Question

There needs to be a more effective way of combating these troll accounts.

Answer 1

What I suggest:
Create a automatic system so that if you use too many profanities, the user will get a warning, and then a ban.

Answer 2

@amistre64

This has been an issue for the LONGEST time...
and you guys are only realizing it now?

I've made many posts about this, and EVERY TIME I would provide screenshots, a mod would ask me to close the post and only PM mods when any problem occurred.

Answer 3

we are not "only realizing it now" ... we have been complaining about the efficiency of the mod tools that they give us and that they are no good at combating this kind of troll behaviour

Answer 4

Oh, thank goodness for realizing this...
in fact, do mods have an IP ban feature at all?

Answer 5

Or is it admin specific?

Answer 6

we have a "useraccount" suspend option ... which is pointless since anyone can make a new account in a matter of seconds

Answer 7

admins, or at least the programmers, could do an ip ban; but they are hardly ever around to deal with it.

Answer 8

oh yea.
Thats what I thought.
In fact, I popped in the source code of OpenStudy for a bit, and I found that the only options you have is:

Kick
Ban (this is a warning)
and IP check

when you click ban, you get asked in a prompt how long you need it to be.
Is this correct?

Answer 9

BTW I'm wondering, is the warning system delayed?
Whenever I report something, it takes up to 15 min. for a mod to answer !

Answer 10

depends on what the mods are doing ... i do not know what kind of lag would exists between report and notif. most seem fairly real time to me

Answer 11

ban/warn yes. with a time limit option for the useraccount.

Answer 12

But it always takes a while :\

Answer 13

@amistre64 this has a very simple solution, instead of sitting around and waiting for a hackathon I fear is not coming anytime soon (not to mention that the hackathon will not be as big as we would like it) we could start to do something, we need to start working with Preetha to get OS better funding,better admins who are actually around and do things like shadowfiend, mattfuery, and farmdawgnation used to do, we need to start revamping this old design and make a new OS.

Answer 14

im not sure of "better admins" is a proper usage of the term :) And im not too sure how us working with Preetha would provide better funding. I agree that we need a designated admin around that we can more readily contact tho.

Answer 15

I mean we need to start sending out some letters and make some phone calls to institutes who would fund us, and we need Preetha to do it since she is the face of OS, and what I mean by "better admins" is admins who instead of just fixing and trying to maintain this crumbling server by putting band-aids we need admins who are dedicated and are always finding new ways to improve OS, you can't argue that @shadowfiend @mattfeury and @farmdawgnation never did anything, because they were always improving OS and finding out how to fix it the correct way,they put cement on the broken dam instead of duct tape instead of how it is done now, the admins now are around but not as dedicated nor do they Improve the site.

Answer 16

Not to mention that it would be nice to have better servers so we don't get as congested which is a big problem here.

Answer 17

Server-wise, OpenStudy isn't quite optimized for horizontal scaling. It's about 60% of the way there, but needs a good bit of love to go the last 40%, because there are certain things that are still designed to run in a single process rather than distributed across servers.

Answer 18

I love this guy, you tag him and he actually comes on O_O

Answer 19

Heh. Depends on the day;)

Answer 20

Yes but I know you are dependable :)

Answer 21

So what exactly would OpenStudy need to overcome it's sluggish speed and lags?

Answer 22

Some pretty concerted performance investigatory work. This isn't trivial stuff, tbh, it's the more difficult side of development in my opinion.

Answer 23

Would it be best to just re-code the whole thing or take out bit's and peaces and test it out?

Answer 24

Neither, really. Testing it in real-life scenarios with a profiler is the best way to go, IMO. But that requires time hehe.

Answer 25

isn't the disapproval guy your test account?

Answer 26

Nope.

Answer 27

O_O

Answer 28

Matt's?

Answer 29

As far as I know it's not a test account.

Answer 30

Wut? one sec let me get the link.....

Answer 31

http://openstudy.com/study#/updates/51c21a78e4b0a49e8c900b7e

Answer 32

Although the convo we had got deleted but it was there @thomaster

Answer 33

Wow!
Shadow's here! :)

@JA1 "isn't the disapproval guy your test account?"
What are you guys talking about ?

Answer 34

Thom said the disapproval face was a test account fro some admin but I forgot who's

Answer 35

I disapprove of this accusation.

Answer 36

It has to be matt or farm because I tagged them both :P

Answer 37

HUZZA it's @farmdawgnation

Answer 38

I mean, this is the third entry in OpenStudy Feedback so who you tagged isn't necessarily an indication of anything :p

Answer 39

Snuggielad:
I know you are farmer but I am still going to call you Mr. Eyeballs :) I quite like that name. FAN MEH

Answer 40

wait, who's @ಠ_ಠ?

Answer 41

I'm horribly confused.

Answer 42

I'm glad we've established that testimonials are the one true source of truth. ;)

Answer 43

It has to be, if not then some miracle happened and this guy just resuscitated after so long with no activity XD

Answer 44

uh huh
I'm so confused
WHAT in the world are you guys talking about
who is ಠ_ಠ
and why is his SS so low :P

Answer 45

I am accusing him of being farmdawgnation but we are not sure ....

Answer 46

I go away, and I have people accusing me of being someone I'm not. Hrmph.

Answer 47

I KNEW IT >_<

Answer 48

OMG @farmdawgnation It's been years!
Like literatly!!!

Answer 49

He built OS along with shadwow and matt, I think we've established he is a big figure on here xD

Answer 50

I know!

Answer 51

Pretty sure it hasn't literally been years :p

Answer 52

Read above and you will see why he is relevant

Answer 53

More like months?

Answer 54

My lord.
All of you had been absent for so long!

Answer 55

Anyway so back to the main topic here lol. So OS would be best to just test with an account?

Answer 56

Hm?

Answer 57

You said "Neither, really. Testing it in real-life scenarios with a profiler is the best way to go, IMO. But that requires time hehe." so i take it you mean the best route is to just test OS on a regular account?

Answer 58

OH WAIT

Answer 59

So how would we work on improving OpenStudy?

Answer 60

Brain crash there, I know what you mean now shadow lol

Answer 61

Lol. My name is there. :|

Answer 62

Wow
It was great when the admins were here... on chat...
:)

Answer 63

We need better servers...
But the admins don't work at OpenStudy anymore!
Where to start?

Answer 64

WOW JA1 you have reunited all the admins. Only @cshalvey @mattfeury are left , I suppose.

Thanks for coming back @shadowfiend @farmdawgnation . we all missed you a lot.

Answer 65

Indeed, but they only were there this morning.
The old-time mod, @darksid had also returned.
They seem to have left :'(

Though @shadowfiend was also here yesterday and the day before, so I expect him to be back.

Answer 66

? Is @darthsid back?

Answer 67

now im happy :) It was great to see you guys again.

Answer 68

Yep, right amistre! Hope, they come back again and again

Answer 69

Am I back?

Answer 70

Supposedly @Preetha mentioned they are working for OS again, but I don't know if this was a cruel joke or the truth :3

Answer 71

Not the true, as proven by their replies on your most recent post @JA1
And where did she tell you that?

Answer 72

On chat but it was yesterday :P that's why I asked on my post to make sure.

Answer 73

Oooh gotcha.

Answer 74

So, here comes my idea:

Divert the minds of trollers :)

http://openstudy.com/study#/updates/51e0a61be4b076f7da41e1f2

Answer 75

One of my ideas was to feed good and bad chat to spam assassin to train it, then have a scrape server just watch the critical chats. For questionable content, report it. Then a human can deal with it. For bad content, delete it and evaluate the user. War or suspend based on the user and their IP check status.