Moderation of the Community

Good afternoon,

I thought I would update you all on some of the work we have been doing this week following the recent SPAM issues on the website.

As you know, due to a number of resource constraints here, we are not actively able to monitor the community on a daily basis, but rely on the regular visitors of the community, like yourselves, to alert us of any issues.

We know how important the community is to many of you and we love that you feel so passionately about it and want to maintain standards within it. To ensure we can address the moderation issues, we are currently speaking to all the colleagues who are moderators regarding their involvement in the community and we are also exploring other options to expand the resources of those who are able to moderate content in a more efficient way. Some of these solutions include "out of hours" and weekend support as we know the community is busy all day, every day.

While we work on these solutions, I thought I would reiterate the ideal way to report spam or abusive content on the community and to "flag" the concern to us. The best way to do this, if you are unsure, is in one of the following ways:

1. In the forum thread, next to any of the posts or replies there is a MORE option. Select this and then select the "Flag as spam/abuse" option (see example)

or

2. In a blog or news item select the "Flag as spam/abuse" option in the right-hand column (see example)

Now currently, spam or abusive content is not automatically removed if only one person complains about it; this is to ensure fairness within the community. But, if more than two contributors report it then there are automatic rules that will, in some cases, remove the content immediately.

These rules are based on a number of settings, which we are currently reviewing, but in basic terms, it is to do with the credibility and authority any user has within the community.

This credibility and authority is called a Value Score and is made up of many different things including; the number of posts, likes, time in the community, etc. If the combined Value Score of the people reporting the abuse is higher than the person who has posted the allegedly abusive or spam content, then the post will be automatically removed. If the combined score of the people reporting is lower then the content will remain until it has been reviewed by a moderator and this will follow our standard Moderation escalation process.

To help prevent spam and abusive content from appearing in the first place we have the following things already in place:

1. Registration security (reCaptcha) - which prevents automatic services from registering and posting. Unfortunately, the recent activity is not automated and is actually individuals creating accounts and posting spam content. We could put further measures in place to prevent new registrations from posting immediately, but we feel this would impact those legitimate new users from becoming active.

2. Content filters - we do have filters in place that prevent abusive language or content from being posted and we will continue to monitor these filters to ensure they are as robust as they can be.

We are also reviewing the SPAM filters, which are able to recognise a certain type of SPAM-like behaviour and prevent the post from publishing in the first place.

We hope this update gives you some confidence that, with the limited resources, we are doing all we can to ensure moderation happens as quickly as possible.

Many thanks for your support and understanding,

Elliott 

  • Elliott
    Thank you for the detailed post.
    I am going to ask a question that you may not be able to answer but one which I think represents what many users are feeling. It would be good to get a reply from someone at RSPB on this.
    In your post you stated "We know how important the community is to many of you....". This is a laudable statement but would have been more so had it said something like "The RSPB knows how important the community is".
    Some (probably many) users are not sure that RSPB is committed to the future of the community & see the current spam incidents, along with the recent "upgrade", as evidence of this.
    Is it therefore possible for someone at RSPB to outline what the future for the community is in the eyes of RSPB?
    Ideally the RSPB sees the community as having a viable existence which would re-assure users but if that is not the case at least users would know where they stood with regard to the future of the community.
    Apologies for the long-winded post but I think, rightly or wrongly, that this question needs to be addressed.
    Ian

  • There are three items on there at this moment, I would love to be able to flag them up but there is no "more" option next to the thread unless you click onto it unless I am missing something.
  • gaynorsl said:
    There are three items on there at this moment, I would love to be able to flag them up but there is no "more" option next to the thread unless you click onto it unless I am missing something.

    This sometimes happens to me, if I have been logged out.I usually find my last message posted to click on my name to re sign in.This then gives me the choice of sign in details.

    Incidentally if I try log in with the button at top of page..that appears to have saved wrong details so will not Log In ..Hope that info may help anyone else having sign difficulty.

    Reminder of what Elliott kindly wrote.

    While we work on these solutions, I thought I would reiterate the ideal way to report spam or abusive content on the community and to "flag" the concern to us. The best way to do this, if you are unsure, is in one of the following ways:

    1. In the forum thread, next to any of the posts or replies there is a MORE option. Select this and then select the "Flag as spam/abuse" option (see example)

    it needs more than one person to flag,and as Alan advises " also flag in the offenders profile,

    Thanks to everyone for thankfully removing last evenings threat,

    It is so sad to read, that it is an actual person posting and not an automated.

  • Thanks guys. I'm sure you're working as hard as you can!
  • On a slightly different subject, what are the rules on friendship requests. I had one come through this morning from someone I don't think I've ever heard of, who doesn't seem to have used the forum. How weird is that? I declined it, hoping I haven't hurt someone's feelings.
  • Thanks Alan, got your message, can we do anything about it?
  • Same happened to me, I presume it is the same person. I did not know who it was and they had never posted or anything, as far as I could see. Should I do anything?
  • Hi Catlady
    Report as spam if there is the MORE tab...AND go to their PROFILE by clicking their name, and report as spam from there.
    THEN DELETE it.
  • Good afternoon everyone,

    Thanks for alerting us to the spam "friend requests" and messages you have been receiving. I have deactivated 1 account as a response to this and will continue to monitor the reported issues.

    As with the spam content, the best option is to visit the users profile page and report the user as spam/abusive - this will flag it through to us here and we can take the best action.

    Thanks for your vigilance.

    Elliott.
  • As a side issue, this thread doesn't work properly, you can't click on the latest post as it comes up "Page not found". You have to click on the title & go the last page.