Anti-Abuse Initiative Trial Period Overview
Introduction
This contribution will be a full overview of the anti-abuse initiative trial period. The perspective here will be mine, the community manager of anti-abuse at Utopian-io. It will cover the 4.7 weeks time of the initiative trial period. I will discuss the last two weeks best contributions. How the moderators have done and, problems we dealt with.
A brief summary of my perspective going forward, what we should do to improve this category.
Finally, a little history of what led up to this anti-abuse initiative.
Contributions
Week 1 Top Anti-Abuse: Oct 10-17
SteemFlagRewards Project Update
Abuse: Spam
Week 2 Top Anti-Abuse: Oct 18-24
Abuse: Comment Spam
Week 3 Top Anti-Abuse: Oct 25-31
Abuse: Plagiarism
Abuse: Copy/Paste
Week 4 Top Anti-Abuse: Nov 1-7
Abuse: Faucet Delegation Vote Farming
Abuse: Bid Bot and Plagiarism
Week 5 Top Anti-Abuse: Nov 8-12
Abuse: Phishing
For the top picks from weeks 1 through 3, I discussed them on my previous overview.
I haven't discussed all the contributions from Week 4 and 5. I'll do that here.
Abuse Series: Call to Action by Enforcer48
The first contribution we have not discussed is from @enforcer48. This was his second anti-abuse contribution. This contribution is a call to action for all Steemians.
It starts out with a tip from another abuse fighter. It leads us to an account abusing bid bots with plagiarized content. It's a great example of why we need abuse fighters. It's a good case to let you know that you can contribute as well, by a tip.
Scam: Your Funds and Friends Aren't Safe by Lovenfreedom
This contribution from @lovenfreedom is her third anti-abuse post. It is also her third Top of Utopian contribution. On this anti-abuse post, it teaches you how to not become a victim of phishers. She first teaches you how to detect a phishing link. Why you shouldn't click on a phishing link. Where and, how to report phishy links you run into on the blockchain.
She shows an example of phishing link. It details why you shouldn't, click that link that tells you free stuff here.
We also had two other very excellent contributions on week 4. One from @slobberchops.
Another one from @guiltyparties.
Both these posts are must reads for anyone who cares about the value/content of STEEM.
The above graph is the weekly results of contributions and scores.
We had some influx of contributions during the 3rd and 4th week. We also had 3 contributions that were not moderated. Those 3 authors were not on the whitelist.
The final week, we only had one contribution. But it was only a 5-day week.
The total contributions were 20, excluding non-whitelisted posts. Out of the 20, 75% of the contributions were excellent. 25% were average and below.
Part of the issues of low contributions was fear of the "Utopian standard." We asked the moderators to produce examples. To help others understand the quality of posts wanted. I hope we have established that standard. I also hope that now, other abuse fighters know, what type of post they can produce.
Moderators
All the moderators learned how to produce quality comments. The moderators did an excellent job. I don't foresee the need for any changes in the moderating staff. We received some helpful information recently from Utopian staff. With V2 coming in 4-5 months, we will need to learn everything again.
All contributions were moderated quickly and professionally. Help was given to anyone who asked for it.
We tried having a rotation system. We were unable to moderate contributions in a timely fashion that way. We changed the system to whoever was available to moderate incoming contributions.
I tried to let the moderators review all posts. There were times when there was no one available. Then I chose to do the job.
Why There is a Whitelist
- It was a new category with new moderators. We didn't want to overwhelm them.
- To make sure contributors to this category, know about anti-abuse projects or initiatives.
- To establish a type and, a standard of contributions appropriate for the category.
During this time of evaluation, we will decide to keep the whitelist or not. It will definitely be open for more contributors in one way or another, in the future.
Why I Want to Keep a Whitelist
To know what is abuse, one must be active in abuse fighting. It is very difficult for a random blogger to actually understand what is abuse and, how to tackle it.
The intention of this initiative is to inform and, educate about abuse. Raise awareness of actual accepted abuse definitions. The initiative was established to reward existing abuse fighters. Those who have long fought abuse with their own stake with no rewards.
I don't want to change that.
I hope that this category is not opened to those who do not fight abuse.
We will notify everyone of all changes. Then everyone will know the future requirements of this category.
Summary
It's been a very long time-consuming struggle to get to this point. I began fighting abuse at Steem Flag Rewards. I learned to report abuse to Steemcleaners at the same time. Things at that time were very chaotic.
I have worked very hard to help those projects become stronger. Teaching others how to fight abuse (direct messages). Why it matters to fight abuse. Working with many others establishing the definitions of abuse. Also making decisions on the best way to combat abuse.
When the opportunity came to work with Utopian, I was quite shocked. I accepted the challenge. Hardfork 20 and, the aftermath made it even more difficult to continue to battle abuse. With the help, encouragement of many, I have stayed the course.
There are too many names to mention but I will name a few.
- The entire moderating staff at Utopian, Steemcleaners and Steemflagrewards
- themarkymark
- guiltyparties
- elear
They all have helped encourage me to get this done.
I am very pleased with what we have accomplished so far. I know we have much more work to do. The biggest obstacle we have to overcome is the "Utopian standard". Everyone seems to think that the Utopian standard is an impossible task. I know with more contributions, we will overcome that.
This post is well detailed and well illustrated with appropriate graphical contents. I see lots of progress has been made on the category. Thumbs up!
The concept of Anti-abuse is definitely a good initiative on Utopian. Considering the effectiveness and the value it'll bring to Utopian and the Steem ecosystem.
I think the idea of whitelist is cool to avoid random contributions and for proper management of the category.
Please note that while the hasn't changed the footer, I am not scoring #iamutopian posts based on the questionnaire. They have their own metric, and that will be the case until we go live with the new guidelines and new questionnaire, which will be comprehensive enough to reflect these types of posts.
Your contribution has been evaluated according to Utopian policies and guidelines, as well as a predefined set of questions pertaining to the category.
To view those questions and the relevant answers related to your post, click here.
Need help? Write a ticket on https://support.utopian.io/.
Chat with us on Discord.
[utopian-moderator]
Thanks for the nice review. Glad your feeling better! We were concerned about you when we heard you were not feeling well. Do you know what happened?
I hope we can make the antiabuse project worthy of the Utopian label. We will do our best to fight for all steemians and represent everyone at Utopian with professionalism and tact.
@Iamstan, thanks for the kindness:) You are wonderful!
The Anti-abuse category is just touching the surface, and you guys are doing pretty good work. Keep it up!
Thank you for your review, @tykee! Keep up the good work!
I think the idea behind the anti-abuse category is mostly fine, but to me it doesn't make sense that it's an entirely separate category of Utopian.
Utopian is about incentivising contributions to all open source projects while the anti-abuse category is limited to just one, the Steem blockchain. On top of that you also have a centralised whitelist so only a limited amount of people, handpicked by yourself and others, are actually allowed to contribute to the category (I also disagree with your idea that "to know what abuse is one must be active in abuse fighting" - abuse like phishing for example isn't some foreign concept for people who aren't active in abuse fighting nor is it limited to the Steem blockchain).
I can write more about my thoughts, but I was just actually just wondering why it wasn't made part of the blog category in the first place since it seems, to me at least, that most anti-abuse posts are exactly that.
Well, blog or not is something the higherups at @utopian-io need to figure out.
The initiative seems limited in part due to immaturity of other platforms. Some abuse fighters spend time on other platforms such as @onosocial, @scorum, @whaleshares. There have not been much discussion because of the pilot nature of the initiative.
I do share similar sentiments about the whitelist.
As for open source projects in anti-abuse initiatives, there are some I know of. One of such is the @steemflagrewards bot. A simple utility would be an issuer of SMT using it as means to mitigate abuse within that token's sphere. This would be done through rewards to community moderation.
Could that have utilities in other crypto social platforms? It's not impossible.
I want to add that the project seeks to educate others about what abuse looks like in a given setting. It's one thing to know what phishing is versus what it looks like on the Steem Blockchain, etc. The same applies to other types of abuse. Add in other similar blockchains in the mix and we would have much more to talk about.
I've wanted to say a similar thing before. An anti-abuse initiative could be extended though, towards all open source, or even to preventing abuse of issues and pull requests on open source repos.
Merging with blog category is another idea that work work though.
I agree about the whitelist.
Think we definitely need users that demonstrate that they are willing to assume the risks associated with fighting abuse on this blockchain and are willing to use their SP to flag on the regular.
Also, gotta express sincere thanks in your putting this together. I'm sure it's helped all of us grow in the area of more structured content creation and also SP to support each other in the fight while we're at it.
Looking forward to the next round with my #2 post. Appropriately, think I'm going to have to figure out how to throw in a good poop joke to match the type of posts I would like to talk about.
Thanks @anthony for your thoughtful comment. You know we are on the same page on most anti abuse issues.
I hope we can have a good plan going forward and involve more daily abuse fighters in sharing their experiences.
Hope to submit another article soon. They take some writing and I'm still going through the SF3 backlog right now!
Glad you made it back safely from steemfest3. Looking forward to seeing some good results from steemfest? Something other than people being sick from drinking too much.
Hopefully we can produce some articles worthy of the antiabuse community.
Am I still able to write for utopian-io now that the trail period is over? I'm afraid I still have quite a bit of SF3 content to come yet.
It just takes so long to write it all up. No barf though :)
Well I sort of feel like another steemit event will delay the return of our category. But I will do my very best to have it returned asap. Everyone will be notified when its ok to post again.
I just want to express my support to this initiative. We all have our own parts in this community, and one of those roles is anti-abuse. Each one has limited capacity as well. Although I know that abuse exists, it takes effort and perseverance for people like you to effectively work on it.
Thanks for your support. We have many detractors who do nothing to solve the problems. They do complain mock and belittle us.
It is very heart warming when someone says they agree with us about these problems.
You know you can help too? You can tag @steemflagrewards or myself anytime you think you run across some abuse. We use ginabot and we also have other bots that tell us of mentions. We can come find out and if it is abuse try to overcome it. Or you can report directly to @steemcleaners Here Join the discord servers of steemcleaners https://discord.gg/dX8BJSF and steemflagrewards https://discord.gg/Rd2pjBM. Or you can also support either project with delegations or upvotes on the posts. Every bit of help from every one matters large or small.
This touched me the most. It has always been my stance as well. It's always easier to complain than to do something to solve a problem.
Thank you. It's always comforting to know that you can call (tag) someone when you come across abuse. I'm now here to support your project. Do you have a post I can refer/read to increase my awareness on what can be considered abuse?
P.S. I also use gina
The posts mentioned on this overview are a good start. They don't cover all the types of abuse but most categories that are the most critical. Plagiarism , Phishing , Vote Farms and spam.
@lovenfreedom is quite skilled in writing and her three contributions to the antiabuse initiative are great. At the steemflagrewards discord the guys there will teach you about everything.
Helping out with this project and getting a couple posts out was a pretty great experience so far. Really good project that benefits the entire ecosystem rather than just a small segment. Hoping to see it grow after the review period.
The feedback to the posts I got out under this project was helpful in getting our anti-abuse tools streamlined. The whitelist is definitely the way to go to make it easier on moderators and keep the anti-abuse project from getting exploited.
One thing I'd suggest is getting the repository or external site requirement in there for each contribution. That'll encourage people to get the info out there beyond the blockchain and make anti-abuse more cohesive with the Utopian vision. Great job though and thanks for all of your one on one support.
Thanks for the help. Thanks for submitting a top quality contribution.
I am not so sure a git is need for a non developmental post. There is one on the template. I have been told it is not needed. Unless like your post it is project post. Your contribution and others that are about a particular project should include that. I am not sure if it is even needed if there is no open source development involved. We should discuss this more in the antiabuse group chat. Are you talking about for SEO purposes?
I have seen several Utopians brought up their thoughts about the project. I do believe there is much room for improvement.
However, I think the greatest hurdle is figuring out the vision for this initiative. I assume details will be discussed during the internal audit.
The vision is written at the top of the guidelines
promote awareness, knowledge and participation for anti-abuse initiatives
I think part of the problem is a lack of Knowledge. Hardly anyone knows how much work is involved in getting project off the ground. Then to make that project function on a day to day basis is another task all together.. There were many obstacles from the start and we overcame all of them.
I think everything in our world can be improved. The question is will the world accept or reject the change? Does anyone care? It seems to me most concern over change is someone trying to preserve their own meaningfulness. Just like the Horse guys saying cars will never be the norm. The candle guys saying Illumination oil is dangerous. SO on and so on. If we listen to the nay sayers there will never any positive change in our world.
I say lets do our best then if someone has a good Idea that doesn't return us to the horse and buggy lets try it. All other arguments are worthless.
I think this applies to much more than simple judgement. I think it applies to how we might perceive new ideas. Things that might force us to change our current way of thinking.
The whole blockchain deal is new thinking. We are here because we embraced the Idea. Are we now going to become stuck here with the beginnings? Or will we move forward on to new territory?
Why is it that I rarely see anyone taking on abusive flagging behavior by bullies? Abuse is abuse is abuse.
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