1038453 - #fxhelp is becoming a laughingstock

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 1036831

(support.mozilla.org :: Army of Awesome, task)

Description

[Dave Garrett]

According to Majken, the flood of #fxhelp spam on Twitter that's increasing today is due to people abusing things to get high up on the leaderboard. Today I've seen multiple people retweeting and asking questions about bizarre #fxhelp spam. A few recent examples:

a bogus response about Sync to a joke about L10N:
https://twitter.com/sandeep81910240/status/487673710451507201
(I saw reports that some were replying to *_ebooks twitter bots too)

a very egregious example of asking someone if they need Firefox help when they tweet something having nothing to do with the Internet at all:
https://twitter.com/balapandu222/status/488727696386437120

a canned response about cache in response to Tyler complaining about canned responses:
https://twitter.com/balapandu222/status/488748601892302848

The two people I'm quoting in these three tweets are both on the top 10 list:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/army-of-awesome

This seems to have escalated drastically today. Accounts in the top 10 should be policed and quickly banned from the leaderboard for bogus tweets. I think putting the whole program on hiatus for a few days until this can be dealt with better might even be a good idea. There's angry people beginning to complain about the spam and Mozilla is going to catch the blame for these morons. The leaderboard should probably be axed altogether.

Comment 1

[moses]

tanner recently started a new thread about AoA and how it's spiraling down. I'm guessing that's what prompted to this bug being filed.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/710479

Comment 2

[Dave Garrett]

Just checking the top few #fxhelp tweets from the guy at #1 right now:
https://twitter.com/abhi_nepal/status/486913370839187456

Quoted here for prosperity:
--------------------------------------------------
Sarah Moore ‏@SarahCAMoore Jul 9
Dear Slut, Sorry, but your vagina does not have a Clear History Button like firefox

Abhishek Thakur ‏@abhi_nepal
@SarahCAMoore Sorry your Firefox doesn't behave. Check out the tips here http://mzl.la/MD75AT  #fxhelp
--------------------------------------------------

These people are either using bots and/or don't have a firm grasp of English. It's _really_ easy to find accounts that are obviously tweeting bogus help in the top 10 list. There just doesn't seem to be anyone policing this.

(In reply to moses from comment #1)
> tanner recently started a new thread about AoA and how it's spiraling down.
> I'm guessing that's what prompted to this bug being filed.
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/forums/contributors/710479

Yep. I guess going there might've been a better venue than here, but I forgot that there was a forum there. Last time I used the contributors forum it was a ghost town (though that was years ago). I do triage here not there, so this was the place I instinctively filed the complaint. ;)

Comment 3

[Dave Garrett]

And it looks like this is a dupe. Sorry for the noise.

Comment 4

[Noah (NoahSUMO/SolidSnake) [:Noah]]

Hey Dave,

Yeah, the SUMO team is aware of this really ugly problem. There is a plan in place to deal with this soon. How soon? I don't know. There may be a few other things taking priority right now. But I'm sure given how bad this is, the priority will be reassessed and at least the Top Contributors list will be hidden or removed altogether.

This problem has been building for months. I just think the Top Contributors list finally helped reveal the trend while at the same time sending the tweeters into a competition for the top spot.

I was about to dupe this to Bug 1036831 but I see you found it. :) And no worries, we had a few discussions about this problem on the forums that went nowhere. Had I filed a bug sooner and asked for a SUMO admin's thoughts on it sooner, it *might* have not gotten this bad. But at the same time, I really didn't have much evidence back then as I don't use the AoA service. 

At the end of day, filing bugs gets the job done. Otherwise things continue to get worse in any product. That's what I've learned. :)

Comment 5

[Majken Connor [:Kensie]]

Noah,

It's problematic that important discussions in the contributor forum can get dropped if a bug isn't filed. That's why that forum exists! Though it's a standard problem since bugzilla isn't a discussion forum. Aside from fixing the AoA problems, SUMO community should figure out best practices for turning discussion threads into decisions and actions so improvements and fixes can be made more effectively.

Comment 6

[Dave Garrett]

(In reply to Noah (oldtimer) [:Noah] from comment #4)
> I was about to dupe this to Bug 1036831 but I see you found it. :)

Yeah, I searched beforehand but obviously failed to find it somehow. I always feel like an idiot when I have to dupe my own bug shortly after filing it. :|