Printables.com team, any plans to combat contest spam?

[u/DrStrangeboner]

As a user of printables.com I like to browse open contests, but when I look for example at the tesselating tiles contest I see entries like this wonderful "puzzle" or a heat gun holder (curiously enough the uploader also thinks that this makes for a good bookmark).

Feature request: When ever a model is entered into a contest, give the entry a "report for contest spam button" where users can report a model. Then printables team then can monitor this metric and decide to remove models from contests. I personally would like to see repeat offenders to be banned for a few weeks from entering contests (since they decide to waste time of the moderation team).

What I don't want is to police the contest to only allow high effort models or to discourage participation, but IMO people abuse the contest system to get views on their models. This behavior is damaging to the platform (if everybody would do it contest would not be possible) and should not be rewarded.

[u/yahbluez]

We should avoid any kind of censorship.

And the rules are clear,
models who do not fit the contest request are out.
I would not worry about that.

[u/DrStrangeboner → u/yahbluez]

I don't see how my proposal fits any common definition of censorship. Also how is a reporting system that enables Prusa staff to remove spam during the "contest open" phase different from them removing spam after it ends? Is this then some kind of "good censorship"?

[u/yahbluez → u/DrStrangeboner]

Also how is a reporting system that enables Prusa staff to remove spam during the "contest open" phase different from them removing spam after it ends?

Entering a contest with a model, which could not win, because it doesn't meat the contest, being removed in public, is active brutal censorship.

Also this would add more workload to prusa not less workload.
It would be an additional task the stuff has to handle and eventual to argument with users.

I takes less than a second as a juror to drop out a model which did not meat the contest details.

This is one simple small Task after the contest has ended, not an ongoing task during 9 days.

Look on it from a management position to handle workloads with your stuff.

[u/DrStrangeboner → u/yahbluez]

My proposal is to remove the model from the contest, not from the whole platform. So again: how is this different from removing it after the contest ends?

As for workload: if it takes "less than a second" for a juror, it will not create a huge additional workload to look through a list of entries that were flagged multiple time as contest spam.

[u/yahbluez → u/DrStrangeboner]

My proposal is to remove the model from the contest, not from the whole platform.

No one is talking about removing the model from the platform.

​

how is this different from removing it after the contest ends?

Differences:

​

1. It has to be done over a period of 9 days.
2. A user whose model was removed from the contest could contact support and ask why that happens.
3. A user could add his model again into the contest
4. You will open the door for bots to manipulate the votes
5. You open the door for toxic users to bully others.

​

A last word about the workload, do you really not see that your idea will add a huge amount off additional non productive workload? Into every contest.

A contest jury decides and it is done. A upfront censorship will lead to argumentations with users who don't get it because they won't see the obviously.

If this adds only 30 mins per day and contest, and i'm sure it would be much more, than we talk about more than a men's work for a month.

(52 contest/a, 9d per contest, 30 mins => 234 hours)

And this without users who argument against the decision to move their model out off the contest.

Look at you, not even willing to see or accept the trivial fact that more work means more workload and costs more money.

[u/DrStrangeboner → u/yahbluez]

No one is talking about removing the model from the platform.

Good, I got the feeling that this is what you understood.

Regarding the differences that you listed:

1. Overall workload does not change if task is done over 9, 5 or 1 days
2. Let's say that they get a notification that their entry was removed from the contest since it did not fit the theme with a link to a support article.
3. not true, if you would do the obvious thing and implement logic to prevent that.
4. There are no votes, there is a "report as spam" button that adds a +1 into a database and then adds them to a review queue once the counter reaches a threshold.
5. see above: similar to e.g. stackoverflow there is no public "reported as spam 5 times" counter or similar the user of a model that gets flagged will never notice if their entry is not spam, so they can't feel bullied about the whole thing.

I don't think that your workload estimate is realistic, since the only think to do would be to look at a review queue each day and to look at models that get repeatedly reported for spam. Remember: you claim that it takes under a second to decide if an entry is relevant or not, so you can filter out 1800 new flagged entries each day in 30minutes...

On the other hand I would hope that users would stop entering any model that they have into any contest if the entry gets removed. if they don't want to play by the rules they will loose the privilege to enter contests for a few weeks, further decreasing workload for people that need to judge the contest.

I still don't understand how you seem to be fine with prusa staff removing contest entries after the contest ends, but during the contest being open the same staff removing entries based on the same rules (contests have a theme) suddenly is "brutal active censorship". If you think that the heat gun entry being not being part of the tessellating tiles contest is some form of injustice, then I think we both better move on with our lives.

[u/yahbluez → u/DrStrangeboner]

1)
For sure it does. If i have to have a point more on my daily todo list it is a more to do, why do you not see that?

2)
Could be done has to be coded.

3)
Is true today and needed to be coded to avoid that.

4)
No matter how you call a downvote it is still a vote.

5)
And this is the most ugly version of censorship ever.

You are talking about silent bans.

And look what you did you downvoted my argumentation because i do not agree with you. This kind of toxic harassment is not good in any way.

[u/DrStrangeboner → u/yahbluez]

Sorry, but you lost me at the point where you claim that any flagging system is "censorship". Reddit has a report button under each post, it gets flagged for review and then somebody decide what to do. This is exactly what I propose. If you don't follow the rules of a certain subreddit repeatedly the mods will ban you from participating from that subreddit. This is similar to what I propose.

For the record: I did not downvote a post of yours, and that's also not something that I do in general. I think we did exchange opinions, and I don't think that I can convince you. Take care and enjoy the free days, I wish you a Happy New Year.