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mattie_p paraphrases Barrabas, who uttered these words (mostly):
To everyone who contributed to the initial roll out, thank you! It was an amazing effort, and we couldn't have done it without you.
I've set down some notes, with an overview of where I see the project heading in the next few weeks. As always, we can stop and discuss if the community feels we should be moving in a different direction.
We have had a wildly successful launch, and can now proceed at a slightly more leisurely pace, at least for the team that handles code development. I have always intended to do development the right way; with a strong foundation of tools and with leaders to oversee and coordinate the effort between individuals and other groups. As a result, this upcoming week I've told our system administrator team to take a break. They can certainly do minor bug fixes at a leisurely pace if they feel bored, but I want a team that is relaxed and refreshed.
Speaking of a team, we actually have at least five of them. There is a systems team, which are primarily concerned with systems and server issues. There is a development team, consisting of people who contribute code to the site. There is a content team, consisting of our editors, artists, and administrators of our wiki, forum, and IRC channels. A fourth group is style, representing those who help determine how the site is presented. Finally, we have our business team, which includes marketing, legal, finances, and other such issues.
This has been an exciting time. I understand there has been some concern about decisions made during first roll out. I promised that we would operate by community consensus, and I will abide by that. Look for opportunities to contribute to the future direction of SoylentNews over the upcoming days and weeks.
(To read the full story in his words, simply go to Barrabas's Journal Entry. (internal hyperlink))
(Score: 5, Interesting) by quadrox on Wednesday February 19 2014, @06:32AM
I have a suggestion for moderation, which I have posted previously as well. On the old site I noticed a tendency for comments to either go all the way to +5, or stay at the initial value. Scores of 2,3, and 4 were not unheard of, but not as common as I would have thought. To provide a better spread and perhaps accuracy in moderation, I would suggest the following moderation change:
1) Instead of +1/-1, allow me to select the desired final value (-1 to 5) and average with other moderations and display with decimals.
2) To prevent instant +5 mods, comment scores can never be higher than the number of total moderations.
I believe the above will be close enough to the old system, while allowing for more accuracy in moderations.
(Score: 2, Informative) by FacialPaper on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:37AM
Speaking of moderation: Is it just me or do mod points expire much faster than they used to? I understand that it's counterproductive to allow people to hoard them forever, but I've seen my points disappear within a couple of hours. I always like to keep a couple in reserve, just in case I come across an interesting but underrated AC, but that's hard to do when I'm basically forced to use them all in one go.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mattie_p on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:39AM
I would suggest you read NCommander's journal entry [soylentnews.org] on the topic of moderation. If you have questions regarding the process by which we award mod points, please feel free to contact him.
(Score: 1) by FacialPaper on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:57AM
Ah, that explains everything. Thanks!
(Score: 4, Informative) by NCommander on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:14AM
I admit, the new algo requires some getting used to, but moderation depends on quick and fast action as articles don't stick around on the front page for very long.
Still always moving
(Score: 2, Informative) by martyb on Wednesday February 19 2014, @12:22PM
There are journal entries describing how the old system worked [soylentnews.org], and how the new system is intended to work [soylentnews.org].
I share your confusion on the expiry of mod points. It's been a long-standing frustration of mine on the old site.
What I'd love to see is something like:
I suppose it should use the same date format as selected in the user's preferences, but am open to alternatives including a separate profile entry(?). For now, whatever is easiest is fine! (BTW, why isn't ISO8601 a date/time format choice? C'mon we're NERDS here! :-)
My thinking is that it provides me a MUCH better idea of how much longer I'll have points available and I can better assess whether I want to apply them to the current story (I've only got 15 minutes left), or wait a bit to see what the next story may bring (I've got 6 hours remaining.)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 1) by stderr on Wednesday February 19 2014, @05:55PM
Or seconds since Epoch...
Or stardate.
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 1) by martyb on Wednesday February 19 2014, @06:34PM
Snort! (Wipes coffee from keyboard) NOW you're talking! Thanks for the laugh!!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 1) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 19 2014, @03:25PM
I have yet to get any points here, you're not told how long they last? If that's so, they should fix that. As to holding on to them, slashdot's lengths seemed reasonable.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2, Interesting) by nobbis on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:42AM
Can I propose an alternative moderation algo :
Stories accumulate mod points without limit
From their total score they are ranked and put in a band, of say top 5%, top 20% etc.
You can then browse at the band you want to see.
It would simplify the mod point distribution, as it would adjust to however many mod points were being used.
Although it could mean more processing to calculate the ranking, you could do that every few minutes from a cron job if it were a problem.
It's easy to look up when your mind's in the gutter
(Score: 2, Interesting) by evilviper on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:53AM
I don't want to see the "top 20%" of comments. And that wouldn't make ANY sense for the vast majority of comments that never see a mod point either way... What percentile is your un-modded comment falling into? Or mine?
I typically set my threshold at +3, so I can see nearly all comments that got ANY positive mods, without downmods later, and skip over all the tripe that wasn't interesting to anyone but the poster, but didn't happen to be bad enough to get downmods.
IMHO, the /. mod system is fine, just make sure meta-moderation is heavily promoted... All this site needs now is STORIES, STORIES, STORIES, to get people coming in, and users frequently reading, and talking.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 1) by jcd on Wednesday February 19 2014, @07:57AM
Yes. And we need things posted to the main page more frequently than once every two hours.
"What good's an honest soldier if he can be ordered to behave like a terrorist?"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Popeidol on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:08AM
That's something that should probably scale with the userbase. If you just dump twice as many articles to the main page, each article will get substantially fewer comments and we won't get any real discussion going. The site has just launched, so both the active users and the frequency of posts will probably ramp up at the same rate.
(Score: 1) by stderr on Wednesday February 19 2014, @06:39PM
Why? Just because you have posted a comment on one article, doesn't mean you can't comment on another article too.
Let's face it, some of the articles won't interest everyone. But with more articles, there's a greater chance of an article that will interest you, which makes it more likely that you will comment on that article and that's what we want, right?
Few people spend time writing comments on articles that doesn't interest them, If you're already not commenting on a not-so-interesting article, an extra (interesting or uninteresting) article can't make you comment any less on the uninteresting article. (Unless we get a huge amount of uninteresting articles and start complaining on all the articles, but then we got bigger problems.)
More comments also means more active mod points in the system. And with more articles, that means more articles where you can actually spend your mod points. Some of us have had problems using our mod points simply because we had already posted comments on almost all the articles.
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 1) by Popeidol on Thursday February 20 2014, @01:09AM
At the end you mentioned that more articles would allow you to use mod points, presumably because you'd be commenting on a smaller percentage of posts. You're not the only one who thinks that, so it's reasonable to assume that more posts would lead to less comments per post at the moment.
I agree that a few more posts a day would be great (especially for those awake while america sleeps), I'd just rather we ramp up slowly to find the sweet spot.
(Score: 1) by stderr on Friday February 21 2014, @09:48AM
I don't think it's reasonable to assume that at all.
If I want to write X comments on article A when article B doesn't exist, I'll most likely still want to write the same X comments on article A when article B in fact does exist.
The percentage of articles I'm commenting on could go up, down or stay the same when B enters the mix, but the absolute number of comments on A doesn't change.
alias sudo="echo make it yourself #" #
(Score: 1) by siliconwafer on Wednesday February 19 2014, @01:33PM
The "without limit" would make it similar to reddit's upvote/downvote in that regard, no? Not saying that's good or bad, just trying to understand your concept.
(Score: 1) by zocalo on Wednesday February 19 2014, @10:06AM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 5, Informative) by NCommander on Wednesday February 19 2014, @08:37AM
To be honest, take any moderation scores from the other site with a grain of salt. The fact of the matter is the old algo skewed the potential pool of moderators, and then compounded the problem when firehose replaced M2, which was a huge factor in determining how points got handed out. Right now, I want to leave it "as is" for at least another week or two, and see how the spread works its way out. I suspect this problem will correct itself.
Still always moving
(Score: 1) by quadrox on Wednesday February 19 2014, @09:10AM
I believe the problem is more psychological in nature. When one has modpoints to spend and finds a good comment, there is a natural tendency to upvote it, even if it perhaps is "correctly" moderated at +3/+4 already and is not quite desevering of a +5 score. This is just human nature.
With my proposal moderators would be led to make more "fair" assessments quite naturally, instead of blindly upvoting a comment.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DarkMorph on Wednesday February 19 2014, @03:50PM
Let's wait a short period first, let the userbase growth settle down a bit and the story submission rate stabilise, before returning to any considerations of refining the moderation system. For the time being, from what I'm seeing from one story to the next, is that the current algorithm is rather decent. I can't think of a legitimate complaint that would warrant an urgent modification at this time.
At the very least, what might work well for a small userbase right now might be poor for a larger, more active group and vice versa which only further supports the notion to just wait until things settle down.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by B1ackDragon on Wednesday February 19 2014, @04:30PM
While I think it's a good idea to explore moderation concepts, I admit to being a bit skeptical (conservative, even), so I'm glad to see a "wait and see" approach. Compared to almost every other rating/up-and-downvote system I've seen, the -1 to +5 mod system seems to work well in promoting and displaying good discussion. I'm not sure why exactly, though I'm sure the quality of the community has a lot to do with it too!
(Score: 4, Informative) by NCommander on Wednesday February 19 2014, @04:46PM
The decision to scratch the old system was NOT made lightly, especially because we had nothing resembling real world data to base it on. Its running off educated guesses and has had one major revision post launch. Once the numbers come in (slash gives pretty decent stats of moderation) after a couple of weeks, then the floor will be open to revising it more :-).
Still always moving
(Score: 3, Interesting) by chewbacon on Wednesday February 19 2014, @11:18AM
No, I leave it broken. I like the nostalgia. On a slow news day, it gives us something to talk about.
(Score: 2, Informative) by mcgrew on Wednesday February 19 2014, @03:23PM
Scores of 2,3, and 4 were not unheard of, but not as common as I would have thought.
I'm not sure if you're talking about here or slashdot, but my experience is quite different. I've only had two comments modded here, both sit at +2 as of last night. As to slashdot, I get quite a few fives but more 2s, 3s, and 4s.
I don't care much for your suggestion and hope it isn't implimented.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org