Moderation Awaiting Approval...
MrSciGuy
Posts: 975 ✭✭✭✭✭
What’s going on with images posted on this forum lately? First they get all stretched and distorted. Now on top of that nearly every single post containing an image is in moderation awaiting approval. @hpwulola Do you know if settings were changed recently or updates made? It’s becoming pretty frustrating.
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Hey there! Yes, we were asked by the legal team to change a few settings when it comes to moderating photos to continue to make sure the forum is a safe and family-friendly site. We have a mod team that is active in pushing through photos that go into moderation. However, as this is all new, I see from your feedback that the delay has been noticed. We will work on improving the lead time here. Thanks for your patience and understanding! And for flagging these concerns to me, it is appreciated. 💛
Thanks so much @hpwulola! Yeah it just seems that the moderation (at least in my experience) has been on every image and has taken a very long time (at least a day).
It is odd that is happening to nearly every image, we are bringing this up to the folks who run the forum! Hopefully they can provide some insight and solutions.
Understandable that the lawyers want to CYA for images. Although I feel like for the most part, as a whole, the regular posters try to keep it family friendly and only slightly push the boundaries every now and again 😅. @hpwulola Would it be possible for you guys, once you've established with your moderators, post the rules/limitations on images for the rest of us so we aren't hung up as long in moderation?
@MrSciGuy Thanks for bringing this up in its own post! I was starting to wonder just what I had done to get put in time out so often! 😁
screenshots of giftbox “postcards” should automatically be excluded from approval-bot-heck ... after all, they are from HPWU’s own POIs.
likewise, screenshots of prestiged/completed registry pages and screenshots of foundable encounters/rewards likewise should automatically be excluded from approval-bot-heck ... after all, they ate from HPWU’s own graphics.
@kiheikid We just gave that exact feedback to these folks!
@MrSciGuy We are using an API to evaluate the photos posted on here to detect anything potentially inappropriate. However, there must be an error that is causing it to be too strict. Team will be looking into it! Until a fix is discovered, I've told everyone to be quick as possible when responding and approving the moderation queue. Thanks for your patience everyone!
Thanks so much for your help and clarification @hpwulola!
@hpwulola - 👍🏼
Image Recognition is hard.
That's what I was thinking, @Lucoire. Sure, go ahead and share the feedback with the team, but there's probably no way to automate that as there wouldn't be any consistent or reliable metadata they could use to identify the "good" images. I think it's all or nothing in this instance. Manually approve all the images or don't. It's a pain, but I can definitely see it from the liability perspective. All it takes is one very disturbing image to ruin it for everyone.
The complaints from the peanut gallery will immediately shift from Why is moderation so strict? to Why didn't you prevent this? and they'd be looking at a serious legal challenge.
Idk, I feel like if you’ve been around here for a while, posted a ton, leveled up, posted images with no issues, you should meet criteria for skipping the “awaiting approval.” It’s getting very annoying. I’ve never posted any inappropriate images (I don’t think I can think of anyone who has actually), yet I’m still getting kicked to approval land all the time. The worst part is it takes sometimes a full 24 hours or more before it shows up. Then when your image finally shows up, 6 people have commented before yours, and it doesn’t even fit or make sense anymore.
Can we have a criteria for being approval-exempt?
Seriously.... I posted a comment earlier with two pics. Gone for approval... who knows when it will post.
@MrSciGuy Well, having lots of stars says nothing about the quality of your posts or the helpfulness/benevolcence of your activity.
Trust is to be earned through patience and continuity.
But is "being allowed to skip the approval process" really a question of trust? And can you measure trust in any form in the forum?
As a child I've been taught that it's futile trying to find technological solutions for social problems. This wisdom feels kinda appropriate in this case.
The approval process is there for a reason. @HPWULola has explained that this forum is supposed to be:
(I hope I haven't forgotten any criteria)
But even with these few rules, there've been more than enough edge-cases of images not being approved, posts edited/redacted (due to its family-unfriendly nature) or even threads closed (due to heated/unconstructive/stubborn arguments) to make absolutely clear that this review-process is required. I know I've caused threads to be shut down, I know I've gone off-topic. I don't think I've been family-unfriendly but I may be wrong about that.
So TL;DR: It is better this way.
@Lucoire I understand that it’s a family-friendly forum. I’m not saying things haven’t gotten heated in certain people’s back and forth discussions, usually getting off-topic. All I said was I personally hadn’t seen anyone posting inappropriate images.
Additionally, there’s a report button for a reason.
Maybe asking about being “approval-exempt” is too much. But is it too much to ask to speed up the approval process? I mean honestly, think about how many images get posted on here in an hour. It’s not a massive site with thousands of images an hour. It’s maybe a few dozen? All I’m saying is it’s frustrating that it takes entirely too long to approve most things.
Not to mention, if the approval process is there due to the “family friendly” nature of the forum, why isn’t it applied equally to every single image posted? Why does it only seem to randomly happen? If being concerned with inappropriate images being posted is their goal, certainly they should force every single one into approval.
Finally, one could just as easily use text (and emojis for that matter) to write something inappropriate, wiggling their way carefully around the censoring technology. Why exactly are images any different?
@MrSciGuy "A picture is worth a thousand words"
@Lucoire ... but only after it’s approved.
I totally get the need for it, but it has been annoying for me in this specific scenario:
Still, I get why they have to do it, so it’s whatever.