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300 Clean Up Crew - I quit


jbenson2

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  • Level 5

Each morning, I remove dozens of spam. And the numbers of spam from India continues to increase.

  • Month after month I see the same comments that Evernote is working with their 3rd party forum supplier to address the problem, Yawn.
  • I also see comments that Evernote employees read all our messages. Hah! If they really did, why don't they remove the spam?. 

Evernote sidesteps the issue by blaming their supplier and then expects us to clean up the mess.

 

So I am quitting the Evernote 300 Clean Up Crew.

All their new Business Customers (who will bend the universe) can take over the job.

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We used to be able to remove a spammer, which took all their posts as well.

 

It was simpler and easy. A couple of minutes, if that and you could get rid of loads of them.

 

Regards

 

Chris

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  • Level 5

I did not have the authority to do a mass removal, so I had to select and open each of them individually. Very tedious,  but lately it has become a Herculean task which I believe should have been Evernote's responsibility from the beginning.

 

After all, isn't spamming a violation of the Evernote Terms of Service?   

 

Evernote gave up offering technical support to free users and expected us (the Evernote customers) to handle those customer support issues. So this naturally drove more questions (and eyeballs) to the forum which made it more attractive for Baba and his love trolls.

 

And they certainly went crazy this morning!

114 spam posts in the past 6 hours

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  • Level 5

My Solution:

 

Evernote should take a teeny-tiny, small, insignificant sliver from their pile of megabucks they are saving (from eliminating support) and contract with someone in India to work the night shift, especially over the weekend, to fight spam. I bet they could find someone to do it for only 25 cents per spam or less. And throw in sliding scale bonus the faster the spam is removed.  

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  • Level 5*

My Solution:

 

Evernote should take a teeny-tiny, small, insignificant sliver from their pile of megabucks they are saving (from eliminating support) and contract with someone in India to work the night shift, especially over the weekend, to fight spam. I bet they could find someone to do it for only 25 cents per spam or less. And throw in sliding scale bonus the faster the spam is removed.

pay off Baba, you mean? i think the black magic and illicit movie download people would like a cut as well.

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Someone - don't remember who - mentioned a solution on a similar thread that I liked. Have Evernote offer free Premium on a monthly basis to those who remove the most spam. Sounds like a heck of a deal to me!

Metrodon, I never wanted the Evangalists gone to begin with. :-(

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Someone - don't remember who - mentioned a solution on a similar thread that I liked. Have Evernote offer free Premium on a monthly basis to those who remove the most spam. Sounds like a heck of a deal to me!

Metrodon, I never wanted the Evagalists gone to begin with. :-(

 

A free month of Premium - that's a great idea and even cheaper than my suggestion.

 

And I don't understand what Evernote gained by sacking the Evangelists. 

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  • Level 5*

"Sacking the Evangelists?"

 

I'm still here; I just don't have the Evangelist title any more. I am a moderator, as most of the people posting in here are. And I still delete spam when I see it. Sorry if I was unable to get in early this AM to clear spam for you that you could actually have cleared yourself, or any other de facto moderator could.

 

Actually, Thursday and Friday mornings for blissfully spam-free when I rolled in, which was nice. I think that the new folks that Geoff hired as night crew have dug in a bit, at least that's what I'm hoping. And maybe they're not on during weekends.

 

I did not have the authority to do a mass removal, so I had to select and open each of them individually. Very tedious,  but lately it has become a Herculean task which I believe should have been Evernote's responsibility from the beginning.

You do not need to select and open them individually. You can go into most forums and multi-select the offending posts using the checkbox on the right, and delete the whole mass using the popup menu that will appear at the bottom of the page. I do miss just marking a user as a spammer; maybe that will come back -- there's still evaluation going on behind the scenes.

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  • Level 5

 

Actually, Thursday and Friday mornings for blissfully spam-free when I rolled in, which was nice. I think that the new folks that Geoff hired as night crew have dug in a bit, at least that's what I'm hoping. And maybe they're not on during weekends.

 

 

Actually, you can thank me for the blissfully spam-free sessions. I was the nite crew.
 
I moved recently to the east coast so I get up earlier than when I was in the midwest.
On Thursday and Friday, I couldn't sleep and got up very early - around 3am EST.
I wiped out dozens of spam messages personally between 3am and 6am.
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"Sacking the Evangelists?"

 

I'm still here; I just don't have the Evangelist title any more. I am a moderator, as most of the people posting in here are. And I still delete spam when I see it. Sorry if I was unable to get in early this AM to clear spam for you that you could actually have cleared yourself, or any other de facto moderator could.

 

Actually, Thursday and Friday mornings for blissfully spam-free when I rolled in, which was nice. I think that the new folks that Geoff hired as night crew have dug in a bit, at least that's what I'm hoping. And maybe they're not on during weekends.

 

I did not have the authority to do a mass removal, so I had to select and open each of them individually. Very tedious,  but lately it has become a Herculean task which I believe should have been Evernote's responsibility from the beginning.

You do not need to select and open them individually. You can go into most forums and multi-select the offending posts using the checkbox on the right, and delete the whole mass using the popup menu that will appear at the bottom of the page. I do miss just marking a user as a spammer; maybe that will come back -- there's still evaluation going on behind the scenes.

 

 

Just tried that Jeff and I don't have a delete in the box, just move or hide. Maybe I am not important enough?

 

Regards

 

Chris

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  • Level 5

Chris,

 

I don't have delete option either.

The check box has two options - move and hide.

But it is clunky, because you have to look at each forum individually and then guess if the title is a spam.

Some titles are easy to spot - Baba from India for example, but others need to be opened.

 

So I was using the "View New Content" feature to look at all of the forums.

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For a couple of years I have only used 'View New Content' so had no idea this ability to select was there.

 

Back to giving up as it is too much effort.

 

Like you with our timescale in the UK, I would often delete 50 or 60 posts in a morning when, as moderators, we could delete a spammer and it would also delete all five of their posts. Just seems so much effort now and I have no idea why! Surely it is better for us to be able to ban people? They can always be un-banned if someone makes a mistake or is over zealous. Perhaps Evernote should make that available to a set group rather than the arbitrary 300 post limit?

 

Oh well, back to wading through the dross to find things useful!

 

Best regards

 

 

Chris

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  • Level 5*

There is no "delete" option for us, but hiding it is sufficient to the purpose. I only do the main forums that I go to on a regular basis -- the General Evernote forum, the Evernote product forum,, web beta, and web clipper. The General Evernote forums gets the most spam of all of those, by far, and I suspect, probably all of the forums. Evernote staff still need to do any actual deletions. Since newly updated posts collected up at the top of these forums, that works fine for me with respect to new content.

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  • Level 5*

 

 

Actually, Thursday and Friday mornings for blissfully spam-free when I rolled in, which was nice. I think that the new folks that Geoff hired as night crew have dug in a bit, at least that's what I'm hoping. And maybe they're not on during weekends.

 

 

Actually, you can thank me for the blissfully spam-free sessions. I was the nite crew.

Then thanks for that. I generally foll in about 6:20 EST. If I had to open up 60 or more spam posts individually to hide them, I wouldn't.

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As many of you know, I compute almost exclusively on my phone these days, which means I have been opening and hiding them one at a time. I wouldn't bother except that they irritate the hell out of me. Wish their was a way to just select all the obvious ones and get rid of then all at once! I kill probably 30 to 40 every day I come by, which is most often very late evening and/or the wee hours of the "morning" (up to 3:00 AM or so), Mountain Standard Time.

Oh, and I've noticed we now have Russian call girls added to the mix.

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  • Level 5

And there are the sneaky ones who put in their natural health supplement spam, but their titles are not as obvious as Baba.

 

The reason I quit cleaning up the posts was my realization that I was just throwing cups of water at a forest fire.

Evernote needs to become more assertive in addressing the spam. Maybe their night shift customer support will be able to solve it during their slow times. (Does EN cust support have slow times?).

 

The large number of spams prove to me that senior Evernote decision makers, such as the Marketing Manager do not spend any time here.

Seems odd due to the large amount of customer feedback available on a real time basis..

In my opinion, they are acting like 9-to-5 PST ostriches wanting to keep theirs heads in the sand.

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Obviously it was way too useful of a function to allow the Evangelists to clean up quickly. 

 

Didn't you blokes get the memo?  Functionality is sooooooo yesterday. Doesn't fit with the clean "workspace"

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  • Level 5

I hid my first and only spam post yesterday. What a rush!

 

If you want a super rush, set your alarm clock for early in the morning. 

There were probably 200 or more of them popping up during the early morning hours.

 

And there is usually a strong turn-out on the weekends.

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I'm at EST +1 here in the Northeast of Brazil... so no early rising required for me  ;)

 

Maybe with Evernote's new expansion into Aussie, they can get some of the new talent to work their magic and filter out some spam while they're at it. At least the new-hires. 

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  • Level 5*

I think we need some technology to be deployed here.  I don't understand why spam filters that have worked for years in EMail servers, and even in other forums, but not here.

 

And even if this is not readily available, why doesn't Evernote employ more people to deal with this.  Surely they can hire on an economical basis, people in India and China to perform this function.

 

Sorry, but I feel that putting this burden on long-time Evernote users, and former Evangelists, is just wrong.

 

I will help where I can, but I will NOT be turned into an SpamBOT.  I appreciate the effort you guys make, but frankly, I think it is misdirected.

 

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A little off topic... but how does one deal with a quadruplicated post which is not spam?... Does a moderator hit the "Remove Spam" button and then hide it, stating the reason as being a "duplicate post"... or does one just leave it be?

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A little off topic... but how does one deal with a quadruplicated post which is not spam?... Does a moderator hit the "Remove Spam" button and then hide it, stating the reason as being a "duplicate post"... or does one just leave it be?

I got a ruling on this previously. Just hide it, and, as you say, in the comment, say that it's a duplicated post.

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  • Level 5*

Lest anyone shed any more crocodile tears about long-time users or ex-Evangelists, I look at it this way:

 

First off, the spam exists, and it sucks. I know that Geoff and staff have to deal with it, and I have to believe that if Geoff had an easy answer like just throwing some unspecified technology at it, he'd have done so long ago and been done with it. So the spam must be dealt with by humans, it would seem, at least at this point. Oh, and some percentage spam will always get through any existing system anyways -- as sophisticated as email spam filters are supposed to be, I still get spam in Gmail, and via our work mail servers. So spam is a reality.

 

I've used Evernote on a near-daily basis for about 6 years now, and it works well for me. It's a worthwhile tool, though like all tools, some ways of using it are better than others. I come to the forums to discuss Evernote but mainly to try to help other folks to use Evernote better. Spam is an obvious impediment to forum use, which means that it's a harder environment for users to get their questions answered. So when I check in and I see spam, if I have the time, I don't mind removing it. It's not that hard in most cases, actually.If I can take out a chunk of spam-trash over my morning coffee, then that makes it a bit easier for people to come in and ask questions / make suggestions / rant / whatever. Less spam == better forum experience for other users. It's an easy choice for me.

 

The flip side is that while any moderators of the 300-post kind can hide spam, it's always been optional. So follow your own bliss.

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This morning I (very carefully) nuked 70+ spam topics in under 2 minutes. Just like most of you. I'm thinking… how could one justify Evernote hiring someone to do a similar job… And then have that person hang out in standby mode to catch those stragglers that come in... Especially when forum members themselves might easily catch them before the hired help had a chance to do so?

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  • Level 5*

@Frank: I'm of the "many hands makes light work" opinion. Of course I'd prefer it if technology could provide the solution (as a software dev myself, it's basically what I've been doing for the last 30+ years), but that just ain't the case, so I'll lend a hand if I have time. For those who don't feel the same way, that's OK too.

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This morning I (very carefully) nuked 70+ spam topics in under 2 minutes. Just like most of you. I'm thinking… how could one justify Evernote hiring someone to do a similar job… And then have that person hang out in standby mode to catch those stragglers that come in... Especially when forum members themselves might easily catch them before the hired help had a chance to do so?

 

Did you oversleep this morning?

The spammers sure didn't.

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Haha! That was yesterday... And this is today...

In fact, when I woked up there was zero spam. Either I was too early for the spammers... Or any number of "moderators" must have already been at it by the time I checked.

Yep... Just as I had suspected, all of the 16 spam topics I (currently) see were made between 9am - 11:37am my time... While I was at the beach. As I was frolicking in the waves with my daughter, it did occur to me that those scheisters were up to no good... But... I resolved to frolick all the more. I thought to myself, "Heck, this is Sunday. Get busy living"... And besides, someone may just solve their love/ marriage problems in the Evernote forum... Today.

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Been getting rid of a few when I get the chance.

 

Yesterday must have been close to 200 as no one else seemed to be bothering and I was looking at new posts.

 

This morning it was 78.

 

Blxxdy pain!

 

Regards

 

Chris

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Hi Chris,

 

I was also a busy bee yesterday. Plus this morning I hid about as many as you did (so far). These posts don't seem to be predictable.

 

I'm thinking of the old Irish version of the song, "One day at a time sweet Jesus, that's all I'm asking of you..."

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  • Level 5

I've noticed the spam activity has changed.

 

Besides the huge dump during the early mornings, Baba and his gang are putting up a few posts every hour throughout the day.

And new spammers are jumping in with offers of vitamins and health stuff.

 

If Chris is killing up to 200 in a night, I wonder how many are being killed by the Evernote Support Night Staff.

Seems like spam on the Evernote forum is a profitable business for some entrepreneurs.

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