@steemflagrewards I am not sure where to post this, but the user @ joeyarnoldvn (I have removed the tag so they do not see this post) has been gaining a lot of attention from the community for spamming, but I wanted to talk about some serious issues here that probably have not been brought up yet due to their complexity.
This particular user has just informed me that they are autistic, and after finding their YouTube channel I have confirmed this to be the case. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNx_jlVZqsHhQ4OABNhgcWg
Some of our moderators have been saying some nasty things to this poor guy, not realizing he has autism, and it is creating a problem we never really expected to run across.
This user gives out rapid-fire compliments to every profile he comes across (occasionally without reading the full post) and often saying the same compliments over and over again which he has been informed is unacceptable by steemit spam decection, however in this particular case we obviously need to be careful not to flag his posts that AREN'T spam, because in this specific case, this user is not intentionally abusing the system but is unknowingly, unintentionally abusing the system (and even then it becomes a grey area of what is defined as "abuse" because can this guy truly be abusing the system when he is unaware of the technical reasons why his comments are flagged? Does his content even count as spam? It's a really good question because he may post identical comments on numerous profiles, but he also follows up on every single person who responds, he never says anything mean, and he never says "hey go look at my profile" or anything spammy like that, he just provides compliments...so from a coding perspective, I have no clue how you would design a bot that could differentiate between this user's posts which are non-malicious, and actual spam)
So I don't want to see him harassed any further or banned or cause him too much grief. I attempted to explain why copy-pasting comments or saying the same comment over and over is not allowed on steemit but of course he is having difficulty understanding, and to be honest, at this point even I am having difficulty understanding how we should proceed. He should probably just be allowed to do what he wants on the platform unhindered, and my vote is that we should just consider him the steemit greeter and first friend of all new users, because that's exactly what he is, a friend to everyone.
Let this be our case study for the unknown variables that crop up when developing automated spam-punishing systems and make sure we don't accidentally harm well-meaning users, but still remove their spam posts while leaving the non-spam posts.
This will require community involvement, which will require people actually being rewarded for spending the time to investigate this stuff. I mean I just spent like 4 hours analyzing this guy's behaviour and trying to communicate with him before he revealed to me he was autistic and I was able to finally find his youtube account by searching "Original Oatmeal Joe"
Yet my account is now diminished due to how many flagged posts I made. This is not ideal.
Thanks for reading, please upvote for the effort I put into this, and keep an eye out for @ joeyarnoldvn (again, tag removed to protect him) as well as others like him.
Let other moderators know it is unacceptable to use harsh or derogatory language while flagging users for spam, because we might just hurt an innocent person like this :-(
you HAVE to be fucking kidding me
Bravo to you for taking the time to investigate this situation. It's probably more rare then not but yes sometimes it will require taking a closer look.
I hear you and I feel the same.
Also, oatmeal joey already has to deal with bernie's abusereports, I think that's tough enough!
Thanks for being outspoken about this issue @anotherhero!
the name that cannot be uttered, well unless if you got utters to milk like Disney with Star Wars
Duly noted. We will encourage correction in the spirit of gentleness and compassion and be mindful of mitigating circumstances such as this.
Is saying hello to people really spam? Keep in mind that it is not like you say a unique collection of random words to each and every person you talk to in real life, let alone the Internet. Solomon said that aint nothing new under the sun or the sea except oatmeal. You know, King Solomon? So, how often have you you said hello or how are you to different people? Is that spam or is simple unintentional repetition? How often do you eat the meal in your life? Is that spam? How often does Disney spam the Star Wars story or other stories?
I was put on a list again for saying hi too often. Nope, you cant say hellow. No way Jose.