As someone who has shared stuff with both family members and roommates while sharing IP addresses, this is a completely horrible idea.
IP bans are useless or worse if IP is assigned dynamically from a pool, like it's done in my ISP. Not only can people share the same IP, those same IPs will be given to completely different people after a few days. Sockpuppeting is an issue, even outside the scoring feature, but IP bans don't really solve it.
As someone who has shared stuff with both family members and roommates while sharing IP addresses, this is a completely horrible idea.
I'm not sure what other method can be used to detect sock puppet accounts that wouldn't be easily defeated - if we use activity, then either members who browsed but who didn't upload (as I did up until last year) are excluded from voting, or we're encouraging uploads for the sake of gaining votes.
And note the method I suggest only affects IP addresses at registration - that means you're more likely to get those accounts all created in a fairly short period from the same IP flagged as possible sock puppets, versus an ongoing IP ban that runs into the issue you brought up. If you're registering more than one or two accounts in the same time frame, I have to question your purposes.
At least with the old "you must be a premium member" method, you had to care a lot to shell out cash for more than one or two accounts to vote with. It wasn't a perfect method, but it at least kept the vote inflation under control.
I still like the idea of separating votes from favourites.
Ah, but then do we count for favourites added some months earlier as votes once the accounts they're attached to l reach a certain age? If so, what sort of load does that add to the back end? If not, we've only delayed the issue by that long. I'm not convinced that making favourites count automatically as votes is a good idea, period. I may vote a post I've favourited, but I may also have done or to look at later.
The sock puppet thing still isn't handled by that - not unless there's a way, at registration, to note IP addresses that have all share the same address on registration and then ban them - or some other solution like Schrobby's suggestion.
But even we have to figure out what constitutes activity - uploading pictures? Forum activity?
Favoriting does not need to count as a vote. Especially if higher level users have more than one vote. Keeping favs and votes apart would also set the fav and vote score apart, that should make having two scores more useful than it is now.
Using IPs to recognize sockpuppets has limits since there are ways to work around that.
Activity is everything, posting, tagging, browsing through posts, commenting, whatever. If there's nothing or barely anything going on it's probably either a sockpuppet or an abandoned account. Dunno how hard something like that would be to implement, though.
just noticed some recent(?), maybe not, changes. just came into realization and put these things into writing. comments seemed cannot be deleted anymore. they can still be, but just hidden in view. i've observed the count didn't decrease despite being deleted. also they still appear in API. not a bad thing i guess, since i seldom use this feature and mainly only in notifying users for available higher resolution/sources.
also the banned artist entries are obscured including the urls, history in the web interface. surely, this is a good thing against vandalism.
i didn't check it yet, but is it possible to still edit banned entries in API? for example you discovered new urls or merge the same banned artist with a different name. for people not familiar with API, this might be a little inconvenient since privileged(?) users are also affected (well, at least in builder level). just some personal observations.
ah, that's really quite some time already. didn't know deleted comments could generate performance issues.
good thing API is working. just thinking those unfamiliar with scripting would be at a disadvantage since the web interface is the easiest. just my 2 cents.
just noticed some recent(?), maybe not, changes. just came into realization and put these things into writing. comments seemed cannot be deleted anymore. they can still be, but just hidden in view. i've observed the count didn't decrease despite being deleted. also they still appear in API.
I'm not really liking the inflated vote-to-favorite ratio here. Before, a ratio as close to 1:1 or above that usually meant that the post was very good since those with a gold account and above usually have better judgement than regular members. Now, I can't really tell anymore since anybody can vote and favorite now.
Guys, someone have problem with Mozilla starting to load some pages painfully slow? That thing started recently on my PC, if anyone can help, that will be great!
[...] since those with a gold account and above usually have better judgement than regular members.
I'm still waiting for some proof of that claim. If you said promoted users, maybe; but gold users that just have to pay money to reach that status, I don't think so.
Now, I can't really tell anymore since anybody can vote and favorite now.
The problem actually is that this is not true. Everybody can up-vote by favoriting now, but there is no way to up-vote without favoriting and no way to down-vote at all (at least for basic members).
The reason why posts with score > favorite count have usually a high quality is because some people that didn't favorite the post (maybe they aren't particularly interested in the copyright) still thought that the quality was so high that they up-voted the post. They also had the ability to down-vote images they thought are bad or had an inflated score.
The problem is basic members can't do either. The only thing basic members can do is inflate the score by favoriting the post, which renders the distinction between score and favorites practically useless.
BUT: This is not the fault of basic members, but a flaw in the way this is currently implemented.
just noticed some recent(?), maybe not, changes. just came into realization and put these things into writing. comments seemed cannot be deleted anymore. they can still be, but just hidden in view. i've observed the count didn't decrease despite being deleted. also they still appear in API. not a bad thing i guess, since i seldom use this feature and mainly only in notifying users for available higher resolution/sources. also the banned artist entries are obscured including the urls, history in the web interface. surely, this is a good thing against vandalism.
i didn't check it yet, but is it possible to still edit banned entries in API? for example you discovered new urls or merge the same banned artist with a different name. for people not familiar with API, this might be a little inconvenient since privileged(?) users are also affected (well, at least in builder level). just some personal observations.
Fuck.
I use these to visit artists' sites, and occasionally add their new sites/aliases. Not happy with this obscuring of information.
If you said promoted users, maybe; but gold users that just have to pay money to reach that status, I don't think so.
A bit off-topic, but I want to point out that this is not always the case. Some Gold level users were promoted to that status for reasons other than paying money. Me for example. I was promoted to "Privileged" level way back during Danbooru v1 days for contributing to the site (mostly tagging and participating in forum discussions). When Danbooru v2 took over all Privileged users were automatically converted to Gold. And there are other users like this too.
SD-DAken said:
The only thing basic members can do is inflate the score by favoriting the post, which renders the distinction between score and favorites practically useless.
I agree completely with this. After the change score pretty much turned into the by-product of favourites and is mostly useless for all posts uploaded after it. It's really a shame that instead of two useful stats/sorting methods we now only have one.
Kikimaru said:
I use these to visit artists' sites, and occasionally add their new sites/aliases. Not happy with this obscuring of information.
Same here, I also visited such pages for links to artists' websites. Honestly, I don't see a reason why the information should be completely hidden. Artists only benefit from it since it directs people to the websites and pages/accounts where they post their artwork. Preventing normal users from editing associated entries makes sense, but I think that it still should be possible for Builder+ users.
I use these to visit artists' sites, and occasionally add their new sites/aliases. Not happy with this obscuring of information.
Same here.
MyrMindservant said:
Preventing normal users from editing associated entries makes sense, but I think that it still should be possible for Builder+ users.
True, since normal users can't even see posts from banned artists to begin with.
edit: As for the voting and favoriting problem, I really suggest reverting back to the old system if favorites from anyone now automatically count as votes. Regular members can't revert their automatic upvotes anyway.
I'm not really liking the inflated vote-to-favorite ratio here. Before, a ratio as close to 1:1 or above that usually meant that the post was very good since those with a gold account and above usually have better judgement than regular members. Now, I can't really tell anymore since anybody can vote and favorite now.
I wouldn't say that gold and platinum members automatically have better taste - but hardly. But they're either good contributors from the past (per MyrMindservant) or they were willing to shell out actual money to Albert to gain those privileges. But it made it much better to artificially inflate scores because to do so would require a lot of dedication and effort, or a large sum of cash paid in ways that would make it easier for him to recognize a voting racket as they'd be paying with credit cards or similarly traceable methods.
With the latest changes, it's trivial to register a bunch of accounts and have thrum favourite all thy posts you want to boost. It would need a relatively simple script to do, or just the willingness to put in a few hours of effort rather than months of contributions or breaking out the wallet. And I doubt we've enough Gold, Platinum, or Builder members to effectively balance them out, even if they all got the +5 weighted voting privilege.
So score went from being a possible measure of quality (with Favourites ranking popularity) to being just another way to show Favourites.
Same here, I also visited such pages for links to artists' websites. Honestly, I don't see a reason why the information should be completely hidden. Artists only benefit from it since it directs people to the websites and pages/accounts where they post their artwork.
Perhaps this is the reason why the banned artist entries were removed. Artists demand their images get taken down; we censor links to their webpages and deny them viewers. Tit for tat.
I'm not saying this is a good thing, mind you. This is just speculation about why useful information would be made unavailable.
Perhaps this is the reason why the banned artist entries were removed. Artists demand their images get taken down; we censor links to their webpages and deny them viewers. Tit for tat.
It would have some sense if also all source links from every single banned artist picture were hidden/removed.
I think it might be a better idea if Builders and above have access to the artist's info and the source links without using the API to edit while everyone else doesn't.
I wouldn't say that gold and platinum members automatically have better taste - but hardly. But they're either good contributors from the past (per MyrMindservant) or they were willing to shell out actual money to Albert to gain those privileges. But it made it much better to artificially inflate scores because to do so would require a lot of dedication and effort, or a large sum of cash paid in ways that would make it easier for him to recognize a voting racket as they'd be paying with credit cards or similarly traceable methods.
With the latest changes, it's trivial to register a bunch of accounts and have thrum favourite all thy posts you want to boost. It would need a relatively simple script to do, or just the willingness to put in a few hours of effort rather than months of contributions or breaking out the wallet. And I doubt we've enough Gold, Platinum, or Builder members to effectively balance them out, even if they all got the +5 weighted voting privilege.
I hadn't considered the possible usage of sockpuppets to boost scores. But if opening up favorites or voting to everyone again is going to create more problems that will only get a bandaid slapped on it and left alone like other site issues, neither are worth bothering with.
So score went from being a possible measure of quality (with Favourites ranking popularity) to being just another way to show Favourites.
This better illustrates the point I was having trouble making about this earlier. Regardless of the judgment Members have compared to higher-level users, having everyone's favorites counting towards score hasn't shown to have any actual benefits or "fix" anything before this test.
As scoring goes, there's a number of people in the thread that dislike the vastly inflated scores influenced by opening up favorite scoring. I assume they also make enough use of the Popular lists to see how it poses a problem for those.
Anyone that actually wants to see the a favorites-influenced top list of images can have a list tailored for them. Popular, being influenced by the score, needs control, and opening things up in the current fashion is only going to screw with that more than it needs to be.
What I dislike about this change is that score thresholds changed unevenly. Previously, I knew what quality to expect on average when searching for scores like 5+, 10+, etc. Now, new posts that would formerly be 5 are usually over 15, while old posts from same group stay at 5.