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As promised, here's the round-table discussion post that I said on Wednesday was coming. We have a long history at SoylentNews of listening and responding to our community; I genuinely hope that never changes. I also recognize that I may have ruffled some feathers in the last few weeks with original content postings so here's the best place to get this all out.
I am mindful of the community's support and goodwill; I don't want to squander any of it. Yes, there are times where my hand may be forced (e.g., DCMA takedowns). Still, I'm always a bit hesitant whenever I post on the main site for anything that isn't site update news or similar. I may be the de facto site leader, but I want my submissions to be treated like anyone else's — I want no favoritism. The editorial team does review my stories and signs off before they go live (unless it's an "emergency" situation such as the last time we blew up the site). However, as the saying goes, the buck stops with me.
SoylentNews accepts original content. I'm also aware that I've probably submitted the most original content so far (See "Previously", below for some examples). I'm grateful for the community's apparent acceptance of my submissions and the positive responses to them. What I don't know is if there is an undercurrent of displeasure with these. Maybe everyone thinks these are all fine. Then again, maybe somebody has an issue with them. Rather than assume anything, let's get it all out in the open.
What I want to cover in this round-table discussion is original content and having images in posts as well as topics such as yesterday's Live Show on Improving Your Security -- Wednesday June 3rd, 2020.
So, contributors and commenters to SoylentNews, get that Reply button hot and let me hear your feedback. As usual, either a member of staff or I will respond to your comments below,
73 de NCommander
Previously:
(2020-06-03) Live Show on Improving Your Security -- Wednesday June 3rd, 2020
(2020-05-24) Retrotech: The Novell NetWare Experience
(2020-05-14) Exploring Windows for Workgroups 3.11 - Early 90s Networking
(2020-05-10) Examining Windows 1.0 HELLO.C - 35 Years of Backwards Compatibility
(2020-05-15) Meta: Having a Chat about SoylentNews' Internet Relay Chat
(2018-10-25) My Time as an ICANN Fellow
(2017-10-09) soylentnews.org experiencing DNSSEC issues
(2017-04-20) Soylentnews.org is Moving to Gentoo...
(2017-04-17) SN Security Updates: CAA, LogJam, HTTP Method Disable, and 3DES
(2017-03-13) Xenix 2.2.3c Restoration: Xrossing The X (Part 4)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 08 2020, @05:10PM (27 children)
Hmm, fair point about the Underrated/Overrated mods. Not that karma retention is much of an issue for even the most dedicated registered trolls.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 08 2020, @05:33PM
Wiseass mods. Shame I can't +1 Funny a moderation.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @05:57PM (25 children)
I main point is that downmodding should carry a price. Make 'em explain it. Or expose them and let the victim face his assailant.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Monday June 08 2020, @06:12PM
All you'll get is copypasta gobbedlygook in the text entry field and it will make readability worse.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @06:14PM
There ya go - have one of your precious "Disagree" mods. Are we correctly having a debate now?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by RS3 on Monday June 08 2020, @09:07PM (5 children)
I'd love to know who downmodded this "troll". I think there are a few bad eggs here- but only a few.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @12:18AM
It's one of my fans. Don't give it a second thought
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 09 2020, @05:07PM (3 children)
There are a lot more wiseasses though. Usually a safe bet that's what happened in discussions like these.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday June 09 2020, @09:40PM (2 children)
No doubt. So should I mod everyone on SN -1 Troll to make sure I retaliate? (obviously ridiculous).
How about they get a month's vacation from mod points?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 09 2020, @11:47PM (1 child)
Oh hell no. Ain't no way I'm mod banning someone for anything but Spam abuse unless policy changes.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday June 10 2020, @02:04PM
Okay, that's news to me. I mistakenly thought that "Troll" abuse would result in modbanning.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:36PM (16 children)
Why? That's not a dig, I'd genuinely like to hear your reasons.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @08:17PM (3 children)
Because it imposes a cost on the "victim". I say pass it on to the accuser/aggressor. Make 'em show just cause
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 09 2020, @11:48PM (2 children)
What cost? Beyond a negligible karma hit that's easily made up I mean.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday June 10 2020, @02:09PM (1 child)
You're very intelligent, and really good verbally, but I think you're caught up in the nitty-gritty argument points.
Let's go big-picture:
1) Why do people spend time and mental effort to write here (or any blog/forum) at all ever- what's their motivation, and what's the payoff?
2) Why is there a mod system at all?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 12 2020, @03:40PM
I'm not caught up in minutiae, it's a very important question to know the answer to if you're going to take that position. I'm interested in the answer.
1) Lots of reasons ranging from the desire to piss others off, to the desire to inform them, to the desire to convert them to your position, to the desire to crowdsource the debugging of their own position.
2) Inertia partly. It was what we did on the old site and what we expected. Other than that, a lot of folks dislike comments they consider of low quality (and almost nobody is completely immune to considering disagreement a qualification for that). I'd get by just fine without anything but a Spam button but I'm aware that I'm in the minority in my ability to read something I don't like and not have it ruin my mood.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @08:21PM (7 children)
And furthermore, downmodding is negative/bad karma on the downmodder's part. They should lose a little too for the desire to inflict "punishment".
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 09 2020, @11:49PM (2 children)
Wishing to inflict punishment on them because them wishing to inflict it on others is wrong? Might wanna rethink that.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2020, @05:37PM (1 child)
No, that's not what is happening in most cases. The downmodders are taking personal offense and are lashing out. They would obliterate the post if they could, and this is just their way of expressing it. You would never want to give real power, like a badge and a gun, to these kinds of people.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 12 2020, @03:44PM
Who does the punishing is irrelevant. The desire to see others punished for something that annoys you is the desire to see others punished for something that annoys you, whether it's you doing it or me doesn't matter.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday June 10 2020, @02:15PM (3 children)
Frustration point: I wish I knew who you are because you, and I have NO idea how many other ACs there are, and I are in agreement. I don't know if there's 1 good AC, or many.
TMB and others who started this site are brilliant, and will always have a clever if not brilliant, but sometimes misguided reply to almost any criticism. I'm not sure what's behind the resistance to change- other than what martyb wrote here (somewhere) that of course changes would involve coding time and there are other priorities.
I've asked TMB a couple of big-picture questions and I'll be very interested in his response, if he responds at all. Like, why do people bother writing anything here at all- what's the motivation? And, why is there a mod system at all?
I think people, in general, get very caught up in point-to-point argument and miss the big-picture.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 12 2020, @03:53PM (2 children)
My resistance to change is because that's just how I think. If I'm going to make a change, I need to be convinced it's going to be an improvement. I don't have any silly ideas like the way we do things now is somehow sacred but the one advocating for change is necessarily assuming the duty of convincing me if they want me arguing their position as well. I'm intentionally a tough sell on non-trivial things because it's a really good way to keep from making things worse and having to fix them afterwards.
And laziness-based inertia of course.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday June 12 2020, @04:09PM (1 child)
Solid wisdom! I'm honored that you've heard me, esp. with all of my scattered rants. I should just make a journal entry and let the rats fight over the cheese.
One of my butt-hurts in life is that people don't listen to me. Just this morning I'm dealing with an IT "emergency" because someone didn't listen to me when I told them what IP address to assign to a printer. They're so much smarter than me, and I'm the only admin for them. They keep choosing IPs in the DHCP range. Gee, can't figure out why the whole network is slow, printer doesn't work, etc. "But teh Internets said this IP is okay!" It's the story of my life.
Thanks again, and we all truly appreciate all of your hard work! Well, most of us...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 13 2020, @09:13AM
You know, I don't know if it is better or worse that they picked on in the private range. Last time I heard of that here some guy in marketing complained their unauthorized printer couldn't get an IP address and 1.2.3.4/5 "worked intermittently" when manually assigned.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday June 09 2020, @09:54PM (3 children)
At the risk of becoming annoying with my repeating this, 1 downmod removes my post from many people's view. Why bother to spend (waste?) time writing here if people can't see my post? And taken to the logical extent, what would this site be if nobody writes?
Much of my life I've been fairly libertarian. I'd be beyond happy to live in a society of good people who treated each other well and didn't commit offenses against each other. We'd be free of laws, police, courts, prisons, etc. Reality, however, can bite the butt. IE, there are people who just simply need to be locked up for the good of the rest.
In an anarchy I could arm myself and ventilate attackers (unless they get me first of course). Here, it's all sneak attacks. I have no idea who to retaliate against.
And quite frankly, it's not how I want to live, including interaction here.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 09 2020, @11:55PM (2 children)
Dude, in your last hundred comments, you had a whopping one comment sitting below a score of 1 and I just spent a mod point to bump that one up because I thought it should be sitting higher. You're not mad because you're being silenced, it's just kneejerk annoyance.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by RS3 on Wednesday June 10 2020, @02:52PM (1 child)
I'm more altruistic than you realize. I think a lot of interesting / intelligent people are warded off by the current mod system, and I'd bet it's why there are so many AC comments on SN in general. Think about the long-term effect: sensitivity and intelligence often go hand-in-hand. So as you lose what I consider to be the better people, you're left with: mostly thugs. Thugs can be intelligent, for sure- I've known many, but not people I spend much time with. It's y'all's system- I just wanted to be sure that y'all see it from our non-admin trenches perspective.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 12 2020, @03:54PM
Fair nuff. Position seen.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.