Stopping abusive comments frmo "GUESTS"

[aevoegels]

I also had once a shacky comment on one of my photos. The person also was a guest name with no email address so I deleted it. I went to my pictures forum looking for a setting where only pbase users or guests with emails adresses could post a message and could not make it work. I wish we had that option.

Alfred

[seebee]

I wish to place on record my support for Ian, and want to be associated with Jeanne’s action in bringing the problem to the notice of Pbase.

[clickaway]

We must do away with visitors who cannot be traced. We will always be vunerable to cranks but if we can deal with them from the first posting, that would save a lot of grief.

I positively welcome 'reasonable' comments from non PBase people in particular as this shows that they are making a special effort to see your work. I think making them register would be a step backward and discourage them from taking a more active role here. But if that's the only way to stop these sick people, that's the road we'd have to take.

On a related issue, what is PBase's policy on such abuse, even if offenders are registered here. Even if they have an account (with or without pictures), can they be barred from maintaining their pages?

slug, please do something so this doesn't happen do another innocent victim. Ian has been forced to withdraw from view all but two of his superb photos.

Ray

[cjmorgan]

From where I sit, it would appear two offences have occured here: (1) an abuse of the voting system, and (2) one particular individual harrassed by one particular "guest".

With regards to the second of these two issues, one abusive guest is just that -- one abusive guest.

Quite right that such an abusive individual be banned from being allowed to make any further comments on PBase at all.

**********

But beyond this, not at all reasonable that all guests be banned for the bad conduct of just one, or that Pbase photographers be denied comments on their images from all guests just because one particular guest choose to abuse the privilage.

**********

Finally, as to the first issue -- an abuse of voting system.

Abuse is abuse, and rationalizing it as "just a prank" or "just harmless antics" is really no better than the kind of lame rationalizatons teenagers put forth for their poor conduct.

Voting for best photos or best galleries is not just a silly game -- there are a goodly number of photographers who's images or galleries rightly deserve their place as top voting choice, and an offense to such folks when a group of individuals collectively vote for friends' images simply to see if enough votes can be piled just for the fun of seeing it can be done.

Therefore, it seems reasonable that an public apology be made from any of those who collaborated to get Ian's gallery up to the "best of" catagory.

It's one thing if this happens on its own, individuals choosing for themselves, but quite another when folks begin lobbying just for the fun of getting their friend to the top.

Moreover, if such lobbying and abuse of the voting system happens again, I'd respectfully ask that moderators of the forum toss such lobbying individuals out.

What I say here is nothing personal, but abuse is abuse, and somewhat hypocritical if someone willfully abuses the system to then cry foul because they or one of their friends then finds themselves being abused in a different way.

So there you have it -- don't make all guests pay for the bad conduct of just one guest, and give serious future consideration to tossing those who abuse the voting system for either their own personal gain or just because they want to have some fun "manipulating" the system.

Un-friggin'-belivable on both counts.

Respectfully,
CJ

[srijith]

Abuse is abuse, and rationalizing it as "just a prank" or "just harmless antics" is really no better than the kind of lame rationalizatons teenagers put forth for their poor conduct.

I have to admit I have to respect you CJ for seeing the first issue more clearly than others and calling it what it is - an abuse. Though I am not saying that it justifies the "Guest" posts, letting it go past as a non-issue is not right. A group of people did collectively and knowingly abuse the voting system.

The whole issue of this abuse bring out previous sour memories for some. If I am not mistaken, PBase was never meant to be a I-will-cheat-for-top-spot system. It was a place where people who did not have website or could not afford the bandwidth requirements and other needed feature, to share their photos.

If one looks at previous abuses of the voting system at other sites (not going to mention any by name), you will see that the admins had to resort to drastic steps to stop it. "Features" like ability to vote for only x photos per day, ability to vote only if the comment is posted along with it and that the comment should be x characters long at the least, ability to rate votes etc, just adds to the inconvenience of using the site.

Please let us not force slug and team to go down that nasty road.

What happened to Ian is unfortunate, and I hope the pbase system can be tweaked to prevent it. Ability to reject a post before it gets posted would indeed be a good idea. But please don't make that the default option. Ability to trace the IP address of the poster and ban particular IPs from posting at a user's forum would be great too.

all the above are my views as a pbase user and not as the forum moderator, not that it matters much

[rsilfverberg]

I fully agree with CJMORGAN - unfriggn believable by jeannius and the others to first abuse the system and then have the balls to come and complain about potential implications that may have had.

Personally I would very strongly be against the idea that only users with a pbase account can post comments on your gallery/homepage. Most people that look and take the time to comment on my photos are NOT pbase users and they would most likely NOT take the time to sign up just to be able to post a comment.
Sure I get some stupid comments from time to time from people who don't leave their real name/email/homepage address. If I care enough I delete them.

I feel very sorry for Ian - who I don't know - and wish him the best.

[framewerkz]

Now as some of you well know, it was a coordinated effort to vote Ian's gallery to the top spot, done mostly for fun, but also with merit. A voting experiment that allowed us to see how many votes it would take to do so.

I don't think you PADers thought it all the way through when you started having your "fun".

I've noticed time and again a lot of the negativity - and stupidity - (*cough* Don *cough*) happens when people get competitive and start lobbying for votes, etc.

Personally, I don't see the point of having a "Popular" feature if it's going to generate this sort of fallout. I'm sure that 90% of the PBase users don't care if their photos make it to the lists (I don't, for one), and it might be worth considering taking out this feature altogether if a small minority is going to ruin the Pbase experience for everyone else with this incessant competitiveness.

[arjunrc]

So back to my original suggestion -

lets solve a problem that we can solve.

Give the owner the choice of moderating posts in his own galleries _only_if_he_wants_to (ie make that as a choice in your profile).

People who may receive unwanted posts then has an option to view them before it is shown on his/her page. Those people who would prefer not to moderate their received comments do not enable this option.


Its much more difficult of a problem the other way around - that is spy/track/inspect 'bad' commenters. Its tough to implement, never really works, lands up restricting 'freedom' for those who dont want it, and most importantly, its never easy to conclude on what 'bad' is (i.e justifying whether the commentor should have vs. the receiver deserving it)

regds
arjun

[aevoegels]

But please don't make that the default option.

I think the idea is not make it default but for each user to be able to set in their profile whether they want to receive guests posts or not.[/quote]

[darter02]

Even though I am a “PADer,” I have to agree with cjmorgan, srijith, rsilfverberg & framewerkz. The campaign to promote fellow PAD images and galleries is somewhat tasteless and trite. I would hate to be the focus of artificially inflated votes myself. While many of the images produced by other PAD participants are excellent, when I see a concerted effort to rocket one to the top it makes me simply cringe. I believe the recent efforts to fill the top slots with Ian’s work to have not only brought about ill feelings towards the PAD effort, I would also bet that his problems began at about the same time.

I would also like to add another reason he may be attracting the wrong attention. Now I am sure I’ll catch hell for this but hey, it may be a reason. Not too long ago I had a good friend of mine over and we were looking at this site. I was trying to convince him to place his own gallery space here. Anyway, while showing off the features we made our way to the search page. Being the goofy guy he is, he began typing some very naughty words into the search engine. Of course we had a few immature laughs at some of the images we saw. What struck me though was that a number of images that I recognized from Ian’s galleries kept coming up. I mean, after a while of looking at the same people’s galleries we begin to recognize each others work. Of course, the words typed into the search engine did not appear on the image pages so I can only surmise that he used them in the keyword field to drive hits to his galleries. I think this may also be a reason some nut may have found his site and began giving him hell. Who knows?

Of course, now that he has taken his galleries off line I can’t seem to duplicate the search.

[jeannius]

"]I fully agree with CJMORGAN - unfriggn believable by jeannius and the others to first abuse the system and then have the balls to come and complain about potential implications that may have had.

My reply to this is a sincere apology. I had NO idea that people took the popular galleries SOOO seriously. I am here to improve my photography and have fun. I never thought so much anger would come from this. My intent was never to hurt anyone, or detract attention from worthy galleries. I think we all must know that there are sometimes galleries in the popular spaces that are NOT so fabulous. Sometimes they are car parts!

I will repeat that I think that Ian's work has merit and is not undeserving. But I would NEVER again place a vote on a single gallery b/c of this whole thing. And I do not wish to have MY galleries voted for.

I apologize to anyone that was upset by this. I know I have learned my lesson.

But I have to say that I don't believe the coordinated voting effort is NEALRY as "wrong" or "foul" as nasty and abusive attacks on someone's family.

I also feel that the OPTION to screen comments is the best one that has come up so far.

I hope this can be resolved without anymore bad things happening to anyone.

Jeanne

[cjmorgan]

So back to my original suggestion -
lets solve a problem that we can solve.
Give the owner the choice of moderating posts in his own galleries _only_if_he_wants_to (ie make that as a choice in your profile).....
regds
arjun

Seems to me we already have that choice. I mean, unless I'm wrong, if there's any comment to any of my images which I might find offensive, the option is there to delete that comment.

And I certainly find it easier to delete an occational offensive comment rather than to have to make an active effort to approve the text of every comment which gets posted.

And so long as I have what I have now -- the option to delete any comment posting which I might find excessive or offensive -- that seems option enough without a changing of structure which might make more work for myself (or any of us for that matter).

CJ

[arjunrc]

Seems to me we already have that choice. I mean, unless I'm wrong, if there's any comment to any of my images which I might find offensive, the option is there to delete that comment.

And I certainly find it easier to delete an occational offensive comment rather than to have to make an active effort to approve the text of every comment which gets posted.

CJ

The difference is when you realize you have an offensive post. Currently, someone posts it, the world sees it immediately and you see it when you notice in your homepage that you have a new message. There have been cases where I did not see a comment for days on my site. This is worsened by time zones. Some one may post a derogatory comment about my wife (say) and I dont 'wake up to it' for the next 24hrs. That is very unacceptable to me.



Currently, you either have an option of not allowing anything or allowing everything. Both are extremes. Moderated comments is a middle ground.

And I certainly find it easier to delete an occational offensive comment rather than to have to make an active effort to approve the text of every comment which gets posted.

CJ

Which is why I have specifically stated in both my above posts that this is a feature that is upto the user to activate. I would imagine anyone who does not want any irresponsible comments on their site would not mind the effort of moderation.

regds
arjun

[franziskalang]

Having the option to only let signed-in PBasers comment on photos as described in Jeanne's excellent post starting this forum would be a wonderful tool for every PBaser. Please consider adding this feature.

[cjmorgan]

The difference is when you realize you have an offensive post. Currently, someone posts it, the world sees it immediately and you see it when you notice in your homepage that you have a new message. There have been cases where I did not see a comment for days on my site. This is worsened by time zones. Some one may post a derogatory comment about my wife (say) and I dont 'wake up to it' for the next 24hrs. That is very unacceptable to me. ...
regds
arjun

Look, when someone makes allegations about your wife in a legal affidavit, which you then have to hire a lawyer about, and waste the time and energy to go to court about, and even then worry about it because it's all there as part of legal record, then that's a time to get upset.

But in contrast, this is small potatoes. Wake up, read the message, delete it, forget about it and get on with your life. Don't sweat the small stuff -- and any comment about yourself or your wife or any other loved one which you see on this forum which you don't like probably ain't going to significantly impact their life. And all the more so if you can just delete it as soon as you see it. So delete it when you read it, then get on with your day.

Let's keep some perspective.

CJ