statistics, number of abuse reports leading to a ban?

[nassau]

i'm building a user manager where users may report other users for abusive behaviour. the thought is that after a certain number of abuse reports have been submitted, the 'abusive' user will be banned. all of this is fairly simple, but...

does anyone have any good numbers on the threshold between a good user and an abusive user. i'm thinking it could work something like this:

for a user to be banned, the following must have happened.

1% of all current users have filed an abuse report against him. there's a also lower and upper limits; a minimum of 10 reports are needed, even though this in some cases make up more thatn 1%. also, a maximum of 100 reports are needed to report a user, even though this might be less than 1%.

so, 1% with a min needed count of 10 and a max needed count of 100.

opinions, facts, stats - all are welcome!
:)

[Brad]

It is in my opinion that systems like this are inherently of poor design. The wholesale banning of users should be left up to the human factor, accounting for the intuition and understanding of why or how a use behaves a certain way rather than using mere aggregate statistics from third-party input.

We've had people suggest here at AppleNova that we use the reputation system, for example, as a way of automating the ban process. If a user's reputation gets too low, the system would kick him/her into the banned usergroup. However, this assumes that the reputation system is flawless. As we've seen, though, it is not (http://forums.applenova.com/showthread.php?t=16723).

If a particular user is unpopular, he may get negative dings and appear to the system as a terrible person who should never return. However, that user could simply be a character who doesn't stand for the status quo. That doesn't necessarily mean he should be banned.

I suspect the same may go for your complaint system; although, I have no idea what software you are using.

Is banning abusing members becoming such a problem for you that you've reached a point where you need to automate it? I'd only suggest resorting to such means on a dire basis if you have a huge volume of users to review.

[nassau]

thanks for the input!

i'm designing a system that can be used for any purpose/website. i'm building the automation system to have it there, if needed. i do realize that having a human overlooking the while thing is not a bad idea though.

in my system there's a warning level first, where a user is 'warned' if a certain numbers of abuse reports are filed against him/her. after that, yet another number of posts will render the user 'banned'.

--

but back to the subject: brad, or anyone, do you have any stats on a good number of abuse reports that should put a user 'in risk' of of being banned?

[Brad]

I think the number would have to be gauged by and scale with the rate of use and overall number of users. If there are only 100 active users, the number would have to be pretty low. If there are 10,000 active users, though, the minimum number should appropriately be larger. It would also depend on how quick members are to report abuse. Some communities have more of a hair trigger than others.

Here at AppleNova, we very, very rarely receive abuse reports (from these: http://forums.applenova.com/images/buttons/report.png). The few we get are usually about a new spammer that we're already on the way of blocking. Of our 8700 total accounts, we have 140 banned accounts, the overwhelming majority of which were spammers. Of course, we don't have 8700 active members. 3096 have posted at least once, 1181 at least ten times, and 462 at least fifty times.

HTH.

[Banana]

Two points to consider-

I've always thought warning system as ineffective and more likely to be abused. A prime example is the "warning war" you'd have with your AIM account. It's actually more for fun than warning.

Secondly, why not let user self-police? Not everyone will agree on who should be banned, so just give users option to ignore other users with occasional check to human-ban select users that are spamming or really blatant. Less coding, less work, less maintenence and everyone's happy.

[scratt]

/ot

Hey Brad.. The vote to put post count back in the main thread view is still in the lead in the thread you referenced!! :p

[Brad]

/ot

Hey Brad.. The vote to put post count back in the main thread view is still in the lead in the thread you referenced!! :p
Not when compared to the sum of votes for options that don't insist on putting them back!

16 = user CP
22 = thread view
59 = beer, tacos, etc.

Mmm. Tacos. :)

[nassau]

alright, that's it. i'm reporting you guys for abusive, thread stealing and off topic'ing!! where's that button....

[scratt]

I definitely think that was a cynical move by the dictatorship to cloud the issue..

Let's say we split the "extra" votes evenly between the two main options... Hmm..

(If Bush can get in on 22% of the vote I don't see why other things shouldn't!)

In that case Thread View is teh winna! ;)

EDIT - Sorry nassau. :)