Intensive listening

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Le Baron
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Re: Intensive listening

Postby Le Baron » Mon May 16, 2022 2:43 pm

tungemål wrote:Anyway, to avoid the robots, can one way be to require new members to have one post under their belt before they can create new topics? They can use the first post to introduce themselves.

I read a topic yesterday about how a certain number of initial posts are all approved before they're posted. So someone is approving them.
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Re: Intensive listening

Postby tungemål » Mon May 16, 2022 3:00 pm

Le Baron wrote:
tungemål wrote:Anyway, to avoid the robots, can one way be to require new members to have one post under their belt before they can create new topics? They can use the first post to introduce themselves.

I read a topic yesterday about how a certain number of initial posts are all approved before they're posted. So someone is approving them.

Yes, the post looks legitimate enough.
I was thinking that such an requirement could stop spambots, because a robot would not be programmed to post an introduction first. And if they do write "Hi, I am Robot. I'm here to harvest valuable advice." - then we will be suspicious. :)
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Re: Intensive listening

Postby Le Baron » Mon May 16, 2022 3:02 pm

I don't get why they are approved anyway. There's another one here from yesterday, which is the same sort of annoying question: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 14&t=18065

Who read that and approved it?
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Re: Intensive listening

Postby rdearman » Mon May 16, 2022 3:29 pm

Le Baron wrote:I don't get why they are approved anyway. There's another one here from yesterday, which is the same sort of annoying question: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 14&t=18065

Who read that and approved it?

I did. And that user has responded in other threads, and you've replied to them. :ugeek:
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Re: Intensive listening

Postby Le Baron » Mon May 16, 2022 3:42 pm

rdearman wrote:
Le Baron wrote:I don't get why they are approved anyway. There's another one here from yesterday, which is the same sort of annoying question: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 14&t=18065

Who read that and approved it?

I did. And that user has responded in other threads, and you've replied to them. :ugeek:

Have I? I responded in the one I posted above, but I've not seen any others with that user, who only has 2 posts: the initial post in that thread and one dubious reply which I replied to.
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Re: Intensive listening

Postby rdearman » Mon May 16, 2022 4:06 pm

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Re: Intensive listening

Postby Le Baron » Mon May 16, 2022 4:28 pm

Quite so. There's no sense in me being artificially intelligent myself when I can get a bot to do it for me.
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Re: Intensive listening

Postby Cainntear » Mon May 16, 2022 5:48 pm

rdearman wrote:
Le Baron wrote:I don't get why they are approved anyway. There's another one here from yesterday, which is the same sort of annoying question: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... 14&t=18065

Who read that and approved it?

I did. And that user has responded in other threads, and you've replied to them. :ugeek:

I reckon Thomas90 is a bot too. Notice how the second post didn't actually address any of Cavesa's points, and was only sort-of related to the original post... almost like it was modelled on a possible response to the stimulus rather than being written by the same person.

Remember a couple of years ago when the botsmeisters' favourite technique was necroposting on long threads with a straight rip-off of a post from three or four pages (and 6-18 months) previously...?

I suspect the Thomas90-a-tron was programmed to respond in a vague manner in order to prevent the extremely sus post-now-and-forever-hold-your-peace approach.

I would personally recommend, as I said before, that the default response to this sort of single sentence newbie post is for someone to respond with a couple of questions and wait for evidence that there's a real person behind it before feeding the machines.

These bots are really messing up the internet, because...
tungemål wrote:"how to"-pages probably has a bigger chance to turn up in google searches.

More specifically, Google loves questions and answers.

If you put your search in in the form of a question, the results will usually be formatted as:

Several ads

Then a "Featured snippet" of about 5 lines from a page, usually part of a list.

A series of "People also ask" questions, where you click on the question and it gives you a one-paragraph answer ripped from a site. This is a double-edged sword for legitimate site owners, because on the one hand, Google leverages it to make it less likely for people to click away from Google (because now you've got the answer, why bother clicking?), but for the cheap bot-generated pages, who cares? Getting up there means getting clicks!

I got to that site through a question on Google, so I reckon the whole thing has been deliberately optimised to answer questions in Google-sized paragraphs, so that the algorithm will favour them.

If people are flooding out genuine knowledge with junk, that's not really in the greater interest, and I think we should all be pushing back against it.

I don't think my call for asking questions is unreasonable. It's not impolite -- if there is a genuine person behind the post (and honestly, I have no doubt that both of the posts in question are bots) it comes across as showing genuine interest, so no-one's going to be offended.
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Re: Intensive listening

Postby tommus » Mon May 16, 2022 8:33 pm

I think that new users should have a higher threshold to join. This should include, as a minimum:

1. A reasonable introduction
2. Putting the following items in their Profile before their first post:
a. Their native language(s)
b. The language(s) they are studying
c. The country where they are living (to be updated if they move)
3. A minimum number of sensible posts before they get full privileges.
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Re: Intensive listening

Postby MaggieMae » Mon May 16, 2022 9:04 pm

tommus wrote:I think that new users should have a higher threshold to join. This should include, as a minimum:

1. A reasonable introduction
2. Putting the following items in their Profile before their first post:
a. Their native language(s)
b. The language(s) they are studying
c. The country where they are living (to be updated if they move)
3. A minimum number of sensible posts before they get full privileges.


As a newbie myself, I would agree with all of the above except the country bit. There are plenty of people worried about privacy already, and I would hate to scare someone off because of just that. For me, Google has all of my infos already, I really don't care that much. :lol:

That being said, most of that is already required. The only thing not currently required is the introduction. The answers from the registration question of the languages you speak are instantly transferred to your profile. I've already seen 2 new users (newer than me) answer 23 and 95 to that question, and they have 0 posts, so I'm assuming our fearless leader has been keeping them from posting. Thankfully. :)

I wouldn't mind an introduction requirement, especially since there's already a great thread and outline for that. Or a "you must reply to x posts before you can start a new topic, and the first few topics will be monitored". There's already the monitoring process, which is great, but already super hard for admins in the first place, trying to figure out who's real, who's fake, and who's scamming.

Someone else mentioned newbies getting frustrated with the requirements and leaving, but I thought everything was very clearly spelled out between the rules and FAQ. Someone who genuinely wants to join a community, imho, will go there first before even making an account. I definitely wanted to know what I was signing up for before I finally did it. Most other people will, too. Unless they're trolls, scammers, or bots.
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