SOCVFinder: providing enjoyable reviewing, live duplicate notifications and cherry-picking on Stack Overflow

Question

SOCVFinder

Background

This bot was developed to address the following issues:

1. The problem of duplicated questions, that not only confuse search engines but also encourage rep hunts by copying and pasting answers. SE specifically introduced the the mighty Mjölnir to address this problem, yet it is often not used by users with the privilege, for some reason.

2. The inefficiency of current close review queue. There are too many questions and too few reviewers; the end result is that the few reviewers often see all their work age away, especially if they filter on low-traffic tags.

Objectives

1. To provide a means and aids to users having a gold-badge in a tag in finding duplicates faster.

2. To help users easily identify (and review) questions of certain (customizable) characteristics. A.K.A., "cherry-picking", "filtering", etc. so that they feel they are making a difference helping the community.

1. Dupe hammer aids

1.1 Live duplicate notifications

Allow users with a gold badge to opt-in for real-time notifications of possible duplicates. Those notifications are messages sent to certain configurable chat rooms.

Example:

possible-duplicate python mysql django django-1.7 Link to a question @User1 @User2

The users will only be pinged if they're present in the room. It is possible to give feedback on a duplicate notification (true positive; false positive).

1.2 Duplication search

Allow users to search for questions with duplicate flags or close-votes as they wish, possibly indicating filter options, like a max number of questions to review, a date span, a score count etc. This is similar to the tag filter in the /review interface but provides more filtering options and abstracts itself from the current review interface.

Screen-shot of an example of Java duplicate search:

The bot won't return previously reviewed questions.

2. Enjoyable and targeted reviewing

Make your reviews count!

Leverage the community's work, don't let it go to waste and have some fun doing it.

2.1 What can make reviewing enjoyable?

• Knowing that your vote counts;
• Cherry-picking questions;
• Getting statistics on reviewing (users/tags/rooms).

2.2 How can you make your vote count?

• Review questions that already have high or low close vote count.
• Review questions that will not go to the roomba.
• Review questions together with others

2.3 Cherry-pick your questions

Query the bot for the desired number of questions in tags of choice, with the possibility to specify a desired CV count, question score, if not roomba, if has answers, if has accepted answer etc. The bot won't return questions already reviewed.

Screen-shot of an example of a cherry-pick request with a filter "3 close-votes" in the Swift tag:

2.4 Enjoyable statistics

Query the bot for some statistics so you can enjoy your efforts and see the status of your favorite tags.

Examples:

This is your effort that I have registered all time
   nr [tag]             Reviews  CV virt.  CV count    Closed
-----------------------------------------------------------------
   1. java                  370       221       216        87
   2. blinking               45        22        22         4
   3. javascript             25         8         8         3
   4. c                      11         2         2         2
   5. c#                      1         1         1         1
   6. maven                   1         1         1         0
   7. c++                     1         1         1         1
   8. python                  1         1         1         1
   9. swift                   2         0         0         0
-----------------------------------------------------------------
      TOTAL                 457       257       252        99

Tag statistics all time
   nr [tag]             Reviews  CV virt.  CV count    Closed
-----------------------------------------------------------------
   1. python                839       814       672       286
   2. java                  779       721       537       272
   3. c#                    272       185       185        69
   4. php                   111        98        98        89
   5. ios                   160        93        93        33
   6. c                     122        84        83        42

3. Limitations

• The bot only uses the Stack Exchange API and does not do any "screen scraping".
• The API can not filter on close votes, hence all questions need to be scanned; to reduce API calls, an index system is implemented.
• The information regarding if a question is in the close-vote queue is not currently available in the API. As such, we cannot redirect user to the /review interface.

4. Commands

For full command specification based on privilege level see Quick guide.

5. Accounts

This bot is using the Queen account and is also a registered StackApp. The test is currently made in SOBotics chat room.

6. Source code

Source code is available on GitHub at SOCVFinder.