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So, as per usual, I like to occasionally check the pulse on the community to make sure that people for the most part are happy and satisfied with the day-to-day operation of the site. For those of you who are new to the community, first, let me welcome you and explain how these work.
When I open the floor to the community, the intent is to provide a venue to discuss anything related to site operations, content, and anything along those lines. I actively review and comment on these posts, and if one issue pops up multiple times in comments, I generally run follow up articles to try and help address issues the community feels is important before someone decides to take rehash and form a spinoff. Feel free to leave whatever thoughts you want below.
In contrary to my usual posts, I don't have that much to say to this, so to both the community and editorial team's relief, I'll cut this off right here before it becomes Yet Another NCommander Novel.
~ NCommander
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday November 08 2016, @08:54AM
I do think about commenting on the more technical stuff or the original content stories, but I tend not to bother because when I have posted thoughtful, complex arguments before all I get in return is down-modded and shitpost replies.
Unfortunately shitposting is a really effective way to drive people off a site. All you have to do is copy/paste some standard talking points, carefully designed to frame every debate in the shitpost narrative. People soon learn not to bother responding because aside from the down mods they get, it's a complete waste of time. You waste your precious time deconstructing and refuting their points, and they just copy/paste some more shitposts in response.
I don't know how to fix it. It's a problem everywhere. Slashdot included, although at least there are enough good moderators there to reduce its effectiveness a bit. From what I hear the site owners have been wielding the banhammer quite a bit since the take-over, to try to sort this out.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Tuesday November 08 2016, @10:21AM
I suspect a part of it is that for many people, its psychological that they don't want to downvote someone. We have some breaks in the system as ACs start at 0, and you need high karma to post at 2. We could wield the banhammer with abandon, but that's just going to encourage more people to troll more; best way to get rid of is to ignore (and/or moderate it out of existance). ACs are de-facto banned if their IP subnet drops below -25 karma. If memory serves, logged in users drop to 0 at -10 karma, and -1 at -25.
I'm well open to ideas on how to improve it, but its not an easy problem to solve in the slighest.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday November 08 2016, @10:40AM
The only thing I can think of is reviewing mods personally. Meta-moderation is supposed to do it, but I think you need more users for it to be effective. People who moderate things troll, offtopic, overrated or whatever just because they agree should not get more mod points. Hopefully then the problem will self-correct over time.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 08 2016, @11:31AM
Yeah, the problem is finding someone capable of being absolutely impartial to do it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday November 08 2016, @01:07PM
The usual solution is to have simple guidelines that cover the worst abuses. Doesn't have to be perfect, only 80% coverage with low false positives.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 08 2016, @02:35PM
Yeah, I just don't trust guidelines when it comes to screwing with someone's speech. They may be good, they may be bad, but they're always going to be interpreted differently from person to person. Which is why I did my best to spell out really, really clearly what is and isn't Spam when that moderation came out. And there are still disagreements and butthurt to be found.
Mind you, this ain't all up to me; that's just my personal opinion on the matter.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday November 08 2016, @02:57PM
It's impossible to have perfect moderation, but if you don't try you end up with 4chan. So the real question is, where on the spectrum between 4chan and a moderated political debate do you want be?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday November 08 2016, @04:05PM
Nah, I trust you guys to shut the channer types down through numbers. When/If that starts to not happen it'll be worth revisiting but not quite yet IMO.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.