RoboMod

[Dami]

Don't worry boys, I wasn't asked to trail it either although I dare say my report button isn't cold

[Paul]

1 hour ago, ajpoolshark said:

ah, must have read Paul's post wrong, I thought it said a small group of members were being used in the trial?

Yes, as in a small group of members are involved in terms of when they report posts, they're hidden straight away pending review by the team. When that happens 'robomod' pm's the member who's made the post to let them know that's what's happened.

Once the team review, the post may be unhidden, or it may remain hidden, in which case we will contact the member again (in most instances at least currently, as we've been a bit stretched, but the aim is to do this 100% of the time). 

[bobbydog]

48 minutes ago, CreweCold said:

Robo-mod...hmmm... Post disappears and never comes back, even if it's within the spirit of the discourse- as @bobbydog has pointed out. Yet the original post you are replying to often remains in all its glory.

i think the issue is, robomod is not a robot. its basically the ability of a member to hide a post until reviewed by a mod. if it doesn't get reviewed, it stays hidden. if everyone is given the ability, then i can see it creating more problems than it solves. people will disagree and mods will have to get involved, creating more work. if its only a select few that have the ability, then its down to the personal opinion of those people if a post is hidden. in which case, they may as well be official mods. we already have a report facility so i dont think "RoboMod" is needed.

Edited December 17, 2017 by bobbydog

[Mokidugway]

There's always the possibility of people just hiding posts of people they don't like ,

[Cheshire Freeze]

Just now, bobbydog said:

i think the issue is, robomod is not a robot. its the basically the ability of a member to hide a post until reviewed by a mod. if it doesn't get reviewed, it stays hidden. if everyone is given the ability, then i can see it creating more problems than it solves. people will disagree and mods will have to get involved, creating more work. if its only a select few that have the ability, then its down to the personal opinion of those people if a post is hidden. in which case, they may as well be official mods. we already have a report facility so i dont think "RoboMod" is needed.

Exactly.

It's the fact that the post is automatically hidden that gets me. Fair enough if the post in question is highly offensive- there can be no quibbles over that. However, for borderline posts which fit the general flow of the thread yet may be ever so slightly (subjectively) 'off topic' I think it's harsh.

[Paul]

 

16 minutes ago, CreweCold said:

Exactly.

It's the fact that the post is automatically hidden that gets me. Fair enough if the post in question is highly offensive- there can be no quibbles over that. However, for borderline posts which fit the general flow of the thread yet may be ever so slightly (subjectively) 'off topic' I think it's harsh.

Perhaps, but that's why we're trialling it on a small scale initially, so we can learn how it may work, both in terms of its positives and negatives. 

17 minutes ago, Mokidugway said:

There's always the possibility of people just hiding posts of people they don't like ,

Then the post would be unhidden - in fact posts which the team didn't think need to be hidden have been auto-hidden a few times during this trial and have been unhidden  quickly and seamlessly. 

20 minutes ago, bobbydog said:

i think the issue is, robomod is not a robot. its the basically the ability of a member to hide a post until reviewed by a mod. if it doesn't get reviewed, it stays hidden. if everyone is given the ability, then i can see it creating more problems than it solves. people will disagree and mods will have to get involved, creating more work. if its only a select few that have the ability, then its down to the personal opinion of those people if a post is hidden. in which case, they may as well be official mods. we already have a report facility so i dont think "RoboMod" is needed.

The posts are always reviewed, it's the same as any other report, they're flagged to the whole team and stay flagged up until they're checked and marked as solved by a team member. 

I agree that if we rolled it out widely in its current form, then we would probably end up creating the situation you describe, but that's not to say there isn't some use to having some automation. For example, we've already created a system which would automate the hiding of posts if x amount of people report them, which based on the way reports are made currently would mean only the more serious problems would be auto-hidden pending review. Yes, that's still potentially open to abuse by people if they get together to get a post hidden for the hell of it, but it's not like that wouldn't be easy to spot and stop. 

The point is really, we're testing an idea, that's giving us more ideas and good insights into how something like this may or may not work. As I said yesterday - you can only improve things by trying stuff out - some stuff you try ends up being a bust, some stuff works fine and some stuff leads you to something else which does work. Time will tell how we end up with this idea..

Edited December 17, 2017 by Paul

[A.J]

aye, it's definitely worth ago, if it makes mod/admin team's life easier then it's a good idea....having been a mod/host for over 8 years on NW I know how busy the team can get dealing with reports, arguments and the like............but, as CC & BD & Moki inferred, robomod is open to abuse (I'm thinking model & political threads) where there is often polarised viewpoints leading to members reporting posts like crazy because they dont like the person/dont agree with the members viewpoint) creating even more work for the team, but if the robomod function has the ability to be adapted to stop this kind of thing then it's worth a punt....one suggestion I'd make would be the functionality to 'robomod' posts containing swear filter words as even though 99% of profanities are covered by the swear filter it's pretty obvious when people still post said profanties knowing the swear filter will kick in (it's never nice to be told to 'mongoose' off!)

Edited December 17, 2017 by ajpoolshark

[Paul]

Thanks AJ

Funny enough, there's a new option on here to automatically set a post to pre-moderation should it require something in the swear filter, so that's something we may switch on at some point