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from the a-response-from-the-director-of-project-freelancer dept.
After laying out my longer-term plans for the site two weeks ago, I've sat down, read the feedback, and started looking at writing a response. Under normal circumstances, I generally reply to comments as they're posted, but in this case, a more public and general dialog appears to be necessary. If you haven't read the previous post, I recommend doing so now.
Now, with that introduction out of the way... I have unfortunately been unavailable to write a more detailed response, due to real life issues. So please excuse my only responding to two of the major points brought up. I do wish to have a follow-up to address the remainder, but I can not make a promise as to when that may be.
UI issues
I did a really bad job explaining what I meant here, given this by far was the most commented on item! I'm not planning to beta, or Web 2.0 SoylentNews; what I want to do is clean up the interface, as well as add some dynamic aspects for those who use JavaScript, while, and I stress this, without compromising the functionality of the site as it stands now for the non-JS crowd.
For example, one thing is having the ability to perform an in-line reply; if you've got JavaScript enabled, it should simply create a reply box directly below the comment you're responding to without having to load an entire new page. For non-JS users, it should simply go to the current reply form we're all familiar with. This would help improve usability for the JS using majority while keeping us safely away from the evils of beta. Another example is re-doing the entirety of the preferences panel. As of right now, individual users can customize their site experience quite heavily, but said options are scattered across multiple pages, and are frequently buried in places one might not expect. For instance, if you wanted "Funny" comments to show higher than others, how many folks can really find that part of the UI without difficulty?
What I want to do here is a massive pipe-cleaning of our interface so that the site is easy-to-use, while not adding flashy or unnecessary chrome. While we might someday give the site a larger face-lift, it will be done with the feedback of the community, and with plenty of notice (and with every effort to preserve the old interface made for those who simply do not wish to change). For the immediate future though, everyone should expect to see the slow, but steady improvements we've been making since day 1.
Quality of Discussion
A large part of the comments focused on the issues with the moderation system. For those of you here since April, you might remember a discussion on reworking the mod system and know this has been something of a long-term goal that we simply haven't gotten to. One major problem is doing it is something of an all-or-nothing, and we can't have individual users opt-in/opt-out of a new system. That being said, this is something we do need to do relatively soon; we (the staff) have already seen issues with abusive moderation, and have fired off warning emails. As of right now, we haven't banned anyone from moderation, mostly on account we can't (the old moderation ban system was tied into metamod, which remains hosed), and that it also opens a real slippery slope.
Many folks complained that on the other site quite a few people reported that they were apparently blacklisted from moderation. Furthermore, a lot of the time, what is or isn't acceptable can be an extremely relative thing. The fact is, the moment the staff intervene on anything that isn't flat-out abuse, we create a precedent that is better left avoided. The correct method here is to tie the entire system to metamod (M2), and that as long as a user does a semi-decent job of moderation (i.e., 75-80% of mods get ACKed), they keep getting mod points, while those who moderate poorly or abuse the system don't.
The downside of this system though is that M2 is basically work with very little reward, at least as it is currently implemented. My current thoughts here involve reworking karma, as well as perhaps allowing badges and ranking, to hopefully provide benefits for some of the more tedious aspects of peer review.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 01 2014, @04:37PM
systemd disagrees and this is why global warming is fake.
I see off topic as a less severe flamebait most of the time especially since there isn't many comments to begin with for any given story.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 01 2014, @06:10PM
Most, if not all, of those annoying systemd comments that I've seen have in fact been tied in to the submission in some way. They're often even more on-topic than a lot of the other comments are, I'm sad to say.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 01 2014, @07:31PM
Don't blame the systemd comments, instead blame systemd!
If we didn't have that festering boil on our asses, we wouldn't have to talk about it every day.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday October 01 2014, @08:44PM
systemd is the new beta
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 01 2014, @10:46PM
There are a lot of parallels between the two:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 02 2014, @12:09AM
Except the only people forcing anything related to systemd on a significant portion of SN's audience are the butt-hurt bitches who can't stop crying about being butt-hurt. /. beta affected all users of /., systemd only affects a small subset of SN users and has nothing to do with SN itself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 02 2014, @01:28AM
Nobody here has ever forced systemd on me. The only time I've had it forced on me is when I install pretty much any Linux distro these days. And even Debian and Ubuntu will fall victim to it soon enough. I'm fine with people wanting to speak out against it. It really does suck. The more people who say it, the better!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 02 2014, @09:53AM
i'm a debian user without systemd
anyone who can't set up debian without systemd, and then jumps on the interwebz to bitch about it is welcome to go back to windows
nobody is forcing systemd on anyone... its just that apparently some are too lazy and/or stupid to do a little bit of reading to figure out how to configure their system the way they want it
if you want debian to work exactly the way you want out of the box, go pay for someone to make it happen you lazy cheapskate whiner
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 02 2014, @12:02PM
I'm not going to stick with Debian 7 forever just so I can avoid systemd. I'm going to switch to Gentoo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03 2014, @02:39AM
Good luck with that once Jessie is out. You'll be screwed, and you'll wish you had spoken out against systemd instead of being a dipshit like you're being now.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 01 2014, @10:14PM
Here's are some perfect examples of abusive moderation [soylentnews.org] happening here at SN.
#100382 is currently at '0, Troll'. But after reading it, it's obviously not a troll comment. The points it makes are valid, and totally relate to the story topic and to the parent comment's topic.
#100396 is currently at '0, Offtopic'. But it's clearly an on topic reply to a comment that itself is on topic.
#100401 is currently at '-1, Offtopic'. But it's also clearly an on topic reply to a comment that itself is on topic.
All three of those are incorrectly moderated, no matter how you look at it. They're totally relevant discussion given the story's topic and the original comment's topic.
I think whoever modded down those comments should lose their moderating privileges forever. They've censored perfectly legitimate and worthwhile content.
That kind of outright and unjustifiable censorship is much more harmful than those comments being left unmoderated.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 01 2014, @10:55PM
All systemd posts are off topic. We get it, you're butt-hurt and can't stop crying. Stop being pathetic bitches and get over it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 01 2014, @10:56PM
Those ones were completely on topic.
(Score: 1) by clone141166 on Thursday October 02 2014, @03:04AM
Agreed, I think it's not offtopic if the post demonstrates a clear chain of logic to a related topic. In this case the article was about Wandows/Operating Systems in general, and the post segues to Linux and then to systemd. Maybe it's a little bit of a stretch, but it's still a *related* topic with some interesting content in the post. Modding it offtopic seems extreme.
I went ahead and used up some modpoints to push the posts back to neutral/positive :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 02 2014, @12:08PM
Thank you for righting that wrong.
It is too bad that the abuser probably won't be be punished, though. The other AC is right, that mod should never mod again. It probably was the same mod who abusively modded all three, so they're his three strikes. He should never mod again!
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Thursday October 02 2014, @07:43AM
This is one reason I browse at -1. I don't want to rely on other people's moderation. What one moderator may find trollish I might find interesting or at least I want to read it and think "agreed, troll". Most of the time I agree.
Frankly, I think the moderation system works quite well, but I'm all for trying out (slow) changes
(Score: 2) by Yog-Yogguth on Thursday October 02 2014, @11:00AM
Same here however I started out wishing for a +1 Disagree then lately I've been thinking -1 Troll ought to be removed from the moderation options but maybe those are both bad ideas of the “perfection is the enemy of good” kind. For example the old /. meta-moderation turned out to be a cure worse than the disease.
If Funny doesn't give karma then maybe Troll and Off-topic shouldn't take karma either? Easy to think of ideas that might turn out to be horrible :)
It makes me very conscious of the fact that I don't really understand why I like the old /. and now SN (and Pipedot too) so much more than anything else:
Bite harder Ouroboros, bite! tails.boum.org/ linux USB CD secure desktop IRC *crypt tor (not endorsements (XKeyScore))
(Score: 1) by CirclesInSand on Thursday October 02 2014, @07:49PM
I sometimes wish for a "+1 disagree" or "+1 well written". Interesting/insightful/informative all indicate some degree of agreement. There needs to be a mod for "I don't agree but you stated it well".
(Score: 2) by bugamn on Monday October 06 2014, @10:01PM
Why not use interesting, informative or insightful with those? I might disagree with your point and yet find that your statistics are informative, for example.
(Score: 1) by CirclesInSand on Tuesday October 07 2014, @07:58PM
The point is that this is how *you* feel. Most users will not mod insightful or informative if they disagree with the point the poster is making. Most users use "insightful" and "informative" and "interesting" to show agreement. You probably do too, but don't self evaluate critically enough to notice. Probably.