At 2/13/08 07:42 PM, SlashFirestorm wrote:
If any sort of post-judgment whistling is allowed, it needs to work differently than normal whistling---not pulling the flash off of the Portal. Such an option would result in dickheads mass-whistling perfectly legit flashes, as well as uninformed newbies whistling their idea of 'spam'.
A post-judgment whistle could let the flash stay, but would bring the flash up on a list for a Portal Mod to check out. They could approve or delete the flash, and possibly block those whistling something obviously legit (like an illwillpress flash, which would likely be one of the first targets of abusing the feature). Blocking could only apply to post-judgment whistling, and for either a set amount of time or permanently.
Or maybe huge losses (the equivalent of 15 abusive reviews or so) in whistle points would work, before blocking. Just like review mods sometimes tell us down at Rage's that shitty reviewers sometimes get PMs admonishing them for their crappy reviews, and only review bans or review deletions afterwards if they're unresponsive to the mods' warnings. And if this were implemented, it should probably be on a flags-per-votes system, that a submission with a ton of votes over time (say, any award-winner) would take a large number of flags, even from Deity whistles, to even bring it up for deletion.
And why, exactly, would IWP Flashes be the first ones flagged? I'd think something that many people hate would be the first to be mass-flagged, for example KK movies, or even the Hitler/Pokémon flashes. IWP has his haters, but not as many as the KK.
Another anti-abuse feature could be making it possible to whistle a flash post-judgment only during its first week on the Portal, so we don't have morons going through the archives and picking off anything they wish.
Maybe the first month or so... But not something really old.
ANOTHER possible feature would be allowing this as a relatively low-level secret---potential solutions including attaching it to EXP, where it would be unlocked like a normal secret (low enough for legit users to earn in a few months, high enough to make it a pain for people to alt-farm accounts), or attaching it to Whistle level---silver or higher, maybe.
Maybe a secret between the Cake and the Graffiti, or better between the Graffiti and the one after it. But I kind of like the idea of attaching it to whistle levels, only giving users who are able to be trusted with whistles the opportunity to flag after Judgment. Though, if I were Wade, I'd begin it at Bronze rather than Silver, just to make it a bit easier. Not that it's all that hard to go from Bronze to Silver.
I'm not sure if a Portal Mod should be able to pull and delete flashes on their own; that seems like too much power for one person (admin-power, in fact).
Hmm... Maybe deletion on account of flag criteria could only happen after a certain amount of flagging power (say, the equivalent of 50 Normal whistles, or 10 Deities if the ratios that I heard are correct) at 200 votes, that the ratio of total flag power (with Normal-level whistles as 1) to votes would have to be at least 1/4 after Judgment, and increasing as the number of votes increase.
There are LOTS of possibilities in implementing Portal Mods, and lots of ways to prevent it from being abused. I hope to see Portal Mods someday---I think quite a few EGB members would make good judges of what is and is not abuse---in some form or fashion.
Actually, the user who I think would make the best Portal Mod would be BlueHippo... But he's already got two responsibilities (for Reviews and the BBS), plus work, so he might be hard-pressed for time.
Hell, at the very least, they could sort through the queue of normally-flagged flashes, so Wade doesn't have to look through them all himself or purge everything in one blast.
He hasn't had time to do either since the redesign, if what I've been hearing on Wi/Ht is correct. That's why this whole idea of Portal mods came up, and why it's such a good idea.