470
dfox
7y

A note on devRant community etiquette. I've seen some behavior lately that I want to just mention since it goes against the rules of our community. We've specifically built moderation tools into upvoting and downvoting, and that is how all content should be moderated.

Commenting on rants that you don't think should be posted only gives them more exposure and unfortunately at times people trying to moderate content via comments and rants have gotten abusive towards other members. On the contrary, I've yet to see any of the people these select few members accuse of "ruining the community" act hostile towards anyone.

So with that said, I wanted to make sure this policy is visible, because commenting on other people's rants, especially in a hostile way to stop them from posting, is bannable and we really don't want to see it. Like mentioned before, that's what downvoting is for and it's much more effective since it doesn't boost the content like adding a comment does.

We take content quality seriously and while we haven't been able to eliminate reposts completely, we've made a lot of progress. For directly reposted content, we added the repost detector (https://devrant.io/rants/425054/...) and are still working to improve that and appreciate any feedback/ideas for it.

Like any community on the internet, devRant will always have some reposts and it will always have some content you really don't like. That's what comes along with being an open platform with very little moderation. We get requests to moderate more heavily, but we don't like censoring recent rants and don't plan to do that.

Most of the times people who repost content or an image didn't realize it was already posted. Not everyone uses recent sort and almost always they have no ill intent.

Anyway, feel free to let me know if you have any questions and feedback is always welcome.

Comments
  • 51
    Thank you for the cool platform and thanks for the Infos.
  • 30
    *insert thank you gif*
  • 49
    I'm glad you've called this out, things had started to feel a little poisonous around here lately.

    I love our little community, it's a rare and beautiful thing. I'd hate to see it become bitter and nasty 😇
  • 18
    Thanks dfox. The abusive commenting on rants was really starting to bug me. Glad to see you guys took note of it and did something about it. Keep up the awesome work!
  • 6
    When using the webapp I can downvote a rant, but I cannot choose between downvote options (repost, offend, not for me...). How is such a downvote registered?
  • 5
    @g-m-f haha

    @dfox tjz for clarifying out!
  • 12
    @DivByZero good question. Right now those are treated like "not for me" but we plan to add the real downvote reasons soon.

    @g-m-f thanks for the feedback. I definitely agree about content that has literally nothing to do with development and is so off topic it constitutes spam, but that really is what the downvote as spam is for. Commenting on it really does boost it so more people will see it.

    I generally try to go through almost every rant. If I see someone routinely posting spam or even just 1 or 2 spam posts, I try to deal with it. But yeah, those annoy me too and we definitely don't want those kinds of posts here.

    This rant is mainly in reference to people being repost police and some who have gone as far as calling every image a meme (even though a meme is a specific type of image) and then trying to police the app.
  • 13
    Some kind of orientation period could be a good idea, but the first thing I would look for is proof it would actually help anything. When I look at reposts, they are frequently from people who have been here a while and might just not have been on the app in a while. So we can investigate who creates the most reposts, but to me it's not clear that a majority of them are from brand new users.

    @qbasic16 no problem and we appreciate the feedback. Keep in mind that the quantity of image posts always increases on the weekend because people tend to be not at their jobs so there's less to rant about.

    As for actual percentage of image posts, they have not been increased for a while now. In raw numbers, yes, they have, but that's because total number of rants has increased too so that's only reasonable to expect. In terms of top rants of the week and month, image posts are down significantly from the past so they certainly aren't increasing in that sense ever.
  • 10
    However, like you point out, we still want to try to prevent obvious reposts, as made clear from the repost checker we implemented. The method you describe is something we've thought about, but to do that, we need a better way to find similar images. We store a phash with each image and it was my hope that we could use that to find similar images, but it's so bad we can't show the results to users and we certainly can't use it to detect reposts. So it comes down to trying to figure out how to better detect. Ideas on that are always welcome and can be very helpful. I do not have a lot of experience with image analysis so I'm trying to figure all of that out.
  • 11
    The last thing to add in general, is that as devRant continues to grow, it is almost a guarantee the overall quality of rants in "recent" will decrease. I don't think quality in recent should ever be expected and it's meant to be more of the Wild West. Algo and top are supposed to give more consistent quality. Recent is recent, and that includes reposts. Even so, we still do some filtering of recent due to the obvious overwhelming demand to do so. But as there are more rants, at some point, "recent" will no longer even be feasible for browsing every post.
  • 9
    And that's not to say it's not good to use recent, but the point is if you do, you have to be willing to see stuff you won't like.
  • 7
    If people were to behave online as they would AFK, that would do a lit if good.

    Keep up your honorable work @dfox and @trogus!
  • 6
    @dfox will you ever make the repost detector open source? Would be really fun to work on.
  • 8
    @NeatNerdPrime thanks!

    @tahnik we'd love to. Right now there isn't really anything to open source. It's just a hash of the image contents. We'd love to be able to integrate an open source project though, maybe we can start one. We're open to ideas about that.

    @Letmecode this wasn't directed at just specific people or a person, it's a general rule. We don't want people being abusive towards other members when it's not warranted, like someone reposting an image accidentally that's already been posted. Especially new users who likely have no idea it's been posted before. It's exactly the negative and abusive atmosphere we don't want to create here.

    And that's not to say you can't disagree with people, tell them they are wrong, etc. but there's a place for that and we've had people just picking out rants they don't like (ex. ones with images) and posting comments like "repost" or it was even taken further with mass posting of "why are you ruining devRant."
  • 16
    By the response to this rant, I think it's safe to assume the biggest detriment to devRant could easily become people just looking to belittle other members and we really don't want that.
  • 8
    Developers are in general somewhat lacking in interpersonal awareness / empathy. We're an odd bunch.
  • 4
    @Letmecode it's a cliche for a reason.
  • 3
    @Letmecode I'm not sure you understand what "oxymoron" means, but I can assure you that "it's a cliche for a reason" is not an oxymoron.

    Also, and this one is more hazy, I'm not sure you know what "cliche" means, and I'm only saying that because cliches can be and often are true. The very reason things become cliche'd is generally because there is a root in fact, or truth, about them. Here's a link to an article about cliches that are true: https://google.co.uk/amp/...

    You're welcome 😊
  • 3
    @Letmecode once again you're welcome.

    May I ask, if you know what "oxymoron" means then how could you possibly think my comment "it's a cliche for a reason" is one?

    Genuine question.
  • 16
    @Letmecode @GigaMick This back and forth you're having has that element of unnecessary conflict @dfox was touching on.

    Sometimes people are going to say things you disagree with, and that's fine, you can argue with them, just try to keep it civil (no personal attacks). And as this is a public space and not a private conversation also consider the impact it can have on others and the friendly vibe of the community we've all come to enjoy. If you sense a back and forth is feeling antagonistic, I would encourage either party to step back and take the high road of just walking away. There is no prize here for convincing someone that they are wrong.
  • 18
    The point is, to be quite frank, this is my rant and I think I can speak for nearly everyone reading it that they don't give a fuck about whatever b.s. you guys are arguing. No one is getting anything out of it.

    This is just an example. People should consider the rants people post to be that person's content and they should respect it.

    @letmecode, if someone comments on your rant that they are offended and you should stop posting stuff like that, it's fair to tell them to fuck off. We're not looking to censor people. What this is about is not abusing individuals who are doing nothing wrong, and not derailing other people's rants with garbage.
  • 5
    @rtannerf if it's actually completely irrelevant and not dev related then you're welcome to mark it as spam.

    "should be on 9gag" isn't something I can comment on as a whole because it has no actual meaning in terms of what kind of content we allow. You can mark anything "not for me" but anything marked as spam should be non-dev related or actual spam/++ begging/swag begging.

    If you have examples feel free to ask about any you want and we can give our opinions.
  • 4
    @rtannerf I see what you're saying and it's a good point. There's definitely a like but it's not entirely clear for some of those.

    I do agree they probably aren't spam so maybe not for me, but we could also maybe implement an off-topic option like you suggested.

    The idea behind offensive/spam is it's to mark rants that violate our TOS or are so spammy/irrelevant that no one could possibly get anything out of them.

    We've tried to stay on the side of being liberal when it comes to the kinds of content we allow, because I think most good communities do that. But on the other hand, I really think 99% of rants should be dev/tech related, and I think we're pretty close to that now. I leave 1% because I think in any real community there's a rare time for something unrelated.
  • 4
    @dfox chipping in on the repost thing, there are api's for neural networks converts an image to a vector. Using this you could find images that are very close and classify them as repost.

    Just an idea :)
  • 4
    @andros705 yeah I know, problem with that is it checks exact pixels so any compression will throw it off. A NN will be more generalized and therefore produce better results in a task like this.
  • 1
    Maybe allow something like a negative comment with the same effect of downvote, and is different from normal comment. Sometimes people just need to rant about bad rants...
  • 5
    @Dacexi we're definitely open to stuff like that. The problem is I've yet to find a suitable API or open source project to do it with. If you know of any please let me know.

    @lwhken there's a time for negative comments but it should really only be if it's on-topic. Ex. the rant is meant to be a debate. That's fair game IMO for back and forth argument.

    The example in this rant was not on topic and provided no value to anyone except the two people involved. However, I think the topic being debated could have actually been a compelling rant on its own and that's how, IMO, it should have been posted.

    I'm fine with rants being posted in response to comments or other rants, but they should never explicitly call out users and they should never tell people what kinds of content they can and cannot post. We've specifically never allowed @ mentions in rants because that's something we don't think fits.
  • 1
    General question, does repost refer to something posted on devrant that has been posted on devrant before or does it mean things that have been posted anywhere before?
  • 4
    @ninjatini repost only refers to something that's been posted on devRant before.
  • 3
    @dfox This causes a competition to be the first who reposts the latest gag from somewhere else.
  • 2
    @dfox you might want to have a look at this and use it with really low tolerance https://github.com/paucarre/...
  • 4
    @dfox Amen, brother! I like this community as is, lets not turn devrant into SO.
  • 4
    @dfox I like @tarstrong 's idea. I'd like to know when and why I get downvoted
  • 4
    @Player2 yeah same here. I don't even have to know by whom. We could just have some numeric stats there. I've always been curious to see such data about my own account's posts and comments.
  • 3
    Yes @dfox. Remove identifiers from all the metadata and allow us to see it for our own accounts
  • 3
    @dfox I like this app alot good job man 👊

    The toxic people are grammar Nazi it adds no value. The argument above. Was about what a defenition is, that is no problem in my opinion

    If there is a issue with something, you could create a global popup with your message for the week or whatever you want.

    Like week 23 start of this rant but naming them like grammar Nazi

    or

    a popup on first try of this app with 10 command ments.
    You will post close to on topic.
    You'll never correct spelling.

    Naming exactly the definition of the bad behaviour gives clarity. Like a dictator ship where de dictator dictates the users to not be a cunt.😜

    Idk just a thought

    Overall I think there is a great culture on here.
  • 9
    Whenever i see new members post memes or pictures that've been posted a lot or post totally non-dev related content i tend to comment nicely and just tell to keep this in mind (I think that telling that stuff (nicely) sometimes helps more than just downvoting). If this is also 'rather not' behavior, my apologies!
  • 3
    @linuxxx this is the way to do it. Be nice, polite and inform them instead of screaming "repost!". This helps as newer members might not yet understand this stuff yet and have no chance even knowing it was a repost since the member was new and never saw it before 🙂
  • 6
    @Dacexi I certainly hope @dfox and @trogus agree!
  • 5
    @DivByZero it's not ideal, but in reality, almost every online community has that same behavior. It's exponentially more of an issue in communities that are centered around current events. If that was the case with devRant I think we'd have to spend more time on fixing it, but currently, it seems to only affect a very small percentage of posts and it is precisely what the repost downvote is for.

    @tarstrong I think that's a great idea and it's definitely something we want to implement. I'll make sure it's on our list, and we'll try to get to it as soon as we can. We definitely want to provide more info on which of your stuff is getting dowvoted and why, and we agree it is important. We're also working on adding "block" functionality which has been more work than I thought it would be so it's been delayed a bit.

    @Triskelion we've tried to stay away from hardcore rules and a rigid structure. We can always reconsider, but I'm not sure it's a big enough issue yet to force rules reading.
  • 4
    @linuxxx I think that's fine, and I've never seen you do anything I'm referring to here I don't think and if it's getting downvoted anyway it's nice to let them know why.

    What I would say though is it should still be cases where it's a frequent repost, or, as I said before, something that is completely not dev-related at all and ridiculously off-topic. A good rule of thumb is also if there's a comment thread taking place of people discussing the rant then in no case does it make sense to come along and be like "this is a repost." And I'm not saying this to you, but I have seen other people do that and I think it's unnecessary and in reality the people talking in the comments don't care.
  • 7
  • 2
    @dfox I am really glad to see that you read all the comments on this rant of yours and actually did reply to them. Thank You. No suggestions from my side. 😃😉
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