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After my last SN post the topic of moderation was brought up. Since its been quite awhile since we last openly discussed the state of moderation, I want to give the community a venue to discuss their feelings on it, and if the system needs further refinement. As a reminder, here's a review for how the system is currently setup:
- 5 mod points are handed out to at 00:10 UTC to users with positive karma
- ACs start at +0, users with karma less than 40 post at +1, users above that can post at +2
- You need 10 karma to mark some spam or troll
- Under normal circumstances, the staff do *not* have unlimited mod points, but can (and have) banned abusers of the moderation system
Please also review our SoylentNews Moderation Guidelines.
As always, we are willing to make changes to the system, but please post examples *with* links to any cases of suspected mod abuse. It's a lot easier to justify changing the system when evidence is in black and white. I also recommend that users make serious proposals on changes we can make. I'm not going to color the discussion with my own opinions, but as always, I will respond inline with comments when this goes live, and post a follow up article a few days after this one
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Can anyone remember when the times were not hard, and money not scarce?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:16AM
I believe I have previously asked the moderation with a citation (s) might be a useful addition that I have not seen on other sites.
E.g. If I mod a comment -1 disagree, it might help to give a hint why?
(Score: 3, Informative) by pnkwarhall on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:52AM
From my current understanding of the mod system, nothing keeps you from commenting in a thread you've moderated. It doesn't un-do your moderation if you comment. So mod 'disagree', then leave the comment explaining why.
Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
(Score: 4, Insightful) by opinionated_science on Wednesday May 20 2015, @11:04AM
is this the preferred method? Fair enough, but I try not to comment on threads I moderate - it seems self serving. A citation would be a passive guidance that "this document is informative", rather than "this comment is disagreeing".
(Score: 3, Interesting) by q.kontinuum on Wednesday May 20 2015, @12:51PM
In which sense? You can't moderate your own comments, and moderating others appears to be a good reason to provide some additional comment. Also, by modding parent down you are reducing the visibility of the thread you are posting in, so it's not self-serving. Voting parent up might be, but not much, since he might outshine your own comment :-)
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Reziac on Wednesday May 20 2015, @01:15PM
Occasionally I mod up the comment I'm replying to, so it doesn't look like I'm talking to myself. :) I figure if a comment is worth replying to, it's worth having more people see it, and if it's at zero it's hidden from a lot of folks.
So I find this to be a really useful feature of our current moderation scheme.
Seriously, I really like how it's working now, and have no complaints.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday May 20 2015, @06:58PM
However, one tweak that I like the idea of is a karma buffer. You can go over 50, but each night you lose floor(karma/5)-9 points if you're over 50. So if you can post a lot of good stuff and get to 70, next day you'll be 65, the day after you'll be 61, then 57, then 55, 53, 52, 51, and finally steady state at 50. This protects you better against abusive downmods, and encourages regular topping up of the buffer.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @08:44PM
I did this once. A point by point list of rationales for a down-mod. It was not well received.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by engblom on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:57AM
Personally, I find everything having to do with "disagree" modding to be wrong. If the original poster is not a troll, let the original post be and make an own post refuting his arguments! If you have good arguments, you get modded up, if the original poster had good argument, he gets modded up. I find it plainly wrong to mod down things because of disagreements.
Everybody should be able to see both comments and determine themselves what was better.
If the original poster is a pure troll and not just a person with a disagreeing opinion, then some admin action would be good. If we get too much trolls for admins to handle, we maybe could have some kind of reputation system making giving our users rights to take actions against trolls. For example, if somebody has been a good and active member for more than one year, he could get the right to take actions against trolls. However, the smaller the anti-troll group is the better.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by wantkitteh on Wednesday May 20 2015, @11:22AM
Disagree modding is going to lead to a lot of tension simply because any situation where one person is saying another person is wrong is by it's very nature confrontational. Nothing we can do about that, I prefer using replies myself and think that encouraging debate is probably a better direction to take.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @03:00PM
This is the Internet. I post as an AC. Some of my posts get modded up. Some get modded down. I've had posts that get modded up to five points from zero. I've also had posts that get modded disagree or troll even. Up, down, agree, disagree, troll, I make various arguments to consider. I may also consider and have very many counter arguments to my arguments. But I don't take modding personally. Usually when entering a thread I change the settings to show almost all of the responses because I also find many of the ones with fewer mod points interesting as well. No one should take some posts or mods on the Internet personally. It's the Internet. It's no big deal. The point is that I consider what others think and I express what I think for others to consider. Worrying that someone else will disagree with me will negatively limit the discussion. Not everyone is going to agree with me on everything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2015, @01:25PM
so you must be a karma whore
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @03:03PM
A "+0 Agree" could be implemented to counteract the negative bias obtained by being able to disagree, but not to agree. Note that this is different from upmoding, since you might agree with a post that you don't consider particularly interesting, informative or insightful.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DECbot on Wednesday May 20 2015, @04:17PM
An interesting implementation would be to make comment scores a sum of vectors. Let agree/disagree be a value of (m,0) and traditional moderation be a value of (0,n) where m is the magnitude of agrees (negative values denote disagrees) and n is the magnitude of the traditional scoring. Initially I would keep the method of moderating the same, 5 moderation points a day and scoring only one point per person per comment. I would also keep the agree/disagree mods independent from karma. This method allows the community to see not just the comment score (+5 interesting) but also see community reaction (+5 disagree).
Of course the use of agree/disagree might just reinforce the echo chamber.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday May 22 2015, @07:52AM
To whomever modded this "Disagree":
Touché
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Wednesday May 20 2015, @11:33AM
I think the point of disagree is to offer people a way to let off steam, when they see a post they virulently disagree with. It's a better option than "Troll", which is what they might otherwise choose.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Wednesday May 20 2015, @01:56PM
That and giving a democratic hint when someone else has already posted your preferred rebuttal.
You can understand why someone posted what they did, but they're still wrong and highlighting that context(without penalizing them) for the conversation is handy.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by q.kontinuum on Wednesday May 20 2015, @12:46PM
I find the "disagree" option also a bit pointless, but since it's actually "0 disagree" and not "-1 disagree", I consider it harmless. Receiving a "disagree" moderation is something I actually perceive as a flattery, as it shows I had something non-obvious to say that hit a nerve somehow, and yet others seemingly are not able to provide a counter-argument :-)
Registered IRC nick on chat.soylentnews.org: qkontinuum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @07:52PM
Agree with this comment.
The times I've posted obvious replies and got "+5, Informative" etc, I felt ashamed.
For me a "-1, Troll" is important. There are too many people here who blow Google, and God's chosen are always on the lookout to down-mod anyone who mentions them.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:32PM
It mostly exists because of long standing complaints that it didn't exist, and (hopefully) prevents abusive downmods looking for another option. Each disagree mod *is* tracked, so if 10 people mark it disagree, and then it gets modded up, it would +3, Disagree, vs +3, Interesting. Kinda like the controversial tag on arstechnica.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Wednesday May 20 2015, @02:58PM
well Ars has "controversial"..I consider disagree to be "disagrees with known facts". Hence, I think in citations...
(Score: 3, Informative) by frojack on Wednesday May 20 2015, @04:07PM
That may be what you consider "disagree" to mean, but there is nothing to suggest that.
It means what it says: The person modding simply disagrees with the post.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday May 20 2015, @04:36PM
Wouldn't "controversial" and "flamebait" be fairly similar? Since it's rather hard to judge intent over the Internet.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 22 2015, @02:38PM
I wouldn't think so. "Flamebait" for me is not so much about the content, but about how it is expressed. So I'd consider a statement like "Linux is not a good operating system" as wrong, but not flamebait. But "Linux is shit, and only morons use it" would be flamebait.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Zinho on Wednesday May 20 2015, @12:10PM
I thought we had that handled by restricting "wrong" mods to people who have actually commented in the thread? For example, as I post this I don't have the option to mod you incorrect.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 2) by Zinho on Wednesday May 20 2015, @12:13PM
Oops. Actually, I did have "disagree" before my post. Please mark my previous one "disagree" :P
Wasn't that a proposed solution at some point, though?
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin