...

Provence said:

Flagging would've been more effective...

That's what made me think, should there me a separate flagging permission where the user can flag as many posts as he wants?

tapnek said:

That's what made me think, should there me a separate flagging permission where the user can flag as many posts as he wants?

People who have approval permission (i.e Janitors) are able to flag as many images as they want.
About the suggestion: Although there is a huge amount of bad posts and it would be faster to clean them up with such a permission, I think that this would only result in more vandalism...
Well, I've no real opinion to this, though^^.