03-13-2014, 12:00 AM
Is it possible to vote yes for sock puppets and no for spam?
I've been a very vocal opponent of sock puppets on other forums I've belonged to in the past, and over time my experiences taught me that fighting them actually isn't a very good idea. For one thing admins and mods ended up having to spend so much time chasing sock puppets that everything else on the forums got neglected as a result. Worse still there were times when people I knew were innocent had their accounts stripped and all their posts deleted because of mistakes by the site management. These people almost always left and didn't return. Finally, none of the methods of fighting them ever worked. The people using puppets to disrupt the forums always returned with new puppets to do it all over again. They saw it as a game and continued to improve at it. Ultimately the attempted cure, (which failed), proved worse than the disease.
For these reasons, I'd suggest we focus on a user-side solution to the issue. Just as a reminder for those who've forgotten it is possible to filter out other people's posts. This might be the best solution right now for dealing with sock puppets and spam. See http://sorcery.yuku.com/topic/5132/How- ... yEh04XdeQk for details on how to do this. Also if anyone knows of a good program for reading web forums that has good filters and would work with yuku please let us know.
Edit: I just noticed these forums use RSS, which is a very common format. I know there's tons of RSS reader programs out there, (many of which are free), so it shouldn't be hard for people to find ones they like. I've already tested subscribing to this with Firefox's Live Bookmarks, which works although I don't see any filters on it yet, (I never actually used live bookmarks before). As a side note I see that FLB just lists the most recent posts from any of these forums in order which makes checking to see what's new on sorcery much easier. I'm going to keep exploring RSS readers a bit, and if I fall in love with one I'll mention it here.
I've been a very vocal opponent of sock puppets on other forums I've belonged to in the past, and over time my experiences taught me that fighting them actually isn't a very good idea. For one thing admins and mods ended up having to spend so much time chasing sock puppets that everything else on the forums got neglected as a result. Worse still there were times when people I knew were innocent had their accounts stripped and all their posts deleted because of mistakes by the site management. These people almost always left and didn't return. Finally, none of the methods of fighting them ever worked. The people using puppets to disrupt the forums always returned with new puppets to do it all over again. They saw it as a game and continued to improve at it. Ultimately the attempted cure, (which failed), proved worse than the disease.
For these reasons, I'd suggest we focus on a user-side solution to the issue. Just as a reminder for those who've forgotten it is possible to filter out other people's posts. This might be the best solution right now for dealing with sock puppets and spam. See http://sorcery.yuku.com/topic/5132/How- ... yEh04XdeQk for details on how to do this. Also if anyone knows of a good program for reading web forums that has good filters and would work with yuku please let us know.
Edit: I just noticed these forums use RSS, which is a very common format. I know there's tons of RSS reader programs out there, (many of which are free), so it shouldn't be hard for people to find ones they like. I've already tested subscribing to this with Firefox's Live Bookmarks, which works although I don't see any filters on it yet, (I never actually used live bookmarks before). As a side note I see that FLB just lists the most recent posts from any of these forums in order which makes checking to see what's new on sorcery much easier. I'm going to keep exploring RSS readers a bit, and if I fall in love with one I'll mention it here.