sllort's Journal: The hazards of weblog research (don't try this at home)

If you're thinking of starting a career as a crusader for Moderation reform, you should probably be aware of what lies in wait:

* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @08:34PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @08:35PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @08:35PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @08:35PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @08:35PM
    Moderation of "1700 Post Commemorative!" Friday February 22, @09:04PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @10:38PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @10:38PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @10:38PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @10:38PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @10:39PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @11:48PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @11:48PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @11:48PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @11:49PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Friday February 22, @11:49PM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Saturday February 23, @12:42AM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Saturday February 23, @12:42AM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Saturday February 23, @12:42AM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Saturday February 23, @12:42AM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Saturday February 23, @12:42AM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Saturday February 23, @01:15AM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Saturday February 23, @01:15AM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Saturday February 23, @01:15AM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Saturday February 23, @01:16AM
* Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards" Saturday February 23, @01:16AM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:17PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:17PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:17PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:18PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:18PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:29PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:30PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:30PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:30PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:30PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:42PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:43PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:43PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:43PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @10:43PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @11:00PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @11:01PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @11:01PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @11:01PM
* Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?" Sunday February 24, @11:01PM

Every single one of those moderations was, as you may guess, -1 Offtopic. Editor Mass Moderation? You tell me. Notice that each set of Moderations is in blocks of 5 by datestamp? This means 1 of 2 things to me: either Editors are now rate limited as to how fast they can use Moderation points, or there's a user out there with a LOT of Moderator accounts. This account has -7 karma (don't worry, I can still post and I have lots of other accounts, I'll be fine).

Now here's a question: if this was an Editor, realize that they were staying up late on a Sunday night to moderate one user out of 250,000 down. If you've always wondered what the folks at Slashteam waste their time on instead of writing decent weblog code, you may now be one step closer to an answer. The possibility exists that modstorming a single user for hours on end is more important to someone that doing their job. Scary, huh?

Again; please don't worry about my karma. This account is just a research tool now; I use it to discover how the system works for the benefit of everyone reading. It looks like we need a much more accurate grasp of when Archival occurs in order to make Modbombing Disable an effective tool. The latter set of comments was posted late on a Sunday exactly on the Archive horizon (by hand of course; never break the rules and use a script). Once I've kwhored this account back to normal levels, I'll write an addendum to my HOWTO. For now, I'd stay away from the technique, as even late on a Sunday night, someone's got way too much time on their hands. (-;

Even if they do have a sense of humor.

-s.

Update 2/25: The good news is, my comments went into archive later that night, so my account is now entirely immune to retroactive user moderation! Proof that the Modbombing Disable technique is viable and effective. The technique is probably sufficient as-is for accounts that are less closely watched than mine, but I still plan to upgrade the process to cut the Archival Event Horizon much, much closer. Hope this helps!

``Sense of humor''

[jcast]

If they had a sense of humor, they'd have modded your ``Can I disable modbombing'' post +5 funny.

Huh?

[flikx]

• There's no rate limit to moderation.. users or admins. Users can only use up 5 points at a time, in discussions they have not participated in.. while editors have unlimited points. [unless the slashsite is configured not to allow this.]
• How can all of the moderations be -1 offtopic? Once your comment hits -1, then it cannot be moderated down at all until someone moderates it up. This would mean that you posted multiple comments with the same subject. (See below).
• Maybe I'm wrong, and moderation will still show up in the message queue, even if an error is produced. You seem to have crapflooded your comment list into oblivion.
• Further examination shows that you posted a lengthy series of crapfloods; each post was moderated down -1 offtopic twice.. and was most likely done by an admin. This could have been a scripted modbomb, or it was done at the database level. I'm more to opt for scripted.

For those of you looking for a link [olsentwins.com]: here's the thread in question [slashdot.org]. I put $1 on the assertion that michael the nazi modbombed this one.

Re:Huh?

[flikx]

Rate limitations

Oh, okay. I never caught that particular statement by taco. Such an informal rule is a good start though. As an admin, I usually tell my authors to only moderate as they would 'as a normal user'. Meaning that authors should admin only in discussions they don't post in, and act like they only have 5 points every few days or so. It's not too easy to enforce, but it usually helps keep modbombing [or even comment deletion] in check.

all moderations: -1 offtopic

Okay, that confusion is my fault. In your journal, you didn't quite infer the fact that those were multiple comments. It became obvious with a little bit of digging around, but I should have changed my earlier statement to reflect that.

Error production

If someone tries to moderate down a comment already scored at -1, an error would be produced. I was wondering if a scripted modbomb attempt was set loose on a single comment; wherein an author was under the impression that this was another PoD.. a good way to combat that with minimal attention is to unleash a 3 line perl program which simply moderates a chosen comment down at a specific interval over a course of time. This was a fairly reasonable assumption.

scripted

Considering the rigid nature of the moderation, I'm more to opt for scripted modbombing. It would be trivial to write such a program; especially if one was familiar with slashcode.

5 comments / 3 hours

Once again, I'd say that this points to scripting. Any smart coder would build some sort of rate limiting into this function. What was previously handled with a simple UPDATE comments SET score='-1' WHERE uid='xxx' (paraphrased) is now handled with some slick slashdot-only function built aside admin.pl. Slashdot has been ripe with such hacks for ages .. just like the rumored bitchslap.pl which came out a year ago.

Re:Huh?

[flikx]

Hm.. disabling modbombing. Clearing your visable user history wouldn't be too effective.. since I'm sure that threads are bombed by catching them in the stories. Most likely, a certain type of posting behavior is flagged and set aside. Rapid multiple posting is brought to the attention of the authors.

There's no way to speed up the archiving of a story or journal entry, and since slashcode now keeps everything in the database [as opposed to writing everything 0+ to .shtml files], comment behavior right before archiving can still be flagged. At least comments cannot be moderated once archived; but they can still be manipulated at the database level.. which the script in question probably does already.

---

Now for a legit way to defeat this script.. I'd say the best bet is to create a diversion of some sort. If you make enough noise elsewhere with a different account, you may be able to slip something small under the radar. Do some experiments to figure out the nature of the scrip [if it actually exists]; figure out how to make it bite, and then troll it good. A little social engineering can go a long way to draw the fire of any authors involved in the modbombing.

Try posting comment floods in 'hidden' sids [I.E. make a couple new discussions]. Theoretically, comments will be left alone if they're out of the main stories. It may be pointless, but you could post your messages in hidden sids and journals.. then mass link in the discussion boards. If you devise a way to post intersperced throughout the discussions, plus from multiple accounts/IPs, you would force everything to be moderated down by hand. If you only have a couple posts under your primary account, the most you could get hit is for 2-3 points (per comment at least).

What exactly are the goals of this project? What sort of comments would you wish to slip past this junk? I can't think of a good way to defeat this problem offhand, but there's always a way.

My guess

[sulli]

If I were an Editor, I would come up with a tiny bit of javascript that, with one click, selects "-1 Offtopic" for all comments on the screen. Kind of like the "Select All" script on yahoo mail. This would be used for fp's and the like, and wouldn't be added to slashcode. Probably the 5 limit is because Editors are Users and Users can only mod 5 comments at once.

don't use the other accounts too often

[gmhowell]

I have this account in my friend/foe list (guess which one?:) and if you post under other ID's, I may not see the journal entries.

Heck, if I had any mod points, I'd risk M2 karma to go bump you back up a bit (okay, so I would rank you 'underrated' so as to protect my precious karma:)

Re:don't use the other accounts too often

[flikx]

Okay, time for some tinfoil hat wearing ultra paranoia. No offense to anyone present, but I don't think most of you are familiar with slashcode from an admin's point of view.

So here goes: in slashcode 2.2.x, every comment has a neat little bit of info in the titlebar area. It's obviously only seen by admins. Contained in said area are two hashes, one called IPID, and the other SubnetID. Slashcode tracks every user, and lets you know which accounts use which IPs/Subnets and vice versa.

So account hopping is depreciated on slashdot. You might as well stick with the same account. Because as long as you keep the same IP/ISP/netblock/etc.. a scorned slashdot editor can follow you to the ends of the Earth. Muwahahaha.

Screenshot can be had here [xmission.com]. No database experience needed anymore to keep an tight iron-fisted grip of terror on your readership.

Re:don't use the other accounts too often

[gmhowell]

If truly willing, and on a dialup, it's fairly trivial to defeat this.

But it is a pain in the ass.

What do you expect?

[GSV NegotiableEthics]

Looking at your comments list, I see that you posted loads of literal gibberish and, of course, it got modded down. Why do you find this surprising? On most other systems you would have lost your account long, long ago. I'm just amazed to see that you have the temerity whine about this. You got what you deserved, and I'm very happy to see that the system works very well.