TrollTing: Difference between revisions

2,533 bytes added ,  15 July 2004
detecting spam is a side effect of understanding and measuring New Troll point of view
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(detecting spam is a side effect of understanding and measuring New Troll point of view)
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There are postings called "spam" pretty all over in wikilandia. I tried to interlink some wikispam discussions and proposed a SpamBox/WikiSpamBusters solution. I'd be interested to hear what you think of it. http://wiki.s23.org/wiki.pl?WikiSpam. More generally your view on spam in the wiki process interests me. -- [[User:MattisManzel|MattisManzel]] 20:54, 15 Jul 2004 (EEST)
There are postings called "spam" pretty all over in wikilandia. I tried to interlink some wikispam discussions and proposed a SpamBox/WikiSpamBusters solution. I'd be interested to hear what you think of it. http://wiki.s23.org/wiki.pl?WikiSpam. More generally your view on spam in the wiki process interests me. -- [[User:MattisManzel|MattisManzel]] 20:54, 15 Jul 2004 (EEST)
::::So-called "[[spam]]" is a symptom of having no clear process to deal with the [[funded troll]].  Most [[wiki spam]] is actually subtle and consists of inappropriate references to commercial products or services including raising questions or issues about them that put one type of service in a competitive advantage to another. 
:::::''side note'' - Obviously [[Consumerium buying signal]] is doing this honestly and openly.  But much [[Wikimedia corruption]] consists of an over-tolerance for specific corporate interests, e.g. [[Bomis]], that advance their own interests over the [[GFDL corpus]] as a whole by sponsoring [[sysop vandalism]].
::::Tolerating unlimited [funded troll]]s is to permit the [[systemic bias]] of "whoever has money to pay them" into the [[community point of view]].  But to react by censoring them has of course the opposite effect to that intended: if I wish to promote [[Coca-Cola]] then I simply insert spam for [[Pepsi]] and the reactive stupidity of the [[sysop power structure]] will end up favouring my actual sponsor.  So the right reaction is one process that doesn't care who is funded and who is not, and simply determines that:
:::::"Hey, you are not representative of the [[New Troll point of view]], the statistical evidence and sequence of events is such that the [[balance of probabilities]] favours the theory of you being paid to be here, not having shown up due to some natural or normal expansion of our user base to include such as yourself."  Is this easy to figure out?  No.  But given a [[faction]] system is possible.  If in a given month you get 20 new "Reds" and 10 new "Blues", you might observe that one blue defends commercial products very specifically, two reds attack them.  So if in one month four of the ten Blues are strongly promoting commercial products but only two of the Reds are strongly defaming them, this is a big shift, and there are tests you can apply to determine if this skew is the result of some deliberate attempt to influence or alter the [[neutral point of view]].
:::::But to get to that, you must acknowledge that there is a [[New Troll point of view]] and that changes in the flow of attention into the wiki must change.
:::::In this model, "spam" is simply statistically infrequent linkage or approval of some commercial product, perhaps as quantified by a [[URI]].
:::::There are other useful tests like "is the URI linked to, presently for sale?"  If so then it's likely someone trying to boost up the [[page view]]s.
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