My dear friends,
I don’t have access to the Lounge, so I ask the question in general and then I’ll ask you to delete the post.
I was replying to the “aluminum electrolytic capacitor question” thread and, when I finished, I couldn’t post the reply because the post was deleted.
I know the topic wasn’t appropriate for this forum and the question could even be “very” inappropriate, but as a technician I’ve come across many inappropriate questions from audio “purists” and who am I to criticize them…
I just wanted to understand, because I couldn’t find anything wrong (…), why the post disappeared: was it deleted by the author? (I don’t know how to do that…)
Hi Jorge,
I think the admin must have deleted it.
There has been some discussion behind the scenes … we think it was an AI bot.
Cant be sure, these things are getting very clever
Regards
Neville
It is very strange, that after he/she/it got the answer, contiued to ask basically the same. I’m not sure that was a bot, howeve I find the phenomenon suspicious.
I’m quit sure the behavior of that being was very much like a troll’s behavior.
I’ve never read a “thank you” from his/her/its side.
After getting a good answer, repeating the question with different wording does not seem to be very respectful to me.
Few times I flagged a new topic as “inappropriate here” and it vanished few seconds afterwards. (These were advertising first posts, which contained a link to some product or service - not related to any FOSS thingie).
So probably I have some rights here on the forum, however I’m definetely not an admin.
In this case I’m innocent, I did not flag these post, I think there were valuable informations in the SSD versus HDD topic. I would not have removed them…
Someone having similar “rights” as I do, may have flagged those topics, unfortunately did this while you were writing an answer.
I think a real admin can investigate who it was.
You’re absolutely right. I didn’t realize that he hadn’t thanked you for the replies and yes, at the very least, he should have shown respect and thanked you, as we all do.
I’m totally unaware of this kind of troll and bot behavior, I’d go so far as to say I’m totally naive on this subject.
I didn’t know how flags worked either. I thought it was just to alert the administrators.
You are welcome
I’m just speculating, this “right” may have some relation to trust level?
If I look at your profile, your trust level is “member”, a 2nd level.
If I look at @nevj profile, or at my own, I find something “normal member”, a 3rd level. So it’s a bit higher than yours.
It’s possible, that if you flag something as bad, with your trust level it just alerts admins to check. With our higher trust level maybe the flagged badness is removed instantly.
I did not do anything special to get my trust level, I think it is “earned” automatically with time spent on forum, and maybe number of posts, or such.
Yes, the level of membership changes depending on participation (I think) in the forum. I usually have another level, but I’ve been away and I’ve dropped my level, which is why I didn’t put this post in the Lounge but in general: as a normal member, I no longer have access to the Lounge.
Yes, it was like how many ways can I ask the same question.
I believe you are correct. I have lost the “Dedicated” badge twice and earned it 3 times over the the past 3 or 4 years. It’s one badge once earned, you can loose. I believe you can loose the badge from not posting, but not sure what the criteria is.
Sorry to be late to the discussion, dont think any of us 4 have access to delete a post, but can flag for administrative action then it can be deleted.
The post about capacitors was a repeat of one about a year back almost the same wording, i think I flagged that one after we spent time exchanging.
The same user was running 2 other questions that were very similar in content, also flagged and removed.
The interesting one with this time the poster was asked about music preferences and did not want to reply, i asked about what they were in and got a list of consoles for games. Its very hard to identify real against AI … we try our best.
As for jorge dropping a level, I know thats possible, but for most of us who have been around a while and post regular and are active, but need to step away for a period due to health, job, family etc… should be exceptions. But not sure who or how that decission is made.
To all of you,
Thank you very much for all your comments.
I’ve been carefully reading the thread on diyAudio that Gary found and, unfortunately, I’ve seen everything you’ve mentioned that has happened here on the forum and I was so naively going to reply to the user, in order to help someone who needed to be helped.
Thank you very much for flagging and removing the thread, and above all for being so attentive to these users.
Hey, we have been seeing an increase in AI-powered forum bots, the post/poster you are referring to was one of those, so any posts they made have been deleted, and so is the account.
Every so often, some of those manage to go under the radar, but we do our best to eradicate them.
You are doing a difficult job, and doing it well. We dont see bots as often as we used to. A few of us, including me, got caught with this one. Live and learn.
I’ll join Neville in thanking you for keeping the site running smoothly, think it gives us pleasure to help others, getting harder and harder to spot AI in every walk of life.
Hi Sourav,
Thank you very much for the work you are doing in the background to maintain the forum.
I would never have thought that there could be users who are merely bits with AI.
