SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T BUY a voodoo globe so that you could make the earth spin
real fast and freak everybody out.
-- Jack Handey, The New Mexican, 1988.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SlimmPickens on Wednesday May 20 2015, @09:16PM
What about commenting on submissions?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 21 2015, @05:56AM
you can already, just create a journal entry of your own, link to the submission (or cut and paste the whole thing in), and have at it.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday May 21 2015, @07:49AM
Easy - when it appears on the front page you can comment all you want. The time to discuss the content is not when a sub is waiting in the queue and has been seen by only a small number of people, but after it has appeared on the front page and has been read by many more.
Sorry, that might seem a bit flippant. More seriously though, what is the benefit of commenting on stories that are not necessarily ready for the front page? We get into the same problems of influencing what will eventually be published, which can enforce groupthink, or at least be used for casting in a poor light those stories with which the commenter might not agree. And, as with moderation of submissions, it could easily deter some submitters who don't write as well as, say, yourself.
I'm not scotching the suggestion out of hand, but I would have to be convinced of the benefits before I could support it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SlimmPickens on Thursday May 21 2015, @08:28AM
Just to chip in with a bit of re-writing, add missing links, provide updates etc. AFAIK it worked pretty well at the green site.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday May 21 2015, @09:01AM
I appreciate that the suggestion is well intentioned - but to be honest that is the editor's role. In addition, we have to check that we are not leaving ourselves open to litigation, that the format follows our own documented standards, submissions do not contain an unfair political bias etc. One thing that we have to do is check that links actually point to what the submission suggests that they point to. We have had attempts to abuse links by pointing to political, LGBT and other sites while purporting to be links to tech sites. Without significant controls on edits being carried out by the community and records of each change made, it looks like it could be really easy to abuse the system by changing someone else's submission which would, ultimately, increase the editor's workload and not ease it. Plus, it doesn't avoid the problems that I have already highlighted in previous posts. None of the editor's tasks will be eased by allowing others to change submissions. Our internal procedures provide a record of who edited what and ensures the safeguards that we think are necessary.
This needs to be discussed by the ed staff in more detail - I can see the potential but the controls that would be necessary would be quite burdensome at first glance. We - and I think that I can speak for the majority of the eds - would prefer to see the community effort devoted to more submissions rather than tinkering with the one's that we have.
And an easier solution for those who want to help shape our stories is to join the editorial team. We recently took on new staff and are finding that the workload is much easier now that it can be shared more widely. But there is always room for more to join the staff - there is no formal commitment requiring you to do a specific number of stories or work when you wouldn't want to. Editing just a handful of stories each week makes the whole task easier for everyone concerned.