Drawing attention to a specific user and their detrimental behaviour

[Hausigel]

I believe it is impossible to formalize everything that is allowed and everything that is not allowed in the Portal. No matter how far you go, people will always find a way to create situations which have not come up before and which are not covered by any written rule.

Example: Suppose we introduce a strict limit for how many puzzles any author may publish within a fixed time interval (such a limit exists already, but it is currently considered more a guideline than an actual rule). An author who wants to publish a greater number of puzzles anyway might be tempted to create multiple accounts for this purpose. We could forbid this, but then he might ask other users via email to publish them on his behalf. And so on.

As far as I am concerned, the puzzle needs a reasonable balance between written rules, unwritten rules, the users' willingness to follow these rules and a mechanism to enforce them. Note that we are already enforcing certain standards which not written down anywhere. For example, when the "C.C. vs Sayori problem" came up, many people urged us to take action even though it would be surprisingly hard to point your finger at any explicit rule that C.C. might have broken.

As uvo said, we are still trying to figure out what the best way is to deal with such situations. In any case, what bothers me is that users are happy to break one "rule" (regarding the anonymity of ratings) while pointing out another "violation". Why should one be legitimate, but not the other?

Deciding what kind of behaviour we find acceptable or not is a very delicate matter. You may remember that we had similar discussions in the forum already, and the decision making process for the Portal was even brought up in our last two annual community meetings, with no definitive outcome. The Portal has changed so much, and there are so many colliding opinions by now; it would be foolish to assume that the problem mentioned in the OP could be solved easily to everyone's satisfaction.

[ildiko]

Wenn man zu einem Rätsel auch noch die Lösung veröffentlicht, wo auch immer, aber offensichtlich an einer Stelle, die leicht zu finden ist, darf man sich nicht wundern, wenn es auch Leute gibt, die das nutzen/missbrauchen. Wozu macht man das überhaupt? Und ich meine sowohl den Autor als auch den Löser. Um seine Statistik in die Höhe zu treiben? Als Autor: Wenn man zeigen will, wie der Lösungsweg ist, wozu dann noch die Veröffentlichung im Portal? Als "Löser": um schlechte Bewertungen abzugeben? Was für ein armseliges Verhalten, finde ich. Solche Personen tun mir einfach nur leid.

Aber jedem Tierchen sein Pläsierchen.

[Niverio]

As uvo said, we are still trying to figure out what the best way is to deal with such situations. In any case, what bothers me is that users are happy to break one "rule" (regarding the anonymity of ratings) while pointing out another "violation". Why should one be legitimate, but not the other?

This part is true, in the sense that by making this post, I have violated the true anonymity of the ratings. However, in this instance, it is the long term actions of the user themselves that have served to violate the anonymity. My puzzles have been downvoted countless times, and I have never kept track of who downrated them, nor kept a track of people who always rate them highly. However, when one of my puzzles get a terrible rating, it is basically a natural instinct to check the recent solves / comments on the puzzle in an attempt to understand why. And it is hard to not notice the same username pop up time and time again. Should we be able to notice this pattern when we want to keep the anonymity? Likely not. But it is what we have in terms of the system.

And regarding why should one be legitimate and one not, I do think that "Not all rules are equal." Or at least, the repercussions for breaking various ones to various degrees, shouldn't be, in my humble opinion.

[Dandelo]

Ich finde, der Vorschlag, die besten und schlechtesten Ratings zu streichen, ist wert, darüber nachzudenken. Vielleicht jeweils 10%? Bei den meisten Rätseln sollte das keinen großen Unterschied machen. Natürlich kann er dann mehrere Accounts einrichten, aber vermutlich würde ihm das die Lust nehmen. Außerdem würden neue Löser irgendwann alle seine Bewertungen unter die 10%-Grenze drücken.

Wobei ich immer noch denke, zu Portalrätseln sollte in den Kommentaren nicht die Lösung (verlinkt) stehen, sei es nun vom Autor oder von Lösern.

[Tallcat]

I very much agree that it is impossible to foresee all possible behaviors that could occur. For this reason, I do not think that it would be appropriate to do nothing because it was not something that was explicitly warned against. Indeed, as noted above, this has applied to situations in the past (where nothing in writing was explicitly broken), yet action was still taken.

In the current circumstance, it could be easily argued that no 'rule' per se was broken. A solver is free to solve as many puzzles as they like and rate as they see fit. However, in this case, there is a clear, established, and systematic pattern that seems to be done with malice (and extends beyond trying to inflate solve statistics. If that was the goal, why does the solver rate the puzzles at all?) That the user in question seems to have sought out livestreams of puzzle solves as an additional resource for solution codes in cases where solvers are not viable only reinforces this (Saying that 'live streams of solves should be stopped' misses the point). We could spend a lot of time discussing the 'why' someone feels the need to do this, but to me, this is not the relevant point. The established and systematic pattern of a malicious behavior to me violates the spirit of the community.

I certainly can appreciate from the moderators point of view that this is a difficult issue and there may not be a good/perfect solution (and it is perfectly possible that any actions taken could be circumvented down the road). However, I do not think this should be reason to not, at least, consider possible actions at the moment.

Thank you,

Tallcat

[Hausigel]

... when one of my puzzles get a terrible rating...

The lowest rating in your puzzles I could find was 82%, and that one is over a year old. Almost all your puzzles have a much higher rating, very few are below 90%. TERRIBLE RATING? Forgive me for being so blunt, but I find this rating obsession just sick.

I have an idea. Let me modify the rating system so that puzzles are rated only by the authors themselves, nobody else. Users can give themselves the rating they like, everybody happy. Any objections?

[Hausigel]

... there is a clear, established, and systematic pattern...

One more thing. As has already been pointed out, there is no definition for what the rating actually means. Of course one could argue that only the puzzle itself should be taken into account, but I disagree; the presentation of a puzzle is - at least for me - a relevant factor. This may well include the availability of the solution.

Several people have already expressed their opinion that it is against the spirit of the Portal to make the solution easily available. Maybe a user decides to downvote these puzzles BECAUSE they come with a solution. When that happens, is it still malice, or do the ratings reflect the user's genuine view regarding the puzzles? Just a thought.

[Dandelo]

Maybe a user decides to downvote these puzzles BECAUSE they come with a solution. 

Good point! It is a reason. But most solutions are published by users, not by the authors.

[Tallcat]

i certainly take your point on board - and can understand how users do not like that/feel it violates the spirit of the community. Given that several people have raised it, modification to the rules of posting/comments to prevent that happening on the LMD site itself could address that or would allow setters to address this in their posts. That being said:

1. I would not have issue with users downrating me because of this if it was something that I was specifically made aware of/was bought to my attention in a hidden comment on a puzzle by the user. This would give me that knowledge and could be addressed in future puzzles. Similarly, if this was something noted up front in rules/site guidelines.
2. In this case, the user seems to have sought out livestreams that were not directly linked in any way with LMD/linked in comments/posted by the author. Some of the puzzles had been 'presented' on the site for days or weeks before any (non-linked) solve elsewhere, before the user then made their rating - do I consider that situation 'malicious'? I would say yes I do as it would seem to say "if anyone anywhere solves this puzzle and i happen to see it, it's a bad puzzle". I would also add on top of that, this pattern of behavior was established before the recent proliferation of live solve channels.

I also want to emphasize that i have no issue with negative feedback (and, yes, to address the point up front, my LMD page shows that my puzzles are overall very well received and rated). Negative feedback helps me improve as a setter and if people have difficulties/issues with my puzzles, i would welcome them to comment to let me know where i can improve. But, as noted above, from my perspective, this does not seem to be the driving factor behind this pattern of behavior.

[Niverio]

... when one of my puzzles get a terrible rating...

The lowest rating in your puzzles I could find was 82%, and that one is over a year old. Almost all your puzzles have a much higher rating, very few are below 90%. TERRIBLE RATING? Forgive me for being so blunt, but I find this rating obsession just sick.

I have an idea. Let me modify the rating system so that puzzles are rated only by the authors themselves, nobody else. Users can give themselves the rating they like, everybody happy. Any objections?

Sorry, I should have worded it better. When I said "when one of my puzzles get a terrible rating", I meant a rating given by an individual solver, not the overall rating of the puzzles themselves.
And I only know of this because of the Statistics page that gets updated once per month. And the "terrible rating" I meant were the ones individually given as either 0%, 25% or 50%, to my standards.

With that being clarified, what you are defining as "rating obsession" is just me striving to improve myself both as a setter and solver via feedback and communication with people. And on this website, puzzle ratings are what reflects that improvement the most. (And I value comments in way higher regard than ratings themselves.) Therefore, in my eyes, yes puzzle ratings should mean something. In general, a highly rated puzzle should be expected to have a higher quality than a lower rated one. This is also the standard expectation of a solver browsing through the portal to check which puzzles they would like to attempt or not. And yes, this also means that some puzzles should be rated lower than others, for the ratings to keep their meaning. Yet right now this balance is just being toppled by this one troll who has done this to thousands of puzzles without solving them.

I am really surprised about the tone of the reply itself. If ratings are meaningless to even a moderator of the server, why do they exist?

And a side note: Checking my profile to make this post personal is the wrong way to do it. There are countless setters suffering from this user, not just me. I just happened to be the one setter that decided to take action against them.