Score sockpuppetry, user sockpuppetry.

Shinjidude said:
I've personally been watching you for a few days now. You haven't quite hit the guidelines for invitation yet, but you are getting very close.

I appreciate that. It’s good to know my efforts are going to pay off, and I’m looking forward to finally being able to search more than 2 tags. But honestly, I’m not really too concerned with “regaining my right to vote.” I am far more concerned with everyone else’s. The value of the scoring system has, in my opinion, been reduced to the point where ability to vote in it doesn’t mean too much to me. With this change in effect, the only ways the majority of Danbooru users have to express their appreciation of an image is to make an inane comment, or to fav it. Since the former is outlawed, the latter will eventually come to dominate. And then we’re left with exactly what moe.imouto has: a ranking system without down-votes.

I would also like to point out that the system I described above could easily emulate the system we have now. When you keep track of what users voted which way, it’s quite simple to calculate the vote based on only priv+ voters. You could actually split the popular page into “Popular Among Everybody” and “Popular Among People Who Have Proven Themselves Not To Be Morons,” or maybe just make it an option to ignore Member votes everywhere. However, I get that the change has already been made, so the new system is how things will be for a while at least. I just hope that someday alternatives will be explored.

As for the “should have said something sooner” thing, yeah, I regret not doing so. I saw the thread when Granola posted it, but I didn’t think such a huge change would be implemented a mere 3 days later. I guess I underestimated how fast stuff can change around here. I will definitely make an effort to check the forums more often after this.

How about just removing score visibility for the non-priv members, while retaining it for priv+ members? Then we log votes by username. Search results based on order:score still return posts based on score, but non-priv members can't see what score a particular picture has.

It appears that this mass score voting sockpuppetry bullshit comes about as a matter of e-penis or plain internet idiocy--there are morons who want to see their favourite picture(s) voted up, and imbeciles who want to see their hated picture(s) voted down. Kind of like forum ego bullshit where those who have higher post counts are more revered than those with lower post counts, really.

Take away their ability to see the score and the problem should go away, no? If a lot of forum faggotry can be avoided by hiding post counts...

So it could be fixed that order:score does return posts sorted by score, but only priv+ members can actually see said score while blocking non-priv members from doing so? In that way non-priv members still get to vote, while priv+ members get to... gloat?

saturnine said: Take away their ability to see the score and the problem should go away, no?

Not necessarily. If they're doing it to troll a particular user, it still has most of its intended effect even if the troll can't actually see the number.

If a lot of forum faggotry can be avoided by hiding post counts...

I've never actually seen this have any effect on a forum's behavior.

jxh2154 said:
Not necessarily. If they're doing it to troll a particular user, it still has most of its intended effect even if the troll can't actually see the number.

Sounds like tenuous speculation to me. Your statement also makes the assumption that the majority of sockpuppetry done so far have been to irk a particular user. How true is this?

I've never actually seen this have any effect on a forum's behavior.

Yeah, because it isn't brought up. It's pretty stupid to invoke someone's post count when you don't know what it is! Big surprise there.

I've got a bit more to add on to my suggestion, although this would approach Wikipedia-esque moderation and might not be what the moderators are looking for--how about a peer-review system where priv+ members (who are the only people who can see the score) can flag a picture for a mod to check if someone's been sockpuppeting the score?

The mod could then do two things:

1. Remove the sockpuppet votes
2. Freeze votes on the picture for a short duration of time

I'm not sure how well this would work, though, considering that it relies on priv+ members to report anything out of the ordinary with regards to scores that they see.

Coconut said:
I would also like to point out that the system I described above could easily emulate the system we have now. When you keep track of what users voted which way, it’s quite simple to calculate the vote based on only priv+ voters. You could actually split the popular page into “Popular Among Everybody” and “Popular Among People Who Have Proven Themselves Not To Be Morons,” or maybe just make it an option to ignore Member votes everywhere. However, I get that the change has already been made, so the new system is how things will be for a while at least. I just hope that someday alternatives will be explored.

I actually had a suggestion in mind similar to that. Make it a user-side option for anyone to show scores based only on the amount of votes (favorites or otherwise) from Priv+ users, and have it apply to order:score and the Popular lists. That way, anyone who really wants to look for the quality material can just enable it for themselves.

I suppose we could re-enable Member voting as well, so that anyone looking to game the basic scores can't get in the way of anyone else that has actual quality in mind. Priv+ users would be able to look at a "Basic" Popular list with tallying votes from all users, upvote/favorite what they think belongs on the "Advanced" Popular list, and introduce other Priv+ users to such better quality uploads (something currently happening since the changes).

Also, would anyone mind a separate thread to keep track of general thoughts on the new scores/vote system? I ask because discussion about it seems a little scattered between this thread and forum #440608.

saturnine said:
Sounds like tenuous speculation to me. Your statement also makes the assumption that the majority of sockpuppetry done so far have been to irk a particular user. How true is this?

I checked order:score_asc before the scores changed. I saw about 15-20 posts that had obviously been downvoted through vote spam. The majority of these posts were uploaded by Granola, with the rest belonging to a few other people.

saturnine said: Your statement also makes the assumption that the majority of sockpuppetry done so far have been to irk a particular user. How true is this?

I don't even think there's been much sockpuppetry at all, and it's a largely overblown concern. Mostly it's people posting something unpopular and then assuming something illegitimate is happening when it gets a low score.

There was definitely user-targeted trolling gong on in granola's case, however, which is the reason this drastic change was put in place. If this thread hadn't happened, we would have just continued on like always. In fact, I don't think any change to scoring was necessary at all. But now that it's happened, there are both good and bad things about it.

Yeah, because it isn't brought up. It's pretty stupid to invoke someone's post count when you don't know what it is! Big surprise there.

You don't need post counts to know who the established users are. And you don't need post counts to be a dick to someone or have them be one to you. The actual post numbers are just a scapegoat and really have nothing to do with people's behavior. Post counts and image scores are not comparable because the former cannot be affected by anyone but the owner of the account (well or the admins). Image score is something external to the uploader, that they have almost no control over.

Post count is comparable to upload count, not scores.

how about a peer-review system where priv+ members (who are the only people who can see the score) can flag a picture for a mod to check if someone's been sockpuppeting the score?

But there's no mechanism to tell. I don't even know if Albert has access to that kind of data, and the rest of us sure don't.

As a note, jxh and I have experience on another forum where there were post counts visible, then there weren't, and then there was again.

It didn't lead to any meaningful changes.

How was moe imouto's solution to the problem a mistake?

Once again, the only purpose behind voting is to see what the community thinks of a pic... for the sake of seeing what a community thinks of a pic.

Changing that to seeing how many people within the community like it isn't that big of a change, and it'd solve the down voting problem.

"Solve" it by taking away the ability to express my hate for a picture. No thanks. Just stop proposing that.

That is like "solving" the problem of bad uploads by removing the upload option. I don't think I have to explain why it isn't a good approach.

Coconut said:
1. The pool of priv+ users is simply too small. The low sample size significantly decreases the usefulness of the post rating statistic, even if the votes are supposedly "better."

Smaller pool of voters means each vote has more power

Coconut said:
2. How many comments are there that go something along the lines of “Stop making comments like ‘that’s so hot’! We have the rating system for that!” Taking away the rating system, and stupid comments are the only way for people to show appreciation of an image, except for adding it to their favorites

With the change to the comment system, stupid comments have dropped, since "hot" takes up the same hour as a well thought out reply.

Coconut said:
3. I completely agree with Shinjidude and Log in that there are tons and tons of images that I like, but don’t like enough to fav. There needs to be some level between “I don’t care about this image” and “I love this image so much!"

I somewhat agree on this point, but I feel the gain from making it Priv+ is much higher than the loss of this feature to normal members, then again, I'm privileged.

Coconut said:
4. Ratings played an important role in terms of feedback. Yes, I agree with whoever said that ratings are just there to boost the e-peen of the user that posted them, but I would posit that that’s a plus.

Had you looked at the votes from the previous system, all the "feedback" was how to tell which pictures had the largest breasts. A terrible quality image could be voted higher than anything of actual value JUST because the woman with giant boobs in it.

The username solution has the exact same problem as the IP solution. It takes up resources that should go to some other part of danbooru.

I'm going to go out on a limb here, but I'm willing to bet the average member probably doesn't care about having lost the ability to vote. Most are here to leech anyway. Those seeking priv+ are unfortunate casualties, but gaining priv status isn't as hard as everyone wants to believe it is.

Note: I don't mean to pick on Coconut here, he has a lot of valid points that I felt needed to be directly addressed. Also sorry for the long post.

Guts_of_Eclipse said: Once again, the only purpose behind voting is to see what the community thinks of a pic... for the sake of seeing what a community thinks of a pic.

And if you only allow positive votes and no negatives, then you're not accomplishing that at all. Opinions move in two directions, not just one.

Suiseiseki said:
Had you looked at the votes from the previous system, all the "feedback" was how to tell which pictures had the largest breasts. A terrible quality image could be voted higher than anything of actual value JUST because the woman with giant boobs in it.

I want an example of this.

Scalar said:
I want an example of this.

You never noticed this? It typically occurred with much of the popular post listing on a daily basis.

Scalar said: I want an example of this.

Pretty much any browsing by score in the past would have provided loads of evidence.

jxh2154 said:
Pretty much any browsing by score in the past would have provided loads of evidence.

Shinjidude said:
You never noticed this? It typically occurred with much of the popular post listing on a daily basis.

I understand that explicit posts generally get higher ratings. What I'm asking for is an example of a terrible explicit image getting a higher rating than an objectively better one.

You can tell because when the scores were reset very few explicit posts were rated highly.

What I don't get is why regular members aren't allowed to vote on an image, but they can still edit tags. Someone could just as easily make an account and fuck with the tags on a whole bunch of images as they can with abusing the voting system. I'm assuming tags are more important than a score right?

Scalar said:
I understand that explicit posts generally get higher ratings. What I'm asking for is an example of a terrible explicit image getting a higher rating than an objectively better one.

Erm...the yuri images from gununu_(pixiv) were drawn rather poorly, and yet made it to the most popular images section every time.

post #340298

post #348638

BiZzAr0 said:
What I don't get is why regular members aren't allowed to vote on an image, but they can still edit tags. Someone could just as easily make an account and fuck with the tags on a whole bunch of images as they can with abusing the voting system. I'm assuming tags are more important than a score right?

But there is a tag history as well, and undoing what a troublemaker causes with the tags is actually pretty easy from what I've seen.