politicartoons | Mod post

I'm slightly offended that you'd assume that, once I explicitly said I would only stop spam, I would use my hypothetical authority to stop non-spam.

I've watched you dive into T_P and go into immediate meltdown mode over this issue. I don't think you're lying when you say you'd intend only to focus on spam, but I also don't think you're even-keeled enough to sustain that promise.

Of course we're offering [arguments.]

Yeah, okay. Let's see:

Spam sucks.

Evaluative judgment, granted for sake of argument.

Spam should never be displayed longer than is strictly necessary.

Normative assertion made in conclusory fashion. Why "never" and "strictly necessary"? All that the initial judgment seems to imply is that less spam is better than more spam.

It's a criminal failure of LJ that members can't report spam in communities.

Do you believe that exaggerations like "criminal failures" constitutes an "argument?" And what does this have to do with our approach to spam, absent an LJ-sponsored feature?

Communities with spam are unpleasant.

Just re-stating the initial judgment here.

Politicartoons allows spam to stand for days because there are no moderators.

That's true. So far, then, we know that: Spam sucks, and it's been allowed to stand "for days," which is generally worse than having that spam be removed more expediently.

Therefore, the community requries more active moderators, for the purpose of eliminating spam and spammers.

Unfortunately, this only follows if we grant that "spam should never be displayed longer than strictly necessary," which - besides being an unsupported assertion - is puzzlingly vague.

My only interest, with respect to spam, is that it be managed in a way that minimizes its disruption of the community, in the same way we might want to moderate the use of hate speech, flamewars, and off-topic posts and comments. My argument is just that it should be controlled (like any other content should be controlled) to the extent necessary to ensure that everyone (apart from those with an irrational aversion to spam) feels comfortable and enjoys participating in the community; and as I've noted, it doesn't seem like that spam post's being up for a couple of days seriously impeded this community's operations.

Your "argument," such as it is, seems to be that we should moderate spam even beyond the point at which it no longer meaningfully impedes this community's activities, just because it "should never be displayed longer than strictly necessary," whatever that's supposed to mean. That doesn't follow from anything, and it's not self-evident. So...?

I've watched you dive into T_P and go into immediate meltdown mode over this issue.

You've seen one T_P comment thread, ever.

I also don't think you're even-keeled enough to sustain that promise.

Fair. I think you're wrong, but, then, I would. I'm happy if people other than me will delete spam and ban spammers, I just want someone to do it. Again, do you volunteer? If you volunteer, I will happily support you.

Why "never" and "strictly necessary"? All that the initial judgment seems to imply is that less spam is better than more spam.

More "spam is never content, spam displaces content."

My only interest, with respect to spam, is that it be managed in a way that minimizes its disruption of the community, in the same way we might want to moderate the use of hate speech, flamewars, and off-topic posts and comments.

And I think you're fundamentally missing how spam works, particularly how uncontested undeleted spam attracts more spam.

Your "argument," such as it is, seems to be that we should moderate spam even beyond the point at which it no longer meaningfully impedes this community's activities, just because it "should never be displayed longer than strictly necessary,"

And from this I conclude that you have never had to deal with spam or spammers in any meaningful sense.

You're right. Apart from an occasional spam comment in my own journal, I haven't really dealt with "spam or spammers in any meaningful sense," and I certainly haven't experienced enough of it to know whether or how undeleted spam can trigger the infusion of more spam.

If you're right that the failure to immediately delete spam will lead to the infusion of more spam, then I'll grant that there is value to deleting it as quickly as possible. That's a dynamic I've never seen in operation, but again, like I've said, I've never had a front-row seat to it occurring.

Fair enough.

I do this kind of thing for a living, in my real job - particularly, in email administration. I've also had a very popular blog both on livejournal and off, and I've worked to deal with spam for both my and other people's blogs. I don't expect you to take my word for it in the abstract, but:

Assume I'm wrong when I say that undeleted spam attracts spam.

Assume I'm wrong when I say that most spam contains malware and is dangerous to click on for all but the best-protected users.

Even given those two assumptions: Is there any reason why the presence of spam is a *good* thing? Is there ever any reason to NOT delete spam ASAP?

In the mean time, I assert that spam is an inherent bad, and that spam attracts spam, and that spam is inherently dangerous. And I can argue those if you want,

Spam isn't a good thing. But if spam doesn't have the technical effects you say it has (and, to be clear, I'm taking your word for it), then the only question left is whether it's disrupting the community. We just haven't seen that happen here.

When you say that spam attracts spam - how does that work, exactly? Since you mention user-triggered malware, is the mechanism essentially that people follow spam in communities like this, which attracts more spam to this community? I'd previously taken you to be suggesting that its mere non-deletion was sufficient to attract further spam.

When you say that spam attracts spam - how does that work, exactly?
I'd previously taken you to be suggesting that its mere non-deletion was sufficient to attract further spam.

Places where spam isn't cleaned up are noted by spammers as places where spam isn't cleaned up. Spam accounts that are not banned return to the same place and spam more, since obviously people aren't blocking spammers. That happened here recently: I pinged Wes to note a spam comment, and that user repeated the same comment repeatedly on different posts over the next days.

For a while on Livejournal, the spam comment that didn't have a spam payload but was meaningless was very common - they were testing to see who ignored spam, and people who ignored it got dozens after a short delay. These days, LJ doesn't have that kind of cachet - instead, spammers go straight to OpenID comments, and a few hours after the initial one passes muster without deletion they start hitting everything in sight. It's all automated.

*in addition*, spam contains malware, which often tries to steal social media credentials, for the purpose of using your account to spread more spam. And those attacks tend to target places you have posting access, but that's more a "it sucks for you to have spam appear here" problem and less "spam here creates more spam here" because they'll probably use your LJ OpenID to spam Gawker - livejournal itself is a weak target.

My point is, spam should not be tolerated because it is an absolute evil. And there are methods available to stop spam without otherwise altering the community - even if you don't trust me when I say "spam only, I'll do that", I'd trust *you* if you said you would delete spam and ignore non-spam moderation issues. And there are pre-existing problems related to "nobody is deleting spam in a timely way" here. And my aim isn't to moderate non-spam issues; I think those should be addressed, but they're not the topic and they're not immediately relevant. I want there to be people watching for spam, deleting spam, and available to be notified that yet another spammer is spamming a community I watch.

And Livejournal doesn't let non-moderators report spam when it happens in communities, let alone delete spam comments. So that means the spam cleanup crew have to be moderators.

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