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Started by 20160805, April 24, 2018, 07:53:24 PM

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20160805

^ If I may ask, what would be an example of overly generic answers to that question (it's how you stumbled upon AARoads, right?), and what would be a good answer?  I'm just curious.
Left for 5 months Oct 2018-Mar 2019 due to arguing in the DST thread.
Tried coming back Mar 2019.
Left again Jul 2019 due to more arguing.


formulanone

#51
Quote from: Scott5114 on April 26, 2018, 05:29:44 AM
Quote from: formulanone on April 25, 2018, 03:25:51 PM
I would imagine the staff bans spambots / questionable users with some regularity, to the point where there's no sense in making a big deal out it. Humph...maybe it's quite rare.

The most suspicious would be first-time posters.

Generally, they don't even get so far as to get a ban. We screen users at time of account creation in two ways. Firstly, the account creation form asks a question that they user is free to answer however they wish. One of the moderators reads the response to this question and, if it is overly generic or incoherent, can flag the account as suspicious or never enable it. We also check email addresses and IP addresses against lists of known spammers. This catches the vast majority of spamming attempts, especially automated ones.

Ah, that makes sense. Different forum software handles the user count differently than the next, and so you all vet the incoming requests before getting counted.

Alps

Quote from: 20160805 on April 26, 2018, 06:51:44 AM
^ If I may ask, what would be an example of overly generic answers to that question (it's how you stumbled upon AARoads, right?), and what would be a good answer?  I'm just curious.
"Interest"
"Discussion" (frequently misspelled)
"Want to exchange information"

jeffandnicole

Quote from: 20160805 on April 26, 2018, 06:51:44 AM
^ If I may ask, what would be an example of overly generic answers to that question (it's how you stumbled upon AARoads, right?), and what would be a good answer?  I'm just curious.

"Goats"

US71

Quote from: 20160805 on April 26, 2018, 06:51:44 AM
^ If I may ask, what would be an example of overly generic answers to that question (it's how you stumbled upon AARoads, right?), and what would be a good answer?  I'm just curious.

In the immortal words of Georgia Road Geek: ROADS!

Exchanging ideas, sharing finds, finding common interest.

I was on MTR before AA Roads, but I was an early member here. But generally the same reasoning: sharing knowledge, ideas,  etc. And there's less noise over here, in general.
Like Alice I Try To Believe Three Impossible Things Before Breakfast

Max Rockatansky

Quote from: jeffandnicole on April 26, 2018, 08:49:46 AM
Quote from: 20160805 on April 26, 2018, 06:51:44 AM
^ If I may ask, what would be an example of overly generic answers to that question (it's how you stumbled upon AARoads, right?), and what would be a good answer?  I'm just curious.

"Goats"

Because of the shield gallery.  I used the pictures to cross-reference highway shields I was buying were the legit deal because most of them had some sort of information Jake put up.

hbelkins

#56
Quote from: Scott5114 on April 26, 2018, 05:29:44 AM

We also check email addresses and IP addresses against lists of known spammers. This catches the vast majority of spamming attempts, especially automated ones.

This brings up an interesting side discussion that has affected my job recently. Occasionally, someone will fall victim to a phishing attempt, despite numerous warnings from our IT people not to do so. This results in compromised email accounts from the ky.gov domain, which get used to send out spam. Occasionally this will cause the ky.gov domain to go on one of Spamcop's lists. That limits our ability to communicate with the outside world. In my case, at least two newspapers on my press release email list use email providers that subscribe to Spamcop's services. My press releases to those outlets will bounce, and it takes the equivalent of moving mountains by the Commonwealth's Office of Information Technology to get off those lists.

And inevitably, someone else will get phished and the cycle starts all over again.

If I may ask, which spam lists do you use, and have you ever had a situation where a legitimate IP address range or email domain got flagged as spam?


Government would be tolerable if not for politicians and bureaucrats.

J N Winkler

Quote from: Scott5114 on April 26, 2018, 05:29:44 AMI'd be legitimately interested in knowing what some of the potential applications (from a user standpoint) are. I'll be honest–I can't think of any myself. They could be useful for estimating projected traffic flows and thus server resource usage, but I don't see why anyone other than Alex would need that.

It is easier to give a full overview of the potential applications with access to the actual page itself rather than memories of what it displays.  I recollect, however, that it shows post counts for the top posters, busiest times broken down by month/day of week/time of day with "all-time" records, busiest threads, busiest boards, etc.  This information can be put together with other data and some additional analysis to answer questions such as the following:

*  What are the top posters' mean and median daily post counts?  This information is useful for setting crapflooding limits.

*  What are the mean and median lengths of posts generated by a top poster and how does this compare to the mean and median post lengths for all forum users?  Is there a pattern in how post length changes over the course of a user's association with the forum?

*  In terms of the regional boards, how closely does post volume track the populations of the states (or parts of states) that form the region for each board?  (In the case of states split across multiple regions, such as Texas, there would be an element of arbitrariness in assigning counties to regions, but this could be finessed by looking at which regional board contains all or at least a majority of the discussion pertaining to a major metropolitan area in that state.)  This can then be used to answer questions such as whether there is any variation between regions in likelihood of having AARoads-active posters, whether variation found corresponds to availability of outdoor recreation opportunities (climate can be used as a proxy for this), etc.

This is really just the tip of the iceberg in terms of what is possible with statistical analysis.  Very little of it has to do with simple-minded ego gratification of the penis-length-measuring kind, or has the propensity to encourage crapflooding.  I appreciate that few if any forum regulars reported (or, probably, undertook) this kind of analysis in the ten years the forum statistics page was generally viewable, but on the other hand, to take it away as the result of objectionable use by one individual makes it much more difficult for others to start research of this kind.  It also forces us to forgo some of the potential benefits, such as better marketing of the forum (through avenues such as Facebook) to regions that are currently less well served in terms of road-related discussion.

Quote from: Scott5114 on April 26, 2018, 05:29:44 AMThere may have been other ways of resolving the situation, but it was seen as a simple solution with little of real value being lost to the majority of the members. Indeed, the sun rose the next day.

This is true.  However, since the sun is a flaming ball of gas about 93 million miles away from the Earth, it is guaranteed to rise even after a nuclear war.

I wonder if the decision to hide the statistics page would have been made if forum management had revolving membership, which one would ordinarily expect to raise the odds of someone aware of the potential research applications being involved in the decision.
"It is necessary to spend a hundred lire now to save a thousand lire later."--Piero Puricelli, explaining the need for a first-class road system to Benito Mussolini

Alps

Quote from: hbelkins on April 26, 2018, 10:45:53 AM
Quote from: Scott5114 on April 26, 2018, 05:29:44 AM

We also check email addresses and IP addresses against lists of known spammers. This catches the vast majority of spamming attempts, especially automated ones.

This brings up an interesting side discussion that has affected my job recently. Occasionally, someone will fall victim to a phishing attempt, despite numerous warnings from our IT people not to do so. This results in compromised email accounts from the ky.gov domain, which get used to send out spam. Occasionally this will cause the ky.gov domain to go on one of Spamcop's lists. That limits our ability to communicate with the outside world. In my case, at least two newspapers on my press release email list use email providers that subscribe to Spamcop's services. My press releases to those outlets will bounce, and it takes the equivalent of moving mountains by the Commonwealth's Office of Information Technology to get off those lists.

And inevitably, someone else will get phished and the cycle starts all over again.

If I may ask, which spam lists do you use, and have you ever had a situation where a legitimate IP address range or email domain got flagged as spam?
I think it's in the forum's interest not to publicly disclose that.

Scott5114

J.N. Winkler–you raise very good points, however, most of the applications you describe benefit the forum management (either through more effective automated moderation or through marketing) and would not necessarily be of interest to rank-and-file membership. Forum management still has access to the stats page. In any case, I would assume that Alex has a more detailed facility that provides much better data in the form of server-level statistics, though I have not gotten confirmation from him for this.

I am not aware that the AARoads forum itself has had any sort of active marketing done on its behalf; my understanding is that the "marketing strategy", so much as there is one, is search engine optimization through good content. Any sort of active marketing would be done by Alex alone, as it would inevitably cost money. I am not sure that there would be a whole lot of financial ROI for such a thing–I don't think banner ads pay well enough to justify the cost of advertising to bring in new users.

H.B. Elkins–While we could be tripped up by any number of edge cases, in all situations, accounts are vetted by hand, so an appearance on a spam list does not necessarily guarantee that an account would be rejected. In the specific case you cite, a moderator would almost certainly recognize the ky.gov domain as an unlikely source of spam, and regard its inclusion on the list as an error.
uncontrollable freak sardine salad chef

hbelkins

Quote from: Scott5114 on April 26, 2018, 03:45:38 PM
I am not aware that the AARoads forum itself has had any sort of active marketing done on its behalf; my understanding is that the "marketing strategy", so much as there is one, is search engine optimization through good content. Any sort of active marketing would be done by Alex alone, as it would inevitably cost money. I am not sure that there would be a whole lot of financial ROI for such a thing–I don't think banner ads pay well enough to justify the cost of advertising to bring in new users.

As a Facebook Page administrator, I will occasionally get a blurb show up in my news feed that I'm being given a $30 credit to promote a post on my Page. Unfortunately, it's not something for which I would like to use that credit to promote, and they never offer to promote for free a post that I would like to promote to get the word out about something.

Example: We recently had an employee recognized for statewide excellence in workers comp incident reporting. I got the "$30 credit" offer on that one. Yet I've never been offered that credit to promote a road closure, which would be in the public interest to have publicized far and wide.


Government would be tolerable if not for politicians and bureaucrats.

webny99

Quote from: Scott5114 on April 26, 2018, 05:29:44 AM
Quote from: webny99 on April 25, 2018, 07:33:41 PM
Perhaps a more fundamental question is why the stats page has been visible by default since the forum's foundation.
...until then, none of the five users with access to it had any reason to consider the implications of the stats page being visible, over the years.

I understand that it was me that gave you a reason to consider the implications. The frustrating part is that I did it unknowingly and my hands are tied - I can't make you un-consider those implications (I can, however, try to make a case for why those implications are overstated/irrelevant, but I have had limited success in doing this).

Quote
Quote from: J N Winkler on April 25, 2018, 02:27:05 PM
I am in favor of the statistics page returning.  Its applications are much wider than comparative penis length measurement, and taking it away is a very heavy-handed way of discouraging filler posts.
I'd be legitimately interested in knowing what some of the potential applications (from a user standpoint) are. I'll be honest–I can't think of any myself.

JN has laid this out fairly well. It isn't really a question of need, it's a question of interest. Nothing on the stats page directly affects our ability to converse, but sometimes, it contains interesting stuff for those of us who are interested in trends (monthly and daily post accumulations, volume of new discussions, highly active times of day, etc.), and data (informative charts about longest threads, top posters, and such). For me personally, transparency is something appreciate and highly value; and transparency is significantly reduced by not having the extra stats visible.

QuoteThere may have been other ways of resolving the situation, but it was seen as a simple solution with little of real value being lost to the majority of the members. Indeed, the sun rose the next day.

While I suppose that is true in general, it seemed like there was a mismatch between the problem and the solution. The two problems were (1) stats threads, and (2) high volumes of low-quality posts. Hiding the page definitely addressed (1) in dramatic fashion, but (2) was the bigger problem, at least IMO. And the fact that the stats page is invisible - that does absolutely nothing to stop anyone from posting 500 fluff posts to get a status bump.

Quote from: DaBigE on April 26, 2018, 01:54:49 AM
The presence (or lack thereof) of the stats doesn't bother me one bit, but I'll offer this suggestion: Bring them back for those who so desperately want them, but make a forum rule banning starting threads based on forum stats. Make breaking the rule a punishable offence. I would think those posts should be easy enough to moderate.

At the time, it was outlined that hiding stats was easier than banning stats discussion. While that may have been true at the time, all it took was a reversal of my excessive stats-posting behavior to change that. Long-term, I highly doubt there will be anything to enforce, or even moderate, regarding stats. With that in mind, it would actually be a win-win to keep the page visible.*

*That goes out the window if people start discussing and exploiting the stats. Then, so the argument goes, the forum loses. But this didn't happen at all until I came along, so there's no reason to think it'll happen again.

QuoteIt is a bit more complex than that, as the rationale for disabling the stats page is both to prevent threads based on statistics as well as preventing posting behavior modification to shape the trends in the statistics, e.g. by making large numbers of low-quality posts.

Honestly, does anyone think I'm guilty of engaging in the bolded behavior? I would feel really bad if so, because I always try to make logical, valuable, and interesting contributions (even though I have overstepped at times). It sounds to me like this is something that was perceived rather than reality. If the mods/admin really thought that fluff posts were an issue with me, I would have liked to have been personally addressed and told to stop posting fluff before a more consequential action was taken.

For me, the two have always been completely separate: My posts are what they are, and the stats are what they are, but I never posted for the sole purpose of influencing the stats. Even the stats threads themselves were not something I posted to influence the stats, just stuff I thought people would be interested in and not stuff they would try to change.

Now, I'm not arguing that other users haven't posted a lot of low-quality, spam, posts. But I am arguing that that is a completely separate issue that was never related to the stats discussion. Posting for a status bump vs. posting to exploit the stats just aren't one and the same. The motives are easily separable... and to my knowledge the latter just wasn't happening.


hbelkins

If an issue is going to be made about transparency, it is my opinion that the biggest single step that could be taken in that regard would be to require forum users to use their real names, or some derivative thereof (such as my user name here.)


Government would be tolerable if not for politicians and bureaucrats.

hotdogPi

Quote from: hbelkins on April 27, 2018, 01:09:23 PM
If an issue is going to be made about transparency, it is my opinion that the biggest single step that could be taken in that regard would be to require forum users to use their real names, or some derivative thereof (such as my user name here.)

Many people (myself included) aren't comfortable giving out their real names (first and last) online.
Clinched, minus I-93 (I'm missing a few miles and my file is incorrect)

Traveled, plus US 13, 44, and 50, and several state routes

I will be in Burlington VT for the eclipse.

adventurernumber1

Quote from: hbelkins on April 27, 2018, 01:09:23 PM
If an issue is going to be made about transparency, it is my opinion that the biggest single step that could be taken in that regard would be to require forum users to use their real names, or some derivative thereof (such as my user name here.)

My username (adventurernumber1) is unrelated to my real name, but I do have my real name outlined in my profile, which can be seen directly below my avatar when browsing through the forum (David Carson). However, what is the benefit of everyone being required to do so (since, as has been noted, not everyone is comfortable with it)?
Now alternating between different highway shields for my avatar - my previous highway shield avatar for the last few years was US 76.

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/127322363@N08/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-vJ3qa8R-cc44Cv6ohio1g

jeffandnicole

Quote from: hbelkins on April 27, 2018, 01:09:23 PM
If an issue is going to be made about transparency, it is my opinion that the biggest single step that could be taken in that regard would be to require forum users to use their real names, or some derivative thereof (such as my user name here.)

I disagree as well (ironically, I know). 

And what's to say someone's using their real name?  John Smith could easily use Kevin Dean as their user name. 

On forums where I need to 'use' my name, I don't, and have a basic alias for that.

Alps


MNHighwayMan


Scott5114

'5114' is the first four digits of the UPC code on a box of Ziploc bags that was sitting next to the computer when I was creating my first-ever forum account in 2003.

No, really.
uncontrollable freak sardine salad chef

Max Rockatansky

#69
I just got done watching Fury Road when I created my account and user name..  So basically my screen name is nothing more grandiose than I enjoy Mad Max movies and happened to be watching one at the time I joined.  Some people didn't get the reference and thought it was my name. 

signalman

Quote from: Max Rockatansky on April 28, 2018, 08:52:55 AM
I just got done watching Fury Road when I created my account and user name..  So basically my screen name is nothing more grandiose than I enjoy Mad Max movies and happened to be watching one at the time I joined.  Some people didn’t get the reference and thought it was my name. 
I had never made that connection, but it makes perfect sense now that you point it out.  I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one whose head it sailed over. 

As for my own name, I found this forum almost 9 years ago while researching Delaware traffic signals.  My name isn't really fitting for me, but I also lack creativity and this was the first user name to pop into my head when I was registering for an account. 

US 89

#71
I was suffering from a severe lack of creativity when I made my account here. Is there a way to change my username to something else?

signalman

Quote from: roadguy2 on April 28, 2018, 10:17:46 AM
I had no creativity when I made my account here, and "roadguy"  was taken already. Is there a way to change my username?
I know that a few others here have changed their user names.  I'm not exactly sure how one goes about doing so though.  I messaged a staff member about changing mine a couple of weeks ago, but that request went unanswered.

webny99

Quote from: signalman on April 28, 2018, 10:23:50 AM
Quote from: roadguy2 on April 28, 2018, 10:17:46 AM
I had no creativity when I made my account here, and "roadguy"  was taken already. Is there a way to change my username?
I know that a few others here have changed their user names.  I'm not exactly sure how one goes about doing so though.  I messaged a staff member about changing mine a couple of weeks ago, but that request went unanswered.

I used to have a completely different account. When I wanted to change my username, I just created a new account. Then, when everyone found out, the admin team merged the two  :)

I wouldn't advocate doing this, as technically it's against forum rules to clone yourself. (I didnt know that at the time, though.) I'm not sure what the SOP is for username changes, but I would've thought, anyways, that PM'ing a mod would be an option. I think I recall something being said in the guidelines to that end, too.

And yeah, I'm one of the ones who thought "Max Rockatansky" was his real name... oops  :meh:




Anyways, back on topic...  :pan:  :pan:  :pan:
I laid some stuff out in reply #63, all of which still stands...

20160805

To change your username, IIRC you'll have to PM an admin and ask from there.

I bet my username is even more uncreative than most of yours: it's simply the date I joined in YYYYMMDD format.  I saw someone else on Reddit use his join date as his username, and I thought it was cool.  On that note, I was also known as 20170919 on another forum called The 110 Club (devoted to supercentenarians), but I got fed up with their jerky admin and so scrambled my password and left.
Left for 5 months Oct 2018-Mar 2019 due to arguing in the DST thread.
Tried coming back Mar 2019.
Left again Jul 2019 due to more arguing.



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