James Dennett <jdennett@acm.org> writes:

|>  I do not know to what extent the knowledge that a human moderator
|>  will reject such flames helps people to avoid posting them in the
|>  first place!

In comp.lang.c++.moderated, we will reject them systematically and
immediately.  If we see them.  Moderators are human, and we have
automatic reflexes.  Typically, some names in the From: line will
trigger an automatic acceptance.

This leads to the somewhat particular situation that the only flames you
do see are from the most qualified and generally reasonable people:-).

--=20
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Andrei Alexandrescu <andrewalex@hotmail.com> wrote:
+ "James Dennett" <jdennett@acm.org> wrote in message
+ news:39DA5A2D.259B3BD3@acm.org...
+ > (And to back Phil up; the flame from Mr WinNT was one of the perks of the
+ > job.  Priceless.)
+
+ Come on, guys, post it.

Wouldn't that defeat the point of rejecting the article in the first place?
:-)

Let me dig it out of my archives and I'll mail it to you.


Phil

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"James Dennett" <jdennett@acm.org> wrote in message
news:39DA5A2D.259B3BD3@acm.org...
> (And to back Phil up; the flame from Mr WinNT was one of the perks of the
> job.  Priceless.)

Come on, guys, post it.


Andrei


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"Francis Glassborow" <francis.glassborow@ntlworld.com> wrote in message
news:R10BB6AMGG25EwM7@ntlworld.com...
> I am not sure about this idea. As one of the most frequent posters, with
> a rejection rate under 1% (actually, I think it should be higher as
> posts that duplicate the content of other posts should be rejected, but
> often are not -- but I would not want to add to the moderators work), I
> still think that a filter on potential (in my case accidental) flames is
> worth while.

Right. I was thinking that the robomoderator applies the "flame search" to
all messages, even those considered for automatic approval.

Also, it's actually easy to detect automatically messages that quote
heavily.

> OTOH I would welcome moderators considering rejection of flagrantly
> erroneous information. Sometimes allowing such errors to be posted is
> educational, but sometimes it only confuses newbies.

Yes... tell me about that. Java's containers leaving STL in the dust,
anyone? :o)

(Okay folks, that's a joke. Put that gun away! Hey!... Hey!...)


Andrei


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"Gabriel Dos Reis" <gdr@merlin.codesourcery.com> wrote in message
news:m31yxzho9v.fsf@merlin.codesourcery.com...
> "Andrei Alexandrescu" <andrewalex@hotmail.com> writes:
> | For example: every 10 approved articles in a row qualify the author as a
> | serious person, so the robomoderator lets messages go through without
> | passing them to human moderators. If an author posts an off-topic
article
> | (other participants can email moderators to reveal that), she loses the
> | credit and must make again 10 relevant postings to get it back.
>
> But that article which shouldn't have been approved in the first
> would have been approved -- and the probability that such articles
> will actually appear isn't something I will qualify low.

This is true. Don't forget the filters, though, which can greatly improve
with time.

Come on folks, everybody can say "it can't be done". Only pros find a way to
do it. Let's think of something that *can* be done.


Andrei


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fjh+csc-admin@cs.mu.OZ.AU wrote:
...
> Approved:       678     messages (of them, 0 automatically)
> Rejected:       142     messages
> Preapproved:    0       new posters

I just realized that this corresponds to a rejection rate of 17%. My own
messages get rejected at least an order of magnitude less frequently
than that. What are people typically doing to get rejected so often?

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"Andrei Alexandrescu" <andrewalex@hotmail.com> writes:

[...]

| Come on folks, everybody can say "it can't be done". Only pros find a way to
| do it. Let's think of something that *can* be done.

Well, I'm not saying it can't be done.  I'm saying the scheme you're
proposing isn't an improvement of the existing scheme.

I perfectly remember heated debate initiated by the most talented
experts on this newsgroup and I was glad to see moderators did a great
job in keeping the debate to technical level -- that wasn't easy, I guess.
And I do think that under your scheme, there would have had been an
unfriendly atmosphere because "offending" postings would have been
autommatically had been approved because their authors were known
to post usually highly technical material.  Whether readers would have,
afterward, sent mails to the moderators about postings which should
not have been approved wouldn't really have improve nor ease the matter.
And I'm not really interested in seeing frequent messages from the
moderators "Folks, XXX had reached the limits and his/her credit is
now reset to zero.  Please accept our apologize."

--
Gabriel Dos Reis, gdr@codesourcery.com
CodeSourcery, LLC  http://www.codesourcery.com
       http://www.codesourcery.com/gcc-compile.shtml

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In article <stiboah9eht679@news.supernews.com>, Andrei Alexandrescu
<andrewalex@hotmail.com> writes
>Right. I was thinking that the robomoderator applies the "flame search" to
>all messages, even those considered for automatic approval.

I would love to see such a brilliant demonstration of AI. Of course it
might create a new game, getting your flame past a robomoderator:)


Francis Glassborow      Association of C & C++ Users
64 Southfield Rd
Oxford OX4 1PA          +44(0)1865 246490
All opinions are mine and do not represent those of any organisation

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James Kuyper  <kuyper@wizard.net> wrote:
+ > Approved:       678     messages (of them, 0 automatically)
+ > Rejected:       142     messages
+ > Preapproved:    0       new posters
+
+ I just realized that this corresponds to a rejection rate of 17%. My own
+ messages get rejected at least an order of magnitude less frequently
+ than that. What are people typically doing to get rejected so often?

- A fair amount of spam.
  (Now /that/'s something I'd like to see be remembered by an AI filtering
  program.  Spam once and get automatically banned for a year.)

- Obvious homework, platform-specific questions, etc.
  (c.s.c++ has a fairly strict charter, remember.  My favorite was some
  guy who asked a question regarding the guts of WinNT.  The article was
  rejected.  He completely missed the point and flamed the moderators'
  list.  It was hilarious.  I still have that email.  :-)

- Good C++ questions that aren't Standard-related.
  (The strict charter again.  Articles which deserve discussion, but on
  clcm, not csc++.)

Does this help?


Luck++;
Phil
comp.std.c++ moderator (one of many)

--
pedwards at disaster dot jaj dot com  |  pme at sources dot redhat dot com
devphil at several other less interesting addresses in various dot domains
The gods do not protect fools.  Fools are protected by more capable fools.

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James Kuyper wrote:

> fjh+csc-admin@cs.mu.OZ.AU wrote:
> ...
> > Approved:       678     messages (of them, 0 automatically)
> > Rejected:       142     messages
> > Preapproved:    0       new posters
>
> I just realized that this corresponds to a rejection rate of 17%. My own
> messages get rejected at least an order of magnitude less frequently
> than that. What are people typically doing to get rejected so often?

Typically, posting to the wrong group or posting spam.  It is rare than an
on-topic post is rejected.  Sometimes technical problems will cause a poster
to submit a message twice, and sometimes we (the comp.std.c++ moderators)
catch this and reject the duplicate.  I don't know if Fergus has stats on
the reasons given for rejection, but in my experience (as a faceless
moderator for most of the last year) has been that the constructive
atmosphere of this group is such that regular readers do not tend to post
flames.  I do not know to what extent the knowledge that a human moderator
will reject such flames helps people to avoid posting them in the first
place!

(And to back Phil up; the flame from Mr WinNT was one of the perks of the
job.  Priceless.)

-- James Dennett
comp.std.c++ moderator (another)
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brahms@mindspring.com (Stan Brown) writes:

>fjh+csc-admin@cs.mu.OZ.AU wrote in comp.std.c++:
>>
>>This is an automated report about activity of our newsgroup
>>comp.std.c++. It covers period between the
>>previous report and the current one, ending
>>on Sun Oct  1 00:05:01 EST 2000.
>
>This would be much more interesting (at least to me) if it included
>somewhere the date of "the previous report" or even the interval. Is
>this weekly? monthly? other?

It's monthly.

This is a feature of Stump, the moderation system that we are using.
I'm not quite sure why it showed up now and not previously.

Incidentally, in other news which I'm not sure if we have reported
on the newsgroup before, since about six months ago (?) we have had
two new moderators, James Dennett <jdennett@acm.org> and
Phil Edwards <pedwards@jaj.com>.  Those two and Matt Austern
<austern@research.att.com> are doing the bulk of the moderation
at the moment.  Steve Clamage and I have been handling moderation
of defect reports and crossposts (since Stump doesn't handle those),
and I've been administering Stump.

--
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3        |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.

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James Dennett <jdennett@acm.org> writes:

>I don't know if Fergus has stats on the reasons given for rejection

abuse    7
binary   16
clcm  160
crosspost  69
duplicate  24
charter   23
offtopic 309
offtopic-xpost   1
spam  123

abuse:  This person has been blacklisted as an abuser
binary:  Message contains binary characters [autorejected]
clcm:  Article would be more appropriate in comp.lang.c++.moderated
crosspost: Inappropriate crossposting (>= 5 groups) [autorejected]
duplicate: Someone else already posted an article saying the same thing
charter: Message does not fit charter
offtopic: Message does not fit charter
offtopic-xpost: Message does not fit charter, and was crossposted
spam:  Message is spam (don't even send a rejection notice)

Messages which are cross-posted to 5 or more newsgroups are automatically
rejected with a reason of `crosspost'.  That catches quite a bit of spam.
Binary messages are also automatically rejected.  Apart from that,
all rejections are manual.  No-one has been blacklisted as an abuser,
so the 7 articles rejected for "abuse" were probably misclassified by
the moderator -- the poster would have received a misleading rejection
notice, but was not actually blacklisted.

"Message does not fit charter" is a very broad categorization.
There's no useful distinction between "charter" and "offtopic".

I can put rejected messages up on a web site or ftp site if anyone is
interested ;-)

--
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger fjh@128.250.37.3        |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.

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I drop it :o(.

(Moderator, please approve this message.)


Andrei



======================================= MODERATOR'S COMMENT:
 Well, since you said 'please'... :-)

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Subject: comp.std.c++ report for Sun Oct 1 00:05:01 EST 2000
Newsgroups: comp.std.c++
Date: Sun Oct 1 00:05:01 EST 2000

This is an automated report about activity of our newsgroup
comp.std.c++. It covers period between the
previous report and the current one, ending
on Sun Oct  1 00:05:01 EST 2000.

Note that we do not report the number of articles cancelled
after they got approved, because the cancellations are done
manually. Typically messages get cancelled by requests of
posters themselves.

Lastly, the statistics below are skewed towards higher numbers because
there are always some test messages from moderators themselves who
approve and reject them to make sure that our robomoderator functions
properly.



Approved:       678  messages (of them, 0 automatically)
Rejected:       142  messages
Preapproved:    0 new posters

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fjh+csc-admin@cs.mu.OZ.AU <fjh+csc-admin@cs.mu.OZ.AU> wrote in
comp.std.c++:
>
>This is an automated report about activity of our newsgroup
>comp.std.c++. It covers period between the
>previous report and the current one, ending
>on Sun Oct  1 00:05:01 EST 2000.

This would be much more interesting (at least to me) if it included
somewhere the date of "the previous report" or even the interval. Is
this weekly? monthly? other?

--
Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Cortland County, New York, USA
                                  http://oakroadsystems.com
C++ FAQ Lite: http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/
the C++ standard: http://webstore.ansi.org/
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I have an idea for easying the job that moderators do: a credit system for
article writers.

For example: every 10 approved articles in a row qualify the author as a
serious person, so the robomoderator lets messages go through without
passing them to human moderators. If an author posts an off-topic article
(other participants can email moderators to reveal that), she loses the
credit and must make again 10 relevant postings to get it back.

Also, before automatically approving articles from people with credit, the
robomoderator can do the obvious job of filtering out offensive words (don't
forget a specific offensive word in which "c" is replaced with "<", "[". ot
"("). These potentially offensive posts will be forwarded to a human
moderator for a decision.

The database of potentially off-topic or offensive patterns can grow from
the rejected posts. Don't forget that these messages won't be rejected, but
rather forwarded to a human.

The resulting system is of course not perfect, but don't forget that the
purpose of moderation is not to get 100% pure C++ content, but to keep
off-topic stuff at a reasonable minimum.


Trying to help,

Andrei


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In article <std6lt2ioa0v1f@news.supernews.com>, Andrei Alexandrescu
<andrewalex@hotmail.com> writes
>For example: every 10 approved articles in a row qualify the author as a
>serious person, so the robomoderator lets messages go through without
>passing them to human moderators. If an author posts an off-topic article
>(other participants can email moderators to reveal that), she loses the
>credit and must make again 10 relevant postings to get it back.

I am not sure about this idea. As one of the most frequent posters, with
a rejection rate under 1% (actually, I think it should be higher as
posts that duplicate the content of other posts should be rejected, but
often are not -- but I would not want to add to the moderators work), I
still think that a filter on potential (in my case accidental) flames is
worth while.

OTOH I would welcome moderators considering rejection of flagrantly
erroneous information. Sometimes allowing such errors to be posted is
educational, but sometimes it only confuses newbies.


Francis Glassborow      Association of C & C++ Users
64 Southfield Rd
Oxford OX4 1PA          +44(0)1865 246490
All opinions are mine and do not represent those of any organisation

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"Andrei Alexandrescu" <andrewalex@hotmail.com> writes:

| I have an idea for easying the job that moderators do: a credit system for
| article writers.
|
| For example: every 10 approved articles in a row qualify the author as a
| serious person, so the robomoderator lets messages go through without
| passing them to human moderators. If an author posts an off-topic article
| (other participants can email moderators to reveal that), she loses the
| credit and must make again 10 relevant postings to get it back.

But that article which shouldn't have been approved in the first
would have been approved -- and the probability that such articles
will actually appear isn't something I will qualify low.

--
Gabriel Dos Reis, gdr@codesourcery.com
CodeSourcery, LLC  http://www.codesourcery.com
       http://www.codesourcery.com/gcc-compile.shtml

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