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posted by NCommander on Wednesday May 20 2015, @10:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the community-pulse-check dept.
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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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by mrcoolbp on Thursday May 21 2015, @02:48AM

    by mrcoolbp (68) <mrcoolbp@soylentnews.org> on Thursday May 21 2015, @02:48AM (#185865) Homepage

    I think NCommander meant if you have a "suspected case" (a comment you think was subject to abuse), show us an example and we (the admins) can look into it. Side-note: You mentioned IPs; IPs can't moderate, only accounts can moderate, so we would know which accounts are performing the moderations. IPIDs (Hased IPs) are more useful to track ACs (who can't moderate) in case they are spamming advertisements or something (IPIDs are legacy code, and yes people can avert this, but we do find them useful to at least help combat some of the spamming).

    For what it's worth, I've been involved in the (very few) potential mod-bombing investigations we have conducted. One or two seemed to have some semblance of merit, however, in every case the community corrected any mods that (we, in our opinions) were not appropriate. I strongly feel that simply making a post that says "really? that mod seems inappropriate because of X and Y" is much preferable then calling on the admins to police the comments section (something we prefer not to do because A. we'd rather be improving and running the site B. we feel this should be handled by the community anyway). I'm of course open to suggestions on how we might empower the community to more effectively do this, but the current system (where everyone has a few points a day) seems to be working well for that.

    Another side-note: though I feel the moderation guidelines are pretty well-written, not everyone will read them or follow them. Also people's opinions will always differ (which is a good thing), so comments will sometimes swing, some comments will be modded in a way I may not agree with, and so on. I truly believe that in general the vast majority of comments get modded appropriately in the end. Some may not, but can a system like this really be perfect?

    --
    (Score:1^½, Radical)
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=2, Interesting=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5