@pleasestop being so pushy! - Help me soften my tone and revise my message
Detractors
In my 11 days of existence I've seen mostly overwhelming support, but of course there are a few detractors. When I run into this I like to offer a non-confrontational reply speaking to clear points in support of my work like I did in this this comment thread yesterday.
Of course, this is real life and that doesn't always play out as expected.
I was thankful for the mildly supportive reply that came in after that. Until that user wrote another reply.
As the bite from those remarks set in, I noticed another reply to one of my posts.
Usually the message I hear can be distilled down to, "I hate you and what you're doing..." and offers no opportunity to learn and grow. These replies are an incredible example of feedback in action.
Although I appreciate the idea...[it] needs lots of work...I'm not your enemy
I want to publicly thank @omitaylor for taking the time to articulate these thoughts so well and sharing them with me. And also for putting in the effort to help me find a better way and seeing this from the perspective of the platform and not just some personal ego needs and explicitly diffusing the conflict by pointing out that we are not enemies.
Since one comment was a reply on my post, I've thrown a few upvotes from my other accounts to push this comment to the top and if you appreciate this feedback as much as me I encourage you to share a few votes with @omitaylor as well!
Who made you god?
I've been very conscious of this and have gone to great lengths to remain as neutral as possible and I received some humbling validation of that.
All of my comments are automated and I want the community to see my replies as an algorithm, not a human thinking, acting, and judging your content. Because I'm not, it's all in the formula.
I've previously said that sharing the exact details in my approach would give spammers a clear road map to avoid me and as I think about that more that is actually exactly what I want to do. I'm working to completely open up everything about my work--and specifically my algorithm--to get further validation from the community that the algorithm correctly represents the communities interests.
In this light, I hope that any perceived sense of authority is washed away from me personally.
Bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth
I've been commenting about this point a lot and I've previously spoken of the impact on bandwidth from excessive comments and I'm thinking about writing another full post on this since it is a cornerstone in my work.
The basic point here is that excessive comments impact bandwidth, which literally stops smaller accounts from posting, commenting, voting, or interacting with the blockchain at all. While there may be a solution in an upcoming hardfork, that's a non-specific waiting game so I'm looking at the options we have today.
Most people do not support this idea so I was excited to see @omitaylor say it directly.
What's expressed here is a genuine concern: Potential Fees. However, I personally find that fees are a much more sound approach if the alternative is self-appointed cop-bots.
If spam continues at anything like the pace we're seeing I may become an advocate for transaction fees on the Steem blockchain, though I think we're a long way from that.
We'll definitely talk about this more but I don't wanna digress too far today.
My Shortcomings
The replies from @omitaylor speak directly to some great points and I wanted to respond to each of them.
I feel that this bot is spamming and using excessive bandwidth.
So do I. I've mentioned this point several times and I do have a clear plan to significantly reduce the amount of comments I'm making and hope to roll that out shortly. For the time being I'm fighting fire with fire.
Education and transparency might be helpful but representation and reprimanding is not.
I do want to better highlight the education component, though today it is just my post on ways to avoid me so I wonder if I need to go further? Maybe write a new post, but if I did, what should I cover?
I also wonder if there are some curation groups focusing on new accounts that I could partner with to direct these new users to. I'm not sure where to even begin so I could definitely use your help here.
Passive aggression is still aggression.
I am plainly blind to any perceived aggression in my approach, but of course my view is subjective which is why I am turning to the community for that objective view.
A suggested revision of my comment is offered, which I'll touch on shortly, and there was also this.
And how about a friendly avatar.
One key takeaway here is that this is some of the most well considered feedback I've ever received. Frustrations often turn to outrage and violence begets violence so that path rarely unfolds successfully. I hope this serves as an example for effective ways to share honest feedback--even with some frustration mixed in--and still see it warmly received and fully considered. And in this case literally implemented.
And probably the most important comment I could ever quote.
Right now [you are] being a douchebag. :)
I hate douchebags, everyone does, so can you help me stop being one!?
How can you help?
Of course, I'm always looking for general feedback on anything and everything, but specifically I'd like to revise the text in my replies. I see two general goals for the revision.
- Soften my tone
- Better encourage education
On that second point, there may be specific things to figure out and implement, which is not so much just revising text. Even so, I'd like to distill my message into a more palatable form and make it far more warm and fuzzy.
And I want to include the entire revised message suggested by @omitaylor.
You just said "beautiful post" again and have 36 similar comments. You have not been flagged. These types of repetitive comments are the reason why your Steem Sincerity API classification scores are Spam: 52.80% and Bot: 2.30% @pleasestop is a bot here to help you improve your score by reminding you that users may interpret these kinds of comments as spam and flag you. We want your experience here to be better if you'll let us help you! Here you can read about how to improve your commenting which could help you gain more rewards from the community for awesome comments.
I think this is a good start, but I'd like to get all your feedback as well regarding ways I can revise my message further. And if we can shorten it even more that'd be ideal!
And I'm no artist so if anyone is good at avatars I totally agree that mine could be updated!
This is great because I'm going to open the can of worms and start talking about the algorithm soon so this feedback will set us up for that discussion perfectly.
Please share your thoughts and help me revise my approach to stop annoying people and instead focus on reducing spam as well as my own negative qualities.
Your bot is annoying. You are hitting some of my followers. There are just so many ways to say thank you for sharing...most that I have seen add more to their comment than the couple words you are pulling out. I do not have a problem with dealing with spam, but 100% of the people commenting on my post are not spamming.
I frequently have over 300 comments on my posts and after while I use the same words over and over because I am tired and I am being courteous to my followers. I am waiting for your "F"-ing bot to hit me. That happens and I will start flagging your bot. THINK ABOUT IT: you are doing spamming yourself.
Personally when someone comments on my post and it is courteous I do give a damn how many times they have used the phrase (usually there are only a few words) elsewhere.
I cannot understand some people here on steemit that cannot understand that there is a lot of people who have limited grasp of the English language, therefore they may use the same phrase withing their comment, because they have learned that much and use it.
I can mute your flipping bot, but then only I cannot see your crap...my follower(s) still see it.
And if you are not a bot then get a life and find a way to put quality content on Steemit. God forbid you help some newcomers or try and understand the problems people not familiar with English.
SO PLEASE STOP THIS! AND STOP SPAMMING MY BLOG
I have a whitelist that you can use to prevent me from appearing on any of your posts. I'll be revising my message shortly to make this clear, sorry this wasn't in place for you already.
I have done this. I am very tired of all those who think they are helping, and all they do is confuse newer people. If someone is spamming me I know how to mute them, or confront the issue.
I have never flagged anyone but feel it is time to reconsider this, whether a bot or a real user. I have had idiots get on a followers case for supposedly plagiarism. I insisted they provide proof. What finally showed me was the farthest thing from plagiarism that I have seen here. a couple of the same words that are the same as some one else's is not plagiarism. Just like using the same phrases in comments, along with other words is not spamming.
Informative post.i luv this. thank you
Ijust want to apologize for telling you to go flag yourself. I thought I was just talking to a bot.
Does it make a difference? If it is a bot it is only as good as the developer and cannot think for itself. If it is a person then it is even worse!
I really appreciate this, thank you!
<3
Thanks for this post. I'll return to it a bit later after giving this further thought.
I'd love to hear from you more.
This just makes it longer, but I think it would be useful to let people know somehow that Steemit is full of spam-bots who comment based on the tags of the post and sometimes keywords within it. A user who isn't making popular posts yet may not see them, and maybe won't know that they exist. But I think educating people to understand the importance of saying something that makes it clear you read the actual post, even if your essential message is "great post," is important, because it will get those users more rewards and let them participate more.
Speaking particularly to the Helpie folks who are criticizing here because they all know each other and "great post" is meaningful to them because of who it comes from rather than its content, you might find some way to allow authors to whitelist certain commenters on their posts. (Or maybe that's too complicated, but I think some solution is necessary.)
Thanks for some great points here. The education piece is huge, and finding a way to communicate it in an understandable form is just as important.
And you make a great point about accounts that already know each other. I did just release a whitelist that allows an account to exclude me from replying to comments on its posts. Restricting the whitelist to specific commenters gets a bit more complicated so I hope my whitelist is sufficient.
For whatever its worth, here is how I would word it...
(the bot name is already please stop, no need to say it again imo)
Hello There - @username
I'm a bot designed to help new users interact on steem in a more efficient way. I've noticed you've sad "SPAM COMMENT" this time 91 times out of your last 100 comments. You currently have received 0 flags, but know that some people really don't appreciate these type of comments.
Your Steem Sincerity API classification scores are Spam: 76.80% and Bot: 6.90%
My mission is to tell you this is because contrary to what you might, your comments don't help you earn the support of the community, which is I'm sure your goal here.
(I would then offer a link to some guidelines on etiquette, many are available).
Of course @tcpolymath's idea is also excellent, but humanizing the bot a bit would help in my humble opinion.
i dont think this bot owner read his replies!
I hope you are wrong... you might be right, but I hope you are not...
:)
Haha, I don't reply while I'm sleeping!
Awesome work, thanks for articulating your ideas so clearly.
Can you share some suggestions?
https://steemit.com/steemit/@krystle/new-users-guide-to-steemit-etiquette-and-some-handy-tools
I'd second that, I think you should write a post (or better, choose one of the posts written by a valued community person) on how to write better comments (This one is mine.)
Some people write spam comments because they don't know any better.
It'll be awesome if you choose different (equally useful) posts by different people in each of your replies, it can be made with simple algorithm, and it will reduce how spammy your replies seem.
Another thing, I suggest you don't comment on a person more than once in a time... Maybe once every week or once every [put large amounts here] post/comment if they are too much spammy.
Great suggestion, I'm going to start looking for posts like these that will fit well here. And a lot of this truly is not knowing any better, so it'll be great if I can get this education component right.
And I've considered reducing the frequency of my posts, but it's really easy to get me to stop and so for most accounts do not continue after I start replying. I am already planning to significantly reduce my comments and this is one area I continue to look at.
Quiet frankly short comments are annoying, but I think its a problem with steemit and not necessarily with the comments themselves. Another thing I've noticed is that the top-most comments get upvotes and its usually the comments below, (which have a much better content) that get ignored.
You might want to offer some sort of service where people can INVITE your bot, it would also be a way to have the community join in. On the other hand, people don't really seem to care about low quality comments as much as we do.