Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday August 03 2019, @04:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the if-you-can't-fix-it,-break-it dept.

U.S. pulls out of Soviet-era nuclear missile pact with Russia

The United States formally withdrew from a landmark nuclear missile pact with Russia on Friday after determining that Moscow was in violation of the treaty, something the Kremlin has repeatedly denied.

Washington signalled it would pull out of the arms control treaty six months ago unless Moscow stuck to the accord. Russia called the move a ploy to exit a pact the United States wanted to leave anyway in order to develop new missiles.

The 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) was negotiated by then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

INF treaty.

Also at BBC and NPR.

Previously: President Trump Warns That the U.S. Will Pull out of Nuclear Forces Treaty and Build Up its Arsenal


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @05:25PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @05:25PM (#875199)

    With everybody getting only ten mod points a day, is that such a problem? If a post is without merit, others can downmod.

    You're have alluded openly to being able to deanonymize posters due to your position. There is enough partisan hatred on this site that I feel without clear guidance eventually some volunteer with a big enough political chip on their shoulder is going to get so offended they will use their powers to dox someone who posted something they didn't like. The possibility of that kind of chilling effect felt much much less probable on the Green Site.

  • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 03 2019, @05:57PM (1 child)

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 03 2019, @05:57PM (#875204) Journal

    With everybody getting only ten mod points a day, is that such a problem?

    Potentially yes. Many people in our community filter the comments so that only those that meet a certain moderation value will be seen. This is an attempt to get rid of the trolling and other unwanted comments that appear from time to time. Imagine that you post something that someone else (who also runs several sock-puppets) takes a disliking to. They can use their sock-puppets to downmod your comment to 0, where many people will not see it, and they can use their own user id to counter any individual attempt to mod it higher. For example, having posted your comment and subsequently finding it sitting at 0, you might log in and moderate it up to counter the 'unfair moderation, that you perceive to be happening. While it sits at 0 then your comment would only be seen by a handful of our community.

    Others abuse the system by posting something as AC that might invoke a bad response and use their public user ID to lift it off 0 where many people will not see it. If there is a bad response they can always claim that they didn't post the original comment and that their up-mod to it was a incorrect moderation typo.

    We want this site to generate intelligent discussion. We do not care who holds what views. The moderation system that we employ is not perfect and there are regular threads that end up discussing various alternatives. The moderation system works well when members of our community use it to identify good and interesting comments rather than just down modding those that they do not like. But moderation abuse is a problem and one that we need to be aware of. However, we do not take action lightly and, as far as I know, we always give public hints or private warnings before considering anything more drastic, unless the abuse is preventing the site from functioning as intended.

    Changes to the current moderation system can only be addressed when we have significantly more technical support than we have at present. Many of our devs, techies and admins are very busy with their private lives and real world problems; we simply cannot implement any changes in the immediate future.

    • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Saturday August 03 2019, @08:42PM

      by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 03 2019, @08:42PM (#875243) Homepage Journal

      I have set my threshold so I see everything. But I'd sometimes like to see the moderation status before I consider reading something. Yes, I can see the number if I *look* for it. But might it be possible to display it more visibly by, say, using a different colour for the entire comment?

      No, even if it's decided this would be a good idea, I don't expect anyone to actually have the time to do it.