Tavern on the Meta - 2018-11-14 (page 2 of 4)

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8:03 AM

@Adam since it's now locked, can you please add the quote format around "See also" section here? @public removed it in several FAQ questions and I'm now rolling back those edits.

@ShadowWizard OK now you're just making me more curious.

Security through obscurity is never the answer.

delv-pls 20K mac meta.stackexchange.com/questions/318266/… /cc @ShadowWizard @Bart @Glorfindel (oh, and @pub let's agree on that we don't suggest edits on blatantly off-topic questions, okay?)

In part because it makes people like me want to find out how it works to break it, rather than to suggest improvements to make it work without being secret.

@forest it shouldn't be the answer, but it's just better in some cases.

Assuming you talk about the serial voting reversal formula, the way to reverse engineer it is actually fairly straightforward

8:13 AM

@Magisch I'm sure it is, I'll probably just set up some bots and see if it's something as trivial as a weighted threshold of votes over time or something.

@rene oh he did that too? sigh

yes

Hopefully @pub is one who learns from mistakes then. :)

@forest At the same time, security by obscurity really works here in this case

Still giving him slack.

8:14 AM

@ShadowWizard It's pretty much never better. If it's so badly designed that mere knowledge of how it works results in it being completely broken, then it's worthless. It should be designed so that knowledge of the working does not make it easier to go through vote fraud.

People who use votes to inflate their scores have no clue how it works, and that's why it somewhat works

@rene KABOOM

@Magisch People who use votes to inflate their scores are usually dumb enough that, even if it was public, they would not be able to get around it.

This relies on the fact that most people who do standard issue serial voting are uninvested in the site and its mechanics

@forest you are putting too much into it.

8:15 AM

@forest eh, yes and no

@Magisch I think people could only abuse it if someone were to actually write a voting script to evade it. Most people don't know how to do that (and that's really the only way to get a lot of votes fraudulently).

You're thinking in terms of hard software security, while this is more of a ... social encouragement tool

heh

Even still, a good design would detect signs of voting fraud, not detect signs of people who don't know how to evade voting fraud. Even something as basic as machine learning could be used to notice simple patterns.

Freenode has tried to do the same thing with its spam detection bot (forget its name right now), and we all know how well that works. :P

Sigyn, that was it. Or something like that.

Almost a Ninja! :D

Context before you flag: (sorry, found only in Hebrew)

נינג'ה ישראל

נינג'ה ישראל או NINJA ישראל היא תוכנית מציאות ישראלית המבוססת על התוכנית האמריקאית "אתגר הנינג'ה" (American Ninja Warrior) של רשת NBC, שהיא בעצמה ספין-אוף לתוכנית היפנית המצליחה בשם "סאסוקה" (サスケ‏; Sasuke). התוכנית הציגה מספר רב של מתמודדים המנסים להשלים מסלול מכשולים עם דרגת קושי עולה. בשנים בהן משודרת התוכנית בעולם רק מספר מצומצם של מתמודדים צלחו את המסלול הסופי. המתמודד המנצח, יובל שמלא, זכה ברכב שטח, ואם היה עובר מכשול נוסף היה זוכה גם ב-250 אלף שקלים. מנחי התוכנית היו אסי עזר ורותם סלע, יחד עם צוות הפרשנים ניב רסקין ורותם ישראל. העונה הראשונה עלתה לשידור ב-25 ביולי 2018 בקשת 12, ונגמרה ב...

I wonder if there's any way to reverse the algorithm using info from the public archives... That keeps records of voting reversal, doesn't it?

Or is that stuff only public in real-time, not in the archives?

8:21 AM

Interesting. I post a picture of almost a ninja, and @Derpy appears. :D

@pub is now asleep, wonder how he would react to waking up for a flood of pings in his inbox? ;)

dragging @public out of bed

Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog

@ShadowWizard Let's not add more unnecessary ones.

@SonictheAnonymousHedgehog well, he did say he love pings as much as I do. I'm just testing that statement. :)

@forest think that SE voting fraud detection is mostly vote-source based.

18 hours ago, by public static void main

@Sha yes it is, I love pings as much as you.

Which means that probably somewhere someone is already using cloud based VMs to escape detection.

8:25 AM

And for me, waking into inbox full with pings feels good. :P

@Derpy My first guess is that it generates an interaction graph (forget what those are called) to see if there's an abnormal amount of voting within a specific cell (again still forget what the term is, but those little "clusters" of interaction).

E.g. for a given threshold for vote reversal, the amount the weight for any vote goes up is inversely proportional to the amount of distinct individuals the user has voted for.

Or something vaguely along those lines.

From what I know, the algorhitm system is quite simple, but I don't think any change to it is in the dev time budget right now

@forest I doubt it is very complex. If I had to guess, I would say that probably it is just a scheduled script that checks if any account has received a lot of votes in a short period.

That simple? I mean that seems even simpler than I would have expected.

If it founds something, it then tries to see if there is a visible pattern.

8:29 AM

I'm not going to comment on what I think the script is like exactly, as I like my account undestroyed :P

"Visible pattern"?

waffles

Commenting on site-specific algorithms is not against the ToS.

Using said knowledge to commit vote fraud is, though.

I've been explicitly asked by moderators before to refrain from publicly commenting on specifics of serial voting stuff

Are you a representative of the site somehow, or just a random user?

8:31 AM

@Magisch Well but if we can prevent others from doing even worse things, it might be valid to discuss it. No?

^

Exactly. I mean when I find out the details, it's not like I won't suggest improvements. Though I tend not to like suggesting improvements for secret algorithms.

@forest only those with blue name are "representatives of the site". :)

Ah, so you're just being bullied into not speculating. :P

Well that just makes this even more interesting.

@forest no

The blue ones talk here rarely.

8:33 AM

Can I just say this is getting ridiculous?

"bullied" is an exaggeration. I've been sticking my nose into where users noses don't belong before

Here:

> Every night around 03:00 UTC, a voting fraud detection script is run that looks for patterns such as these. It basically looks for users who have voted on another user's posts many times. The threshold number is fairly low within a given amount of time (the exact mechanics are kept secret).

There's no such thing.

@Derpy Yeah that much I've read.

and the above quote if from no less than animuson.

Some people just don't like secrets.

8:34 AM

I think no one here said much more than what the staff already said in a public post on meta.

So, please, stop lionizing users, will ya?

Right now the hardest thing for me is to think of a way to test it out without actually voting fraudulently. Maybe if I create a dozen accounts to vote for each other, but still post beneficial content? But even then that'd be breaking ToS.

derpy has a point

Which reminds me... @Mithrandir glad to see the fire ceased, your cousins are safe. For now. :)

leonizing?

@forest If you're serious, just use SEDE and run whatever you want to test on there

use SEDE to find profiles and then look by hand at their voting history. You should be able to find what you want that way without actually sockpuppeting anything

8:36 AM

@forest yup, if detected all dozen account will be nuked and your main account suspended for long time.

Does SEDE have data on who voted for whom?

no

@forest of course not.

Not sure how useful SEDE would be then.

(I know nothing about SEDE, just that it gives you data on stuff and junk)

It also doesn't have more then the 1 date interval of when the vote was actually cast

8:36 AM

@forest merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lionize

Oh I thought you said leonizing for some reason.

Users trying to poke too much into the voting tools might find that a mod looks in their direction in a disapproving way.

@forest it is mirror of the actual database used by Stack Exchange, just without any "private" data.

Basically: This stuff is secret for a reason, don't go poking around in it too much

@Mithrandir I don't care. If mods get aggressive because people are "thinking too much", then I don't want to be on this site anyway. If I'll get in trouble while not breaking any of the ToS, then we have a problem.

8:38 AM

anyway, it you want to do something useful for the site, there is something else worth doing.

The hat pictures are public domain

Thinking too much != trying to find the details about the voting scripts

it is about time someone creates an user script to use the hats all year long.

But regardless, I'll go "poking around" and trying to learn as much as I can while not violating the ToS or interfering with content on the site.

There's a reason normal users aren't supposed to focus on moderating user behavior, just content

If you go about it wrongly you get a bunch of witch hunting for no reason

@forest Sure. Just please don't reveal anything that you discover publicly.

8:40 AM

Stack Exchange Inc is a US corporation. Algorithms cannot be copyrighted.

Revealing information about an algorithm, if not done by reproducing the exact code (which can be copyrighted), is always legal.

Because really, if people start knowing how to hide their fraud so that it doesn't get detected... that makes things much, much more difficult.

@forest Talking about algorithms... What would you say is an algorithm?

The attitude mods have towards curious users is what determines whether or not I'll find out the algorithm and suggest improvements, or find out the algorithm and take time to design an easy to use userscript for voting fraud (for education, of course).

@Tinkeringbell I think there's a specific legal definition, but I don't know it.

Cause I have this "funny" co-worker that keeps calling each if-else statement an algorithm... and I really hate that as to me an algorithm is a set of multiple instructions.

So whenever he says 'we need to change the entire algorithm', it means change the if-else or for-each loop. Not rewrite the entire code-base :P

In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm ( ( listen)) is an unambiguous specification of how to solve a class of problems. Algorithms can perform calculation, data processing and automated reasoning tasks. As an effective method, an algorithm can be expressed within a finite amount of space and time and in a well-defined formal language for calculating a function. Starting from an initial state and initial input (perhaps empty), the instructions describe a computation that, when executed, proceeds through a finite number of well-defined successive states, eventually producing "output"...

> In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm (/ˈælɡərɪðəm/ (About this sound listen)) is an unambiguous specification of how to solve a class of problems. Algorithms can perform calculation, data processing and automated reasoning tasks.

8:42 AM

I think patent law has a specific definition.

Or maybe just in the EU.

Since a single if-else statement can't really solve a class of problems, it can't be called algorithm. @Tink

@ShadowWizard I found that. Which indeed caused the annoyance.

If/else is just an implementation of conditional jumps.

(feel free to refer this co-worker here ;))

@forest GOTO was much more fun though. :D

@Magisch To clarify, should I expect moderator retaliation if I discover and publish non-copyrightable and non-trade secret information using non-disruptive means?

8:45 AM

@Tinkeringbell I'm asking for a raise. I change many algorithms on a daily basis ...

Never realized I did those complex things ...

@forest I'm not a moderator or affiliated with the site in any way

don't ask me

Oops, I meant @Mithrandir

@forest yes, you should.

Your names both start with an M

I know that I've been asked in a friendly way not to before when I looked at it, and I comply mostly because I respect the askers and understand their reasoning

8:47 AM

What you consider "non-disruptive means" may not be actually non-disruptive; the problem is that these things are kept secret because if it was public, then fraudsters would have a much easier time of it. So if you happen to find out something, then it is preferred that you don't reveal it.

@Mithrandir By non-disruptive, I mean passive. I.e. using nothing but data which is already public (as opposed to creating vote fraud bots to test it actively).

You're free to look at stuff. It's preferred that you don't reveal what you find.

I wonder if preferred is a euphemism for absolutely required.

You probably won't be suspended, unless you persist after being asked multiple times to stop. But the information might get redacted.

Eh I don't plan to publish anything on this site itself.

Hadn't even thought about that. I understand deleting that.

Thanks for the clarification though.

8:51 AM

I can't do anything about it if you publish the details of what you find in a blog post somewhere. Just understand that by doing that you are potentially handing the keys to undetected voting fraud to those who find it.

And... for understandable reasons, that's not something I'd like to happen.

@forest well, please don't write a blog post "How to bypass Stack Overflow vote fraud mechanism". You'll only harm Stack Overflow, and it's just something not nice to do. Leaving legal or not legal aside.

"How to bypass Stack Overflow vote fraud mechanism, or why security through obscurity doesn't work - userscript and documentation included"

:^)

Be your views on security by obscurity as they may, fact is that's how it currently works and there isn't really dev time right now to completly rework it from what I can gather. So if you think that publishing an easy-made way to bypass it is going to make SE prioritize it, that's the wrong way to go about it

No need to harm others just to prove a point.

And a pretty jerk move

8:54 AM

Other sites have similar fraud detection mechanisms, and they actually work, even with the information public. The reason is that it detects fraud behavior, not just fraud signatures. In order to evade it, users are forced to slow down their voting or to register a larger number of accounts to accomplish the same purpose.

You wouldn't believe the effort some users put into evading this thing already.

I get all that, but the point remains. Why do you intend to damage SE to make that point?

As it is, there are plenty of people who evade it and are currently not detected.

Which just means the algorithm is not ideal.

Go ahead and find and flag them then

That^ would be a lot more helpful.

8:55 AM

I don't use SO.

The sites I'm on are too small to have much fraud anyway.

If you flag something reasonably, mods will forward it to the CMs, who will reverse as needed

couple of edits there and you have enough rep to flag

meh

I'm lazy.

You can flag on any site if you have the association bonus - you get that at 15 rep.

Oh good point

@forest so you'll spend long hours to reverse engineer the script, but too lazy to earn 15 rep on a site? Something here doesn't add up, sorry.

8:57 AM

I get curious easily lol

You already spent hours discussing it, for sure. ;)

It's been hours? O_o

Total? Sure.

I thought this was the first time I talked about that. My memory is terrible.

Also, funny reading for you:

19

Q: Curiosity fell over the cliff (aka what happened here??)

Once upon a time there was a user named Curiosity. That user got fair share of questions with what appears to be fair upvotes: Examples: one, two, three Then came this question where a user posted a comment that might have offended our Curious user: Good chances that he/she chose ...

discussion deleted-accounts sock-puppets

:D

9:00 AM

Ew, serial downvoting in revenge is just low.

It's what most people do though. Why else serial downvote??

People serial upvote in order to boost their rep so they get more job offers.

IIRC there's a big problem with some Indian fraud circle doing that on SO.

@forest sure, but it's totally unrelated to serial downvoting. As far as reasons go that is. :)

True

@ShadowWizard as if serial downvotes were just a "targeted at user" thing

9:04 AM

@rene I'm going to quit my job if I don't get arrays

you can have [tag] based serial downvote...

you can have question based serial downvote...

@forest there were always voting rings and there will always be, can't do much about it except keep an eye if possible and alert moderators when we see something.

Like, downvoting a certain tag?

@forest yep.

I mean I know some people feel really strongly about how shitty a given language is, but downvoting it? I mean that's just silly.

9:05 AM

Tag based serial voting is seriously hard to detect.

...but possible ;)

I think it'd be simple enough to deterministically detect just by comparing the percentage of downvotes to a specific tag for a given user against the average.

@forest nahhhh... much better than that. It is pretty clear that recently someone on Sci-fi&Fantasy downvoted all MLP related posts. Or at least attempted to.

hah

The site I regularly participate on once got serial downvot on new questions >_>

<_<

9:08 AM

O_o

]_[

@forest btw, may be reversed now since I don't see those votes in my history anymore

You flagged? Called a CM?

4

Q: Suspicious downvotes on recently asked questions

I noticed that most of the recent questions that are not closed since Oct 12 until now (Oct 16) have been downvoted at least once: Can 2 elements be combined into a new release without a "clan based Kekkai Genkai"? Is Gaara able to control sand because of his mother or shukaku (the 1 tails) Try...

support down-votes

Wait, I was checking the wrong year.

Nope, still there.

9:11 AM

damn

!!/blame

@ShadowWizard It's John Dvorak's fault.

He is the fraudster?! :D

Since there are not many regular users, I was observing most voters in a week and had a hunch of who was the culprit

user image

9:13 AM

@andmyself and?

@Derpy hehe. Classic. Probably the mod forwarded this to SE team or a single CM, and it got lost in the void.

And now year later, most likely it's pointless to dig again into it anyway.

@ShadowWizard It is also possible that I were wrong. I think there was indeed a pattern there (all votes came at the same time) but probably they were too few to really justify any work

Might be...

Anyway, more recently, I think someone had downvoted ALL the answers on the cheese swag at about the same time.

@Derpy and we know who it is.

Like it would do him any good.

9:16 AM

Same person who started that offensive bounty.

user image

Offensive bounty?

@andmyself and? Was that user suspended?

downvotes were explicitly excluded from the contest in the first place, so pretty useless thing to do.

@forest yes, bounty with offensive description.

9:17 AM

Link?

@ShadowWizard not suspended, but then the fraud also died

@Derpy Not that useless. You can still use them to get your post in front of someone else's :P

@forest @Derpy posted a screenshot not long ago

I see one that's just a flag comment.

@andmyself oh, so the mod probably sent official warning. Nice. :)

9:18 AM

@Tinkeringbell not if you downvoted ALL the answers and probably had no post there in the first place.

@forest found it here:

2 days ago, by Derpy

I want to know who casted THIS vote (warning: offensive) and hopefully have him/her reported

oh wait, it was the close reason.

@ShadowWizard was an offensive close vote, not a bounty.

But there was also a bounty with similar description.

What's offensive about voting something off-topic for condoning rape?

I mean, condoning rape is something that should not be done.

@ShadowWizard There was an offensive bounty too, but that was found by another user ;)

9:21 AM

@forest yep, but that vote was made on a post about a contest about cheese.

oh

@forest maybe because a fun contest is not doing such a thing, and saying it is offends those who organize it?

Maybe they're just a radical feminist who saw something benign and thought it was condoning rape. Who knows.

it refers to fart, not rape though...

So, while it may have been valid on another post (but in that case, flagging would have been a better option) it wasn't really appropriate on THAT post.

9:23 AM

It's done by a radical animal rights activist who happens to be a very long time user of Stack Exchange. @forest

ah

Those activists like to claim that cheese is a product of rape.

Because cows "don't consent" so breeding them = rape.

@ShadowWizard Oh, that user...

@andmyself yup.

@forest exactly.

He wasn't like this before, something happened to him. But... meh. Not our role to dig into it.

sounds fun

What's his name?

Not really. :/

I gave enough hints....

9:25 AM

Gah but then I have to read :(

Not going to reveal especially when he's still chat banned so can't join and respond to what we say.

@ShadowWizard No, that's my role. :^)

lol it probably is...

status-second-coffee-of-the-day

!!/coffee Andras

@ShadowWizard brews a cup of Americano for @Andras

user image

9:29 AM

!!/tea Shǫg9

@andmyself brews a cup of chamomile tea for @Shǫg9

lol

ehh... you are aware it actually pings, right? @andmy

Poor Smokey... going to be kicked... :D

@ShadowWizard dunno...

You almost made me scratch a hole in my screen...

@Mithrandir to drink the coffee? ;)

9:31 AM

@SmokeDetector ew

I guess it's the thought that counts

@ShadowWizard ǫ != o

@AndrasDeak why? It's a fine coffee! ;)

it may have started out fine, but it's become Americano

@Derpy ohhhhh. Smart.

Oh great, I can't even dismiss a ping while my mouse isn't working...

9:32 AM

Personally I love plain espresso. Double.

Hahaha @Mithrandir That's just too funny :P

...

@Mithrandir you can with AJAX. Want the code?

coffee, earl grey, cold

Also, by posting it should clear all pending pings. @Mithrandir

9:33 AM

Right. That doesn't work if I don't want to reply.

Yup.

I once got flooded with pings so made a script to auto clear them even when I'm away. ;)

Does anyone know what a backlock is?

I love pings, but not when it's 100 per hour. lol

@Tinkeringbell typo of backlog?

Backlock or backlog?

9:34 AM

Getting flooded with pings here is not the end of the world. You should see what users on Freenode who happen to be -R have to go through...

@AndrasDeak Shh. I'm supposed to go through the backlock.

No one said backlog :P

@Tinkeringbell Lock that locks your back?

ah

*

*hands Tink a lockpick* For the back door.

@forest what's Freenode? What's "-R"?

9:35 AM

It's so tempting to say 'I'm sorry, I looked but couldn't find a backlock to go through', if this co-worker didn't already act like I'm stupid. ON the other hand, perhaps I should just go with the flow!

@Mithrandir if one door closes another one opens

@Tinkeringbell lol

@ShadowWizard In a way ;) I'm trying to stay strong and positive here.

@ShadowWizard Freenode is the largest software-development-focused IRC network. -R is a status for a user (you can set statuses on yourself) which means anyone can send you a private message. If you're +R, they have to be registered to send you a message.

Only 27.75 days to go!

9:36 AM

-R on Freenode = thousands of new spam messages from a variety of the server's regular well-known fairly racist spammers. I.e. wowaname and that one kid whose name I forget but I really should remember who keeps making those offensive channels.

@Tinkeringbell and how many seconds? ;)

that ^

Start some online counter @Tink! Maybe use the winterbash counter, I made a jsfiddle for it once. :D

I take it "spam" not in the SE meaning of "spam". Racist spam sounds oddly intriguing. "Enlarge your superior dongle", things like that

Is the winterbash counter up yet?

9:37 AM

@forest eww, sorry to hear!

Apparently not.

Nah like "gay-ass n****** come to my irc server that doesn't suck! ditch these kik**!" (in all caps, in a thousand windows from a thousand bots).

@Mithrandir nope. Just a panda.

must be a convincing argument

Well, pandas are good.

9:38 AM

Totally convincing.

@Mithrandir but they don't have hats.

Guess again img08.deviantart.net/ad51/i/2008/168/f/0/…

Plot twist: The panda is the hat.

@ShadowWizard Hmm.

Hmm to you too!

9:40 AM

Go hmm yourself!

@ShadowWizard timeanddate.com/countdown/… but that does count weekends too.

at least, the chicken is still there

> winterbash2017.stackexchange.com/chicken

@Bart I will! I won't be a pleasant sight.

I wasn't telling you to show us

Keep that to yourself

just don't look back ...

9:41 AM

in anger?

yes

@rene back is locked so I can't.

@Bart I heard you say?

@Bart OK OK, I will show. Just wait for it. :D

@Tinkeringbell :D

9:44 AM

@ShadowWizard Hurry up will you?

Hmming takes time, patience!

Don't have that.

Being in here is stressful right now, I might just get pulled away at any moment without notice!

@ShadowWizard and distance. Hmming distance to be specific.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in link text in answer, potentially problematic ns configuration in answer (123): Can I use "I" in an essay? by Emily Rock on writing.SE

Do I want to Google "hmming"?

9:48 AM

@Tinkeringbell just backlock yourself to the desk?

@Mithrandir no

@Bart Don't need to. Co-worker will do that. But you missed all the fun ranting I did about my co-worker in here by staying away so long!

:D

@ShadowWizard ..................

Well then.

9:50 AM

Done! Here is my hmming! @Bart @Tink

Do I have a lantern hanging on my nose, @ShadowWizard?

@Derpy might as well have, yep. ;)

user image

new pierced look

lol

9:51 AM

^ this one I just posted is far more appropriate

user image

@Derpy That is a cute butterfly :)

hehehe

@Bart You think that's funny? They almost made me post 'I like Bart' messages...

@Tinkeringbell poor you

@Mithrandir lol I was kidding... first image result for "hmming" is:

user image

:P

9:54 AM

@Bart As long as you keep that in mind :)

@Tinkeringbell you mean the butterfly called Flutter, that says she "comes from a place where everyone has a set talent in life"?

Which also, just by chance mind you, have a mother that they called "Celestia"?

Yep, clearly they were thinking about nopony specific when they added that character

@Derpy I kinda just meant the image looked cute.

I already knew it wasn't a picture of a real butterfly :P

Nothing is real.

I am. According to my definition of real

you're all brains in jars as far as I'm concerned

9:59 AM

heh, wonder if that user is still active?

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