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[Deleted member 205422]

Sorry for posting it here, but there no Forum on the actual forum, neither there is any contact options.

I am really frustrated by this now. About every third time I post something - be it a new thread start or reply - my posts get marked as "awaiting moderator approval".

I get it, I am new to the forum, but it's been days, I am not a robot neither do I post anything off - how does this (does not) work? Why do my messages / replies get published only after ample time has passed. Why does it still need moderator approval?

I am not sure if it's happening to others, but it defeats the purpose of having a community - if my posts wait with being published till they are no long featured on the front page, how likely is anyone to answer them?

And most bizarrely, why am I censored when I reply other people? It's like telling a newcommer to go take his business to reddit instead. Is this for everyone or is some algo selecting lucky me? Like sorry, I really resisted temptation the first about 5 times this happened, not anymore. I wonder if this post gets published right away without approval.

 

[leesteken]

I am really frustrated by this now. About every third time I post something - be it a new thread start or reply - my posts get marked as "awaiting moderator approval".

Even worse is to write a complete answer (with links and examples and using the right styles for commands and everything) and not being able to post it because their post no longer seems to exist!

I am not sure if it's happening to others, but it defeats the purpose of having a community - if my posts wait with being published till they are no long featured on the front page, how likely is anyone to answer them?

It happens to all "new people", trust me, I know (see above). It has nothing to do with you personally. But "it defeats the purpose of having a community" is uncalled for. Lots of people come here with their little problems which could be easily fixed if they would search for it. However, because they are new, they don't know what to search for exactly. So the regulars on this forum answer their questions and can't even post it!

PS: I'm surprised you even got and indication why your post disappeared. I don't remember getting anything the few times I asked a question on this forum.

 

[Deleted member 205422]

Even worse is to write a complete answer (with links and examples and using the right styles for commands and everything) and not being able to post it because their post no longer seems to exist!

It happens to all "new people", trust me, I know (see above). It has nothing to do with you personally. But "it defeats the purpose of having a community" is uncalled for. Lots of people come here with their little problems which could be easily fixed if they would search for it. However, because they are new, they don't know what to search for exactly. So the regulars on this forum answer their questions and can't even post it!

PS: I'm surprised you even got and indication why your post disappeared. I don't remember getting anything the few times I asked a question on this forum.

Re "it defeats the purpose of having a community" - I am not sure how it came across, what I meant was, as for PVE I am a newbie. I am not a Linux, LXC, QEMU, etc newbie at all, but for all purposes I came here because I hoped to rocket start me exploring the product - I have time now and would like to find out as much as possible in the shortest time. If I get no answers (not because the community is dead but because they do not even see me q's, then I leave the community here, maybe it's faster on reddit, Idk. It's all that I meant by that comment.

Re "surprised you even got an indication" - I did not, I went to search high and low and then found that little caption above my post. But it's not like instantaneous. It often happens after I edit my answer (just spotting a typo etc.). It makes it unusable for me.

I get the argument about people abusing the forum as their google, but why not have a "Newbie Forum" for just that? I simply wished to point out something is very wrong about how the forum is technically handling new posters.

 

[Deleted member 205422]

On a second thought, I should have said "defeats the purpose of having a community forum on this site".

I also spent quite some research before I post me question, do the proper references, formatting, etc. Then ... phew ... gone. And you do not see that until much much later when you wonder why your post is dead in the water. Even worse, post gets published, I get a reply, I want to reply the reply, then my reply to my very own post is censored. Too much AI spoils the broth.

 

[leesteken]

Too much AI spoils the broth.

There is probably no AI involved. Spam filters are typically Bayesian in nature.

 

[Deleted member 205422]

I just do not get it, I write a well constructed question or reply, code formatting and everything, no excessive copy/paste from anywhere, rather I put in web-links. Censored.

Then I lash out toxic pile and it gets posted right away.

 

[leesteken]

Indeed, I often see spam appear (which requires you to wait a while to report) and also see proper threads disappear. The current spam filter appears to not be very helpful.

 

[Deleted member 205422]

I just wonder if any of these posts actually catch an eye of any of the staff members? Are they aware?

Obviously, I do not have and no one new experiencing these issues just evaluating will have a way to file a ticket to the support down on this webpage.

 

[fabian]

you don't actually see most of the spam since it gets automatically caught - so I'd say the system is working better than you think it does of course like any heuristic approach, there will always be false positives and negatives. the forum is actively moderated, and that of course includes handling of posts marked as spam (and marking posts/threads as spam that slipped through). after you've reached a certain threshold of (benign) activity, your posts will be much less likely marked as spam.

 

[Deleted member 205422]

Well I am sorry, but this is not really addressing the problem. I understand there's spam to deal with, but the UX as of now is:

1) Registered new account, got message thread posted, all good, 5 minutes later made an edit and it gets marked as spam, i.e. disappears for others, including those who re in the middle of replying to it. This surely does not have to be this way.

2) Had an ongoing thread with replies, whether being the OP or not, and some of the answers suddently get marked as spam. It kills the conversation that started between the participants. I can imagine something is evaluated as spam in the case (1), but how would another long established member be interacting with someone in a thread that suddenly started spamming? The engine is missing common logic.

3) When I am the OP, my own post disappears from my screen, it's not in the list and marked as awaiting approval, I can only find it when go "back" in the browser window and only then I see subtle message at the top. It is very bad UX, there should be clear message back to the OP that his post is awaiting approval and be in some list. Otherwise I might as well think there was a glitch in the browser and start submitting all over again.

4) I find it very very unlikely that a verified user account that made some real posts suddenly starts spamming. The spam filter does not "work better than I think", it has false positives where a deterministic logic could have avoided so.

NB I understand I get this all for free, the forum, the product to evaluate, etc., but this is the first forum in decades I have had this happen to me and the reaction is lacking, i.e. is the answer really "wait it out, you will be good later on?"

 

[Deleted member 205422]

Indeed, I often see spam appear (which requires you to wait a while to report) and also see proper threads disappear. The current spam filter appears to not be very helpful.

So I do not mean to be starting any flame here tonight, but yesterday you had agreed the current spam filter is too trigger happy, but today you gave a like to the reply which was going to do nothing about it?

 

[leesteken]

So I do not mean to be starting any flame here tonight, but yesterday you had agreed the current spam filter is too trigger happy, but today you gave a like to the reply which was going to do nothing about it?

Indeed, I was happy with the reply. I don't see the contradiction as it also contained some new information. Please don't try to guess why I do things based on a single click on a button in this thread.

EDIT: I learned that filter does catch most spam (which is invisible to me). I also did not know that reaching "a certain threshold of (benign) activity" reduces the false positives. Overall an informative post and I'm glad that a staff member took the time to respond to this. I realize that it does not solve your problem right now, but I fully expect that it will get better over time (as was my subjective experience).

 

[Deleted member 205422]

Indeed, I was happy with the reply. I don't see the contradiction as it also contained some new information. Please don't try to guess why I do things based on a single click on a button in this thread.

EDIT: I learned that filter does catch most spam (which is invisible to me). I also did not know that reaching "a certain threshold of (benign) activity" reduces the false positives. Overall an informative post and I'm glad that a staff member took the time to respond to this. I realize that it does not solve your problem right now, but I fully expect that it will get better over time (as was my subjective experience).

So while I appreciate your answer, I am afraid we will agree to disagree here. I knew you replied yesterday mentioning how frustrating it was to be on the replying side on the forum posts, then I saw the simple like without any additional reply that would indicate you saw it and do not even expect anything for them to do, to get better (including for your experience). I was flabbergasted. Other people have not seen the posts, so apologies I have just picked on your like, I am actually surprised no one else bothered to chime in, but who knows maybe their replies might be awaiting approval.

 

[Deleted member 205422]

On my impression of the reply from the staff, I did not originally want to mention it, but I found it EXTREMELY RUDE. It's in fact worse than no reply at all, think about it for a moment. They see someone's experience suck, they can't even "whitelist" me in particular and give it a second thought to help EVERYONE AFTER ME? So they do not care. It's all low-caps like someone typed it in a rush not really have time to address this, a smirk added like yeah keep training our Bayes?

The above you might found extremely uptight, but then I went on to check ok what do I get with this product if I actually PAY FOR SUPPORT and found no matter which tier one pays for it will be only available DURING REGULAR BUSINESS HOURS following public holidays of a single country in Europe because it is all one office (it's 2023, lots of companies have remote employees all over the globe). So ok, now I understand why no one even bothered to "approve" my posts during a weekend Europe nighttime, but to be honest I am shocked it is human based.

And to top it all off, but understand this is automated in the non-reply reaction that got your like, the bottom tells me to:
"Do you already have a Commercial Support Subscription? - If not, Buy now and read the documentation"

BUY NOW AND READ THE DOCS ... but the docs are terrible, that's why i was posting here. Anyhow, this is my last post in this rant thread, I am thankful for the findings it brought to light for me though.

 

[leesteken]

So while I appreciate your answer, I am afraid we will agree to disagree here.

It's fine. I don't care if strangers (on the internet) agree or not. Pick on me all you want to make an example, but don't expect me to agree (to disagree or otherwise).

I knew you replied yesterday mentioning how frustrating it was to be on the replying side on the forum posts, then I saw the simple like without any additional reply that would indicate you saw it and do not even expect anything for them to do, to get better (including for your experience).

I fixed my own issue by not responding within a few minutes. Although I never though the issue was worth starting a thread over, I'm glad you did and the staff now knows how some people feel. Things will improve for you over time as a higher score will reduce this from happening to you.

I was flabbergasted. Other people have not seen the posts, so apologies I have just picked on your like, I am actually surprised no one else bothered to chime in, but who knows maybe their replies might be awaiting approval.

Censorship is always possible and I think allowed here because Proxmox is a company and not a country. I do appreciate their efforts to moderate discussions on their public forum and to prevent spam. I've been here for a little while now and I still trust them enough to run their software.

On my impression of the reply from the staff, I did not originally want to mention it, but I found it EXTREMELY RUDE. It's in fact worse than no reply at all, think about it for a moment. They see someone's experience suck, they can't even "whitelist" me in particular and give it a second thought to help EVERYONE AFTER ME? So they do not care. It's all low-caps like someone typed it in a rush not really have time to address this, a smirk added like yeah keep training our Bayes?

The above you might found extremely uptight, but then I went on to check ok what do I get with this product if I actually PAY FOR SUPPORT and found no matter which tier one pays for it will be only available DURING REGULAR BUSINESS HOURS following public holidays of a single country in Europe because it is all one office (it's 2023, lots of companies have remote employees all over the globe). So ok, now I understand why no one even bothered to "approve" my posts during a weekend Europe nighttime, but to be honest I am shocked it is human based.

And to top it all off, but understand this is automated in the non-reply reaction that got your like, the bottom tells me to:
"Do you already have a Commercial Support Subscription? - If not, Buy now and read the documentation"

BUY NOW AND READ THE DOCS ... but the docs are terrible, that's why i was posting here. Anyhow, this is my last post in this rant thread, I am thankful for the findings it brought to light for me though.

I does feel a bit like a rant and maybe the energy could be spent better on somehting else. I think we could all do with a little more perspective and take the original issue a little less serious.

 

[fabian]

Well I am sorry, but this is not really addressing the problem. I understand there's spam to deal with, but the UX as of now is:

1) Registered new account, got message thread posted, all good, 5 minutes later made an edit and it gets marked as spam, i.e. disappears for others, including those who re in the middle of replying to it. This surely does not have to be this way.

2) Had an ongoing thread with replies, whether being the OP or not, and some of the answers suddently get marked as spam. It kills the conversation that started between the participants. I can imagine something is evaluated as spam in the case (1), but how would another long established member be interacting with someone in a thread that suddenly started spamming? The engine is missing common logic.

3) When I am the OP, my own post disappears from my screen, it's not in the list and marked as awaiting approval, I can only find it when go "back" in the browser window and only then I see subtle message at the top. It is very bad UX, there should be clear message back to the OP that his post is awaiting approval and be in some list. Otherwise I might as well think there was a glitch in the browser and start submitting all over again.

4) I find it very very unlikely that a verified user account that made some real posts suddenly starts spamming. The spam filter does not "work better than I think", it has false positives where a deterministic logic could have avoided so.

NB I understand I get this all for free, the forum, the product to evaluate, etc., but this is the first forum in decades I have had this happen to me and the reaction is lacking, i.e. is the answer really "wait it out, you will be good later on?"

unfortunately, both editing posts to include spam and sleeper accounts that start spamming a while after registration, including after having a few "benign" looking posts are very common (not only here, but on every platform with open registrations). and yes, some of the more subtle spam bots manage to get real interaction with human users going as well.

On my impression of the reply from the staff, I did not originally want to mention it, but I found it EXTREMELY RUDE. It's in fact worse than no reply at all, think about it for a moment. They see someone's experience suck, they can't even "whitelist" me in particular and give it a second thought to help EVERYONE AFTER ME? So they do not care. It's all low-caps like someone typed it in a rush not really have time to address this, a smirk added like yeah keep training our Bayes?

The above you might found extremely uptight, but then I went on to check ok what do I get with this product if I actually PAY FOR SUPPORT and found no matter which tier one pays for it will be only available DURING REGULAR BUSINESS HOURS following public holidays of a single country in Europe because it is all one office (it's 2023, lots of companies have remote employees all over the globe). So ok, now I understand why no one even bothered to "approve" my posts during a weekend Europe nighttime, but to be honest I am shocked it is human based.

And to top it all off, but understand this is automated in the non-reply reaction that got your like, the bottom tells me to:
"Do you already have a Commercial Support Subscription? - If not, Buy now and read the documentation"

BUY NOW AND READ THE DOCS ... but the docs are terrible, that's why i was posting here. Anyhow, this is my last post in this rant thread, I am thankful for the findings it brought to light for me though.

I am sorry you interpreted my answer like that - it was obviously not my intention to be rude, but to explain (a bit!) of the background of the status quo. I also (when I wrote my last reply) did check your profile for any current issues and there were none, and it didn't seem likely that you will run into more issues unless posts of yours get manually flagged for review. We are constantly adjusting the behaviour of the spam heuristics (which are not developed by us, but come with the forum software we use), but it's walking a fine line between friction for new users (mostly those that by accident show - superficially - similar behaviour to that of spam bots, which unfortunately can happen) and not being overrun with spam. I understand that it's frustrating to run into the limitations, especially if some of them are unknown to you. Note that there is a "Contact us" link at the bottom of the forum that provides ways to contact staff outside of the forum in case your account does get falsely marked as spam.

If you are not happy with the support packages we provide, you can take a look at our partners, some of which offer custom tailored solutions as well.

 

[Deleted member 205422]

unfortunately, both editing posts to include spam and sleeper accounts that start spamming a while after registration, including after having a few "benign" looking posts are very common (not only here, but on every platform with open registrations). and yes, some of the more subtle spam bots manage to get real interaction with human users going as well.



I am sorry you interpreted my answer like that - it was obviously not my intention to be rude, but to explain (a bit!) of the background of the status quo. I also (when I wrote my last reply) did check your profile for any current issues and there were none, and it didn't seem likely that you will run into more issues unless posts of yours get manually flagged for review. We are constantly adjusting the behaviour of the spam heuristics (which are not developed by us, but come with the forum software we use), but it's walking a fine line between friction for new users (mostly those that by accident show - superficially - similar behaviour to that of spam bots, which unfortunately can happen) and not being overrun with spam. I understand that it's frustrating to run into the limitations, especially if some of them are unknown to you. Note that there is a "Contact us" link at the bottom of the forum that provides ways to contact staff outside of the forum in case your account does get falsely marked as spam.

If you are not happy with the support packages we provide, you can take a look at our partners, some of which offer custom tailored solutions as well.

Thank you for the reply, Fabian. Points taken, I do understand it's not forum solution developed by you, but I really do not have this experience from any other public forums when I have created a new account. They might torture me with CAPTCHAs and all that, sure, but it is more transparent in that way. Or I get outright blocked in which case I have to contact support, it's not like gaslighting. I do not think it's a solution for the people after me (to have to explain this over and over or point to this thread), just the past few days I myself saw others, for instance:
https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/merge-two-servers.135873/#post-601421

I have been around for just a few days, I really do not think it's a good PR, even I might have been the most vocal, every single potential new customer will be put off by posts suddenly disappearing for no apparent reason, it feels buggy at least. I wanted you to know about it, if it's not a priority I can't make it for you, of course. No hard feelings, but if someone asks me now about if i recommend PVE, I would say "if you are new, go to their forum to search for answers, but post your own questions on reddit instead". This has nothing to do with product itself, though I wish it had better docs too.

About the support, I understand, it would help to have a reference page to some of them (if you have affiliate programme or such), because for my "homelab" testing of course nobody cares, but how could I recommend it to (most) corporate customers if the only info on the support page says anything other than 24/7.

Again, like I promised, I won't fuel this thread, but I do not think the forum is good as it is for new signups. And I myself will unlikely reply to others who freshly signed up which they will in turn interpret as dead community.

Peace out.

 

[fabian]

About the support, I understand, it would help to have a reference page to some of them (if you have affiliate programme or such), because for my "homelab" testing of course nobody cares, but how could I recommend it to (most) corporate customers if the only info on the support page says anything other than 24/7.

https://proxmox.com/en/partners/explore - it's linked right at the top of our homepage

 

[Deleted member 205422]

https://proxmox.com/en/partners/explore - it's linked right at the top of our homepage

My bad, my bad. But I can't help it and have to say I would suggest to included a link directly in the support part as well. In the forums at least when scroll to the bottom i see where to get subscription and pmx customer portal, but no partners, it's only on the homepage i think.