Disclaimer: Please read the full post before commenting. This post will be refined overtime, so I highly encourage to check back if there are any updates!
Hey everyone!
My name is Francis and I am a DEV user for 6 months. There is something I want to reveal...
I am currently a DEV Community Mod where my job is to ensure the community abides DEV's Mission and following best practices when it comes to articles and interacting with the community.
A guide for that can be found here:
The Goal of this Post!
I want to create a thread that allow users to ask questions and get a response in a timely manner. As a DEV Mod, I want to ensure you have your questions answered from a Mod perspective.
@ben, @jess and the rest of the DEV Team are extremely busy, especially with the acquisition of Major League Hacking.
A lot is happening behind the scenes at DEV and I believe I want to take the responsibility to answers questions and concerns as we are moving forward. It will save valuable time for the DEV team!
If you have questions about:
- AI usage on DEV and ways I can improve my Moderation.
- Questions on how to use DEV.
- What a Community Mod can and cannot do.
- Other fun Icebreakers (Love to chat!).
Note: Any questions related to how DEV and MLH team operates internally can be contacted through to the DEV team email: yo@dev.to
I would love to hear from you!
Notice
With the recent surges of Sloan messages, I want to let you know a few things:
- Sloan, by itself, does not detect AI-generated articles or is "alive". It is sent via human (which is me for the most case. Not sure who else uses Sloan other than the internal DEV team).
- ClassifierAI, the project I did with @codingwithjiro has NOTHING to do with the moderation process on DEV.
- The deciding factor on sending the Sloan message comes down to the following: User activity, reading the article in its entirety, running via GPTzero.
Hey all, just wanted to share that we'll be updating our general moderation guidelines and tooling for the community soon.
A lot goes on behind-the-scenes that's a combination of manual moderation and automated spam detection. There is a lot of nuance here that requires constant adjustment and rebalancing.
I'll note that there are hundreds of mods with the ability to send messages via Sloan, so not all of it has fallen on Francis's shoulders - though we deeply appreciate his dedication to the the community, and he is by far one of our most active volunteer moderators.
We'll share a more substantial update on community moderation and our perspective on AI-assisted content in the next few weeks.
Top comments (26)
Hey all, just wanted to share that we'll be updating our general moderation guidelines and tooling for the community soon.
A lot goes on behind-the-scenes that's a combination of manual moderation and automated spam detection. There is a lot of nuance here that requires constant adjustment and rebalancing.
I'll note that there are hundreds of mods with the ability to send messages via Sloan, so not all of it has fallen on Francis's shoulders - though we deeply appreciate his dedication to the the community, and he is by far one of our most active volunteer moderators.
We'll share a more substantial update on community moderation and our perspective on AI-assisted content in the next few weeks.
This is a big priority for us going forward after lots of work to catch up with new demands of moderation in this age. I think we'll land in a really good place.
Thanks @jess and @ben! If you believe if there is something I can do to improve, do let me know in the meantime!
I'll ask the first question. How many Sloan warnings does it take before an account gets flagged? And will there be a notification when that happens?
Great first question! and appreciate the communication we had on @dannwaneri's post for this concern.
In my opinion this depends on the user's activity and how they are using DEV. For example, let's say a person has never been caught but their profile shows the following:
If this was the case, it will be either a single warning message before flag or flagged the account entirely.
However, if it was a genuine mistake and did not know before hand, I usually go with a few warnings before hand. Of course, I make mistakes and it could vary.
There are other deciding factors based on how long they are on DEV and other things, but those are the most common.
I never been Flagged from Sloan before, but I would assume it would be like any other comments (though sometimes dev.to email notification is slow. One time I got an email notification that someone commented on my post 3 days ago lol). Can you clarify to me?
Thanks :D
One more thing — my article "I Spent 3 Months Training An AI. My VP 'Reallocated' It. Then I Got Two Calls At 1 AM." (dev.to/xulingfeng/i-spent-3-months...) still can't be found in search. Could you take a look? The latest article is fine now.🤣
Yea I did and it wasn't there...
I would recommend re posting it. Nothing on the article is flagged or anything I have done on my end. Sometimes, articles doesn't popup. Happens to me as well and not sure why.
Feel free to repost and let me know if anything!
Got it, I'll republish and test it. I'll let you know how it goes either way.
Update — it worked! I didn't delete the article. I just edited it — literally removed one empty line and saved — and now it shows up in both the feed and search. So a simple re-save re-triggers the search index. Thanks for the help! 🙌@francistrdev
Yea no problem. Good to note in the future for me lol. Any moderation issues let me know! Do also disclose the use of AI if you are using AI (I don't want to come back and run them Flags again lol)
Don't worry — I've been putting disclosure on everything since our last discussion. We're good! 🤣
Sounds good!
Email notifications from DEV have always been prompt for me. But I never received any notification about my account being flagged.
My suggestion: add a system-level notification in the community's notification center to inform users if there's anything unusual with their account and how to improve it — if that's possible.
@ben and @jess ☝️
Two legends in a one frame
lol
Appreciate you writing this up Francis. And glad to see Jess and Ben weighing in . looking forward to the updated guidelines...
Yea no problem Daniel! I hope the Sloan messages weren't affecting you in a negative way. My only request is to implement best practices in writing and sourcing when necessary. Let me know if anything else!
I feel like I got it entirely wrong 😅. I honestly thought Sloan was an actual person. When I got a Sloan message about a formatting issue on one of my posts, I assumed you had asked Sloan to comment under my post. Since you mentioned in the P.S. of your comment that you had sent a Sloan message, I completely misread that part. My bad 😅
I didn't realize Sloan was more of a moderation system/persona and that the moderator was actually the one sending the message. Thanks for clearing that up!
Yea for sure! I knew Sloan was a bot that Mod can control. It would be crazy if Sloan just say "Hi" and go from there. I would be scared for my life lmao.
I do appreciate it. It seems that people are open after the Sloan message, which is good!
Great insights! It's always interesting to hear about the experiences and challenges that come with being a community moderator. Thanks for sharing your perspective.
One question: What's the most common mistake new community members make, and how can they avoid it?
Hey! Hope you are well :D
I believe the most common mistake is not reading carefully before commenting/posting. There were instances where people believe that "the most likes in a DEV challenge = Win", which is not the case. According to the rule, it is only use as a Tie breaker situation and not the overall result.
My tip is reading the full post before making conclusions. Right now, there is assumption that the project me and @codingwithjiro did was use to determine if the article is AI or not, which is not the case. It would been best to clarify the practices on how I determine the articles instead of assumptions. In other words, ask questions!
Thanks! :D
Hi thanks for opening this up I have a question about AI use and disclosure.
I've been writing on DEV for about 6 months My typical workflow is I use AI for about 10% of the writing mostly for structure, research, and organizing thoughts. The remaining 90% is my own voice, my experiences, my tone.
Sometimes I add a disclosure at the bottom of my posts (e.g I used AI to help structure this post. The experiences and opinions are my own.).
My question is - is disclosure required even for minimal AI use like this 10%?
I want to make sure I'm following the guidelines correctly and not risking any flags or suspension. I've seen some people posts get flagged recently and I want to stay on the right side of the rules.
Thanks for your time.
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