I suspended a user’s posting privileges last night. It is the first time I’ve taken any action against a user. In the past, I’ve been able to post a polite reminder to the Infinite Wall, and people calm down. I asked this individual to please chill, and they called me a pig.
I want to emphasize one thing: This individual lost their posting privileges not due to the content of their posts, but due to the quantity of them. Frankly, their stamina was admirable. Over the course of an hour, they managed over 100 posts. That takes dedication (and some serious issues). My thumbs would’ve fallen off.
Now on to the general issue. It appears that the community of Graffitio is reflecting the real world. We have Artists, and we have Vandals. Artists are interested in leaving something beautiful behind for the rest of the world. A common theme I hear from users is leaving messages on a mountain top or in a secluded field in the hopes that someone will come across them later. Others want to leave helpful hints such as where to find cheap parking in a city or power outlets in an airport. Vandals are interested in leaving their mark. The easiest way to get attention is to offend, and the Vandals excel at it. These lines aren’t cut and dry. Sometimes Artists offend, and Vandals inspire. There’s also a bunch of people in between who just want to hang out. (I’m looking at you, Sexy Seven!)
People have asked me about my vision for Graffitio. To me, the beauty of the Internet is the way it lets people share a moment in time across space. I see Graffitio as a place where people can share a point in space across time. When I look at the messages all of you have posted on local walls, I see what I imagined. People are expressing romantic musings, the hotness of their bartender, and how their sandwich tastes like poo. The best part is that these are actual conversations… only a few messages over the span of days, but conversations nonetheless. It is beautiful.
Then there’s the Infinite Wall. It’s quickly becoming more trouble than it’s worth, and I’m working on some features in rel4 that will diminish it’s necessity. I’m disappointed in the vandals, but I expected them. I’m also disappointed in the hateful response to them. These responses, their suspension, and this blog post are all just feeding their ego, and it angers me to be a part of that.
As this gets worse, my patience is wearing thin. I had no choice in this case, but I really wasn’t comfortable suspending someone without having any rules in place. I’m now enacting one: Respect One Another.
I think the only good thing that came out of that is that you now know the servers are running great. This guy obviously had no problem with his app freezing up.
Well said!! I myself am guilty of not having spent enough time expressing everything I want to on my walls, in fact, being a fairly active member of this blog / the forums, and now the irc, probably post the least on walls..
This post has inspired new ideas in me, and I hope to be walling up more meaningful and not so meaningful but tasteful tags along all of my adventures..
The ban was certainly deserved, and if it’s temp, hopefully the vandal learned and will not be so aggressive, but chances are he will be back.. Hopefully we can all be strong enough to ignore these vandals and not engage in the flame wars that ruin nearly every forum ever created..
–Bikr
I find this to be true on the internet in general. “Vandals”, as you aptly describe them, take advantage of the anonymity of the internet to wreak havoc, because it’s fun and they’re bored. The more people who are affected, the more rewarded they feel. So, spaces that are more populated see a much higher percentage of vandals vs. artists.
Take online gaming. The more populated the game is, the higher percentage of “greifers” (aka “vandals”) appear, trying to cause havoc for everyone. The online games I have enjoyed the most are little-known titles with small, extraordinarily friendly communities where it isn’t worth it for a vandal to roam because they can’t cause trouble for enough people. My favorite online game is one that was previously a big name, then the company went bankrupt and the game got sold three times, and even most of its former players aren’t aware that it is still running. The few players who remain (maybe 5% of its former playerbase) are just about the friendliest bunch of artists I’ve ever met, because the vandals left for greener pastures long ago.
The same thing would appear to apply here. The vandals cause havoc where it affects the most people: the infinite wall. It isn’t worth their trouble to cause havoc on some local wall where maybe 5 people will notice in a week. So I suppose my point is that vandals will always be around. More localized regional walls would help, but the higher populated regional walls (New York and California for example) will attract vandals nearly as much as the infinite wall. I think one of the the rating systems that has previously been mentioned would help the most, but even that would only serve to make it easier to ignore the vandals; they’ll still be there.
Personally, I’m only interested in the standard pinpoint walls anyway; they’re the most fun by far.
I agree with this statement about vandels feeding of responses, and i think it is sad it got to the point where i did have to respond, but its one of those things eh? Im interested about the idea of leaving messages on mountain tops and fields… how is this possible baring in mind it requires an internet connection? My understanding of graffitio is the walls are created on wireless networks?
Every time I look at the Infinite Wall or your blog, I keep thinking: “wow, what an awesome social experiment”.
Don’t get burned out over rediscovering that anonymity + text = super powers. There’s no fix for that, as far as I know, not even “avert your eyes” warnings or “count to ten before posting” rules. (cf slashdot’s new discussion system which requires pushing the preview button before posting as an example, or the much older emily postnews netiquette filter…).
Engineering trade-offs appear to be: (a) clamp down on frequent posters, possibly cutting off the flow of a real conversation vs. flooders and (b) automatic content filters vs manual interventions vs putting up with stuff YOU can’t avert your eyes from. All have scaling implications, and I hope you end up at a larger scale than you expect (it’s more fun that way).
I don’t have much useful advice, but I do have popcorn!
i know this is wuite an errelevant reply, but my graffitio page has got all the times mucked up, it says messages have been posted 12014396 seconds ago, and other long numbers, why is this?
@Ben B24
No, Graffitio only requires data network access, such as Edge or G3. Which is what makes it awesome, really, since you can post invisible messages just about anywhere.
Well my favorite online game is San francisco zero, which I think graffito users would really dig, btw. Mostly cuz it’s an online adventure taking place in the real world.
Thanks Anoop,for the visions! It’s awesome.
Thank you for expending your time on this wonderful little app.
Thanks anoop for the excellent post…hopefully a few of the bans will stop some of the vandal activity on the infinite wall. I would hate to see the ifinite wall go because it’s the only one I get…I haven’t found a local wall yet…and the one I made hasn’t had a peep except for me. Anyway….love this app
The Infinite Wall is POINTLESS.
I don’t see any gain from it. Anybody could say anything and get away with it. You can’t even keep a purposeful conversation with anyone because of anonymity. For example, if “A and B” are talking, I could easily pose as “B”, confusing “A” for awhile, making the conversation insignificant. Anyone from any part of the world can contribute to it.
I don’t see any point in suspending, banning, or getting upset at users abusing the Infinite Wall.
@Anthony: I don’t entirely disagree with you. Features are coming that address the issues you mention.
I was just recently on the Infinite Wall and you said you were going to call authorities on some user’s hometown, by which I though, no offense, was a little ridiculous.
You will always have jerks that test the system.
@Anthony: I totally agree. Not much longer after I wrote it, I realized it was ridiculous and removed that portion of the comment.
I like the other walls though. Not much walls in Hawaii. I’m trying to spread news to iphone users on my campus at school (University of Hawaii Manoa) to use graffitio. Because there are some ghetto-ass hangouts and also some very awesome chillax (chill+relax) places that deserve attention.
One of my favorite apps so far.
How do you ban someone that is anonymous?
I think the idea of the Infinite Wall is good - I just think there will always be people who will say anything because they are anonymous.
The most effective treatment I’ve found: ignore them.
If no one responds, they get bored and go back to commenting at youtube.
I’ve been having several “normal” conversations on the IW, and every now and then someone will come in and say something stupid. I continue my conversation, and usually they never post again.
@g: I can block individual devices. If this person wants to go out and buy another iPhone or iPod Touch, more power to them.
@ kepesk. Thankyou for your reply, however i apologize, as i am unware of what dat ntwork acess is, or what edge/ G3 are…
i would much appreciate it if you could explain these principals to me…?
@ Ben B24
Edge and G3 (and GSM, for that matter) are data networks that the iPhone can use to access the internet when it isn’t near a known wifi network. These data networks operate from cell phone towers, so their reach is very wide.
anoop: I am driving to Oregon and saw your intriguing I. Wall post about Rel. 4.
So I checked the blog for a new post about it… Am I missing something? I NEED to be in the loop here!
Dwoody
@ kepesk, i thankyou once again, first of all for explaining this to me in a way i can understand, and secondly for allowing me to see furthermore the incredible potential for this application! absolute genius!!!
yeahwe aren’t really anonymous, right? Our posts come In with an ID tag –just cuz the iwall doesn’t show it don’t mean the server don’t collect it! ;-)
How about using the same mechanism most online sites use to self moderate: karma? Allow the users to vote posts up or down and, if a message gets a sufficiently low number (say -100, something that really, really suggested it was disliked by the broader community), it automatically disappears? (Or allow the user to set the threshold–I’d probably pick -5.) You could restrict the vote to once per device, so you would avoid vote stuffing.
You could also automatically suspend someone’s posting privileges if their posts received too many negative votes over a short period of time. In all fairness, you might make the suspension temporary (like a day), getting them to cool off a bit before they started again. Note that this would also allow the community to prevent flooding like you saw with the person you banned.
Just a thought.
even with graffitio 3 it STILL won’t locate me. Any help?
Wow, very interesting. I can’t wait until you can upvote/downvote. With that, everyone is kind of an admin. I will be using Graffitio a lot more with that. I hope this can alter the subject of posts on the infinite wall.
I hope I can be a beta tester for the next release!
Love the 3.0 software update, much cleaner! Still need user names though, other than that excellent
See, my favorite thing about Graffitio is the anonymity. I love seeing posts from people and not knowing who they were. Not sure why, it just seems more powerful that way.
Keep up the good work, this is an excellent App.
i love the anonymity too.
i don’t want to see usernames. i want it just like leaving anonymous notes scribbled on the wall.
I would kill the wall. All the filth there makes it pointless. Now they are discussing mollesting 10 year old boys. Sick.
Anonymity can achieve wonderful and terrible things. It’s natural forthere to be vandals. Implementing usernames is a terrible idea. It does not reflect real graffiti. Graffiti is a powerful public forum which has the OPTION of credit, but would you ever really know? There in lies the power and the flaw.
@Anonymous: I couldn’t have said it better myself. Especially the “OPTION of credit” part. That is why even if you sign up for a username, when you make a post, you have the option of not including the username and just having an unsigned numbered post like you do now. Usernames allow artists to definitively claim their work. Consider them a certificate of authenticity.
as long as I DONT have to register to post comments, I’ll be happy. Any sort of register requires authentication, a form of power structure, accouunts can be moderated blah. I know this is not your intent, but sometimes it’s better to wallow in the beauty of the noise, rather than posting OFFICIAL comments from Joe Dumbshit.
Well why would you block someone for the number of times they post but not what they post. As I write this there is people on the ifinite wall posting messages of Racisim, Anit-Nationalist, Bigots, and all sorts of hate mongers, but they are allowed to post as long as they do not send numerous messages in a short time span? Kinda backwards dont you think? I have deleted the app do to the hate. You say people come there to post things of a good nature, but im sorry to inform you that is few and far between. So someone called you a pig after you threatened to block him/her? Maybe him/her just wanted the free reign as you give the other knuckleheads. One of your messages on the infinite wall says respect one another. Go on your app right now and see if thats being done. Than comeback here and post some more lies that all is good in the world of Graffitio. Thank you for at least allowing me to post my message of disagreement with you and look forward to seeing your answer if you dove one!!
There are currently 62,715 messages on the Infinite Wall. There is no way that I can personally sit and monitor what people are saying and ban them. I have a life outside of Graffitio that includes my life and my job. Even if I tried, it would be a losing battle. I also don’t want to draw the line as to what’s acceptable and what is not. We all have different lines. This particular decision was made easy for me by the fact that it was flooding the server.
What I am doing is spending the time I would use moderating to develop features that will allow you to dampen the noise. The first step is usernames. With permanent usernames, we no longer have to deal with the imposters. It’ll enable the artists to have real conversations, and I’m certain that people looking to talk about things of substance will soon drown out the knuckleheads. I’m thinking about two options. The default setting will be to not show unsigned posts or to not allow unsigned posts on the regional and infinite walls. We’ll have to see.
There are also over 30,000 walls that aren’t the Infinite Wall, which for the most part, are clean. As I said in this post, the Infinite Wall is more trouble than it’s worth, and if things don’t improve, I will just kill it.
But if you want to delete the app, I totally understand. Drop back in after a few releases and you may like what you find.
And I wonder what ever happened to the user who’s posting privileges were suspended…
Anoop : you seem level headed enough to realise that there will always be knuckleheads. It’s tychos greater Internet fuckwad theory :). For those complaining about the hate, I understand why you are so outraged, but the thing is; what would you have done if you read it on a real wall? What’s that? Probably nothing? Apply the same logic. Hate speech is annoying and I abhor it, but it’s a part of the human condition. Sour and the sweet people. That said, I like that there are no regional walls, and the boards are all user generated.
@ anoop .. I visited this blog for the first time and let me just say.. That I sincerely appreciate you taking time out of your life to respond to not only my messages but our entire graffitio community .. It’s good to know that you care about our concerns and questions .. But on a completely different topic .. The username that I chose apparently is too big for it to be published in it’s entirety .. Was kind of hoping that you could help me out by somehow reseting my username and allowing me to create another .. A suggestion for future updates would be to set a limit on the number of characters we can use on our names to avoid a situation like this .. Although I know that the chances of me getting a new username are slim to none .. I figured I would give it a shot .. ANY response would be awesome .. Even if it’s just to tell me to deal with it .. I really enjoy your application .. In all honesty it has become one of the many reasons why I love my iPhone .. And I cannot thank you enough for your hard work and genuine concern for us.
-Sincerely
Diego Corona
P.S. If you could manually change the name on my phone it would be from d[-_-]b Red Leader 559 to RED LEADER
@Red I changed your username.
@ anoopr .. Wow wasn’t expecting such a quick response.. Thank you :)
I see a high potential here. I would love to draw though. Is there a possibility of such a feature?
Graffiti is partly bohemian and delinquent, and partly human and fragile.
-avdj