7

I noticed that there's a userscript on StackApps which detects review audits and warns you about them (It can also be done 100% reliably by monitoring the AJAX requests to /review) and there's at least a few people interested / using them or similar scripts, judging from comments on a recent MSO post.

Is using a script to avoid audits acceptable ?

I think that using something like this is cheating the system, and makes robo-reviewing too easy - should this be deleted from StackApps, or the system changed so that it's no longer possible to detect audits client side ?

Improve this question
2
  • 3
    It can be used for good, e.g. a good reviewer who is just tired of audits. It won't turn him/her into a robo reviewer, just into a happier reviewer. If it's used for bad, it's not the tool's fault, but the user's, and such user should be dealt with, e.g. lifetime review ban.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Feb 10, 2016 at 20:06
  • 1
    If its used for good, that's great. I wonder how many good reviewers use it because they're tired of audits, vs. how many bad or robo-reviwers click their way to badges with the help of such a script though.
    – Jonas Czech
    Commented Feb 10, 2016 at 20:32

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
11

The purpose of audits is twofold:

  1. As an educational tool to help you learn to use the particular review queue.
  2. As a tool to prevent mistakes due to fatigue or carelessness.

If you already know how to use the queue and you don't make mistakes, then audits are unnecessary.

OTOH, if you don't care that you make mistakes and use a tool to prevent the system from detecting them... Then that's a problem.

Toying with the idea of dialing back audit frequency and just auto-banning people whose reviews are too far outside of the norm.

Improve this answer
5
  • 2
    Agreed - a script which lets you click (heck, it could even do the clicking for you !) your way to those shiny badges without any audits in the way is a problem.
    – Jonas Czech
    Commented Feb 10, 2016 at 18:09
  • 1
    Can you comment on what "make mistakes" means? I'm afraid it's about "outside the norm", which isn't necessarily the same thing. Judging by this non-scientific sample of Q&A traffic for "bad audits", lots of times it's the "norm" that's wrong, so the audits don't educate you about how you should vote to avoid mistakes.
    – Mogsdad
    Commented Feb 10, 2016 at 18:12
  • 3
    There are many thousands of audits every day and a tiny fraction are poorly-chosen, @Mogsdad. But when I say "make mistakes" I mean failing to flag spam or close bad questions or reopen fixed ones or approve good edits or reject vandalism. The sort of carelessness that makes more work for others or leaves cruft floating around. It's often possible to identify these after the fact, which makes relying on audits for #2 less critical.
    – Shog9
    Commented Feb 10, 2016 at 18:40
  • 4
    @Shog9 did you consider making system to raise mod attention flag? so that they could re-check suspected reviewers prior to (manually) suspending them. I am kinda skeptical that you can make heuristic sufficiently reliable for automatic bans
    – gnat
    Commented Feb 10, 2016 at 21:13
  • 2
    So if the norm is to robo-accept suggested edits, I might get review banned for rejecting too many?
    – Jeffrey Bosboom
    Commented Feb 11, 2016 at 3:40

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .