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Welcome, new trolls! We're pleased as punch to have you aboard, unfortunately as you may have noticed our moderators are unable to give you the moderations you've been working so hard for. Since we can't really do much about people not moderating more, we're going to be giving out more points so that the ones that do can give you the attention you so desperately crave.
Moderators: Starting a little after midnight UTC tonight, everyone will be getting ten points a day instead of five. The threshold for a mod-bomb, however, is going to remain at five. This change is not so you can pursue an agenda against registered users more effectively but so we can collectively handle the rather large uptick in anonymous trolling recently while still being able to have points remaining for upmodding quality comments. This is not an invitation to go wild downmodding; it's helping you to be able to stick to the "concentrate more on upmodding than downmodding" bit of the guidelines.
Also, this is not a heavily thought-out or permanent change. It is a quick, dirty adjustment that will be reviewed, tweaked, and likely changed before year's end. Questions? Comments?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 25 2017, @11:56PM (15 children)
Pretty significant one. And one that I can't tackle any time soon anyway what with constant back pain keeping me from coding right now and a paying gig coming up next week or so that I'll have to code through regardless. Try and keep it to an average of 20% or so downmods to total mods and you won't even get a frown out of me. Not that it's something that's regularly checked; we allow worse moderation ratios, we just don't like them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Saturday August 26 2017, @12:50AM (4 children)
Ok, so why not more modpoints, but the cost of modding varies with the direction and status of the target? Logged in vs anonymous and curent score maybe.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 26 2017, @01:56AM (2 children)
Simplicity first, complexity if that doesn't work out. It's a happy little rule.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Monday August 28 2017, @07:47AM (1 child)
Funny, my thoughts after reading a few comments went exactly like this.
- Problem is trolls? Well then don't give everyone more, just give everyone more options to beat trolls down.
- We like promoting ACs, but worry about promoting everything to +5? Make it "for free" to promote a comment (AC, or maybe all) from 0 to +1.
- Oh, we want to avoid having everything at +5? We could make it progressively "more expensive" to promote comments further up.
Yeah, all of it is possible. All it requires is TMB hacking a lot. For which we only pay him in more comments.
As a comment above pointed out:
Is the point of the moderation system sufficiently satisfied by the current version of the moderation system?
Clearly, in the eyes of (at least) TMB: nope, so let's try a simple fix.
Downside I see to the simple fix is that it'll cause a lot more upmods then downmods, while the problem was insufficient downmods.
I don't see a simple solution to that without changing the community. You could get some folks as designated downmodders or some such. But yeah, that changes the dynamics and then you have police running around the forums... :s.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 28 2017, @10:06AM
Actually, the problem this was meant to address wasn't insufficient downmods. I stated that poorly. It was meant to allow people to keep a good upmod to downmod ratio while still addressing the called-for downmods. Which is to say, don't take that as meaning I don't think we can use the additional upmods as well. Not on all stories by any means but on the heavily commented ones we could definitely use more upmodding.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 26 2017, @01:57AM
Not shouting you down, mind you. Just saying let's see if we can fix it without big changes before we go getting funky with the Cheeze-Whiz.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Kell on Saturday August 26 2017, @02:17AM (3 children)
Sorry to hear you're having back pain problems, Buzzard. Best wishes to a speedy recovery!
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 26 2017, @02:22AM (2 children)
Cheers. It's just a pulled muscle but it's a back muscle and those do tend to cause way more annoyance than anywhere else.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Kell on Saturday August 26 2017, @04:20AM (1 child)
Glad to hear it's nothing permanent/crippling. Speedy recovery!
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 26 2017, @06:47AM
Uzzard injured his back while trying to suck his own cock; therefore, he deserves to be permanently crippled for attempting such an immoral act.
(Score: 2) by Arik on Saturday August 26 2017, @03:44AM (2 children)
As I would prefer to avoid being disliked, it would be hella cool if I could actually see my moderation ratio, on whatever time-frame and terms of reference y'all look at them. Because I have little idea what my ratio would look like. I am pretty sure I mod up more than down, but is it 1%? or 30%? *shrugs* no clue. I spend those points on impulse. Generally trying to up-vote if I think something is legit insightful or informative and down-vote if I think something is a troll/flamebait AND rated too high already. I'm sure some days I do a LOT more down-voting than others though. When you look at it, are you looking at a daily score, a weekly/monthly/yearly average or what?
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lx on Saturday August 26 2017, @06:29AM
This way it's better. IMO modding should be done on the merits of the comment, not on the basis of moderator point scoring. Modding is about promoting healthy discussion not about you or me being liked/disliked. If that means wacking trolls all day and getting a lower mod score, so be it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 26 2017, @10:10AM
Last I looked at it, it was a since-go-live tally. Don't worry about a day to day or month to month ratio. Not all days and months are created equal. The smallest unit of time worth considering is probably six months or a year's span.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday August 26 2017, @04:09AM
Oh man, sorry to hear about your back pain. I've had problems with it; used to take and swear by various glucosamine supplements (esp. "Cosamin"), but stopped a few months ago. Back started hurting a lot, but now pain has gone away.
I find it's mostly sitting positions that cause the problem. If I sit such that my lower back curves outward, very very bad for many days. If I'm sure to keep it pulled in, I'm good.
And moderate exercise and activity seems to help. Most of the work I do is fairly physical but doesn't seem to hurt the back, unless I do something really stupid like try to pick up something crazy heavy. A few 80 lb bags of concrete mix don't seem to be a problem (that work is very rare) as long as I'm generally in good shape.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 27 2017, @08:49AM (1 child)
Can you assign modpoints and downmodpoints, such that they can be used only according to their direction?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday August 27 2017, @10:25AM
Possible but not especially easy. Easier to check which direction your previous mod points have gone for the day. I think.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.