Some Suggestions Regarding Flagging and Bots

in #steemit8 years ago (edited)

Bots have become a very common sight on steemit, and they can help do a lot of important things, like @cheetah and the related accounts that help identify content ripped from websites. I doubt any humans will volunteer to work 24/7 like bots do, so they seem to be here to stay. Because of this, I think that implementing a few new features would help bots be more effective.

Allow flags to have a reason

I think this is really important to have as it allows the poster to know what they are doing wrong so that they can more easily improve their future content. There could be a few pre-written reasons, like Tag spamming, Stolen content, etc. or the field could be filled in manually.

Allow accounts to be marked as bots

An account being marked as a bot would do two things:

1. Votes from bots are shown in a separate category 

I'm envisioning something like this:

(Really bad Inspect Element usage, but I think it shows the format well enough)

I've seen people complain about being marked as spammers by certain bots, but not being able to know which one it is. I think that this would help solve that. This would also tie into the second suggestion:

2. Give each bot a page where abuse reports can be sent

Since people could now know which bot is flagging their content, a page where abuse reports could be sent and responded to is the next logical step. Bot owners could provide a context for why the flag was given, and the poster could respond. For convenience, the bot account could also give access to responding to the posts to another account so that the bot owners wouldn't have to log into the bot account, and add a trusted person to help deal with the reports. This may not be necessary, as I don't know what @ned and @dan have in mind regarding all the features of memos.


I think that giving content posters more information about why their post was flagged, who did it, and how they can fight it would make steemit a much more attractive platform to create content for, and help it grow even larger. Viva la steemit!