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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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Two is not equal to three, even for large values of two.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by moondrake on Wednesday May 20 2015, @11:54AM
There should not be "sides" at all in down-modding. The comment is either troll/flamebait or you mod disagree, which does not lower the score.
Of course, some posts make a flamebait remark and then say something insightful, which makes it hard to evaluate and causes conflicting mods. And everyone is susceptible to let personal opinion cloud judgment. But these things are not solved by only allowing upmodding.
What you propose might work, but only if one increases the max number of points to 20 or so, and sets a threshold at 10. However, this means that topics that attract little interest have no posts above 10, which I find unsatisfactory compared to a 6 pt system that we have now. When we leave the scale as it is now and disallow downmods, it means that 2 or 3 people with very extreme opinions and modpoints (everybody has those) can dominate most discussions (high-modded post amplify themselves by initiating more discussion, so a racist +5 comment easily turns into a flame/troll fest. With the current system, such problems are only visible when there is a significant minority opinion, e.g. AGW). Increasing the amount of such post is not something that I believe you want to see.
(Score: 2) by GeminiDomino on Wednesday May 20 2015, @03:00PM
There should not be "sides" at all in down-modding. The comment is either troll/flamebait or you mod disagree, which does not lower the score.
Counterpoint: political hand-grenades. Any political faction has its own dogma that *someone* will always post at least once, regardless of how old, irrelevant, or debunked it may be. Suddenly, you have "sides"
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 20 2015, @06:02PM
Correct. For example, "[Niggers/Mooslums/Bitches/SJWs/Fags/etc] aren't human" is a common one. It may be factually invalid and inflammatory, but its still a widely-held opinion.
(Score: 2) by moondrake on Friday May 29 2015, @11:42AM
It does not matter if the opinion is widely held. Even if you hold that opinion, you need to be an utter moron to not realize they are inflammatory. Therefore its still flamebait.
There might be dogmas or stupid statements that are not inflammatory though. Perhaps in addition to disagree we need a "Silly" mod. I do think btw that Mods such as "disagree" should require at least one reply to point out why you disagree.