Many accounts get flagged because of (a) commercial usage / spam or (b) an illegit goal. Especially in the case of commercial usage, the spammer hopes to get some quick exposure before the account is suspended. By keeping a flagged account out of zeitgeist until the case has been resolved would make 43T less interesting to spammers.
Right now, neighborhood watch sees loads of users with (almost) identical goals like “hack and find out passwords” or “become a hitman” or “http://commercial.websi.te”. I think that 43T would improve if these goals could be blacklisted, i.e.
I agree with Jim that after flagging a user from neighborhood watch, I’d like to be sent back to the NW page to review the next account. In some “controversial” cases – i.e. if an account gets both “suspend” and “keep” votes – I’d like to know about the other Neighborhood Watchers’ comments and about the final decision.
Furthermore: why not ban certain goals? I’ve been flagging down a lot of “hack and find out passwords”, “be(come) a hitman”, ”... gaia gold …”. I suppose that goals that include an URL could also be banned.
A next step up would be the integration of automated content quality management on the site – think of Mollom or a similar tool. I suppose that this would help a lot when the Neighborhood watch process is too slow: in keeping Zeitgeist clean(er) from spam!
I’d finally like to have a communication channel about Neighborhood watch, to discuss and resolve cases that often lead to controversy (like rappers submitting lyrics, teenage mermaids etc).
