An Idea for a Rails QA App forms...

I've collected all the data up to the end of February 2010 and had some fun running a few reports. Now what?

There's the QA process. Do I really have all the data or do I just think I do? How do I exclude what I don't want, i.e. spam?

How do I separate the HA.org heroes from the trolls from the spammers? That's the most important question because this project is about troll behavior and having fun dissecting it.

The work of collection was a month by month process. The HA.org frontpage contains a comprehensive list of the archives by month and the number of articles for each month. So I'm thinking right now that a good QA process' work will have to be divided the same way.

So first I see a selection toolbar at the top of the browser viewing area with a year/month and  backwards/forwards arrows. At the bottom center right of the screen a radio button group with  hero, troll, spammer selections and a submit button. The rest of the screen will contain a sampling of comments from the handle owner.

So at a glance, I can come to a decision, is this a hero, a troll or a spammer? Once the decision is made the comments and the handle can be marked and then excluded from further year/month examinations.

And of course there's all the handles whose status I already know up front. No need to look at those. Roger Rabbit's stuff alone accounts for 11 percent!

So that's good enough for pass 1.

Pass 2 is then first a matter of submitting some spammer's spam for further examination to Akismet. Why? A hero or a troll's handle may have been hijacked by a spammer for a time. Submitting the comments to Akismet can easily mark what is spam and what is not.

Next is the hardest part.. A handle like Jane Doe may at one time be a progressive from Tacoma and at another time a troll from Bumfuck, WA. That's going to take a good amount of work but of course if we're smart, the work could be minimized.

15,078 handles.. Don't remind me of the comments. Someone's got to do it.