PLEASE Stop Flagging posts ( CL)

[sbill]

Those ads are free in Canada...

If someone has so many flagged ads in their account that ads are being flagged off regularly, then you can be pretty sure there is something in the ad that needs fixing like a prohibited link or something the readers just don't like. You can take your ad to the flag forum for assessment if you can't figure out what the problem is.
...so it's a futile exercise to be doing that in case anyone thinks it's a good idea to flag without cause. It's not.

This is certainly the craigslist party line, and seems to be parroted by countless true believers (shades of 'That must be wrong...it's illegal!' used to justify keeping existing legislation, classicly put forward when the speaker (fanatically) favors the status quo).

Interesting how googling 'cl flag forum' produces a whole lot of threads that beg to disagree, for instance:

http://www.spectacle.org/1109/craig.html
some excerpts of the above link:

A visit to a help forum on flagging discovered the following kinds of exchanges:

Q: If someone's ad gets flagged over and over, it is said that their account gets brittle (takes fewer and fewer flags to bring the ad down). Would their other ads posted at the same time also be suseptible to being flagged more easily as well?

A: not the stupid brittle question again. you got your answer yesterday.

Now, these are forums on Craigslist servers, linked from the Craigslist help pages, and cited in a response you get whenever you try to email customer service. In these “help” forums, you will find a lot of rude and deliberately insulting responses, much shrugging (that’s just the way it is, anyone can flag you for anything) and invocations of infallibility (if you’re getting flagged that much, you must be doing something wrong).

Each thread starts with an aggrieved request, like this one:

Why was this flagged? < bexyandben >
Title: Long-term, romantic, loving, tender -- friends first! mw4w - 4040 (St Charles County)
We posted in the mw4w misc romance section--why was it flagged?

Many quickly lead to answers that are insulting and critical and have nothing to do with the Craigslist terms of service:
That was your entire ad? One broken sentence?

Bexyandben then posted some more details, whereupon someone answered: “You sound like creepy Satanists...” Further responses criticized the couple’s open lifestyle, and suggested they post somewhere else than Craigslist.

Bexyandben objected that their original post completely complied with all Craigslist criteria; if their post was not welcome on Craigslist, why was there a “men and women for women” section?
The answer: “Just because it is there, does not mean the readers like it.”
Bexyandben: “So, readers can flag anything they "don't like"?”
Answer: “Yep”.

And the thread, which goes on for scores of messages, gets worse, more personal and more insulting from there.

End of excerpt
More interesting reading in possible insights into the flagging politics/alleged ad sabotage at craigslist:

http://www.nygeekgirls.com/618/craigs-lists-dirty-little-secret-whos-policing-the-flagging-police/

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-marketing-discussions/718371-how-auto-flag-craigslist-ads.html

http://voices.yahoo.com/craigslist-flaggers-learn-defeat-them-4578173.html
"If you are the victim of repeated and unwarranted Craigslist flagging, the first step to take is to email the Craigslist administrators at abuse@craigslist.org. However, as many can attest to, your complaint will probably be met with deaf ears or, at best, a conciliatory but unhelpful reply. In some cases though, Craigslist will determine that you (and probably others) are the victim of an automated spammer/flagger and they will take steps to mitigate the damage. Hopefully, they will block the (usually well-known) proxy addresses."

 

[odonnell]

This is certainly the craigslist party line, and seems to be parroted by countless true believers (shades of 'That must be wrong...it's illegal!' used to justify keeping existing legislation, classicly put forward when the speaker (fanatically) favors the status quo).

Interesting how googling 'cl flag forum' produces a whole lot of threads that beg to disagree, for instance:

http://www.spectacle.org/1109/craig.html
some excerpts of the above link:

A visit to a help forum on flagging discovered the following kinds of exchanges:

Q: If someone's ad gets flagged over and over, it is said that their account gets brittle (takes fewer and fewer flags to bring the ad down). Would their other ads posted at the same time also be suseptible to being flagged more easily as well?

A: not the stupid brittle question again. you got your answer yesterday.

Now, these are forums on Craigslist servers, linked from the Craigslist help pages, and cited in a response you get whenever you try to email customer service. In these “help” forums, you will find a lot of rude and deliberately insulting responses, much shrugging (that’s just the way it is, anyone can flag you for anything) and invocations of infallibility (if you’re getting flagged that much, you must be doing something wrong).

Each thread starts with an aggrieved request, like this one:

Why was this flagged? < bexyandben >
Title: Long-term, romantic, loving, tender -- friends first! mw4w - 4040 (St Charles County)
We posted in the mw4w misc romance section--why was it flagged?

Many quickly lead to answers that are insulting and critical and have nothing to do with the Craigslist terms of service:
That was your entire ad? One broken sentence?

Bexyandben then posted some more details, whereupon someone answered: “You sound like creepy Satanists...” Further responses criticized the couple’s open lifestyle, and suggested they post somewhere else than Craigslist.

Bexyandben objected that their original post completely complied with all Craigslist criteria; if their post was not welcome on Craigslist, why was there a “men and women for women” section?
The answer: “Just because it is there, does not mean the readers like it.”
Bexyandben: “So, readers can flag anything they "don't like"?”
Answer: “Yep”.

And the thread, which goes on for scores of messages, gets worse, more personal and more insulting from there.

End of excerpt
More interesting reading in possible insights into the flagging politics/alleged ad sabotage at craigslist:

http://www.nygeekgirls.com/618/craigs-lists-dirty-little-secret-whos-policing-the-flagging-police/

http://www.warriorforum.com/offline-marketing-discussions/718371-how-auto-flag-craigslist-ads.html

http://voices.yahoo.com/craigslist-flaggers-learn-defeat-them-4578173.html
"If you are the victim of repeated and unwarranted Craigslist flagging, the first step to take is to email the Craigslist administrators at abuse@craigslist.org. However, as many can attest to, your complaint will probably be met with deaf ears or, at best, a conciliatory but unhelpful reply. In some cases though, Craigslist will determine that you (and probably others) are the victim of an automated spammer/flagger and they will take steps to mitigate the damage. Hopefully, they will block the (usually well-known) proxy addresses."

True that others helping in the flag forum are not staff and personals ads such as is used here as an example of the help given might not reflect the opinions of all those helping and Personals ads are much harder to troubleshoot than TS ads which when flagged off, usually (not always) means there is some kind of problem with the ad. It's all guesswork which is why many erotic ad posters don't take their ads to the forum for help. An American site with mostly American help tends to be not very helpful to Canadians considering many don't understand Canadian laws are different, but if there is something in the ad that is obviously needing a fix (prohibited link maybe), it could be of some help. There is no staff help for free ads so the options to get help are pretty limited. Readers flag ads and those reading personals ads flag for much different reasons than those reading TS ads and those helping with Personals ads are not the most patient people sometimes and who can blame them really. Rules do change so it is best to try to help yourself first just by getting familiar with the rules and being sure to follow them yourself and not use what others are doing as an example of what is permitted. If their ads have prohibited photos or links they too willl draw flags until removed so the old argument that others get away with breaking rules won't help anyone keep their own ads up. It's not usually hard to figure out why an ad is being flagged off over and over if one studies the rules and avoids over posting.

 

[viola]

I've been researching this for a client whose ads (non sexual) are being flagged & taken down apparently by a rival. It seems that Cragslist's automatic flagging actually takes into account how many page views without flagging have been had as well as the number views that resulted in flags, and uses the ratio to decide if the post should be removed.

I wrote a proof of concept 'bot' that automatically hit the page a few times as soon as the post was placed at craigslist, and so far the post has not dissappeared, presumably (?) the rival hasn't also flagged it a few +1 times..

Don't know the actual algorithem Craigslist uses, or the actual ratio of views to flags required, but it seems to be an approach that works. There is unfortunately software out there that will do the opposite, ie flag a post automatically multiple times from multiple fake IPs.

Here is a quick bash version that runs from a unix/mac/linux terminal that works to make multiple page calls. (BTW I don't use windows)

# Makes 5 calls to page, insert random delay between calls of max 10 secs, dumps returned page to the bit bucket.

for ((x = 0; x < 5; x++)); do curl -o /dev/null http://pageAddressGoesHere; echo sleeping; sleep .$[ ( $RANDOM % 10 ) + 1 ]s; done;

 

[PlayfulAlex]

I've been researching this for a client whose ads (non sexual) are being flagged & taken down apparently by a rival. It seems that Cragslist's automatic flagging actually takes into account how many page views without flagging have been had as well as the number views that resulted in flags, and uses the ratio to decide if the post should be removed.

I wrote a proof of concept 'bot' that automatically hit the page a few times as soon as the post was placed at craigslist, and so far the post has not dissappeared, presumably (?) the rival hasn't also flagged it a few +1 times..

Don't know the actual algorithem Craigslist uses, or the actual ratio of views to flags required, but it seems to be an approach that works. There is unfortunately software out there that will do the opposite, ie flag a post automatically multiple times from multiple fake IPs.

Here is a quick bash version that runs from a unix/mac/linux terminal that works to make multiple page calls. (BTW I don't use windows)

# Makes 5 calls to page, insert random delay between calls of max 10 secs, dumps returned page to the bit bucket.

for ((x = 0; x < 5; x++)); do curl -o /dev/null http://pageAddressGoesHere; echo sleeping; sleep .$[ ( $RANDOM % 10 ) + 1 ]s; done;

Wow, what would we do without you techies, and your big brains! I only wish I had a clue what you're talking about, but thank you anyway. Seriously, there are only so many things I can be good at!

 

[viola]

A simple, non automated, way to test this would be as soon as your add is 'uploaded' at Craigslist, CL will give you the URL to visit, before it actually appears on the public site for a 'rival' to flag. Visit it and hit your browser's refresh button over and over to log lots of page hits. By the time the flagger gets to see it and flags it, it will have clocked up lots of un-flagged visits from you and should not be taken down.

That, at least is my working theory, and so far seems to work. Please report back your results! ;-)

 

[Real Sonny Burnett]

This post gets a...

 

[nerdburgerdeluxe]

And you are complaining about people abusing the system? Sorry no sympathy here.
The CL posting guidelines are pretty straight forward. One post per 48 hours, per section.
Its that simple.

I have also had issues with ads for ordinary household objects getting flagged on CL and I took it to the forum there.
The response I got was pretty typical to what has been described, lots of arguments that simply did not add up to what I was experiencing.
But I don't care to waste time trying to figure out how CL "really" works.
Their posting guidelines are about as simple and clear as it gets and there is a good reason for them - people who spam the shit out of that site.

Lots of Agencies, Indy SPs and MPs are totally guilty of it so sorry but no sympathy here, even if there is some cat fight going on.
Its not the first time we've had any of that either...

A simple, non automated, way to test this would be as soon as your add is 'uploaded' at Craigslist, CL will give you the URL to visit, before it actually appears on the public site for a 'rival' to flag. Visit it and hit your browser's refresh button over and over to log lots of page hits. By the time the flagger gets to see it and flags it, it will have clocked up lots of un-flagged visits from you and should not be taken down.

That, at least is my working theory, and so far seems to work. Please report back your results! ;-)

 

[nerdburgerdeluxe]

I think there is a distinction worth maintaining between being cyber bullied and having your posts flagged for spamming craigslist. Its not possible for a single person to target another persons ads even if they had multiple handles because craigslist only recognizes one flag per ad, per IP address.
The OP may perceive that she is being victimized but I would beg to differ.

Well nerdy, since you're not a SP who's been victimized on CL, you can't be expected to understand how we feel, can you?

What viola is suggesting is not violating the posting guidelines, there's nothing wrong with viewing your own ad online as many times as one wishes, and that's all she's suggesting.

 

[viola]

I think there is a distinction worth maintaining between being cyber bullied and having your posts flagged for spamming craigslist. Its not possible for a single person to target another persons ads even if they had multiple handles because craigslist only recognizes one flag per ad, per IP address.
The OP may perceive that she is being victimized but I would beg to differ.

I too beg to differ ;-)

If you use a browser set up to use TOR then every page hit
and/or flag will end up at the server appearing to be from a new, random ID address, so IP logging will be of no use. For more info on TOR you can read about it at wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_anonymity_network