Can anything be done about the torrent of spam on the Inkscape answers page? (https://answers.launchpad.net/inkscape)
Windell H. Oskay, Ph.D. Co-Founder and Chief Scientist Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories 175 San Lazaro Ave, STE 150 Sunnyvale CA 94086 http://www.evilmadscientist.com/
On Tue, 2017-02-28 at 11:37 -0800, Windell H. Oskay wrote:
Can anything be done about the torrent of spam on the Inkscape answers page? (https://answers.launchpad.net/inkscape)
We can close the answers page and redirect people to somewhere new.
Windell, do you work on answering user questions? I could do with some help deciding what kind of functionality we might need to replace answers.
Best Regards, Martin Owens
Mostly Maren answers questions on lp, and sometimes me.
I was tempted to send an email about this topic yesterday, because I'm really fed up with the spam on lp answers. I received 2600 spams yesterday, and 3100 spams today (three thousand, yes), which is a bad day.
Overall, My junk folder contains about fifty-one thousand (51000) spams from launchpad answers only, since I joined to ask questions in december 2015. I crafted my .procmailrc to filter out most of the spam automatically, but recently more and more is escaping, since the spam is now in messages rejecting (marking as "invalid") legitimate (and spam) questions, or designed to post a question that *looks* legitimate (like "why ubuntu no virus") only to answer it quickly with spam answers, and I cannot filter that efficiently.
For now, I'd say the launchpad answers section is not usable.
What worries me most is that spammers have started to invade the "bugs.launchpad.net" section, which means that if the launchpad spam war is going to be lost there too, we will have to move to another bug tracker (maybe the gitlab one ?).
Anyway, to answer you, for the functionalities, ideally we'd need: -> a search in already existing questions before asking one -> automatic email updates for a group of people answering questions, for any activity on questions; and email updates to the people asking questions -> status of questions (open/answered/solved/invalid)
On Feb 28, 2017, at 12:10 PM, Martin Owens <doctormo@...400...> wrote:
We can close the answers page and redirect people to somewhere new.
That seems a bit drastic, but if launchpad doesn't offer appropriate tools for dealing with it (keyword blacklist, letting users flag/delete, hiding suspected spam, etc), then you may be right.
I imagine that www.inkscapeforum.com (as the "official forum") would be a natural place to direct people?
Windell, do you work on answering user questions? I could do with some help deciding what kind of functionality we might need to replace answers.
I'm not a core-level developer, but answering questions is one of those ways that I can be helpful to the project. Whenever I find myself on launchpad I always make a point of scanning new questions for ones that I can answer.
Windell H. Oskay, Ph.D. Co-Founder and Chief Scientist Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories 175 San Lazaro Ave, STE 150 Sunnyvale CA 94086 http://www.evilmadscientist.com/
Mostly Maren answers questions on lp, and sometimes me.
I was tempted to send an email about this topic yesterday, because I'm really fed up with the spam on lp answers. I received 2600 spams yesterday, and 3100 spams today (three thousand, yes), which is a bad day.
Overall, My junk folder contains about fifty-one thousand (51000) spams from launchpad answers only, since I joined to ask questions in december 2015. I crafted my .procmailrc to filter out most of the spam automatically, but recently more and more is escaping, since the spam is now in messages rejecting (marking as "invalid") legitimate (and spam) questions, or designed to post a question that *looks* legitimate (like "why ubuntu no virus") only to answer it quickly with spam answers, and I cannot filter that efficiently.
For now, I'd say the launchpad answers section is not usable.
What worries me most is that spammers have started to invade the "bugs.launchpad.net" section, which means that if the launchpad spam war is going to be lost there too, we will have to move to another bug tracker (maybe the gitlab one ?).
Anyway, to answer you, for the functionalities, ideally we'd need: -> a search in already existing questions before asking one -> automatic email updates for a group of people answering questions, for any activity on questions; and email updates to the people asking questions -> status of questions (open/answered/solved/invalid)
Am 28.02.2017 um 21:37 schrieb Marc Jeanmougin:
Anyway, to answer you, for the functionalities, ideally we'd need: -> a search in already existing questions before asking one -> automatic email updates for a group of people answering questions, for any activity on questions; and email updates to the people asking questions -> status of questions (open/answered/solved/invalid)
- Additionally, I'd like to have an option to upload files directly, and to mark as 'needs information'.
Files situation:
It's almost impossible to successfully explain to the average user that email attachments do not work in the launchpad answers section, and what a file sharing webservice is.
I do it every time I need to take a look at people's files to make sense of their question or issue, and in 30% of the cases, people still attach files to their answer by email, and I need to tell them that it didn't work, and ask them kindly (again) to upload those to either dropbox, google drive, or framdrop.org or any other file hosting web service of their choice.
This makes it an unsatisfying experience for the user (who needs just an easy-to-use interface), and delays answering of questions.
Also, I can't give visual explanations easily (for a graphics program!), while it would be very helpful to be able to do so, without linking to imgur or another image hoster, which I currently do and where (potentially useful) images may be lost with time.
More Info:
The forum at inkscapeforum.com comes with all the options Marc pointed out (aside from the marking, which I haven't missed on the forum yet), plus a whole lot of wonderful community members who are becoming better and better at explaining tricky stuff to users, and most of whom are real experts at some area or other.
Only it's not officially 'ours', aside from the domain name, suffers from spam issues itself (not visible to normal users like me, though) and developer attendance for the really tricky questions is a rare event.
The link in 'Ask us a question' in 0.92 goes to the inkscape.org website, and can be redirected any time. The link in previous versions is hardcoded to go to launchpad. There is no option to set a different URL or write a note on launchpad (the features were intended to be there, but they aren't fully implemented, i.e. they just don't work).
Regards, Maren
On Wed, Mar 01, 2017 at 12:12:24AM +0100, Maren Hachmann wrote:
Am 28.02.2017 um 21:37 schrieb Marc Jeanmougin:
Anyway, to answer you, for the functionalities, ideally we'd need: -> a search in already existing questions before asking one -> automatic email updates for a group of people answering questions, for any activity on questions; and email updates to the people asking questions -> status of questions (open/answered/solved/invalid)
- Additionally, I'd like to have an option to upload files directly, and
to mark as 'needs information'.
Yeah that seems like a critically important feature.
The forum at inkscapeforum.com comes with all the options Marc pointed out (aside from the marking, which I haven't missed on the forum yet), plus a whole lot of wonderful community members who are becoming better and better at explaining tricky stuff to users, and most of whom are real experts at some area or other.
Only it's not officially 'ours', aside from the domain name, suffers from spam issues itself (not visible to normal users like me, though) and developer attendance for the really tricky questions is a rare event.
Well, if anyone ever manages to get a dump of the forum data for us, we can look into addressing those problems.
Until then, probably not a great idea to send an influx of questioners there. And in any case, probably best to doublecheck with that community that they'd be welcoming of the traffic first.
The link in 'Ask us a question' in 0.92 goes to the inkscape.org website, and can be redirected any time. The link in previous versions is hardcoded to go to launchpad. There is no option to set a different URL or write a note on launchpad (the features were intended to be there, but they aren't fully implemented, i.e. they just don't work).
That's good to know, I was wondering if that was the case.
Think it would be worth doing point releases for 0.48 and 0.91 to change the link in preparation?
Bryce
Until then, probably not a great idea to send an influx of questioners there. And in any case, probably best to doublecheck with that community that they'd be welcoming of the traffic first.
- I agree, asking is a must. But in terms of traffic, it's negligible. There are between 0 and 5(-8) questions a day. Usually, it's 1-3. I don't expect anything like an influx, more a trickling ;-)
(I imagine that some people who would otherwise ask, are deterred by the overcomplicated registration process via Ubuntu One. So changing that could potentially give us more 'askers'.)
Think it would be worth doing point releases for 0.48 and 0.91 to change the link in preparation?
- I can't imagine why someone using 0.48.x would want to update their version just to get a new link.
If someone is using such an old version, I think it's either because they don't know that a newer one exists (and then - how would they know that a new point release exists?), or because they're long-time users, who can't update because of a bug that would impact their workflow. Those users probably already know where they can find help. Or they're stuck with an old version because their distro doesn't update the Inkscape version (I don't know if they would update for this, that's more your area of expertise - if they would, then this could be a reason for updating 0.91 for affected distros).
So, no, with my current knowledge, I personally don't think it would be worth making extra releases.
Regards, Maren
Am 01.03.2017 um 04:24 schrieb Bryce Harrington:
On Wed, Mar 01, 2017 at 12:12:24AM +0100, Maren Hachmann wrote:
Am 28.02.2017 um 21:37 schrieb Marc Jeanmougin:
Anyway, to answer you, for the functionalities, ideally we'd need: -> a search in already existing questions before asking one -> automatic email updates for a group of people answering questions, for any activity on questions; and email updates to the people asking questions -> status of questions (open/answered/solved/invalid)
- Additionally, I'd like to have an option to upload files
directly, and to mark as 'needs information'.
Yeah that seems like a critically important feature.
The forum at inkscapeforum.com comes with all the options Marc pointed out (aside from the marking, which I haven't missed on the forum yet), plus a whole lot of wonderful community members who are becoming better and better at explaining tricky stuff to users, and most of whom are real experts at some area or other.
Only it's not officially 'ours', aside from the domain name, suffers from spam issues itself (not visible to normal users like me, though) and developer attendance for the really tricky questions is a rare event.
Well, if anyone ever manages to get a dump of the forum data for us, we can look into addressing those problems.
Until then, probably not a great idea to send an influx of questioners there. And in any case, probably best to doublecheck with that community that they'd be welcoming of the traffic first.
The link in 'Ask us a question' in 0.92 goes to the inkscape.org website, and can be redirected any time. The link in previous versions is hardcoded to go to launchpad. There is no option to set a different URL or write a note on launchpad (the features were intended to be there, but they aren't fully implemented, i.e. they just don't work).
That's good to know, I was wondering if that was the case.
Think it would be worth doing point releases for 0.48 and 0.91 to change the link in preparation?
Bryce
On Thu, Mar 02, 2017 at 02:07:08AM +0100, maren wrote:
Until then, probably not a great idea to send an influx of questioners there. And in any case, probably best to doublecheck with that community that they'd be welcoming of the traffic first.
- I agree, asking is a must. But in terms of traffic, it's negligible.
There are between 0 and 5(-8) questions a day. Usually, it's 1-3. I don't expect anything like an influx, more a trickling ;-)
Ah ok, didn't realize it was so little. Well that simplifies the issue considerably.
(I imagine that some people who would otherwise ask, are deterred by the overcomplicated registration process via Ubuntu One. So changing that could potentially give us more 'askers'.)
Think it would be worth doing point releases for 0.48 and 0.91 to change the link in preparation?
- I can't imagine why someone using 0.48.x would want to update their
version just to get a new link.
If someone is using such an old version, I think it's either because they don't know that a newer one exists (and then - how would they know that a new point release exists?), or because they're long-time users, who can't update because of a bug that would impact their workflow. Those users probably already know where they can find help. Or they're stuck with an old version because their distro doesn't update the Inkscape version (I don't know if they would update for this, that's more your area of expertise - if they would, then this could be a reason for updating 0.91 for affected distros).
So, no, with my current knowledge, I personally don't think it would be worth making extra releases.
Ah, very good points. Alright, I'll not worry about that then.
Thanks, Bryce
Regards, Maren
Am 01.03.2017 um 04:24 schrieb Bryce Harrington:
On Wed, Mar 01, 2017 at 12:12:24AM +0100, Maren Hachmann wrote:
Am 28.02.2017 um 21:37 schrieb Marc Jeanmougin:
Anyway, to answer you, for the functionalities, ideally we'd need: -> a search in already existing questions before asking one -> automatic email updates for a group of people answering questions, for any activity on questions; and email updates to the people asking questions -> status of questions (open/answered/solved/invalid)
- Additionally, I'd like to have an option to upload files
directly, and to mark as 'needs information'.
Yeah that seems like a critically important feature.
The forum at inkscapeforum.com comes with all the options Marc pointed out (aside from the marking, which I haven't missed on the forum yet), plus a whole lot of wonderful community members who are becoming better and better at explaining tricky stuff to users, and most of whom are real experts at some area or other.
Only it's not officially 'ours', aside from the domain name, suffers from spam issues itself (not visible to normal users like me, though) and developer attendance for the really tricky questions is a rare event.
Well, if anyone ever manages to get a dump of the forum data for us, we can look into addressing those problems.
Until then, probably not a great idea to send an influx of questioners there. And in any case, probably best to doublecheck with that community that they'd be welcoming of the traffic first.
The link in 'Ask us a question' in 0.92 goes to the inkscape.org website, and can be redirected any time. The link in previous versions is hardcoded to go to launchpad. There is no option to set a different URL or write a note on launchpad (the features were intended to be there, but they aren't fully implemented, i.e. they just don't work).
That's good to know, I was wondering if that was the case.
Think it would be worth doing point releases for 0.48 and 0.91 to change the link in preparation?
Bryce
Hi Everyone, Sorry to be late to this discussion. I had a bad case of the flu. I agree with pointing Answers questions to the forum. And it was my understanding that was the plan, which would be a year or so away from happening. At least that's the last I heard. (I mean the part where the Ask a Question item in the Help menu can redirect to the forum.) Or....well actually, I think it was going to be sort of a gradual change in some ways, that might be finished within a year or so. Something like that. But I don't think it should be done until we have the new forum up and running. I think we probably need a new powwow on the forum issue. I mean with the board, developers, and any of the original committee who might still be interested. My patience is growing thin, and I really want to get it moving. A decision needs to be made about the hosting situation, so we can take some real action on it. Getting a dump from IF is meaningless unless we have a server ready to accept it. Of course we could use a preliminary dump, just so we can make a test installation, to make sure we know how to do it. But it would be better to practice on the new server, and have only a couple of weeks expire between preliminary dump and final dump. (Mostly I'm thinking that way, because of the inavailability of the owner/admin to give us the dumps.) (And migrating to the new server will just be the first step. We will still need to either convert InkscapeForum to SMF or Inkscape Community to phpBB. Not to mention hopefully bringing Inkscape Cutting Design into the fold too.) There's just SOOooo very much work to do, and almost nothing can start until we have the server.
All best, brynn
-----Original Message----- From: Bryce Harrington Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2017 8:24 PM To: Maren Hachmann Cc: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Spam on answers?
On Wed, Mar 01, 2017 at 12:12:24AM +0100, Maren Hachmann wrote:
Am 28.02.2017 um 21:37 schrieb Marc Jeanmougin:
Anyway, to answer you, for the functionalities, ideally we'd need: -> a search in already existing questions before asking one -> automatic email updates for a group of people answering questions, for any activity on questions; and email updates to the people asking questions -> status of questions (open/answered/solved/invalid)
- Additionally, I'd like to have an option to upload files directly, and
to mark as 'needs information'.
Yeah that seems like a critically important feature.
The forum at inkscapeforum.com comes with all the options Marc pointed out (aside from the marking, which I haven't missed on the forum yet), plus a whole lot of wonderful community members who are becoming better and better at explaining tricky stuff to users, and most of whom are real experts at some area or other.
Only it's not officially 'ours', aside from the domain name, suffers from spam issues itself (not visible to normal users like me, though) and developer attendance for the really tricky questions is a rare event.
Well, if anyone ever manages to get a dump of the forum data for us, we can look into addressing those problems.
Until then, probably not a great idea to send an influx of questioners there. And in any case, probably best to doublecheck with that community that they'd be welcoming of the traffic first.
The link in 'Ask us a question' in 0.92 goes to the inkscape.org website, and can be redirected any time. The link in previous versions is hardcoded to go to launchpad. There is no option to set a different URL or write a note on launchpad (the features were intended to be there, but they aren't fully implemented, i.e. they just don't work).
That's good to know, I was wondering if that was the case.
Think it would be worth doing point releases for 0.48 and 0.91 to change the link in preparation?
Bryce
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No, unfortunately not.
Launchpad staff is working hard on removing spam, and they also have automated systems in place, but unfortunately, they are insufficient when the spammers decide to flood launchpad. One can report spam that hasn't been detected by creating a question in their own answers section at https://answers.launchpad.net/launchpad - but usually, the spam will be removed no matter if it's reported or not. Sometimes, they also accidentally clean out valid questions (happened today), because it's so much.
There are a couple of long-standing launchpad bug reports about not allowing arbitrary users to create FAQ items, mark questions as invalid, or edit question texts - but as far as I can see, they are not being worked on as a priority.
I'm looking forward to the day when we can redirect the 'Ask Us a Question' link in the Inkscape help menu to a forum.
The two useful things I can see about the answers section are that from time to time, a developer looks at questions, and that one can link to a bug report. The rest is spam and inconvenience (no file upload), in my view.
Maren
Am 28.02.2017 um 20:37 schrieb Windell H. Oskay:
Can anything be done about the torrent of spam on the Inkscape answers page? (https://answers.launchpad.net/inkscape)
Windell H. Oskay, Ph.D. Co-Founder and Chief Scientist Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories 175 San Lazaro Ave, STE 150 Sunnyvale CA 94086 http://www.evilmadscientist.com/
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participants (7)
-
Bryce Harrington -
brynn -
Marc Jeanmougin -
maren -
Maren Hachmann -
Martin Owens -
Windell H. Oskay