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Not only have the yt-dl maintainers had to deal with the legal issues and the stress that comes with it, it appears they have a massive spam problem on GitHub w

Not only have the yt-dl maintainers had to deal with the legal issues and the stress that comes with it, it appears they have a massive spam problem on GitHub which must make it difficult to efficiently deal with bugs. I was looking through the reported Issues recently due to a bug that caused yt-dl to stop working for a few days; a PR was quickly written to address the issue but it wasn't merged for several days. That's when I saw Issues like this: https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29809 https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl/issues/29809

sergiotapia 5y ago
I think a good solution would be to make the bar higher to submit an issue. Disable Github Issues entirely and only allow true mailing list type issues that are significantly "uglier" and less "normie" friendly.
- codetrotter 5y ago
  No. I contribute many useful GitHub issues, exactly because it’s easily navigable and comfortable to use GH issues. If you want to raise the bar, I think a reputation system would be better.
  - aloisdg 5y ago
    Who know who is doing quite ok? Stack Overflow.
  - OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
    I think a system like how Slashdot moderation works. You get X points to rate issues or comments based on how many points you have. Comments get a value -2 to 5. Default view only shows 0 to 5. You really only focus your efforts on removing things with a negative rating. I remember it working surprisingly well, especially browsing at 1 or higher, and I've never understood why no one has replicated it. 'Karma' systems must get better engagement.
    - crtasm 5y ago
      If people can easily post spam issues what's stopping them from spamming upvotes on them too?
      - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
        Slashdot use meta-moderation. Mod points weren't given to anybody; you only get a few once in a while. And then the way you use them is rated by meta-moderators. The result of that meta-moderation determines whether or not you get more mod points in the future.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - VMtest 5y ago
    Yes, the mailing list is the best regardless
- newaccount74 5y ago
  In my experience maintaining software, raising the bar to report bugs is a really bad idea. 99.9% of your customers/users will just stop using your software when they hit a bad bug. Only a tiny minority will bother to report bugs. Github issues is already a pretty high barrier (you need a github account to post). I make software targeted at a technical audience, and only 10% of bugs are reported on Github. So by requiring Github you already lose 90% of potential bug reports. (numbers in this comment are very rough estimates)
  - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
    But youtube-dl is targeted at a technical audience (it's a command-line application; I know there are GUI wrappers but those aren't what that repo is for.) So by your numbers, youtube-dl would only miss 10% of legitimate bug reports.
    - newaccount74 5y ago
      What I was trying to say is that even for a technical audience having to log in on Github is an obstacle and will reduce the number of reported bugs.
- shmerl 5y ago
  That's not helping. Mailing lists are annoying to use for bug reports. It will discourage useful contributions.
- kevingadd 5y ago
  When software makes it harder to submit issues I often just don't submit them. For example, the way VS Code's issue reporting system is configured means I can't use it. The result is that I haven't reported any of the bugs I've hit in the software - sure I could probably dig up someone's email address, but why would I waste the time?
  - sergiotapia 5y ago
    >When software makes it harder to submit issues I often just don't submit them. That's the goal.
shp0ngle 5y ago
Wow, I thought you are exaggerating and that it cannot be that bad... but the issue tracker is really, really bad.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
The main problem with their issues seems to be that nobody has the ability to close anything. Sure, there are the likely accidental reports and the tutorial requests like the one you posted, but any large enough project is bound to get those. Even that one you linked had someone from the community likely solve their problem and could be closed both for being irrelevant and for being solved. Several of the issues I checked were similar, probably bad reports but solved anyway.
cookiengineer 5y ago
When 4/8chan came to raid the audacity fork I created, we also had huge problems getting rid of spammy issues. There's only a feature in github to forbid issues being created by "new accounts" which means if the account is older than 48 hours, it can still spam the shit out of your organization. And good luck trying to keep up with hundreds of accounts simultaneously spamming comments with racist and harrassment content. And this feature only exists for organizations, not for public repos owned by a person. The only alternative is to make the github orga only accessible to triage members or maintainers, which would kind of defeat the point of issue tracking and bug reports. Things would be so much easier if GitHub/GitLab/BitBucket had an automoderation bot that does this for you, even a simple blocklist of words or syllables would decrease most of the spam. As most of the chans/spammers use lurking accounts that they reactivate for that purpose, they're very easy to identify. Their email addresses used in git are always from the same providers, and they always use the same kind of language, same kind of avatars, same kind of grammar and questions avoiding the main topic. So it's easy to spot them via a simple ML trained model (bert or tacotron models could easily classify this). Probably even a seq2seq model would be enough. But yeah, guess this was just my two cents that GitHub has a moderation problem.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mahkoh 5y ago
  Are you the guy that people from 4chan attempted to kill over the fork?[1] Do you know when the case will be going to court? [1] https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity/issues/99#issuecomment-875319084 https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity/issues/99#issuecomm...
  - datenarsch 5y ago
    That whole story is debatable at best. Here's just some of the things that make you scratch your head and wonder how much of it is really true: - Author of the fork claiming that he recieved 70+ calls on his pinephone and jokingly said it didn't crash. [1] - He deletes said tweet moments after someone asked him how anyone might've found his pinephone number despite it not being on his website or social media. [2] - Then he says he doesn't have any proof becuse he had to wipe/reflash his phone due to his pinephone crashing (this directly contradicts his previous tweet). After being called out, he immediately deleted his HackerNews post. [3] - The author was posting f-word and r-words on his github bio. [4] sources: [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20210706000825/https://twitter.com/cookiengineer/status/1412201646378131459 http://web.archive.org/web/20210706000825/https://twitter.co... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27746263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27746263 [3] https://postimg.cc/BPXX26W1 https://postimg.cc/BPXX26W1 [4] https://archive.is/ZqK2T https://archive.is/ZqK2T

sergiotapia 5y ago

I think a good solution would be to make the bar higher to submit an issue. Disable Github Issues entirely and only allow true mailing list type issues that are significantly "uglier" and less "normie" friendly.

codetrotter 5y ago
No. I contribute many useful GitHub issues, exactly because it’s easily navigable and comfortable to use GH issues. If you want to raise the bar, I think a reputation system would be better.
- aloisdg 5y ago
  Who know who is doing quite ok? Stack Overflow.
- OldTimeCoffee 5y ago
  I think a system like how Slashdot moderation works. You get X points to rate issues or comments based on how many points you have. Comments get a value -2 to 5. Default view only shows 0 to 5. You really only focus your efforts on removing things with a negative rating. I remember it working surprisingly well, especially browsing at 1 or higher, and I've never understood why no one has replicated it. 'Karma' systems must get better engagement.
  - crtasm 5y ago
    If people can easily post spam issues what's stopping them from spamming upvotes on them too?
    - BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
      Slashdot use meta-moderation. Mod points weren't given to anybody; you only get a few once in a while. And then the way you use them is rated by meta-moderators. The result of that meta-moderation determines whether or not you get more mod points in the future.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- VMtest 5y ago
  Yes, the mailing list is the best regardless
newaccount74 5y ago
In my experience maintaining software, raising the bar to report bugs is a really bad idea. 99.9% of your customers/users will just stop using your software when they hit a bad bug. Only a tiny minority will bother to report bugs. Github issues is already a pretty high barrier (you need a github account to post). I make software targeted at a technical audience, and only 10% of bugs are reported on Github. So by requiring Github you already lose 90% of potential bug reports. (numbers in this comment are very rough estimates)
- BrazzVuvuzela 5y ago
  But youtube-dl is targeted at a technical audience (it's a command-line application; I know there are GUI wrappers but those aren't what that repo is for.) So by your numbers, youtube-dl would only miss 10% of legitimate bug reports.
  - newaccount74 5y ago
    What I was trying to say is that even for a technical audience having to log in on Github is an obstacle and will reduce the number of reported bugs.
shmerl 5y ago
That's not helping. Mailing lists are annoying to use for bug reports. It will discourage useful contributions.
kevingadd 5y ago
When software makes it harder to submit issues I often just don't submit them. For example, the way VS Code's issue reporting system is configured means I can't use it. The result is that I haven't reported any of the bugs I've hit in the software - sure I could probably dig up someone's email address, but why would I waste the time?
- sergiotapia 5y ago
  >When software makes it harder to submit issues I often just don't submit them. That's the goal.

shp0ngle 5y ago

Wow, I thought you are exaggerating and that it cannot be that bad... but the issue tracker is really, really bad.

boomboomsubban 5y ago

The main problem with their issues seems to be that nobody has the ability to close anything. Sure, there are the likely accidental reports and the tutorial requests like the one you posted, but any large enough project is bound to get those. Even that one you linked had someone from the community likely solve their problem and could be closed both for being irrelevant and for being solved. Several of the issues I checked were similar, probably bad reports but solved anyway.

cookiengineer 5y ago

When 4/8chan came to raid the audacity fork I created, we also had huge problems getting rid of spammy issues. There's only a feature in github to forbid issues being created by "new accounts" which means if the account is older than 48 hours, it can still spam the shit out of your organization. And good luck trying to keep up with hundreds of accounts simultaneously spamming comments with racist and harrassment content. And this feature only exists for organizations, not for public repos owned by a person. The only alternative is to make the github orga only accessible to triage members or maintainers, which would kind of defeat the point of issue tracking and bug reports. Things would be so much easier if GitHub/GitLab/BitBucket had an automoderation bot that does this for you, even a simple blocklist of words or syllables would decrease most of the spam. As most of the chans/spammers use lurking accounts that they reactivate for that purpose, they're very easy to identify. Their email addresses used in git are always from the same providers, and they always use the same kind of language, same kind of avatars, same kind of grammar and questions avoiding the main topic. So it's easy to spot them via a simple ML trained model (bert or tacotron models could easily classify this). Probably even a seq2seq model would be enough. But yeah, guess this was just my two cents that GitHub has a moderation problem.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mahkoh 5y ago
Are you the guy that people from 4chan attempted to kill over the fork?[1] Do you know when the case will be going to court? [1] https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity/issues/99#issuecomment-875319084 https://github.com/tenacityteam/tenacity/issues/99#issuecomm...
- datenarsch 5y ago
  That whole story is debatable at best. Here's just some of the things that make you scratch your head and wonder how much of it is really true: - Author of the fork claiming that he recieved 70+ calls on his pinephone and jokingly said it didn't crash. [1] - He deletes said tweet moments after someone asked him how anyone might've found his pinephone number despite it not being on his website or social media. [2] - Then he says he doesn't have any proof becuse he had to wipe/reflash his phone due to his pinephone crashing (this directly contradicts his previous tweet). After being called out, he immediately deleted his HackerNews post. [3] - The author was posting f-word and r-words on his github bio. [4] sources: [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20210706000825/https://twitter.com/cookiengineer/status/1412201646378131459 http://web.archive.org/web/20210706000825/https://twitter.co... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27746263 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27746263 [3] https://postimg.cc/BPXX26W1 https://postimg.cc/BPXX26W1 [4] https://archive.is/ZqK2T https://archive.is/ZqK2T