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Handling user posting potential spam comments without being sure

A topic by komehara created Jul 13, 2024 Views: 316 Replies: 5

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I am currently having some “invisible” issue with a user who is frequently posting very short and generic, but positive comments on my games. At first, I found it nice, but over time I realized that the comments never mentioned anything about the game itself. On one game, which was an obvious incomplete prototype (https://komehara.itch.io/finding-inspiration), they even gave a positive comment which, honestly, sounded ironic if it was done by a human.

EDIT: turns out the version uploaded at that time wasn’t that bad, at least gameplay-wise, which makes the positive comment much less odd. Normal readers coming here can probably ignore the rest of this post (and thread). Moderators may still want to check the bottom section starting with “One last thing”, which is a kind of unrelated issue that I mashed up in this post.

So I started suspecting the user as being a spam bot and checked their other posts on their profile page (removed as solved). Most of them are generic one-liners indeed, but a few do mention contextual information found in the game page (ok, an AI could scrap that) or even the game itself (much harder to scrap for an AI - screenshot reverse image description does exist but video description is another deal, and it would be needed to see that there is “bounce” in a platformer for instance).

I gave them a friendly warning on the page of the prototype mentioned above, they seemed to have understand but later they posted another generic comment on another of my games.

At this point it’s hard to tell if I’m facing:

a spam bot that sometimes becomes very good at parsing information
a spam bot that is sometimes overridden by a human
a human with limited understanding/writing capabilities
a human who makes fun of me (troll)

I was about to tell me once more to post qualitative feedback, and otherwise use the rating button for purely quantitative feedback (scoring), but it’s a bit tiring to write this anyway. I’d like to know what you think about it.

I thought about punishing the user (Block, or Ban from each page - the latter not super useful since user posts one comment per page, so by the time you Ban them it’s already done) but if we’re dealing with 3. (or if it’s really just a misunderstanding) that would be too harsh.

I realize my initial warning maybe was not too clear as I wanted to be too polite… Should I just ask them, one last time, to give more precise feedback? Should I explicitly tell them to do so in order to prove that they are human? (any human would feel offended by that, so I want to avoid - at the same time, I’m dealing with an individual who says “OK” to anything, so maybe that could work?)

It seems like a very little thing and most people would be glad to get free positive feedback, but right now I’m working for a jam and the user commented my stub page (which is basically empty) just to say they’re eager to play the game, which out of context would be great, but with everything else considered just made me more stressed (like stalkers who compliment you, but still). It wouldn’t be an issue if I had people commenting regularly on my games, but on an empty page it really stands out (and I don’t want other people to have the impression I’m asking a friend or even paying someone to post positive comments either).

P.S.

Once more, this is a topic about handling users commenting on my game, so there are similarities to the pinned thread: https://itch.io/t/2105616/moderating-conflict-between-multiple-users-in-game-comments but this thread has been locked so I cannot keep posting on it, and to be honest I’m not entirely satisfied by the answer I had: if I understand correctly, nobody else monitors the comments nor has the duty to moderate users, and therefore Report button is basically useless if you are the owner of the game page, so your only solution is to decide to Block or Ban the user from the game page.

One last thing: I was surprised to me my thread pinned without being notified. I was at the same time happy that my thread could help other people and embarrassed that a small issue I wanted to fix became pinned like this without me noticing. Since the thread was locked I couldn’t post further there, e.g. to ask why it was considered so important, or to ask further questions (in particular about whether the Report button is actually useless for the game creator) to actually make the thread fully complete, and make it really worth pinning.

I sent a private email to itch staff about this but received no reply. So:

could you implement a notification when one of your threads get pinned?
could you establish a policy that when pinning a thread, moderator should post that they are pinning the thread and give the reason, leaving a chance to the OP to reply?
~~could you establish a policy that when locking a thread, moderator should post the reason for locking~~ EDIT: just saw that the reason was posted at the top: preventing spam
could you reply to the email I sent (from komehara@…, subject: “My topic has been pinned and locked for a while on the Questions & Support forum”)
should I open a new thread to finish the discussion now? (about the Report button and other moderation subtleties)

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Salbei154 days ago (3 edits) (+1)

I am not sure if you intended this topic to be answered by anyone else than a moderator/staff member, so feel free to ignore me if that is the case.

I tried to look at your situation from various potential angles, but no matter how you look at it - and reading the rest of your post, I believe it simply comes down to this: You are really giving this too much care for reasons you cannot completely avoid anyway.

And I am not writing this to make your issue seem less important. Believe me, I understand why one would think about stuff like this the way you do. But it still always comes back to the fact that it is just overdoing it without any reasonable benefit. Something that one has to accept at some point.

To get into your points:

About the user: I do not think that they are a bot or are using AI. They are either very young and/or believe writing anything to leave a note/support the creator is a valid use of the comment function. And if you ignore all else - they are actually correct.

Looking through their other comments on their profile page makes it obvious that they intend to write such short comments, either after playing or by just looking at the screenshots of a page. The only thing that makes me go more into 'troll' direction would be specifically the comment about the 'jumping mechanic' - because it is written quite... on the nose, to say the least. But as you wrote yourself, this could also have a logical reason. The thing once more however is: You have multiple reasons, and you cannot pin it down. Not even the staff can confirm for sure that it might be an age thing - at least I cannot remember that you actively have to put your birth date or age when creating your account.

Which brings us to the point of: How far can/should you go as a page creator/moderator? It is your home base so to speak. So potentially, you could moderate the 'intention' of how your comment section should work. But going from what I wrote above about how the user may see the comment section: Are they wrong? Can you make the justified choice to kick them out? Would that go against any fair use of your moderation rights (Which should be a thing in the Guidelines, I would assume).

And that brings us to the final part: All that effort for the following train of thought: How will this user make my comment section look and what image will it reflect to the other users? The thing is you are asking this question in an open web space, where not everyone has the same point of view on things and features, and are thinking about limiting the 'behaviour' as outlined above. The questions here are: Is it really worth it, all things considered? Where are the limits? Where do you have to stop anyway? Is it really that bad to open yourself up to just let it be?

These are questions you have to ask yourself, because nobody else can really give you a final answer to this. You can see a valid reasoning for acting upon this a specific way - there may be merit in there. But it may also be just unnecessary waste of your own energy. Think about it.

On another note: The way you explain your situation and want to resolve it is clashing a bit with what you are actively doing with that mentioned user here. You are writing yourself that you may not want to go all out on them because there could be valid reason for their behaviour and you do not want to be rude. But at the same moment you are openly putting them in a spot light in the global itch.io discussion board. I am not saying you should not have opened this topic. And looking the user up made it possible for me to take my own point of view. But considering: Is it worth it? Are you not thinking too much about it? And during that process: Are you not making a bit overly questionable decisions yourself, even if with reason?

About the locked topic: I read through it (even twice I believe) and I was under the impression that it resolved the issue as much as possible. The points arising here are - as you pointed out yourself - that the system might not be perfect. Especially by just going by the guidelines, I actually had to look up other people asking how the process works and what you can do with it.

But that is exactly the thing: The system works how it does. And in that regard, I believe the moderator gave you all the answers they could have given you - and pinned it specifically because others may want to know it themselves. They locked it because it seemed sufficently done to them and did something that is just common procedure. Asking for more after this is once again thinking into it too much: You are asking for a specific treatment that no one could always foresee being necessary - which is the slight difference to 'actual needing improvement'. I am not saying that they could not improve there either - I think the most obvious problem here compared to other discussion boards is the lack of a private message function - which has been ommited for a reason, however. Everything else you pointed out is - again - quite specific. I for once would not see a reason for why I would need to be notified when a topic of mine gets pinned. And if I would really want to add something to a locked topic, then I read the room: Should I make a new topic? Was it closed by a moderator with the intention of not being discussed any further? Will the moderator eat me (potentially unjustified) if I personally have more questions regarding the closed topic? In regards to your issue - especially after two years - I think nobody would have said anything to you for making a new topic to discuss this further. In some discussion boards a moderator can even merge such topics with the old one.

And if you really think a system needs improvement, they have a dedicated section here to post it. But I would assume adding some more notification check-boxes for forum activity might not have the highest priority for them at the moment.

Again, this is all just my opinion, and I am not perfect either. So take it for what it is worth.

Edit: Having read redonihunter's comment: Something I actually forgot to mention here, is that yes of course: It could also still be something unnatural. Even though (and as they pointed out themself at the end) I believe this not to be the case here.

So it is still a thing you have to judge for yourself. If you have enough reason to believe they are a bot or doing something malicious, it is your very right to ban or report them. But as it is now, and as (including you) three people now have the same opinion of 'Might be, but potentially not' - it just comes back to a user writing comments. Which is just what it is. And honestly: Even if you could ban/report one bot and stop their masterplan of creating good ratings and reviews - as long as it does not go overboard - how much energy do you really want to spend into streamlining your comments and thinking about every spammer/bot/mastermind?

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komehara152 days ago (1 edit)

Yeah, I’ve been thinking more about it after posting my OP but I was busy so I didn’t have time to edit my post.

Basically in the whole writing I forgot my real question which made the post legit: is there some kind of bot check on itch (it’s been a while since I have signed up and I don’t remember if there was a captcha or so), and do my Reports contribute to adding extra checks on already existing users?

Because if there’s a solid system, I’ll just rely on it: I assume 99% of users are human, maybe 1 clever bot could pass the test, if I suspect it, I report. 1 month later, I still see the user: itch decided it was not a bot. OK, then it may be useful to reply to that user. If they don’t listen, then they are just a standard annoying user, which I know how to handle as I would deal with any other human.

EDIT: in the meantime I checked my old games again and found that maybe the last uploaded version was more decent than I thought, and people could honestly just enjoy playing them (maybe not worth an “awesome” but OK. Sorry for all the bother. You can still read the rest of this post if you’re curious about my particular reasons to do things, but if you don’t have much time, the part above with my “real question” was the most important anyway. Now, if I hadn’t done all of this and read your reply, maybe I wouldn’t have had the idea to check my old games again, so I guess our efforts have helped, in a weird way.

Without this, my first post seems like a very circumstantial question and I was expecting people to tell me I would overthink this or just have to decide on my own (sorry for not taking the time to edit my post and make you spend time writing a long post). To be honest, I thought about most of the things you said after writing my post (whether I’m overthinking this, that there are some things I must decide on my own), but if I hadn’t written it, I’m not sure I would have managed to go forward and think this way. Plus it’s like management, you can do it all your way esp. if you have authority but the key is to be open to discussion to find the best compromise. I feel like I must spend more energy alone than asking for help (but if people tell me I’m already putting too much effort by asking for help then I’m stuck, because I’ll feel bad in both cases).

I also stumbled on a few other people who blatantly ignored written instructions but still communicated things clearly in the end, making me think it’s possible to do so in good faith.

Otherwise, it’s not as much about making effort to actively looking for spammers (I don’t have many comments on my games…) than trying to get a peace of mind: the act of suspecting a bot and feeling annoyed is a passive thing, and I’m looking for ways to feel better: which could be confirming a bot/human spammer and blocking it, or convincing myself that I’m dealing with a human acting in good faith.

I’ve already had to deal with human spammers on Discord, who prove they were humans by their acts but communicated in very obscure, disturbing ways. And the fact they were in that gray area made it even worse than obvious spam emails you just spot and delete, because you take the time to talk to them at first, but they don’t reply in a natural way, but you know there’s a human on the other side, so you enter that weird uncanny valley, except instead of bots looking like humans but not exactly, you have humans looking like bots but not exactly. Offline, it would be quite easy: oh, it’s a kid, or an adult with some attention deficit

To be honest I was about to give them another reminder to strive to write better feedback so I don’t put them in the spam category and start deleting their posts (and it’s hard to write a second reminder to someone without sounding authoritative and antagonistic). I think they got the impression I just wanted quality feedback to improve my game, as I gave this as the official explanation to be polite, while really it was more like a custom captcha check (which again is hard to say politely).

Then I remember about my similar, pinned but locked post about issues with commenters in the “gray area” and that I also had to ask a question about this at some point, as they never replied to my email, so I ended up merging the two questions at once, hoping to get some definitive answer. Otherwise I would have probably just sent a second warning.

I don’t see your point about being on the spot light on the itch.io discussion board:

my other post has already pinned for a while, so I’m already on the spot light… for people who actually come to this board. A new thread won’t make me much more “exposed”. Plus non-pinned threads just go down in the list over time (it’s already the case)
if you’re talking about said user to see the post because it’s on the public board, I thought about this too but looking at the activity on this board, it seems that only people with specific issues (and mostly creators) are coming to this board.
there’s not much choice when asking for help on the Internet, esp. within the same community. One day I had an issue with a teammate and wasn’t sure how to behave, I asked for advice on the very same Discord server I met that person on, so there was a certain probability they’d see it - but then they would also see that I’m acting in good faith not to hurt them and to find the best compromise.

Now, it seems you’re also a fellow adept of the long posts, so I’m sure you understand the issues about automatically making inferences after reading something and feeling the need to jot it down. I’ve been thinking about this for a while now so I just did that before the end of the jam to get some peace of mind.

I think I’ll just tell the user to elaborate on specific games because I’m honestly interesting in knowing what they like in my games, esp. to drive them to play several of them one by one. And for the specific game was I think is bad, I’ll just ask them if they really found good parts in it and by “awesome” they mean it’s ugly yes, it could have some potential.

Oh, and I wouldn’t mind a bot giving me good ratings: I rarely check them, rating comments are typically made to be short, or sometimes empty, so a human could totally do that and that helps with the recommendation system. It’s the comment without rating that has no impact on the algorithm (I think) but may have a side effect on my mind. That’s why I was also intending to tell them to just rate me, since it’s great for short comments. Actually, if everything was done in ratings, I wouldn’t mind even the abusive ratings: I got a 1 star “it sucks” on a game that gets 5 starts otherwise? Things will average in my favor. I got a 5 star “Awesome!” on a raw jam prototype? Well the user could be ironic, but in the meantime they really gave me a 5 star, so maybe they’re kinda serious after all (it’s like someone applauds after a terrible song but still gives $10 to the singer - yes they may be trolling to get more people to check the game and be disappointed, but that only makes sense with massive rating).

Anyway, there’s a bigger thread on actual (obvious) bot fight somewhere, so I’ll head there if I got real bot issues.

The suggestion threads may be good for my more specific requests (which I thought about while writing the first post), I may post my suggestions there later (it’s just that you don’t get a pinned post everyday). I still think it’s relevant to give a reason for pinning if it didn’t turn out obvious during the conversation - I saw a bunch of other topics that are very important, that are not pinned, after all. And I don’t mind about priority, when I have a suggestion, I just post it, then it’s the devs’ job to assign priorities to tasks.

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Salbei152 days ago (1 edit)

I believe there is a captcha check during log-in, yes. But probably anyone with some tech knowledge would now give you the answer that this does not stop bots completely, otherwise there would not be issues with bots as a conclusion.

I have not yet clicked on the report button (and do not feel like testing it out by clicking on it under random posts), but I assumed it would notify the staff to check the corresponding comment/user. Maybe the system also tracks reports and acts accordingly if too many accumulate, but that could also easily be abused, so maybe a notification is all there is - simply because while we are managing our own pages, there is a 'parent' above us we (and especially 'normal' users) can ask for help.

So the basic answer to your question is: It does not... really change a thing. The person could still be the same amount of bot as they could not. Which of course brings us back to all the analyz-y stuff about overdoing and how to handle it by your own measurements.

I know what you mean with basically saying: No matter which route you take on this, you feel like you are overthinking anyways. Doing it on your own (specifically planning on how to do it) - overthinking. Asking others about the issue (Making it bigger than it is) - overthinking. Again, one part here is to read the room. Is it overthinking or just making sense to open another topic on this, for example. The other part is the solution I came up with (or actually still try to integrate more and more in my behaviour) - listening to my feeling. Because as you mention yourself, there always seems to be so much variety in how things could go and actually be, that with thinking alone you never can get to a satisfying conclusion. Came up with something yourself? Maybe you still forgot something or learn to do better next time. Asked someone? Maybe they only gave you their point of view? It can never be 'perfect' in that regard.

If you try listen to your feeling however, it usually turns out... as intended. That is at least my experience (and can sound not that convincing, I am aware). Sometimes it turns out right, because you did the most fitting action in your circumstance, sometimes it does turn out so-so, but usually because you were supposed to learn something from it. That is at least how I noticed a lot of times since I tried that approach. And even if it would be complete nonsense, you actively achieved the following: Not thinking too much about something were it is not required, and just do as you feel is right. And that is usually always beneficial. Because even if you have to think about a topic more, your feeling will tell you that as well, or you can learn something from doing what you felt was right to broaden your horizon.

In regards to some of your points:

Checking if a spammer or not for peace of mind: While I know that nagging feeling, I can assure just letting it rest at some point (especially if there is nothing to be gained) is the wiser choice. And it makes you think less, which is a win in that regard.

Discord Situation: This is actually something I think about from time to time, as well. You do not want to be unsympathetic to a person who just are how they are. Seems correct. But it is not as black and white there, either. Sometimes people have to learn and adjust their behaviour, at least as much as they are able to. And it is sadly a truth that we all only have so much attention and endurance to handle all kind of people and situations. You can only try to do your best, which again, for me means to listen to my feeling. That could mean waiting until a person leaves on their own eventually, getting into a situation where you can remove them, keeping them because it is fine, or even liking to have them around. It can still be a very diverse outcome, but without overthinking and doubting oneself.

And if your feeling tells you that it is a bot... at some point you have to make the decision if you want to kick them based on that - or not. Maybe you learn something from it, maybe it was the right decision to do because you needed to handle it that way to 'make it work' for you. And maybe they simply were a bot. Just as sometimes you just know some people are not that great and no matter how much you doubt yourself it turns out that you were right at the end. Again, quite wild amount of outcomes. You can only listen to yourself of what would be the best approach at that point in time.

Writing a second reminder: That is actually a really good solution. And if your only doubt is that it could come across awkward: Forget about that. Honestly, if you think it would make sense to approach the situation like that, just do it upfront: Tell them why you are asking again, what was missing from their last reply, give them some points they could answer on, and just be clear about it. What is the worst that could happen? That they did not like your polite honesty for not seeing why you did it? It may sound harsh from my side, but unless I have a good reason to believe they can nothing for it, it sounds like a problem on their side, not mine. So I can be upfront. I do not have to be afraid of making it awkward. We already are in that situation to begin with and it was not me starting to get us into that. And after being upfront and tackling all points, it may even give you a better view depending on how the person answers you once more.

Putting into spotlight: Yes, I meant the particular user. And yes, purely realistically speaking, you do have a point about how the discussion board is visited and by whom. I am just more of a person of 'the end does not justify the means'. It still seems not polite (or right) to me to put them into a spotlight. And at the end of the day, they could be a normal user liking your work - and they could potentially visit this discussion board. Feels kind of... not cool to me. But as said in my previous post, I can see why you did it. It made sense (at least to you). If not trying to be black and white, the world did not collapse on it. And yes, sometimes it is once again about reading the room: Would it work out this time? How would the other person react? Does it make sense in this situation? For example, your asking yourself what else of an option would there have been? In regards to the user here, as some have pointed out, either letting it be or try to solve it by yourself. For the teammate you had, maybe writing to them directly, instead of seeking an indirect solution where they may see you talked about them. Most of the time, people do not like that too much. But this can (and should) rely on how you read the room. Maybe it did make total sense there to do it like that. Who am I to put your situation into a box and say 'No'.

About ratings: I mean, what could you really do if a platform would be (potentially, not saying it is) infested with bots spamming positive or negative ratings? Hoping that it gets solved eventually, I assume. In that regard, I guess I would not mind either. I would not like fake ratings per se, I would love to get ratings that are truthful, but I cannot do anything against 'good' or 'bad' spam. If you are doing your work commercially, you would of course be driven to like one side more and still care about the other for obvious reasons. If you are doing it as a hobby, you could still care about the latter, but... it is really not worth it. I certainly would not.

About reviews/comments: Again, if you are going commercial, or just want your work to be recognized, than yes. Hoping for users to actually use the systems that matter would be great. Adding a detailed text in some form would be a bonus. From my point of view though: Ratings would be cool, yeah. But I would love for people to engage in the comments about it, no matter if just a short 'Really cool' or a 3 page essay about the principals of game design. Of course, especially if it comes down to 'really bad', you would hope for a more detailed feedback instead of leaving a negative 'impact' on your work. But that is also just how it is. Some people give their expression (sometimes justified, sometimes debatably not), and all you can do is accept and/or ask them for a more detailed answer.

Pinned topics: At the end of the day, it is always up to the mindset of the staff/moderator on how they see their surroundings they are working in. They could have felt like such a topic would make sense to pin as it is not clearly explained in the guidelines - which I agree with. And with some topics they may think it is doable in other ways. Which... is debatable. I often agree on it. Sometimes I feel like the guidelines have more topics which could be expanded upon, as well as some issues handled better on the site/board (Like the reminder of not asking about indexing within a spoiler tag at the top which feels like only 2% of visitors are actually reading). That being said: I am using this site for almost three years now, and while I can see need of improvement at some parts (for example the speed of updates and especially support handling requests/issues), one can see that they do care to do their job right - and they also do listen to their users. Which I do not take for granted nowadays.

... That last part got a bit sidetracked. What I wanted to write here is: It could be a viable suggestion to the team to maybe pin topics more often or think about how to improve the faq and guides on the discussion board. However, as mentioned last post, they probably have other matters to attend to - and as we all know, the usage of the discussion board is quite limited, so once again: I would not think too much about topics getting pinned or not, to be honest.

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redonihunter154 days ago

I told them about a network of similar accounts. Request 207509. About two months ago. Nothing happened.

It is fake accounts doing fake comments. And it is still going on. I checked just now.

Same as your case, one liners that have nohting to do with the game commented on. Or meaningless comments fitted to the genre. Like on horror it would be about being scared. Often the same comment on different games. From the selection of games, it looks like they pulled the top pages of popular or recent and just commented on each game.

My best guess is, someone is growing legit looking bot armies to later sell good ratings and comments or manipulate ranking in popularity, or manipulate jams.

Maybe it even is manual work, an enthusiast could do this no problem. But those accounts I reported are commandeered by a single source. Faking comments is not a thing Itch should tolerate.

(Oh, and I do not think your fan is such a fake commentor as I described it. For one, I do not see any other suspicious comments. Having a single bot is not worth the effort. It rather looks like someone liked a game of yours and is slowly digging through the rest and likes to give comments. So maybe remove the name calling, if you are not convinced that it is an illicit account)

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redonihunter154 days ago (1 edit)

Oh, and the other topic was locked because of spam. It says so in the lock message. Of course we no longer see the spam, because it was deleted. Itch is abused in all sorts of ways. Comment spam is often seen, but unlike issues staff has do deal with, this can be dealt by moderators, and disappears rather quickly.

There was no reply for about 4 months other then spams. Since it is the pinned message, it was prime traget for spam bots.

Speaking of it. Below is already a comment looking very much like spam, what with being posted on several unrelated topics begging to fill out some "survey".

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