average reporting time?

[khwalker]

I'm curious about the "average reporting time" stat. My value has been "13 hours" now for several years. Does anyone ever notice this value change? Thanks!

[Farelf]

...Does anyone ever notice this value change? Thanks!

That statistic is notorious and suspect, sometimes even assuming impossible numbers and it is untrusted by many - there has been much discussion in days gone by (which can be dragged up, using the search facility on any forum page). Having said that, I haven't noticed my own figure change at all for several years either but '13 hours' sounds like a number one would expect to come down over time if you are getting lower numbers on individual parses and if your rate of reporting has been fairly consistent.

[agsteele]

The problem with an average (and we don't actually know how this figure is calculated) is that with such large volumes of spam being reported the figure very quickly get's stuck. Say you've reported 10,000 items and now have an average time of 13 hours. To get that down to 6.5 hours you'd have to report a further 10,000 in zero time to reduce the average to say, 6.5 hours.

So making a significant change to the average becomes increasingly difficult as you report more and more spam.

But, as noted, the figure is considered unreliable. a more useful figure would, I suppose, the average time taken to submit, say, your last 500 reports or some such.

But I doubt there's an appetite to change this algorithm in the SC system.

But thanks for reporting. That's what counts

Andrew

[Fonman805]

Does anyone ever notice this value change?

Yes, it does change over time. My average just went down to 5 hours, after being at 6 for several months.

It took more than 9 months after I started using SpamCop for the average to get down to 6, but it seemed to decrease quicker after I stopped reporting spam that was over 24 hours old and reporting more often during the day, rather than just once a day. My average increased once or twice when I was away for a few days, and had reported all the backlogged spam (up to 48 hours old) upon returning.

[Firefly]

Mine creeped down to 4 hours, where it has been for at least a year. It doesn't really matter other than a nudge to report quicker as early reports are more effective.