Post by redonihunter in What is going on with comments, for the love of god?

Viewing post in What is going on with comments, for the love of god?

Nobody I know can. And that sort of privileged comment policy is whack.

You assume that your and your friends' situation is the same for most users. It is not. There can be all sorts of reasons why your friend group got hit by the spam filter. You probably share statistical qualities that triggered the filter at that time.

And that filter is per account and not per individual comment, once it does hit. You seem to think the spam filter would only filter individual comments.

The nature of the filter might be, that your account gets put on the filter again and again. I do not know. But if you really waited 10 months, you should make a new short thread with a ticket number included, as the rules of questions and support suggest. https://itch.io/board/10023/questions-support View this community's rules…

I think You misunderstood my point.

I intentionally quoted your attitude and presented it with a different outcome. If you do not care that other people can comment, why should anyone care that you cannot. Comments are not that important. Else developers would not even be able to disable the comment section or arbitrarily delete comments.

You can still download, buy and rate games. Itch is not a blogging and commenting site. It is a download store.

You might have noticed that there is no notification about comments for followers, nor is there a way of doing a private messages. The "social media" features of Itch are crude and underdeveloped. That's what you get, if you do not bombard users with advertisements. Such features have to run on slow burn with as little cost as possible.

Which is why it was so devestating, when criminals started to mass attack that social feature. Other platforms might have pulled the plug entirely and disabled this bonus feature. Itch installed a hyper aggressive spam filter, that unfortunately has some lengthy false positives, and staff is overwhelmed with clearing those up. There are more important things for staff to do, so that has about lowest priorty.

receiving feedback is important. Which is harder to do, when you can't post feedback

You cannot use the Rate this game button too?

Share what you liked or disliked about this project. Our community rules apply here. Reviews are shared with developers and your followers.

If you can use that button, that's where you can post feedback to the developer and even remind that dev that there are pending posts. Of course they can ignore that section too, but it is more prominent.

Pending posts

A new post or topic may be placed in the pending queue if it is flagged by the spam detector, or by the moderation settings of the community. Posts here will not be visible to others until approved by a moderator.

The vague or missing information there is, that the developer is also a moderator. I do remember a spam filter complaint thread where someone shared experience where they would always have to wait for the developer to approve the comment.

But that pending posts section is rather hidden, and there seems to be no prominent notification about pending posts.

The edit box is not that good. You might need to select normal text again, after a quotation. Or press enter and del and enter after a quotation.

just shadowbans (cause that's what this essentially is at this point)

Please do not use that word in that way. A shadowban would be, if you can see your comments, but no one else can.

Other platforms might have pulled the plug entirely and disabled this bonus feature.

imdb comes to mind. They ditched their comment feature completely.

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RXA62312 hours ago

And that filter is per account and not per individual comment, once it does hit. You seem to think the spam filter would only filter individual comments.

That's not a filter then, it's an account restriction based on arbitrary conditions. And yes, I would imagine a spam filter would be used to actually filter spam, instead of screwing off random users. If it can detect spam comments (which it should as a spam filter), then there's no reason to keep diving into this false positive account-wide mute. Cause I assume if You, with Your clearly "verified" account posted spam in a comment, the filter would catch it, right? And then maybe put You on a similar list, where You couldn't just post what You want, when You want? Because if it wouldn't, that makes even less sense.

"But if you really waited 10 months, you should make a new short thread with a ticket number included, as the rules of questions and support suggest."

I did. It was locked/removed/whatever. I cannot see that thread, nor the other one I made later. I also sent 3 Support tickets, two of which got voided, one is still up and not even responded to. I said this like 4 times already.

"If you do not care that other people can comment, why should anyone care that you cannot."

Because it's a site, with a comment section and I'm being punished for nothing, while my right to comment is taken away? What are You even saying? Me not caring about others' ability to comment stems from them not being wronged or restricted in any way. While I am. It's like the cops telling you you shouldn't complain about a stolen car, cause your neighbour's car wasnt' stolen. Like actually what sort of rhetoric is this?
And I'm not calling for anyone to simply "care". I'm calling for being allowed to post.

"Comments are not that important. "

That's a subjective statement.

"Itch is not a blogging and commenting site."

Yet it has a "Community" tab at the top, curious, isn't it?
YouTube is a video platform, Meta is a data-harvester and yet both work perfectly fine as a community hub and a place to exchange opinions through comments.

"You might have noticed that there is no notification about comments for followers, nor is there a way of doing a private messages. The "social media" features of Itch are crude and underdeveloped. That's what you get, if you do not bombard users with advertisements. Such features have to run on slow burn with as little cost as possible."

Okay, sob story about costs of running a site aside, the comments section exists. People are allowed to comment. Just not ALL people. This isn't about Itch being a store, it's about the unfair way some users are treated due to the spam filter and hitting a brick wall when trying to do anything about it. You couldn't get a bigger middle finger if it was the landing page.

"and staff is overwhelmed with clearing those up."

If three Support tickets and eight months of time is not enough to clear stuff up by the "staff", you don't have "staff". You have a problem.

"You cannot use the Rate this game button too? "

This one does work. Or it appears to work. Can I however know for sure it's working, if comments don't? I figure it works, but hey, can be wrong.

"But that pending posts section is rather hidden, and there seems to be no prominent notification about pending posts."

At that point I would at least like an access to my posts, so I can copypaste the feedback or just know they exist. But that's just a wish.

"The edit box is not that good. You might need to select normal text again, after a quotation. Or press enter and del and enter after a quotation."

Yeah, no matter what I do, trying to cram in a second quote just changes everything besides the first quote into a quote. Doesn't matter if it's enter, dels, text highlighted, not highlighted, slightly wonky, which I am sorry about.

"Please do not use that word in that way. A shadowban would be, if you can see your comments, but no one else can."

If we go by definitions, shadowban is like banning someone without them noticing. Being cut out of a community, but still gaslit into the idea that you're not. Which I'd say eternal "awaiting approval" queue does fit. Can I post? Yes. Can anyone see it? No. Can I see it? No. Can I do anything about it? Doesn't seem like it. Just because I can't see what I posted, doesn't entirely make it less shadow-y.

"imdb comes to mind. They ditched their comment feature completely."

I imagine they still have reviews though? Fair example, though the scale is somewhat different. I can hardly find people knowing Itch games outside of Itch, making this the best (if not only) community hub for me.

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redonihunter10 hours ago

Fair example, though the scale is somewhat different

Yes. Imdb has a lot of money and a lot of advertisement that would scale with usage of comment features. But even they decided to drop comments, a feature so popular, that it was rescued by moviechat.org.

Meanwhile Itch gets negative money from your comments. Is this an annoying situation that you are unable to comment? Of course. But that does not make it a sob story. The rational would be to deactivate comments for all games. Just as many developers actually did! Itch chose the lesser evil of using a hyper aggressive spam detection system.

Your oldest visible comment is 43 days old and on a game. Has that comment been approved by the developer without you noticing or how does that fit together with your claim that you could not post comments for 10 months?

And I do not understand what you mean with voided tickets and tickets still being up. Typically you do not get any answer to such a ticket. You get an automatic confirmation with the ticket number. If you do not get that confirmation, something is wrong with your mail. If you have selected any mail from Itch as being spam on a provider level, that can have unexpected consequences. There are developers that had massive problems because of such things.

Yet it has a "Community" tab at the top, curious, isn't it

Oh? I never knew. Let me adjust my browser's zoom level, so I can actually see that link (sadly, that was not a joke). You are talking about the last entry in the top bar, are you not. Let's have a look at where community leads. Hmm. It seems it leads to here, the place you are currently quite active posting and talking to other users.

I stand by my opinion. Comments on games are not the core function of Itch. Evident by how developers can deactivate it on a whim. And they can delete comments on a whim. Or approve pending comments. But most devs are too lazy for that or simply do not notice that there are pending posts.

The reason for the situation is, that it costs a lot of money and brings zero money. Staff is ddosed by all the spam comments that you do not see, since they were cought. False positives are unfortunate, but imho, better this than having hacked accounts because Itch did not enough. Read here again.

The recommended course of action is to send one (1) mail to support, explaining that you are waiting for moderation of your comments for a very long time. Do not expect an answer (but if you do not get confirmation, there is something very wrong on a deeper level). If you still cannot comment after five weeks or so, open a thread in questions & support in accordance to the rules of questions & support. Read all the rules there.

And no, those five weeks are not overly long. Developers often wait longer for more important things. Comments are lowest priority.

Oh, and if any admin reads here, please, update the rules and faqs in regard to time frames. 1-3 days is not true for a long time now. Also, consider renaming the section to questions and community support.

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