Note: This is NOT a suggestion for a new feature. This feature is already planned, and I am saying it should be put as a high priority.

Several times, there have been users posting commercial spam, and on the old site, I was usually able to get 3 other friends to report the post to put a stop to it. However, on this site, since I can't do that, I can report the post, but until a moderator comes online (which can take up to a few hours), the user can still go around posting spam every 3 minutes (and I've seen as many as 10 topics by one user), which gives me (and other Scratchers) many more posts to report and the Scratch Team a lot more work deleting them.

The idea is that if a post is reported by 4 different accounts of Scratcher status, then it causes the post to be hidden and the account that posted it to automatically be banned from the forums for a few hours.

Although it appears the Scratch Team stopped releasing weekly website fixes (I haven't seen an announcement for one since October), I think that this should be included with the next fix. Although this would require a significant amount of work in the short term (the ticket for this says a bunch of backend work is necessary), it would save a lot of work in the long term for the reasons stated above.

The ticket for this is also about 5 months overdue.

Support.

No support. Someone could create multiple accounts/get friends to report someone for no reason.

Semi-support. Auto-ban may not be a good idea with what AmayaCreates has mentioned, so I think a temporary 2 hour block from the forums and comments would be better?

jontmy00 wrote:

Semi-support. Auto-ban may not be a good idea with what AmayaCreates has mentioned, so I think a temporary 2 hour block from the forums and comments would be better?

This seems as if it would work effectively for the same purpose.

AmayaCreates wrote:

No support. Someone could create multiple accounts/get friends to report someone for no reason.

On the old site, the accounts had to be of Scratcher status, so I think that would also be true here, making it harder. Also, the ban was only on the forums and was only for about 2 hours.

jontmy00 wrote:

Semi-support. Auto-ban may not be a good idea with what AmayaCreates has mentioned, so I think a temporary 2 hour block from the forums and comments would be better?

At least on the old site, it was just the forums, given that it was created mainly to stop commercial spammers and people that are repeatedly posting inappropriate images.

No support. Too easy for abuse.

MrKyurem wrote:

No support. Too easy for abuse.

That's what I thought when it was first implemented on the old website, but as far as I know, it never caused a single invalid ban in the several months it was there. The reason somebody can't just create 3 alt accounts is that they all have to be of Scratcher status.

Also, this is already a planned feature. I am just emphasizing that it should be higher priority.

…I have ilike five Scratcher status alt accounts xD

Also, since we can't talk about bans like that on the forum. I doubt you could know if that was 100% true.

Ypu may want to explain then what it does in the op more clearly.

AmayaCreates wrote:

…I have ilike five Scratcher status alt accounts xD

Also, since we can't talk about bans like that on the forum. I doubt you could know if that was 100% true.

Ypu may want to explain then what it does in the op more clearly.

No, but I can tell when an account was autobanned because it replaces the post with a message. With a few tricks, it is possible to see the post, and all of the ones I saw were commercial spam.

No support, because it could be abused. (Anyone can do it)

Uggghh, people. You all say it could be abused, yet there has never been one instance of it being abused on 1.4. Literally everything can be abused, but it's not like we can take away everything to prevent it. I could report everyone a hundred times and lie about what they did if I wanted to. I could spam continuously on everyone's profile if I wanted to. But I won't because I am responsible. Likewise, this autoban feature, used only by Scratchers (who have shown obedience and responsibility) will be a great addition to fighting trolls. Now do you begin to understand this inestimable benefits of this?

Support.

Everyone, let me tell you a story of what could happen if this was not implemented.

Once upon a time, there was a Scratch Forums page. There was no such thing as the 4 report auto ban. There was the Scratch Team of course, but they were online only once a few hours. Now, one day, a spam bot spammed the forums. The spam bot advertised false football games. They gave out links to harmful sites that could get people phished. People reported it, but the Scratch Team was not yet online. This spam bot continued to spam the forums per 5 minutes. Now, a new scratcher came across the topic. Not knowing about spam topics and what a sapmbot's topic looked like, he took a look at the link. Immediately,he was taken to a dangerous site, and he was phished, and his identity was stolen. This scratcher's identity was used by a malicious person - he went into the scratcher's banking account and drew out thousands of dollars.

Earlier that day, the Scratch Team got to the Scratch site. They took a look at their reports and found about 24 topics reported. All the 24 topics were irrelevant to Scratch. Every topic had the same thing: advertising fake football games and giving out links to dangerous sites. The Scratch Team deleted the topics, and deleted the spam bot's profile. But that only stopped ONE spam bot from spamming. In the future, and since the 4 report auto ban was not implemented, more spam bots continued to spam the forums repeatedly, giving the Scratch Team lots of work to do and increasing the risk of having people getting phished and having their identity stolen.

This is what could happen if the 4 report auto ban was not implemented. Sure, there are downsides of this suggestion, but overall, it prevents computer programs from posting what could potentially be harmful to a user repeated times. Think about this: Would it be better if someone was invalidly banned, but then got unbanned after sending a appeal, or if a user looked at a harmful link by the spam bot and got phished and / or had his identity stolen? Would you like to be phished and / or have your identity stolen, or get banned temporarily but not get phished and / or have your identity stolen?

Oh guys, it used to be like that in the old website, and I don't really remember people abusing that feature. Absolute support.

I do support this, but with one question:
If a good post is reported and a legitimate scratcher is banned, will the reporters get an alert?

AonymousGuy wrote:

I do support this, but with one question:
If a good post is reported and a legitimate scratcher is banned, will the reporters get an alert?

I believe so. False reports are against the Guidelines.

AonymousGuy wrote:

I do support this, but with one question:
If a good post is reported and a legitimate scratcher is banned, will the reporters get an alert?

Yes. And maybe even a ban.

NoxSpooth wrote:

AonymousGuy wrote:

I do support this, but with one question:
If a good post is reported and a legitimate scratcher is banned, will the reporters get an alert?

I believe so. False reports are against the Guidelines.

joshuaho wrote:

AonymousGuy wrote:

I do support this, but with one question:
If a good post is reported and a legitimate scratcher is banned, will the reporters get an alert?

Yes. And maybe even a ban.

Okay.

I just saw another spammer post 3 topics in a row. If this were implemented, it would probably have been stopped after the first one. This is creating more work for everybody.