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Commenting: Please add moderation and review/approve dialog

A topic by Mark Cleveland M created Jun 24, 2020 Views: 1,590 Replies: 13
Viewing posts 1 to 5
(4 edits) (+1)

Comments containing link or images shouldn't be able to be posted in comments on my game's sales wall without being approved. These kinds of posts are suspect by default, especially when linked to file sharing sites like it was in my case (see below).

Moderation tools seem to be an oversight here.

Effects of not having it: Someone was able to post a comment through the Commenting feature I had enabled on my game, and user included a link that wasn't blocked or held for my review. Instead, it just posted - and happened to be a mediafire link GIVING away the prerelease of the game on my call to action page. Apparently this could have been just about anything, which is unacceptable. 

My sales went down to 0 the moment this happened. They returned to about half their usual level once I turned commenting off. But low and behold there was a mediafire post that I had to report SO fast I didn't even screen cap the comment. Anyways the user was basically a brand new user far as I could tell (and as I said in the report I already made, they should be banned if its not their first abuse). I wanted to just.. give them a free copy via messaging here, but I can't do that either. 

What do I do and how do I prevent this kind of abuse in the future?

EDIT: This was reported immediately. However the very same thing happened the next day. They've since deleted their second array of comments - perhaps so I couldn't report them, and then something else weird happened. A little back and forth while I was busy promoting, but I made the mistake of taking a day off to rest - so I logged in 18 hours later to seeing I was being doxed through the comments there. I deleted those, and was forced to take the whole comments section down.

Moderator(+1)

No, you can always contact support and explain more clearly what happened, and to which of your games. You can moderate comments on your game pages, and if someone abused a download key, it can also be revoked. Our admins may be able to take other action as well, and suggests steps to be taken. Hope this helps.

Well they didnt buy the game, they downloaded a pre-release somewhere, then uploaded to mediafire and posted the link directly to the sales page. They had an account obv but why was a link allowed in the comments to begin with? Is there a setting to disallow them by default - so I can approve them before they go up? links are spoopy, is my take on it.

Moderator(+1)

Definitely contact support with a description of what happened and your suggestions for extra protection measures. Might take a while.

Done

I'm hoping I just missed a checkbox somewhere

(+1)

Damn. I'll have to keep this in mind. I can only recommend - updating the game to feature something 'cool' (not an entire new system or overhaul, just something that the old pirated copies won't have) - then delete all the keys? And if necessary, pursue legal action? 

Moderator

I’m still learning how keys work, but as I understand it in some cases it counts as if the user has “purchased” your game, which means the user will get all future updates. Not sure if revoking such a key would revoke access of that user, but it’s worth keeping in mind.

In this case the user didn't donate to the game on itch. They downloaded the prerelease version somewhere else, then downloaded the free itch version to gain access to comment, then uploaded the former to mediafire, then posted that link via itch comments in an act of Hate. I see no tools to limit the actions of commenters in any way (links, imagery, etc), so I've resorted to turning them OFF. Going to look into the forum features in the meantime..

Due to a lack of comment moderation tools, I had to turn off commenting until I find out more. The documentation online says I get additional options once I turned it on (which I had done, but I see no such "options").

What about the "dedicated forum" option? Does this give me any control over links posted, images, etc? I'd hate to see someone abuse it to post questionable images, hate speech, etc

(+1)

afaik the only option you have is to delete comments or ban people. Most of the time I see nice comments or sometimes spam, I never saw something like this happened and I don't think that this is regurlar thing

That's what I mean though. In this case I have no option other than to monitor constantly when a comment email comes in (there is no preview of the comment in the email: sad) and I am too busy to look because I am promoting the game or doing a podcast.

I deleted the comments and I slept okay that night I guess.. but what I asked for is a way to hold questionable comments (those containing links, or images, or certain keywords) so they arent displayed until approved by an admin or whatever

(+1)

If you needed to delete all comments  from the start (because I see no comments) I would just disable them. If you don't get that many, I would just check it once or twice a day (bookmark the analytics page).  I don't think that Itch.io has time in the near future to make changes on their platform that aren't absolutely necessary. Some people seem to really dislike you or your projects because of the ratings. In the first case I would also disallow the ratings (but I don't know if this affects old reviews, maybe just for the next one). Good luck!

(2 edits)

Done, and done. However that option is very 'nuclear.'

Eh it's a shame that posts containing images and links to file hosting sites are even allowed in the comments. Not allowing that would solve the issue too

EDIT: Turning off reviews was too nuclear. I decided to leave those up

I edited this post's OP to reflect the newest events. I also reclassified as a Suggestion not a Bug (my mistake).