I have recently received complaints on some users consistently uploading low quality posts and those posters essentially being given a blank check as far as uploads due some approvers. This matter has been brought up before and is usually shut down due to the volatility of the topic, but it has been felt that for those who have problems with certain users and approvers that they've run out of means to resolve this matter discreetly and so once again have to have this brought up on the forums again with the risks that might occur. For my part I'm just going to try and keep this as just going over the general complaints and risks of the problem.
The first problem being complained about is that we have some users who readily upload low quality posts, and despite complaints on it and feedback by other users, they will continue to upload low quality posts in number. While we do somewhat have an automatic punishment for some of these users in the form of the upload limit formula, there are users who hit the 4 post floor set on the system and continue to go about their business unphased that their upload limit has been restricted. The limit formula though only impacts some users and for the ones it doesn't have influence on there is little to encourage a user to change course on their uploads. These users who aren't impacted by the limit formula should be either contributors who bypass the mod queue or those who have a lot of approved posts but are not contributors. For some contributors the lack of oversight may end up in a degradation of quality as the pressure for good quality posts is removed, but for non-contributors the pressure for good posts should still exist as those users still have to go through the mod queue that ideally should filter out poor uploads. This leads to the second problem.
The second problem that I've received complaints about is that some approvers will consistently approve poor quality images. Besides allowing poor quality images through the mod queue, this is problematic as it can reward users who consistently upload poor images and encourage them to continue to upload low quality images. It also rewards such users, if approvals are done in large enough numbers, by helping those users be less restricted by the upload limit formula, as their approvals reward them with more upload slots. Furthermore, it could potentially reward such users with promotions, particularly to contributor, due to having their deletion count be lower than it should be and their approvals higher than it should be. So in the end it can allow a user with consistently poor uploads to never have to worry about the mod queue again.
Other problems with an approver who consistently approves low quality images is potentially increased work load on other users (particularly approvers), as other users end up now having to sift through the approved posts and flag posts that shouldn't have been approved (essentially filtering the filtrate, because the first filter isn't working). A poor approver can also compound issues of users who are uploading low quality images, particularly those who bypass the mod queue, as an image can end up needing to be flagged twice. The first time around the post ends up reapproved and then has to be flagged again to override the approval, so it can make it more time consuming to remove bad posts from the system.
Long story short:
- Poor uploaders:
- Can be unphased by 4 post floor on upload limit formula
- Lack of encouragement or pressure to post quality posts on those the limit formula doesn't work on
- Poor approvers:
- Rewards poor uploaders by encouraging bad posts, negating upload limit formula, and leading to bad promotions
- Increases workload on other approvers
- Increases difficulty in deleting bad posts
Updated by albert