Come to think of it, spam is a ToS violation. Why is it handled separately from all other ToS violations, and why should it be the job of the person reporting to categorize a given ToS violation as spam or other?
I suspect the reason is because spam has a different profile from other ToS violations: it tends to happen in bursts, it tends not to be targeted at specific recipients, it tends to be easier to recognize, and maybe the people who handle spam don't need the same administrative powers and dispute-resolution skills that the people who handle other ToS violations need. But in practice what that's going to mean is that spam, being more clear-cut, gets handled faster and more punitively than other ToS violations. So if someone posts a comment I don't like, am I going to report it in the way that gets the asshole banned fast, or am I going to report it in the way that gets me a note pointing me at an FAQ entry telling me I have to delete the comment from my journal myself and just suck up the fact that they'll continue trashing me everywhere else on the site because Dreamwidth supports freedom of speech? Hmm. Tough question.
The current system creates a strong incentive for false categorization. Rather than collecting categorization information from submitters and then complaining that it's bad information, why not just stop collecting that information? It's not valuable information. Dreamwidth's people are going to have to make the categorization decision over again anyway when deciding whether to accept or reject the report.
Improving the quality of spam/non-spam categorization from 10% to 25% to 80% wouldn't make a difference; it would only really help if you could improve it to the point where you could actually trust submitters and stop checking it yourselves. That's not happening until you can eliminate the incentive to miscategorize, by guaranteeing resolution of all non-spam ToS-violation reports promptly to the submitter's satisfaction even when the submitter is wrong. Good luck.
no subject
I suspect the reason is because spam has a different profile from other ToS violations: it tends to happen in bursts, it tends not to be targeted at specific recipients, it tends to be easier to recognize, and maybe the people who handle spam don't need the same administrative powers and dispute-resolution skills that the people who handle other ToS violations need. But in practice what that's going to mean is that spam, being more clear-cut, gets handled faster and more punitively than other ToS violations. So if someone posts a comment I don't like, am I going to report it in the way that gets the asshole banned fast, or am I going to report it in the way that gets me a note pointing me at an FAQ entry telling me I have to delete the comment from my journal myself and just suck up the fact that they'll continue trashing me everywhere else on the site because Dreamwidth supports freedom of speech? Hmm. Tough question.
The current system creates a strong incentive for false categorization. Rather than collecting categorization information from submitters and then complaining that it's bad information, why not just stop collecting that information? It's not valuable information. Dreamwidth's people are going to have to make the categorization decision over again anyway when deciding whether to accept or reject the report.
Improving the quality of spam/non-spam categorization from 10% to 25% to 80% wouldn't make a difference; it would only really help if you could improve it to the point where you could actually trust submitters and stop checking it yourselves. That's not happening until you can eliminate the incentive to miscategorize, by guaranteeing resolution of all non-spam ToS-violation reports promptly to the submitter's satisfaction even when the submitter is wrong. Good luck.