
Bots Help Moderate Stack Overflow - foxfired
https://stackoverflow.blog/2019/09/17/meet-the-bots-that-help-moderate-stack-overflow/
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m463
I can't help but think of Tesla.

They added all these automated ways to schedule service for your car through
the app or website, and after _they_ got comfortable with it, they made it the
ONLY way to schedule service. [good for tesla, not good for community]

The problem I see is that Stack Overflow tries to be an exclusive community.

I think maybe instead of automated ways to flag bad things, maybe they can
figure out automated ways to praise people, be inclusive especially with new
users and redirect mistakes into constructive avenues.

~~~
rcar
I'd argue that these sorts of efforts do help move things towards a better
community.

The site relies quite a lot on knowledgeable people to review and edit things,
and the more grunt work that entails, the more you have to really care about
being a part of the site to commit to it. The types who are interested in
shouldering that burden will tend to be the ones who are extra hardcore, who
are also more likely going to be impatient with mistakes and newbies.

~~~
m463
I think the sentence that got me was:

"Natty started to flag answers automatically once it had detected a particular
answer as a non-answer with considerable accuracy."

It might be that I don't understand - does Natty flag something directly, or
flag them for the moderator?

On the other hand, the Heat Detector bot sounded it was punitive too, but in a
way that might strengthen the community. (interesting thought - could it flag
moderators?)

~~~
ibudiallo
Flagging doesn't mean deleting. It brings those non answers to attention.

I spent an hour looking through them today and I've only seen one false
positive and of course someone reported it instantly.

It's pretty useful. One of the questions I saw today was from few years ago
and no one had answered it. Someone added a "me too" answer that wasn't
helpful. I flagged that answer and provided a new answer to the question, and
now it may help someone in the future.

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dmckeon
Cool tools to leverage human effort in effective ways. I’d love to see a
“smells like homework” tag or review queue to catch the questions that sound a
lot like homework assignments from first courses in programming, so willing
respondents can more readily draw out the querent’s understanding. (“print the
squares of the first 10 integers”, “swap the first & last line of the input”,
and similar)

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thrower123
As much as people love to rip on StackOverflow for being unfriendly, it is in
an entirely different plane of existence from all the little php forums that
it replaced.

You haven't seen arbitrary, shitty moderation unless you were on the internet
in the early 2000s.

The craziest thing is, those people are almost all still on the internet, but
they've aged out of the worst of the terribleness.

~~~
tastroder
On the other hand you could switch communities if one style didn't suit your
taste back then. It often seems like this was replaced by a choice between
large communities like SO and something fringe.

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cybersnowflake
Maybe stop banhammering newbies simply because you think their question about
obscure arcane algorithm #44462 is too similar to an even more arcane question
10 years ago about algorithm #783429 and its immediately obvious to a regular
with a pH.D in quantum statistics.

The only major support site I'm aware of with a 'stupid questions' punishment
policy. Which isn't a bad thing in and of itself except its implemented in
such a draconian and nontransparent way. Demerits never seem to expire, even
after years of no 'stupid' posts and theres no explanation where they come
from.

The bizarre thing is even with this and newbies banned left and right it seems
the admin is on another planet running some other website as all they want to
talk about is social justice and how evil heteronormative SO users somehow can
psychically tell who is a woman or minority and supposedly harassing them to
epidemic proportions but nobody somehow ever sees this.

Maybe get a handle on a few real basic problems before you start crowing about
your geewhiz new bot.

~~~
klez
> Maybe stop banhammering newbies simply because you think their question
> about obscure arcane algorithm #44462 is too similar to an even more arcane
> question 10 years ago about algorithm #783429 and its immediately obvious to
> a regular with a pH.D in quantum statistics.

You don't get banned for questions closed as duplicate, what are you talking
about?

~~~
cybersnowflake
Yes you do. Among other things. Its one of the things that counts toward your
'demerit' score. Or at least it certainly appears to. Theres people who
haven't done anything but ask a couple 'stupid questions' that were answered
before that were modded. Of course their moderation policy is so opaque only
the admin could tell you exactly what happened.Or maybe not since they seen
keen to adapt the 'Google approach' of having their bots take over sight
unseen.

~~~
klez
I stand corrected on the fact that there's no ban procedure[0]. But there's
also a provision that this ban lasts 6 months, not indefinitely.

And it's not about questions getting closed, it's about downvotes.

And from that to saying that the procedure is opaque, I'd say you'll have to
provide some sources about that.

[0] [https://stackoverflow.com/help/question-
bans](https://stackoverflow.com/help/question-bans)

~~~
Arnt
The procedure is opaque because:

He posts questions that are duplicates but are only obvious duplicates if
you're have a PhD in quantum statistics. And he attracts downvotes and gets
demerits. Most SO users don't have PhDs, therefore most of the the downvotes
and demerits must be due to something mystifying.

The procedure is not opaque because:

Well, maybe his questions may be regarded differently by other people, and
then it makes sense.

There's a rule on meta.stackoverflow.com that each such complaint must point
to an example question. A good rule.

