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posted by martyb on Tuesday September 16 2014, @12:58PM   Printer-friendly
from the mod-me-up! dept.

An article posted by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2014/09/15/downvoting-considered-harmful.html has interesting insight into moderation:

A study http://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/disqus-icwsm14.pdf [PDF] published in a journal of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence found that sites that have a "downvote" button to punish bad comments lock the downvoted users into spirals of ever-more-prolific, ever-lower-quality posting due to a perception of having been martyred by the downvoters.

Cory continues: What's more, positive attention for writing good posts acts as less of an incentive to write more good stuff than the incentive to write bad stuff that's produced by negative attention.

How Community Feedback Shapes User Behavior http://cs.stanford.edu/people/jure/pubs/disqus-icwsm14.pdf [Justin Cheng, Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil, Jure Leskovec]

Why Reddit sucks: some scientific evidence http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2014/09/09/why-reddit-sucks-some-scientific-evidence/ [Henry Farrell/Washington Post]

So... do you downvote? if so, why? Does this article make you reconsider your down-modding?

[Editor's note: I offer for your consideration and commentary our very own SoylentNews Moderation FAQ.]

 
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by TK on Tuesday September 16 2014, @03:31PM

    by TK (2760) on Tuesday September 16 2014, @03:31PM (#94064)

    What if there was a "hide as spam" setting that the mods could select. Then instead of "browse at -1" as the lowest threshold, an "include spam" option could be there.

    Alternatively, spam posts could show up as "hidden as spam/troll, click to show comment".

    --
    The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 1) by Tanuki64 on Tuesday September 16 2014, @03:37PM

    by Tanuki64 (4712) on Tuesday September 16 2014, @03:37PM (#94066)

    Sounds good to me.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @11:13AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @11:13AM (#94475)
    only works if there are effective consequences for rating something as spam that is clearly not.
    • (Score: 2) by TK on Wednesday September 17 2014, @01:22PM

      by TK (2760) on Wednesday September 17 2014, @01:22PM (#94531)

      Easy peasy.

      The "report" button can be used by anyone. It logs your IP and username (if you're logged in) and sends a message to the powers that be.

      These reports are looked at by a mod, who agrees or disagrees with the spam label, and officially marks it as such.

      The comment is now hidden, with the message "This comment was marked as spam by $Moderator'sName, click to show comment".

      --
      The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
      • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Thursday September 18 2014, @10:30AM

        by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Thursday September 18 2014, @10:30AM (#94889) Journal

        I like this idea. I'd also like to be able to mark a whole selection of these things as spam. (I've seen them come in batches at a time and I'd rather not waste all 10 of my mod points to mark 10 of 30 messages as spam.) On the flip side, I don't know how you'd control an evil user who starts marking every comment they don't like as spam. That could be a PITA for you guys.

        I also wouldn't mind having a troll button. That is more slippery slope, of course. I would hardly use it, but I suspect others might abuse it pretty good.

        Merely thinking out loud.

        • (Score: 2) by TK on Thursday September 18 2014, @02:09PM

          by TK (2760) on Thursday September 18 2014, @02:09PM (#94984)

          On the flip side, I don't know how you'd control an evil user who starts marking every comment they don't like as spam. That could be a PITA for you guys.

          Every "report as spam" logs the username and/or IP address of the person who clicks it. If you notice someone is just marking everything as spam, file reports from that user/IP under ignore.

          My idea requires reports to be verified by the staff, which is a downside, but it prevents the equivalent of mod-bombing someone's post.

          A possible outcome is that people over-use it and reports just start being ignored (or back-logged so long that they may as well be), but then we're back to square one and no worse off than we were before.

          --
          The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum