"Wow, nice content", "Cool post", "Great news", "Good job" - all these are basically spam comments. Most of the time they are posted via bots, without any concern about the actual post.
There is a new task created on the Condenser GitHub repo, which looks like that:
This patch will prevent short, meaningless comments to appear on Steemit and it will suggest to the user to upsteem the post instead.
From what I see, the task is still being worked on, so any new input should be still useful. A useful comment came from @timcliff, who saw an edge case in which short comments, like "yes", "no" shouldn't be triggered by this filter. This seems to be useful in polls, for instance.
My suggestions - based on the comments that I usually get:
"nice","cool","great","sir","please","good","wow","super","extra","outstanding","go","up","upvoted","resteemed","follow","follow me","followed"
If you have any inputs to that issue, you can write them in the comments (please refrain from "Wow, nice content", "Cool post", "Great news", "Good job", I know you are funny, but still). I will try to compile a list of the most useful and post them to the GitHub issue, in the comments. Alternatively, you can go ahead and post on the issue yourself.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
If you're new to Steemit, you may find these articles relevant (that's also part of my witness activity to support new members of the platform):
Being a sportsman like I know you are, what about some rewards for good behaviour. I like the condenser idea, but I would add a different twist to it, either these comments go automatically at the bottom of the list, or the other comments receive some incentive.. a vote is the current solution I apply to my little community. Maybe when the community grows, a whale that gives a simbolic vote or award for comments with value could make a difference.
Not sure you want people not give you a thumbs up :p (although it makes so much sense to me as well)
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just following from that, I realized how simple it can be, how about this:
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oh darn, it's similar to what @jacobtothe proposed, but with an important twist (as a suggestion post-action or preventing persistence after unwanted behaviour)
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Won't this just result in longer copypasta spam comments?
Just saying...
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@dragosroua This is a good way to clean UP the Spam but I am sure that once people understand that they need to INTERACT with others in their Comments they will then see the TRUE Value of being a STEEMIAN........Thank You
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Looks to me a little difficult to implement...how it is going to differentiate between a frank "Good Work" and a Spam one?
Maybe by entering at the commenter' profile history , I guess?
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I would say that if I want to commend someone's work, I say something specific beyond just "Good work!"
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That would be a good suggestion, but probably resource intensive.
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It wouldn't. That's the idea. The string "Good Work" shouldn't be posted as a comment, at least not via this UI.
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I am imagining something like Clippy, but actually useful:
Just add some googly eyes to the Steem logo, and you're set!
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Oh, I almost forgot about that thing :)) Yes, that could be interesting!
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I would add that it might be valuable to add in a mechanism that weights in Reputation as well?
Seems like that would offer a solid filter for post/character length in general. Maybe a sliding scale that relates to levels?
Just kicking some ideas around to help implement this without it being too Draconian
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I've previously suggested that the poster of the article should have the option to set the minimum reputation required to comment on the post.
(Past payout)
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I've seen you offer up that idea. Personally, it's far too restrictive in my opinion. It would have severely limited my ability to progress on this platform. There's a chance we wouldn't even be having this conversation right now if that option was in place.
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Thanks, I like that. This seems like the perfect fit for the reputation metric, which, at the moment, is pretty much a vanity metric.
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Glad you like the idea. Let me know if the idea gets any traction while this develops.
Reputation can definitely be gamed but I don't know if I would go so far as calling it a vanity metric.
Low Reputation will actively result in grayed out comments and posts, right?
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Only in the Steemit UI, it doesn't have any impact if you post from cli-wallet, AFAIK. That's why I call it a "vanity metric".
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Ah, see I just use the vanilla website for access at the moment. Have dabbled with some of the other interfaces but this site seems to be solving most of my user gripes....but I'm a relatively new user also
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I think even stackoverflow does this kind of check to prevent spam comments. Good thing steemit is considering that option.
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I like this, because it frustrates me to see so many low quality comments. On the other hand, although for the right reasons, this is limiting freedom on this platform a little bit. There are many other small things that could reduce spam and blocking some users that behave in a certain way. Where do we draw the line?
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If this is correctly implemented, we will draw the line at the right distance. I see it necessary. Almost like the Bad Actors list you may hit when you try to transfer steem. Since there is so much account squatting (bittrexx insteat of bittrex, etc) such a list had to be created. Given the amount of spam comments (and the pressure it puts on the size of the blockchain) I don't see it as a "freedom limiting feature".
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I agree, and I am happy we're doing something about it.
Now that I think of it a bit more, is this the right solution for the problem? Since all users wil be affected and the list of words is quite arbitrary (and there is also the misspelling and foremost the other languages component)?
Wouldn't some sort of algorithm that looks at the number of characters and duplicate comments of a certain user' s last 10 comments be better? This is more under the hood, doesn't impact all users and avoids killing legitimate spontaneous comments once in a while :-)
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I posted the link to this conversation on the GitHub issue, hopefully the devs assigned to it will peruse all the comments and pick all the suggestions they'll find useful. Thanks for contributing your thoughts :)
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"Awesome!", that is all I wanted to say ;-)
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exactly! if all you have to say is "thank you" why not just upvote and leave it be until you actually have something to say?
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omg I heard this was coming, but fucking YAY!
I really wanted to say "cool post"
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https://steemit.com/minnowsupport/@inquiringtimes/comments-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly
this is a helpful guide I came up with when I needed something to share with new users, perhaps others find this thread and will find it useful also. :bow:
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That's what I call a comprehensive resource. Congrats! :)
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#dragosroua right , the problem of such span comment are much higher in number. And it's just came just after you had post something. Many great effort had done to reduce it and I believe that it's getting better with more upgrade.
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It's a good start, and I dream of the day when each comment on one of my articles is a real one.
However I despair when I think about it for a bit, I feel like it may be trying to catch smoke, because of course people can (and will) change their habits.
I have had two or three line comments that have blatantly been spam. Telling me how much I have taught them and how wonderful I am, etc. etc.
The problem with these is, not only are they long, they express what could be genuine sentiment . . . hmm, maybe another part of the debate.
As far as short comments are concerned, I think we somehow need to weigh up how many genuine commenters will end up being punished because of this algo.
For instance I just had a particular short comment on my latest article, and the person seems to be genuine and leaves varying lengths of comments on people's articles, he also engages from time to time.
Perhaps the algo can be made to look at individual's average length of comment, and to check for repetition. Seeing as somebody who just posts "wow" on every single article they come across, can be thought of as a spammer.
Whereas somebody with poor English who is just trying to engage, may also leave short comments, however at least they are attempting genuine contact.
It's definitely tricky, I'm sure what I've asked isn't as easy as typing it out!
Cg
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This is great news. Because as you said, nobody reads the post and the bots just reply with nice . I think steemit is going in the right direction. Future looks good.
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Thank you for posting this. I am so tired of the meaningless spam that the bots are posting. And I have only been a Steemian for 4 months! I can't imagine how others who put lots of hard work into their posts feel getting these spam comments.
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Excellent development indeed, i think such development is desperately needed because we see many shit comment's on almost every post, i think this development really helps against spam fighting, thanks for updating us about this development.
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Great Post and i mean,your thought is very good,,,Thank u for sharing with US :)
upvoted
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omg..... really? are you even real? this looks sooooo much like one of those spam comments.
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hey @inquiringtimes
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ok, this one is funny.
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oh,oh really, you are funny man. i like you.
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Hmmm wonder if any people proficient in going through the steem database could come up with a list of words or phrases. Yes or no are a good catch by @timcliff to not filter out.
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This is a good idea, but if it gets implemented, on one hand, it will catch a few false positives and hide a few real comments from real people and on the other hand, will force comment spammers to get better at what they do, write longer comments with better spinning and make their spam harder to distinguish for both the algorithms and humans actually making them more likely to collect stray upvotes.
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It won't hide anything; it will simply prevent them from being posted via this UI.
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So then spammers can just move on to another interface?
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time to stay aware ;p
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FYI the proposed change is only to condenser, and would not affect bots at all.
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