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Comments on Hobbling of users who consistently post low-quality content

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Hobbling of users who consistently post low-quality content

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There are, unfortunately, a few users on Codidact who relatively consistently make low-quality contributions. These posts often come in bursts and tend to be downvoted fairly quickly, but that doesn't slow them down.

I propose that Codidact should implement some manner in which to slow down such users. They shouldn't be prevented entirely from posting, but there should be limits in place to ensure that their posts don't drown out other content.

I am posting a self-answer with a suggestion for how this can be done, but alternative suggestions (or arguments why this is a bad idea) are certainly welcome!

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4 comment threads

It's not possible to meaningfully hobble bad users. You can only hobble new users. (1 comment)
Like the idea. Added some extra steps to your basic proposal to allow for "strictness configuration";... (2 comments)
Perfect is the enemy of good (3 comments)
Downvote!!! it's not because my answers/questions are poorly written (2 comments)
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It sounds like we want to temporarily revoke a person's ability to make lots of posts when recent quality is an issue.

The Participate Everywhere ability allows one to post without limit. Nominally, the requirement to earn it is:

To earn this ability, you need to have roughly 75% of your posts be positively received, with a minimum of 5 positively-recieved posts (these numbers may vary from site to site).

I said "nominally", because we've started communities here in "new" mode, so that people trying to build and expand our small communities aren't, um, hobbled.

Without "new" mode, people start at Participate:

This ability allows you to posts 3 [configurable] top-level posts (questions and articles) a day, and to post 20 answers a day.

This ability also allows you to raise 15 flags on posts a day.

Three posts a day is hobbling, not a block, so people can lift themselves out of it. That number is configurable per community.

Moderators can suspend or revoke individual abilities. I know this question is about automatic measures, but there is a manual option for individual cases that are disrupting a community.

The system automatically checks qualifications periodically (I think a few times a day) and grants new abilities when people have earned them. It does not currently revoke abilities (and in some cases that would be hard to even test).

Question 1: Should we build a "hobbling" system on the same tools? If the criteria (TBD) are met to tell a user to slow down, the script could suspend Participate Everywhere. Later runs of the script would check whether conditions have improved and restore the ability if so.

Question 2: If so, what should the criteria be to hobble a user? Abilities are based on all activity, but it seems like the problem that motivated this question arises from recent activity. If somebody had a bad start a year ago, fixed it, and then has one bad post now, that shouldn't hobble the person, I don't think. But if several more bad posts follow, that's different.

No matter what approach we take, I think it's important to give a user some warning at posting time -- something to the effect of "hey, be careful -- several of your recent posts haven't been well-received and you might get rate-limited".

If we take the approach I'm describing, then the only timing problem would be if the script happens to run while the person is posting. We can probably catch and handle that so the person doesn't lose work. (It'd stink to write up a long answer and only then have it rejected.) Otherwise, we know when you click "ask question" or start to type into the answer box whether you're allowed to post right now, and we can intercept you if not (like we do with existing rate limits).

By using the abilities system, we reduce the chances of creating weird conflicts with the abilities system by having two different, parallel ways of deciding what you're allowed to do. That seems more resilient.

A final question: Should we lift "new" mode from any network communities and recalculate abilities? I'll have to check with devs to find out what other effects there are; I think it's mainly that in "new" mode everyone starts with Participate Everywhere, but if there are other effects too, that would factor into the discussion.

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2 comment threads

Automated or handed out by mods? (3 comments)
Take posting by other users into account (5 comments)
Take posting by other users into account
r~~‭ wrote about 3 years ago

Something in Canina's proposal I quite like is that the limiting factor is determined by the amount of posting done by other users, and not some fixed rate. Even three low-quality posts a day would be more than enough for bad posts to crowd out the good in some (most?) of our communities at present, although at scale this could obviously change. If the goal is to present a front page with more good content than bad, it makes sense to me to target that directly instead of indirectly with a rate limit that needs to be tuned. (That doesn't necessarily mean we can't use abilities in the implementation, does it?)

Monica Cellio‭ wrote about 3 years ago

That's an interesting idea -- a sort of "share the space" measure, as opposed to an absolute threshold. A busy community can more easily absorb a few bad questions.

deleted user wrote about 3 years ago

I believe we should remove very poor quality posts, I am not saying to remove that post since that question already got an answer. Since it totally has nothing to do with Physics than other user might feel bad for that post. Since we are small we should encourage new user by showing beautiful things rather than very poor questions....

Canina‭ wrote about 3 years ago · edited about 3 years ago

Monica Cellio‭ As r~~‭ to some extent already pointed out, a big part of the reasoning behind my suggestion to take activity by other users into account is that it makes the system self-adapting to varying traffic levels. It would also enable the system to adapt to temporary fluctuations in traffic; consider, perhaps, Judaism Codidact during Rosh Hashana, Shabbat or Yom Kippur, when activity and monitoring can both be expected to be reduced compared to other times. A specific time limit that's too restrictive for the purpose of avoiding drowning out good traffic on a somewhat active site such as Software Development Codidact could allow far too much low-quality content on, say, Writing or Scientific Speculation that see much lower levels of activity; and for communities where the activity level naturally varies for various reasons, to remember to manually reconfigure a limit regularly is just one more thing that could be overlooked, or could go wrong.

Canina‭ wrote about 3 years ago · edited about 3 years ago

We can discuss the specific values, and with configurability that discussion can be had within each community, but the data for the system to be self-adaptive is available, so to build some degree of self-adaptation into the system seems to me to be a reasonable approach. Yes, it puts some aspects of the rate limiting out of the control of the specific user, but certainly to some extent I would actually consider that a feature, not a bug. (And that is also why my suggestion included the shortcut of "most recent previous post is positively received". Basically: if you post content that is well-received by the community, then you are allowed to post more content.) Whether a post is positively received is already out of the control of the user posting it, so to some extent, this is how the system already works.