Spam Patrol - new buggy behavior

[jdmore]

Just this evening the behavior at https://www.inaturalist.org/users/recent?description=yes&ids=no&obs=no has changed and become buggy.

When I click to mark an account as spam, I now get an "Are You Sure" dialog that I need to OK.  Slows the process way down.

After I hit OK I get the Whale Shark error screen.

If I then hit back in my browser, and refresh the browser window, the account I tried to mark has indeed left the display, successfully marked as spam.

Then the process starts all over with the next one I try.  It was working great before, please restore!

--Jim Morefield (jdmore)

[jdmore]

Also, in the new https://www.inaturalist.org/flags display, the flags I create through this process now show the flagger as iNat ("auto") instead of my username.

[jdmore]

AND, "View More" at the bottom now resets the page URL to the default (https://www.inaturalist.org/users/recent?from=nnnnnnn), making it impossible to view older batches of "probable spam."

On Monday, January 7, 2019 at 10:04:10 PM UTC-8, jdmore wrote:

[Chris Cheatle]

Same behaviour when using the flag as non-spammer button.

[Chris Cheatle]

I assume it is calling the same code base, but you also get the same behaviour if you actually open a profile page, and use the drop-down option, one minor difference is doing it this way generates no confirmation dialog.

It should be noted in each case, the flagging is working, they are set to spammer status.

On Tuesday, January 8, 2019 at 1:04:10 AM UTC-5, jdmore wrote:

[Ken-ichi]

Whale shark issue is a bug that's been fixed, sorry about that. Confirmation dialog when marking someone as a spammer was an attempt to deal with the fact that people were complaining about clicking that button accidentally, and to make it consistent with the flag-as-non-spammer button. I suspect that the issue with users manually marked as spammers getting shown as auto-flagged as spammers was related to the bug, but if it's still happening, please cite a specific case with a URL. Regarding speed and efficiency, the fact that the combination of this tool and more aggressive automated spam filtering has basically removed all recent spam profiles suggest to me that this tool is efficient enough. "View More" seems like it's still broken, d'oh. Will fix.

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[jdmore]

Thank you Ken-ichi!  Regarding speed and efficiency, it still increases curator time and effort to keep up with incoming spam to have that extra dialog.  Part of the reason we've made such good progress is because it was working so efficiently before.

But that said, if we need it as an extra precaution to avoid mis-flagging, I can understand that.  Just won't be processing as many spam accounts per flagging session going forward.

--Jim Morefield

[Chris Cheatle]

Just to be clear, you can simply press the enter key to close the dialog, you don't need to mouse up and click it.

[Chris Cheatle]

Ken-ichi,

One behaviour I am seeing is the filters to identify spam seem to get turned off after you press view more.

To replicate (with examples as I write this)

1. go to the recent users page : https://www.inaturalist.org/users/recent
2. click the probably spam button which changes the url to : https://www.inaturalist.org/users/recent?description=yes&ids=no&obs=no
3. scroll to bottom of page and click view more navigates to :https://www.inaturalist.org/users/recent?from=1270583

At this point the list of users seems to be all users who signed up after the last date on the first page, and includes users who are clearly not spam candidates, ie they have observations etc. 

Is there a way to keep the filters sticky after navigating to the next page - I seem to recall that was the behaviour before the recent changes.

On Tuesday, January 8, 2019 at 1:04:10 AM UTC-5, jdmore wrote:

[Chris Cheatle]

Additionally the ability to get to a 2nd page showing possible spammers seems totally lost now.

If you end up at something like https://www.inaturalist.org/users/recent?from=1270583 and try and turn the filters on via the drop downs, it cycles back to the absolute most recent. i don't know if it is possible to manually hack the URL, but I don't see that as an attractive approach.

[jdmore]

Hi Chris, yeah, I mentioned this in the 3rd post above, and Ken-Ichi mentioned in his response that he is on it.

Pressing enter to close the new dialog definitely helps, just have to retrain my fingers a bit...

[jdmore]

As of now all seems to be working again.  Thanks again Ken-ichi!  Even noticed the new(?) banner at top showing the most recent account flagged -- more help for accidental mis-flaggings.

On Tuesday, January 8, 2019 at 1:04:17 PM UTC-8, Ken-ichi Ueda wrote:

[Mark Tutty]

Is the confirmation on flagging spammers going to stay? I was doing 10 to 20 pages a day (and weirdly enjoying it) but when this change came in, I stopped doing them and have been hoping the confirmation will be ditched. I just popped back in to give it another go, and it is just too frustrating! Is there any chance of getting that confirmation on a toggle, so that we can turn it off if we are comfortable without it?

 

cheers
Mark Tutty
kiwif...@gmail.com

[jdmore]

I've gotten used to just clicking and immediately thumbing the Enter key on the adjacent number pad of my keyboard -- almost as fast.  But of course that only works if you have that same configuration (and being right handed helps too).

What would REALLY help blast through the backlog (and spend less time on new incoming) is the earlier suggestion of being able to select multiple accounts with a checkbox and batch-flag them all at once.  Just have to watch for those occasional legit accounts scattered among all the likely spam.

--Jim Morefield (jdmore)

[Tony Iwane]

Considering mistakes *do* get made (I've made a few) I think it's good to have that extra step. I think we have a good number of folks on spam patrol and so far it's been kept at bay.

Curious: removing spammers is easy and a pretty black-and-white activity. Are folks finding themselves doing it more often than "welcoming" new legit users? Not asking this to deride anyone for focusing on spam (thank you for all your help), just genuinely curious.

Tony Iwane 

[jdmore]

Points well taken Tony.  Hopefully chipping away at the older spam backlog is not a super-high priority?

Yes, blasting spam is now so easy and fun, it's easy to spend more time on that than interacting with new users.  After a spam session I try to hit the "Welcome" preset button, then the "identify observations by these users" button (which I really love!).  Then I scan for a few images I can ID at some level (at least the "unknowns"), and leave a "Welcome to iNaturalist!" in the comments.  At the same time I scan for problematic photos (potential copyright issues or inappropriate) and try to nip them in the bud.

If anyone has developed a more efficient work flow at the Welcoming end of things, please share!  I definitely touch only a tiny percentage of these, and haven't spent as much time as with the spam.

One thing that would help my workflow personally, is if the "identify observations by these users" pre-set would default to ALL quality grades, not just Needs ID.  For a batch of brand new users, I want to see EVERYTHING they are posting, so I'm always clicking on the Filter and turning on the other quality grades for each batch.

Thanks,

--Jim Morefield (jdmore)

[jdmore]

Also, just curious, sometimes I see new spam accounts showing up at earlier times or dates in the queue, occasionally as much as several weeks before present.  Just curious why these accounts would not have shown up when first created?  Are they maybe being released on a delay by the automated spam filter?  (That automated filter does seem to let a lot of pretty obvious stuff get through...)  They seem like the standard bot-generated stuff, not like a live user was changing any of the "probably spam" filter parameters on the account or anything.

On Monday, January 14, 2019 at 3:35:12 PM UTC-8, Tony Iwane wrote: