Award spam points to users to encourage reporting of spam and bots

[fiddlingfrog]

Title
Award spam points to users to encourage reporting of spam and bots

Short, concise description of the idea
To encourage users to report spam and bot accounts award "spam points" to users when an account they reported is suspended for spam or bot reasons.

Full description of the ideaSpam and bots come in waves on LJ, and by the time a new wave

Comments

[splitcomplex]

To discourage abuse and to encourage careful consideration of reporting, remove a point from a user's total whenever an account they reported is cleared of spam/bot activities.

I'm not sure on this. A lot of people have reported seeing very obvious spambots get suspended and then unsuspended -- would that remove a point from users who'd reported them?

[cahwyguy]

How would people know their spam points? Would there be vgift trophies for spam hunters? If the point total is hidden, there wouldnt' be much of a competition. Further, if someone is shown as being a high scorer, does this give their reports more credence?

[fiddlingfrog]

How would people know their spam points?
All points would be displayed on the high score page. I don't think displaying the points on the profile, like support points, would be a good idea, but maybe a user's rank is displayed instead. But I kind of like the idea of only showing it on the high score page.

Would there be vgift trophies for spam hunters?
I don't think that's really necessary.

Further, if someone is shown as being a high scorer, does this give their reports more credence?
I don't think so, no. A higher score doesn't necessarily indicate being any better at spotting a bot account. It could just mean that you've been doing it longer.

Ultimately this shouldn't change how the Abuse team investigates spam/bot reports at all, excepting the increase in volume.

[cahwyguy]

Then I'm not sure I see a benefit to this. It won't be promoted to the world at large (only those that monitor the high-scores would even know about the competition, thus restricting the size of that circle), and the high scores won't bring the winning users much, either in bragging rights (i.e., vgift trophies) or increased ability to stop spam (no increased credence to reporting).

[fiddlingfrog]

Mostly I was hoping to balance the popularity so that there was a significant, but not huge, uptick in the amount of reporting going on.

[fiddlingfrog]

Oooh, good point.

-1

[mlady_rebecca]

Seems like it would encourage false reporting.

Re: -1

[charliemc]

Agreed.

-1

Re: -1

[fiddlingfrog]

And that's why it's important to manage the increase in report volume to not get too high. As far as I know spam/bot reports are aggregated so that the most egregious offenders rise to the top. If only a handful of people falsely report an account then that report stays low. If the same number of people falsely report an account as report a true spam/bot account then the report volume is too high.