Slightly later than planned (due mostly to the holiday season and people's lives away from SN being hectic) the next bunch of updates for the site is ready to go. It's a bumper crop!
We have some further changes to the moderation system. As before, this is certainly not the end of changes in this area, rather another step along the road of improvement. We will be watching how the changes affect moderation usage with a view to further improvements.
There's also a number of more general improvements and bug fixes.
All being well these changes should go live around 03:00 26th January UTC. So no need for alarm if there's some minor site disruption at that point. Changes went live at approximately 22:00 31st January UTC.
As always, feedback will be welcome once this deployed.
A major thanks to TheMightyBuzzard for the bulk of the work, paulej72 for sanity checking and martyb for testing/QA.
More details after the break....
Admin Note: it looks like we found a late breaking bug that is a blocker for this update. Spam mods are not showing up to the admins with the proper unmodding options. We will update when we find the issue. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next day or so.
Moderation Changes
- Every account older than one month and set willing to moderate gets points every day.
- You can moderate and post in the same discussion in any order, except your own comments of course.
- The most common mod reason now shows as the mod reason.
- Added a new +0 Disagree mod.
- Added a new +1 Touche mod for especially good rejoinders.
- Removed Overrated.
- Added a new -1 Spam mod (inflicts -10 to the karma of the spammer).
- Added a link to appropriate comments for all editors and admins to undo Spam moderations and temporarily ban the moderator from moderating again if the Spam moderation is considered unwarranted.
First ban length is one month, subsequent ones are six months.
General Changes
- Major changes to user input processing filters.
Things in input boxes should stay exactly the same when you hit preview now, among other things. - Added user referencing with @user: or @#uid:.
This only links to their info page for the moment. - Added sup, sub, sarc/sarcasm, strike, and abbr tags to the allowed tags list for comments and stories.
- RSS/Atom feeds should no longer display html-encoded entities as entities in most viewers.
- RSS/Atom feeds now use https links exclusively.
- Added support for international domain names and links that otherwise contain unicode as well as warning when one does.
- Added an option to "Show link domains in comments and stories" here.
Gives the same [soylentnews.org] behavior to links in stories as in comments. - Added two new site themes.
- Several minor to moderate bug fixes that you likely never noticed a need for.
An honourable mention...
New functionality that didn't quite make it into the final cut for this update, but is available for testing on our dev environment.
- Adding a pre-alpha of a soylentnews API. Currently only supports anonymous calls. Usage details here.
As always, feedback will be welcome once this deployed.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @03:26PM
We will be watching how the changes affect moderation usage with a view to further improvements.
Without a list of measurable goals, and a set of baseline numbers to compare against, any improvements are just confirmation bias masquerading as progress.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @04:28PM
Yup, it beta again. Not answering questions about what being done. Giving us a real voice that the GODS think only for themselves.
I have already stopped logging in, soon out the door for slow posting of threads normally lagging behind /.
I was reading this site first, now it comes in around 4th and falling fast.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Nerdfest on Sunday January 25 2015, @05:16PM
I seem to remember quit e a lot of discussion about what was being done in at least one previous story. I lot of good suggestions were made, and I think some of them have been implemented. No, I don't think there was a formal voting process or anything, but if you have valid complaints I have little doubt they would be addressed if they were brought up. This is most definitely *not* Beta.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by juggs on Sunday January 25 2015, @05:17PM
Where are these questions you feel are going unanswered?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @06:27PM
> Where are these questions you feel are going unanswered?
Just as a starting point:
(1) What specific and identifiable problems are these changes intended to fix?
(2) How will we know whether or not those problems have been corrected?
The way I see it, the people pushing for change need to be able to answer those questions with something at least approaching objective metrics. Otherwise this is just hacking for hacking's sake.
(Score: 4, Informative) by maxwell demon on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:03PM
Well, for the input processing filters, I can immediately help you:
Currently for example any post using the less-than sign (through the HTML < entity — BTW, this mentioning of the entity would, with preview and without manual fixing, morph into a less than sign) outside pre-formatted text will break (in general: the less-than sign and some text following it will be missing, due to misinterpretation as tag) if the comment is previewed before submission (unless you manually fix it during the preview).
By just typing a comment using the (entity-encoded) less-than sign and previewing it before submission. If it no longer breaks, the problem is fixed.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:13PM
Great! So why isn't there a similar set of requirements and tests for all the other changes?
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:31PM
Because bugs are not really debatable and features that you do not have to use, you do not have to use. Moderation was the only significant deviation from expected operation of the site that was not entirely optional.
No, I tell a lie. Moving the feeds to having https links was not optional. It was, however, in demand. If http feed links are also in demand, which we heard exactly zero evidence of, they can be easily returned to service without even restarting apache.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @09:41PM
And there been NO clear writing of spec for as all to agree to. Just your hatred of overrate. Thanks for breaking what has been working for years.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @09:49PM
All are never, ever, ever going to agree to even pizza toppings. The majority was however in favor of this. Count yourself [soylentnews.org] if you don't believe me. One or two adamant dissenters were all we got. You got outvoted, learn to live with it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by canopic jug on Sunday February 01 2015, @09:37AM
There are times when an HTTPS page leads to an HTTP page. I'm not sure precisely when it happens only that it does. Perhaps there is some hardcoded reference to HTTP somewhere in there.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 01 2015, @01:06PM
Very likely, yeah. We'll add it to the list but it's seemingly random, so if you happen to run across a reproducible instance of it do please email dev@soylentnews.org the details.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:22PM
Yup, among other entities which I am not going to try typing before the fixes go in this evening. There's still an issue with literal greater/less-than signs that aren't part of tags being stripped from plaintext (should not happen) but that's a bit more thorny to fix since we do allow some tags in plaintext.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @04:35PM
If they gave you numbers you'd just bitch that how they rated comments good versus bad was entirely subjective. There's just no winning with someone when they want to be pissed off.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @04:44PM
I'd have put it more politely but that's the damned truth. I have no idea what'd satisfy dude cept leaving everything strictly alone and letting a few asshats keep handing out -1 Overrated to everything they disagree with.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @06:22PM
You haven't even tried to create a list of measurable goals and yet you are already condemning anyone who calls for even a modicum of engineering discipline as an asshat. Seems like you have a pretty big emotional investment in this experiment and thus perceive any call for accountability as a personal attack deserving of the same in return. That's not a good sign.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @06:52PM
Reread. I called the ones who abuse the -1 Overrated moderation asshats (and I stand by this). The GP I called nothing at all.
If you like, I'll be happy to make a sanitized dump of all comments and the moderations thereof. I am not, however, going to put out metrics just to be told they're worthless since I'm arbitrarily deciding which moderations are abusive and which are legit.
I'm not the one judging. It's going to be up to you lot to decide if the changes are Good or Bad and if they stay or go. Any information you feel you need to make that decision, I'm sure we'll be happy to help with. Don't ask us to make the judgments for you though. We're not going to act like the green site even if you want us to.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:29PM
I am not, however, going to put out metrics just to be told they're worthless since I'm arbitrarily deciding which moderations are abusive and which are legit.
Does that really make sense? I won't list my goals because I don't want to be argued with seems like rationalization.
I'm not the one judging. It's going to be up to you lot to decide if the changes are Good or Bad and if they stay or go.
And how are we supposed to do that if you won't even articulate your goals in the first place?
Don't ask us to make the judgments for you though.
Without a list of identifiable goals for everyone to evaluate all you are doing is making judgements for us.
Clearly you think there are problems here, what are they and how will we know when they are corrected? "You decide" without even a list of problems, much less intended outcomes is really just saying take-it-or-leave-it which is the least functional form of democracy.
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:40PM
Goals? Goals I can give you. Metrics I will not create though because they are inherently subjective and I will not tell people what to think.
Goal: Less abuse of downmods as censorship and/or user-correction of the same.
Goal: Ease of identifying and dealing with spam and spammers. Preferably without unduly impacting the non-spamming users.
Will we be looking at the db to decide if we're succeeding or failing? Absolutely. Would you like to as well? Say the word and I'll have you a DB dump sanitized and ready for public consumption as soon as I can manage a free hour or two. We can't make the call for you on what is or isn't a legit moderation though. Don't ask.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:53PM
> Goal: Ease of identifying and dealing with spam and spammers. Preferably without unduly impacting the non-spamming users.
I don't see anything subjective about that.
> Will we be looking at the db to decide if we're succeeding or failing? Absolutely. Would you like to as well? Say the word and I'll have you a DB dump sanitized and ready for public consumption as soon as I can manage a free hour or two.
(1) Where is the case for there being a problem in the first place? Obviously you've made that judgement for us.
(2) A single raw dump isn't particularly useful. Surely you aren't just winging it. Seems like a regular report of down-modded posts with enough context to decide if within the whole of the discussion they were deserving of moderation would be a minimum requirement to make even a subjective evaluation. And now we are a hop, skip and jump away from metamoderation.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @08:20PM
That's not what I said was subjective, though it is. Our ease and what constitutes unduly are quite subjective. Metrics of good vs. bad downmods would be entirely subjective though, unless you trust our judgment completely? Pretty sure that's not the case though. By this point I'm all but certain you're utterly unwilling to be happy with anything we say and would immediately call any metrics we used imperialistic. Sorry, we're just not going to give you that chance. We're making you and your fellow users decide.
See: Every last discussion on moderation we've had. Do you need links or would you like me to hunt them up for you?
See, I offer you the exact same tools we have and you say they're worthless. I plan on writing up a quick perl script to dump links to every downmodded comment within the duration of The Experiment and an equal time before it began for manual perusal and judgment. Would it suffice if I made that a public page or are you simply, as I suspect, trolling and unwilling to be satisfied?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @09:49PM
Such crap!
"Sorry, we're just not going to give you that chance. We're making you and your fellow users decide."
Better to be truthful! We decided! We said we decided! We won't tell what we are really doing! Our measurement those that leave voted NO! Those that stay PROVE WE ARE RIGHT! We are not a site of "SoylentNews is people". Those that /. were whiners anyway.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @09:53PM
Yes, we're terrible. Oh, wait, it was your fellow users [soylentnews.org] who said please go ahead and do it. Do please continue trolling though. It ensures that nobody will mistakenly take you seriously. You really should have posted once or twice and left it at that if you wanted to incite actual dissent.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @02:20AM
You are getting punked by an AC. You are incapable of stating the goal and the metric to measure the progress for this little hobby horse of yours. You don't even know why you're tweaking the modding system. Figure that out first before fiddling with it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @12:31AM
you are putting up with all this stressful nonsense. you deserve a medal for your patience and understanding. nobody appreciates you. nobody is as smart as you. nobody understands anything you're clearly explaining. all this abuse isn't warranted.
so i can only recommend that you get the fuck out you asshat and find some other forum to troll :D
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @12:01AM
>> Where is the case for there being a problem in the first place? Obviously you've made that judgement for us.
> See: Every last discussion on moderation we've had. Do you need links or would you like me to hunt them up for you?
That's 100% subjective and hopelessly biased because the people who don't see evidence of a problem aren't motivated to cheer for the status quo. By not even attempting to quantify the problem you are guaranteeing to see only what you expect to see.
> See, I offer you the exact same tools we have and you say they're worthless.
YES!!! You got it. That was my original thesis, right there in the first post. You don't have the ability to know whether or not the changes are making a real improvement or not. That I don't have the ability to do so either does not make your case any stronger.
> I plan on writing up a quick perl script to dump links to every downmodded comment within the duration of The Experiment and an equal time before it began for manual perusal and judgment. Would it suffice if I made that a public page.
That is the barest possible minimum to even appear like there is a chance of having an objective analysis.
> I suspect, trolling and unwilling to be satisfied?
That sanctimony gets old.
(Score: 2) by naubol on Sunday February 01 2015, @12:50PM
So, it feels like what you're really arguing is that most human decisions in life are effectively impossible to optimize. And, you'd be right.
Change does sometimes happen for change's sake.
People do fight for the status quo after losing it and realizing how bad it is to have lost it, and sometimes they fight for it even when the new thing would be better.
Let's give the site time to work out how the new system feels.
You have to trust someone some of them time, and this feels like a good time to do that.
None of this is unreasonable, so even if you're not intentionally trolling, you're being unreasonable.
Also, The Mighty Buzzard might not say it, but I will, you're being an asshat.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @06:38PM
So you are one that does not like overrated! The guy maked the change is the final vote! So you are one of GODS, not caring about the slogan of this group: "SoylentNews is people". You just SoylentNews is about the GODS, the people are market goods.
(Score: 2) by ticho on Sunday February 01 2015, @10:23AM
Sorry, you're not even making sense anymore. It's as if these AC comments were attached to a wrong story. Overrated mod was disliked by great many people here.
It is becoming apparent with every post that you are only in it for the trolling.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @06:34PM
Without a list of measurable goals, and a set of baseline numbers to compare against, any improvements are just confirmation bias masquerading as progress.
Utter nonsense. "Poke it with a stick and see what happens [wikipedia.org]" is a valid problem solving method.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:42PM
> Utter nonsense. "Poke it with a stick and see what happens" is a valid problem solving method.
Why do you think it is valid in this case? Is it utter nonsense to expect an auto mechanic to identify what's wrong with a car before deciding to fiddle with the engine much less knowing how to say if he fixed it? Or as long as it still starts when you turn the ignition then it must be better?
Just because it can be valid in certain limited circumstances does not make it appropriate any time someone just can't be bothered to define the problems they want to solve.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tathra on Sunday January 25 2015, @11:23PM
problem: users are complaining about some of the aspects of moderation
goal: try to make them happy so they'll shut up
there, i've explained the problem and the goal of the moderation changes. if less people complain about the moderation system, then the goal is achieved to the best of our ability at this time.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday February 01 2015, @12:46AM
I was wondering about the same thing.
There was some discussion of giving the modder a karma hit for a negative mod. What ever happened to that? Is it in or out?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 01 2015, @04:45AM
First I remember hearing about it but there've been quite a lot of suggestions since we first brought it up.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by ticho on Sunday February 01 2015, @10:27AM
IIRC there was a karma hit mentioned for people using the Spam mod abusively. But maybe IRIC (I remember incorrectly), and the ban from moderation was the only punishment proposed. Can't be arsed to look up the discussion thread, it is already gone from my RSS feed, and really, I'd be ok with either way. :)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 01 2015, @01:15PM
Ah, that negative hit. Yeah, there's a -10 hit on the person marked as spam but it's reversed if the Spam moderation is reversed. The way it's done it's even possible in one specific circumstance to come out with higher karma than you started with. So far there have been no uses of it to even check for abuse though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Sunday January 25 2015, @03:27PM
Nice work! I'm very much looking forward to the moderation system changes as despite this being a relatively small site, moderation seems to be regularly abused. The user referencing feature should also be quite nice.
(Score: -1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @12:07PM
Yup, you are right. New will be worst since we are not allowed to even veiw the process until after they screw up!.
"As always, feedback will be welcome once this deployed. " - We can only talk about the process after they deploy it. Great design!
YUP one site:
"Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, comment posting has temporarily been disabled. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner. If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down. If you think this is unfair, please email admin@soylentnews.org with your MD5'd IPID and SubnetID, which are "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" and "xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx". "
They cannot take people disagreeing with them. And tracking us anyway. Already using their new broken "SPAM" blocking, for non-spam.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 26 2015, @02:13PM
You're funny. How would we do that when the deployment was halted for a non-bug caused by a slight difference between the dev server and production server? That message has nothing to do with the Spam mod and everything to do with an automatic response to your ipid* being modded Troll one time too many. That was behavior baked into slashcode when we got it, we just haven't done anything about it because pretty much nobody has complained about it and we have limited time.
* Our code doesn't store ip or subnet addresses, only a one-way hash of them called ipid and subnetid. So, we could , and the code does, tell one AC from another but not any actual useful information about them. Now we do occasionally get an ip address in the apache log but i haven't seen any for anything but 404s by bots trying automated hacks, mostly php exploits.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @01:42PM
SPAM processing is SPAM processing.
Blocking users, any users from posting is black listing which is SPAM processing.
Saying a user has posted to many negative post and block their post is SPAM processing.
Because you hate negative posts for negative post sake, maybe you show move one an do thinks that are good for the SN not yourself.
PS: Still being block a week later... SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM SPAM
SN is the GODS play ground!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 01 2015, @02:09PM
Newp, that's still troll processing and I'm not going to cancel my relocation leave to remove that bit of code so some troll can shit-talk me more easily. Your fellow users are the ones who marked you troll so many times that you found something no other troll has found to my knowledge; take it up with them.
tl;dr Try civility if you want someone to put extra time and effort in on your behalf.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday February 03 2015, @06:20PM
I moderated a little while ago and sorely needed the "overrated" mod. There is simply no other honest moderation for a factually incorrect comment that doesn't appear to be trolling that someone has modded "informative". If you say "God Exists" the disagree moderation is warranted if you're an atheist or polytheist, but if you say there are no robots on Mars, that deserves to be modded down and you should lose a little karma, even if you believe your own bullshit.
The "underrated" mod is the one I'd have done away with. If it should have a higher moderation, it should be funny, insightful, informative, etc., making the "underrated" mod redundant.
I like the idea of that "touche" mod.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 03 2015, @08:44PM
Almost made it in but factually incorrect really needs to be corrected in a comment more than it needs to be downmodded. That and it would get used as Disagree all the freaking time. I suppose we could require the same person to -1 Incorrect also post a correcting comment but that would make a lot of work for the moderation checkers that we don't have a team of.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @03:33PM
If the admin doesn't choose to ban because of an edge case, should the admin message the user instead?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @04:46PM
It'd have to be via the email they signed up with for the moment. User-to-user messaging, including for admin users, was never fully implemented in slashcode.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:23PM
User to user chat feature would be cool or not.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:43PM
irc.soylentnews.org if you're looking for chat. There's a link to it on the left there. If you're talking user-to-user messaging though, I think so too but there's been some debate. I expect we'll probably throw it up for a hearing from you lot before we commit to the work it would take.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @10:04AM
I'm thinking an admin could send you a message that appears alongside your other notifications (replies and moderations to your comments). With a special alert that you received "admin mail" that goes away once you visit the notifications page.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 26 2015, @02:27PM
Yeah, we probably should implement this for admins at the very least. I know they'd appreciate it and all the downside arguments don't apply.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by ticho on Sunday February 01 2015, @10:29AM
Full user-to-user messaging wouldn't be bad either. It is a common feature in most places.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 01 2015, @01:43PM
Yeah, I'm personally in favor of it but there wasn't a decision reached to even put it out to the community for their feelings on the matter yet. Look for a story doing that probably March or April. I'm not going to be coding most of Febuary on account of packing and house hunting and moving and unpacking and March isn't really enough time to get feedback, get it implemented, and have it spend enough time on dev for testing.
Side Note: We solicit feedback on proposals via story because polls are either open to AC and therefore gaming or they disenfranchise a large section of our users. The email voting thing like for the name was pretty bloody confusing and had the same disadvantages. With a story it's also possible to tell a "meh" no vote from a "I should kill you where you stand" no vote and weigh them accordingly.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by gallondr00nk on Sunday January 25 2015, @03:36PM
I was worried mid last year that the site was atrophying, but that no longer seems to be the case. We get comments on weekends now, and some of the larger discussions seem to be attracting a great number of contributions. Great stuff :)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @04:13PM
I wonder how much of that is due to the weather. I suspect the majority of site users are in the northern hemisphere. So with winter a lot more people are spending evening and weekend time indoors. For a site this small, it would only take 20-30 more users to really bump up weekend activity.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @04:56PM
20-30 more registered users, maybe. We get about 10x the AC users for each registered user but posts per day to hits per day ratio is really pretty tiny, even with our group what's overly concerned with discussion.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @03:15PM
Quick suggestion... have a read of "The Lean Startup" by Eric Ries (Amazon Link: http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-Innovation/dp/0307887898 [amazon.com] ) ... it talks about how to quickly develop and test features. (For summaries use https://www.google.de/search?hl=en&q=lean+startup+eric+ries+summary+filetype:pdf [google.de] )
Short summary: use rapid development and frequent deployment with A/B testing (half see the old feature, the other half the new) to see which features improve the site (i.e. more commenters etc.) and which do not affect it or even affect it negatively. Yes, it probably takes a little more infrastructure investment to manage the quicker rollouts, but pays off hugely when you can quickly roll in a feature, test it for a few days and see if it really does what you expect. Obviously you need to define metrics for this (amount of comments total, amounts of downmodded comments, amount of whatever...), but that shouldn't be hard with a site with this many visitors.
Thanks for all the great work and a good site!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 01 2015, @03:30PM
Problem is we have an enormous and highly complex codebase that doesn't always make much sense. Not much can be done quickly with it as we (well I do at least) have to (re)learn how the bits operate every time we go to tackle an issue. Then it usually takes us a week to find and iron out the bugs of any changes of significant size. Add to that that both paulej72 and myself are of the sysadmin mindset and are extremely conservative in our risk-averseness when it comes to production boxes.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3) by maxwell demon on Sunday January 25 2015, @04:07PM
You mention you remove Overrated, but do not mention Underrated. Assuming that was not just an omission from the summary: Is there a specific reason to keep Underrated that doesn't apply to Overrated?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Sir Finkus on Sunday January 25 2015, @04:55PM
I'd suspect it's keeping in line with the moderation being more about upvoting good comments rather than downvoting bad ones.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @05:02PM
Basically. Underrated can't hide speech from the folks who read at the default filter setting of >= 0. Which is the vast majority of our users since we get way more AC traffic than registered. Underrated's mostly harmless, though not really useful.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by dx3bydt3 on Sunday January 25 2015, @09:16PM
As long as negative mods are possible, underrated still has a purpose. I use it for comments that appear to have been unfairly modded down, but the content isn't particularly funny, interesting or insightful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @05:28PM
That is same reason as Overrated!
Funny with 1 laugh is not 5, so overrated corrects the problem there too.
Should break words from score. Then you can funny with +1, 0, -1 value. Better yet allow you to throw all points it +5 to -5. Then rank has value and meaning.
(Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Wednesday February 04 2015, @11:31PM
The first mod I ever got on slashdot was "Overrated". How can an unmoderated comment be "overrated" unless someone is abusing the system?
If we are going to have overrated, how about making it available for comments that are rated 3 or higher. Also, there should be a preview or undo option for moderation in case a mistake is made.
SoylentNews is Bacon! [nueskes.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 05 2015, @12:11PM
I tend to agree on all counts but the way moderations are stored and calculated, there are going to be bugs if you allow an undo. Major ones? Not really, but we already found at least one when we were working on the undo for the Spam mod.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Sunday January 25 2015, @04:58PM
If a comment gets rated SPAM by more than one moderator, does the author of the comment lose 10 Karma PER mod, or is it just 10 karma the first time, and subsequent mods have no additional effect?
If additional spam mods are cumulative, a user can be Karma bombed out of existence for a single comment. That is a problem.
Can someone explain how this actually works, please?
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @05:07PM
Ten points lost per mod. So, yeah, you could be bombed down negative extremely quickly. Which is kind of the idea. Fortunately there is a link right by the mod score that any admin or editor can click and undo both the moderations and the karma hits. So, fast down but just as fast back up.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by cmn32480 on Sunday January 25 2015, @05:29PM
I see great potential for abuse and a lot of work for the staff.
The spam mod will likely get used instead of "Disagree".
But I suppose that is part of the great experiment. If it becomes a giant cluster, has it been implemented in such a way that the change can be easily removed?
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @05:43PM
Hence the harsh moderation banning of anyone who abuses it. It could still happen but hopefully we'll get that out of the way early and get the few who insist on abusing their mod points unable to moderate for quite a while.
But yeah, it's going to create more work for our poor Eds. The Admins? They mostly lay about eating bon-bons anyway, so I'm not worried about them much.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tathra on Sunday January 25 2015, @11:30PM
the death penalty does not stop people from committing crimes. and real assholes could easily create several sockpuppet accounts, let them sit for a month, and then use them to completely destroy somebody's karma without worry. easily reversible is a must.
(Score: 2) by sudo rm -rf on Monday January 26 2015, @09:56AM
I also see a big potential for abuse, I hope this works out. Also most spam posts seem to come from ACs anyway, so no Karma hits.
SPAM as a modding category on the other hand would be useful, eg for future filter options...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 26 2015, @02:02PM
That's a pretty good point. It may very well change down to a -1 if it's too often abused and rarely used on anyone but AC.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Sunday February 01 2015, @06:26AM
While you are messing with the dropdown menus, I wonder how practical it is to put the spam mod at the bottom, with a line of dashes that do nothing immediately above it. The idea being minimizing accidental selection of the spam mod?
The spam mod inflicts a nasty hit to one party or the other, and I would sure hate to see it inflicted accidentally.
Over on the other site, it was common to see subsequent postings to void unintentional moderations; I have done it as well. Sometimes the mouse moves just a hair and I get the wrong selection. Not often, but it does happen to me once in a while.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 01 2015, @01:25PM
Doable but would require some slightly squirrely coding. Right now they're generated programatically. I'll bring it up to paulej72 in case he's feeling the need for a point release though. For now just tack a comment on afterwards in the same manner you would have on the other site and the person unSpaming it will use the non-ban undo option. We put the non-ban option in specifically for that reason after some feedback from I forget who.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @05:49PM
Oh, and yeah, easily removed. Just delete one database row, bounce apache, and Spam is no more. All the changes to the mod system are about that easy to remove or change. Was pretty much a prerequisite since I didn't want to have to be the one doing a lot of work if all or even part of The Experiment turned out worse than before.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Monday January 26 2015, @02:54AM
Thanks for the clarification, and the work in implementing it.
Despite our dear friend AC and his rantings, I feel that you (the staff in general, and you, The Mighty Buzzard, personally) have been very transparent and open about what is looking to be accomplished with these changes.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by paulej72 on Sunday January 25 2015, @05:51PM
Users that abuse a spam mod, will lose the right to mod. One month no mod points for the first offense and more time for later abuses. Of course if was a miss mod, we will not penalize the user, if they let us know that it was miss applied.
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 1) by tftp on Sunday January 25 2015, @11:45PM
A user with a bunch of accounts (that are free, after all) may be not all that upset that one or a few of his puppet accounts got penalized. After all, there is no requirement of good karma to moderate - only a requirement to exist for 30 days...
At the same time, how promptly would the karma be restored to the victim? Does anyone need to do anything special, like filing a petition to gods of SN, to get his karma back? It might become a concern if the -10 is applied automatically and instantly, but undoing it is a manual process that may take a longer time. But I haven't seen yet how it's designed, so it may well be that the developers have already taken care of such things.
Maybe even the -10 penalty should be applied only manually, after a sentient person reads the comment in question? Is there a lot of spam?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:53PM
There are borderline cases. Some posters have links to personal web sites in their sig, and others may offer a link in the content of their post:
I've personally done some work on this [slashdot.org].
Is that spam? Probably not. But maybe, if someone is really annoyed by it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @08:32PM
You're probably right. We probably should post up a quick clarification of what is and what is not spam. It's really not my decision since I'm neither Admin nor Editor, so I'll forward it along to juggs and let him write a policy RFC.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by juggs on Monday January 26 2015, @12:04AM
This I am on.
In short, Spam is absolutely the nuclear option of moderating and is intended to be used accordingly. Our typical "First Post" type of comments still sit within Off-Topic. Spam is really intended for the absolutely gratuitous click-bait / advertising / botfare types of comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @12:44AM
call it RFC8008135
(Score: 2) by GeminiDomino on Wednesday January 28 2015, @04:50AM
So it would be appropriate for, say, the MyCleanPC crapfloods that showed up on that green site?
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 2) by juggs on Wednesday January 28 2015, @10:34AM
It would be entirely appropriate for those types of crapfloods.
(Score: 1) by gcrumb on Monday January 26 2015, @03:51AM
The spam mod will likely get used instead of "Disagree".
Yep, I could see someone deploying a sock puppet army and pretty much controlling a discussion. Short-term win, yes, but trolls and related sub-pontial creatures are generally in it for the short term.
You'll need a pretty effective ban-hammer to counteract the potential abuses of a -10 mod.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bunfight
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 26 2015, @05:10AM
A link beside the mod score of a comment that any editor or admin can click and instantly reverse all spam mods/karma hits and either ban or not ban the moderator(s) work for you? We were looking to do up a page of all spam mods to more easily sift through them but time became a factor so we check each story manually until that can be implemented.
If someone does go back to an old article and Spam mod you unjustly in the mean time, let us know either over email (will eventually work) or irc (will get done almost immediately) and it'll get fixed.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @06:41PM
Piece of bad programming, since you limit the max Karma and multiple people have to agree. Flame wars with being booted for month or more.
Maybe give the people the real scoop before you write another bad BETA code.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:03PM
If you can't keep yourself from modding something Spam when it's not, that's on you and you'll just have to live with the consequences. You're literally sitting there arguing for the ability to abuse the moderation system to shut people up at will. Us, we're putting out a proposed solution and letting the users decide. Did you miss the part where we put up two posts requesting comment on this then took the overwhelming support as an okay to go ahead?
Damned tyrannical of us, I know.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by buswolley on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:21PM
Anoms can't moderate anyway, what's anom worried about?
subicular junctures
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday January 25 2015, @08:07PM
People with accounts can post anonymously.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @05:32PM
You are really abusing the mod system, by blocking posters that disagree with you STRONGLY!
AC gives us a voice without trail... EXCEPT YOU ARE TRACKING web-finger-prints to put it all back together.
Good show! Great Hypocrisy.
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 26 2015, @07:56PM
Troll, troll, troll your boat...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SuperCharlie on Sunday January 25 2015, @06:30PM
I think the biggest thing isn't necessarily the specific updates. The biggest thing (to me) is that the SN crew are actively working on making this place better for all of us, and for that I say sincerest thanks. Keep up the good fight guys.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @06:45PM
They are already moving in the /. direction. Not telling what is going to happen so we can review it before they fuck up the place.
Design, Check, Build, Check, Roll out, Check, Repeat.
Not toss shit against the walls.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:08PM
So which of the changes (apart from the minor to moderate bug fixes, obviously) had not been discussed previously?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 5, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:08PM
Yeah, we never did that [soylentnews.org] and then never did that again [soylentnews.org] just for the moderation changes. I mean it's not like every line of code and database change we make are somewhere you can read them [github.com] either. We're elitist bastards and just do what we like secretly and spring it on you without notice.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by buswolley on Sunday January 25 2015, @07:25PM
I haven't seen a signed in user complain in this post. Just anom
subicular junctures
(Score: 1) by coolgopher on Monday January 26 2015, @02:40AM
Where's that fancy new +1 Touche mod when you need it? =)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @01:13PM
There was no talking about it not even clear specs. Just very high level on the lines of "spam filter". "overrated was abused". No clearing thoughts. Even now with a roll out, there are no clear changes. Just treatment of us as sheeps not the group that keeps this as a live site. We left /. because of this treatment. Now SN is treating us the same.
15.01 = new beta. Craned down our throats. So much for SN being about the people.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 26 2015, @02:17PM
Pffft, get it right... we're nowhere near complete enough to call beta. Alpha maybe. Still way too many known bugs.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by juggs on Monday January 26 2015, @12:07AM
May I refer you to this: https://soylentnews.org/index.pl?issue=20141208 [soylentnews.org]
Just in case you missed the extensive post AND discussion thereof.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @09:58PM
I'd go a step farther and say that it's even more important that they're updating the site AND seeking input, providing space for comment, and discussing site changes. Those who complain here about Soylent becoming the new Beta miss the distinction: Beta was someone's pet project that was pushed through without discussion, while Soylent is evolving with community input. Not everyone will be happy with the changes, and that's both to be expected and not to be ignored, but at least the changes aren't simply being implemented without some consultation.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @09:59PM
Appreciated. It's not "those" though, it's one single troll.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by carguy on Monday January 26 2015, @02:26AM
Dear TMB(18) -- nice of you to stick with this annoying Anon, I thought I had a lot of patience but you've shown much more. I'm also pleased that these changes are being discussed and that an experiment is about to start.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 26 2015, @02:06PM
It would also be nice to have this conversation before they changed the software. There was no conversation, just high level overrated or spam filter. No details. No treating us members not even a few polls to see direction.
(Score: 2) by elf on Tuesday January 27 2015, @06:25AM
I don't know why you are ranting so much (assuming it's you posting all the time as AC in this post).
Firstly, the admins have spoken about moderation before in previous posts so quit with the "you never told us" whining. This could hardly be compared to BETA,
Secondly, its a universal fact that everyone hates SPAM so you would assume the majority would be for this. If you don't like it, rather than rant why you feel so hard done by, actually write feedback that is worth everybody else reading
Thirdly, as an AC this release is mostly not going to effect you so why should you care? If you have a proper account then post using that so people can take you more seriously. This is one of the few discussions where posting as AC really doesn't add much in terms of relevance.
Forthly. do you really care that much? This isn't a life changing upgrade, its an upgrade to add a spam filter. I'm sure you will live a long and healthy life because of it or despite it.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday January 25 2015, @06:32PM
Just curious:
Which indicates that more is planned later. Any details on that?
BTW, I really look forward to the input processing improvements. Keep up the good work!
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 25 2015, @09:54PM
Is it nice how the "GODS" answer questions?
Talk about an open debate. Cram the new beta down on us, than play lip service on meaningful discussion of the changes.
Thank the GODS for BETA!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 25 2015, @10:01PM
We've done absolutely nothing about you trolling all over the place though. Guess we love us some trolls up here on Olympus, eh?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by Lee_Dailey on Monday January 26 2015, @02:23AM
howdy y'all,
so this ...
"Every account older than one month and set willing to moderate gets points every day."
... makes it seen there otta be an entry somewhere in my account to set "willing to moderate" on or off. i can't find it tho. help, please?
take care,
lee
(Score: 4, Informative) by cmn32480 on Monday January 26 2015, @02:44AM
Click your name after logging in.
On the left hand side, choose Preferences
Go to the Homepage tab
Scroll down to just above the "Customize Stories On the Home Page" section
There should be 2 check boxes that you want: "Willing To Moderate" and Willing to Vote"
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 3, Informative) by juggs on Monday January 26 2015, @05:07AM
The Preferences panel is something that is also on our list to tidy up - that interface is not great - all the options are there.... somewhere, just not where one would expect to fine them in some cases.
Thanks cmn32480 for the more detailed reply.
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Monday January 26 2015, @05:45PM
I work with Windows users for a living. I _HAVE_ to give instructions like that. :-)
If there is anything that I can help with from that side of things (writing instructions, how to, etc) please feel free to let me know.
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 1) by Lee_Dailey on Friday January 30 2015, @07:25PM
howdy cmn32480 (443),
thanks for the detailed "where"! [*grin*] i _finally_ found those settings. wheeee!
take care,
lee
(Score: 4, Interesting) by pkrasimirov on Monday January 26 2015, @09:39AM
Can I haz J and K as hotkeys scrolling one post at a time? See 9gag [9gag.com] and FB wall.
(Score: 3, Touché) by CoolHand on Monday January 26 2015, @01:08PM
Thank you for continuing work to improve the site, and remaining transparent about it. While not every change can please every person, I believe great effort is going into pleasing most of the people most of the time.. :)
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 26 2015, @02:14PM
Cheers, man. Much appreciated after all the trolling.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Wednesday January 28 2015, @11:12AM
Late to the party I know...
Are there any plans to increase the karma limit up from 50.? A lot of us are hitting against it constantly.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 28 2015, @04:30PM
It's been talked about but if you're staying at 50 you'd be staying at $newMax shortly too. Do like I do, enjoy a flame war now and then to make it less of a certainty that you're maxed at all times.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Troll) by WizardFusion on Wednesday January 28 2015, @04:36PM
So you are saying I should piss some people off.? I can do that :)
(Score: 2) by cmn32480 on Monday February 02 2015, @05:43PM
Feel better now?
Hey.... I moderated and commented... WWWWWWWWWWHHHHHHHHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!
"It's a dog eat dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear" - Norm Peterson
(Score: 2) by tathra on Saturday January 31 2015, @11:37PM
would it be possible to have something like a karma buffer? once you hit 50, the instant a post gets modded up, that point just goes right in the trash, but then, say, if somebody mods a +5 down to a +4, you lose that point of karma. i mean, its not that big a hassle for those of us constantly maxed to get another point, but its still annoying to look up and see that "49". it doesn't even have to be a big buffer, just like a point or 2, or maybe gain a buffer point for every 5 or 10 wasted karma or something.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 01 2015, @03:18PM
Interesting idea. It'd require changes to the db so I'm personally thinking not enough bang for the buck but it ain't remotely my call. Will forward it on to paulej72.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Sunday February 01 2015, @02:14PM
$newMax of LONG_MAX would work for a while.
As it is a karma cap just encourages trolling
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 01 2015, @02:35PM
I dunno, seems like most people proper troll as AC and strong disagreement under their own nick because they have karma to burn is actively good for the site. It might be worth tweaking regardless though as 0-50 isn't much of a range. A quick check shows the db can go up to nine digits but there's likely some algorithmic tweaking necessary for any raised value to be viable.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Touché) by MrNemesis on Saturday January 31 2015, @10:43PM
Soylent - you've gone to all the effort of adding unicode support and a new mod level that uses an accent... and you don't use it!
Can we get the dropdown changed to use the proper "Ťöũĉĥé" accentation?
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @03:59AM
I forgot about the Touche mod. It really should have accent d'aigu.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 01 2015, @04:51AM
I'll ask paulej72 about that. I can't bring myself to do it. I refuse to type anything outside the low ascii range unless absolutely necessary or unless it's the poo glyph.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @12:40PM
It's in ISO 8859 and it has a named character entity. [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday January 31 2015, @10:50PM
THANK YOU!!!!! I've been so tired of manually switching every http link to https, now I don't have to! soylent is now the perfect site IMHO.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Sunday February 01 2015, @01:25AM
Also I got mod points for the first time in my life, even though I've been at karma 50 since forever. So you must have fixed something else too.
Quick, somebody say something important before my points expire!
(Score: 3, Informative) by GlennC on Monday February 02 2015, @04:39PM
Something Important.
Hopefully, your points didn't expire.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 02 2015, @05:57PM
Points expire at pretty much the same time new ones are given out at the moment. There should never be a time when your points expire on you and you don't get new ones for longer than it takes the points granting script to run (seconds). If this ever turns out to not be the case, please let us know.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Tuesday February 03 2015, @01:53PM
Looks like I forgot the WOOSH tags.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by lennier on Saturday January 31 2015, @11:28PM
I'm guessing the site update restarted the Twitter interface, because suddenly 51 stories from Soylent reappeared in my Twitter feed.
This probably isn't something that should happen every time the codebase is updated.
Delenda est Beta
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 01 2015, @04:47AM
It won't. There was a difference in every story in that the links switched to https instead of http.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by archfeld on Sunday February 01 2015, @12:58AM
I've been on vacation for some time and have just returned to a place where the interwebz is available, and I must say I like the changes that have gone on.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @12:36PM
Please remove "&from=rss" from RSS URLs.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday February 01 2015, @02:55PM
You know, we honestly might as well. I was going to make the argument that it's how we'd gauge interest in the feeds but we don't run an access_log to pull metrics from, so it's fairly worthless.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 01 2015, @10:31PM
(Score: 3, Informative) by juggs on Monday February 02 2015, @06:48AM
I don't think that is anything new. If I remember correctly it is triggered by the inclusion of a Javascript snippet used by our stats system (piwik) - if you look towards the bottom of the page source you'll see a section that calls out to http://stats.soylentnews.org/piwik/ [soylentnews.org]
Once we get our wildcard ssl certificate sorted out I expect that will use https as well.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 02 2015, @07:20AM
Nope. The site stats script only runs on http. Feel free to ignore or block it at your preference until it gets fixed as it should never have been working for https pages anyway.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by SlimmPickens on Monday February 02 2015, @03:59AM
Looking at how people are using their mods since the update, I'm starting to wonder if the modding should be much more fine grained, like +50 max, and you'd have the ability to add or take a maximum of 10 points from each post.
Posts that resonate with the group would go straight to +50 just as they do now, but you'd find out so much more about the marginal comments that get +1 or +2.
Maybe even go crazy and allow users to apply +5 insightful, +3 funny and +2 informative all to the same post.
I guess this would be rather difficult.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 06 2015, @11:50PM
I have suggested that before. Separate the tag from value. Then you can mark Funny -1. Overate but still funny.
They do not care to hear real ideas.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 10 2015, @06:25PM
Considered and discarded the last time it came up. It would turn the moderation score into a reddit-esque up/down, justificationless vote which we feel we can do better than. You think unjustified downmods are bad now, wait until you don't even have to give a reason for your downvote.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by naubol on Tuesday February 03 2015, @02:25AM
Hmm, seems like more mod points are being handed out.
A contentious thread was pretty well moderated. I saw two instances of flamebait being used in the way overrated used to be used. I saw a few disagrees, which was awesome. Maybe disagrees or plus ones should be unlimited and not related to mod points?
A non-contentious thread was almost perfectly moderated. And, I felt like the quality of posts was up, too.
Without having quantitative results, my early thoughts about the system are highly positive.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by naubol on Tuesday February 03 2015, @02:27AM
One really really desired feature would be reloading the conversation at the moderated post. The extra and frequent mod points make it more obvious how irritating it is to moderate and have to refind my spot in the thread.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 03 2015, @01:09PM
You know, you're so right it hurts. If I weren't on coding-leave to get myself moved out of state, I'd find and code that up for testing right now.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by GeminiDomino on Wednesday February 11 2015, @01:34AM
I came to mention this very thing.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 03 2015, @01:06PM
A LOT more mod points are being handed out, yes. Essentially everyone but very new accounts gets them every day.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 06 2015, @11:52PM
Not good at all. Soon more will be blocked from posting, like me. I am multiple homed, so not a real problem to get around their poor choices.
SN is about poeple - our kind of people.