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  • (Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @05:07PM (22 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 04 2021, @05:07PM (#1141835)

    Arguably EF was more offensive, but posted for much longer - Question: He hasn't posted since April, have you banned him?
    rDT attracted downmods for his political statements, even though they were satire, as Hemocyanin's project has drawn attention to. Question: Has the green site banned users from voicing opinions that a brigade doesn't like?

    This poll has been up for a week, and this may have been the first reply by staff to the concerns people have brought up. It has been more disconcerting than I would have expected. No effort to assuage concerns, plus I learn that a mob can cancel even a logged in account.

    I have the technical skills, but hell no.

    Shouldn't have run your skilled admin TMB off.

    Starting Score:    0  points
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       Troll=1, Informative=1, Total=2
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   0  
  • (Score: 2) by martyb on Saturday June 05 2021, @01:12AM (21 children)

    by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Saturday June 05 2021, @01:12AM (#1141932) Journal

    Arguably EF was more offensive, but posted for much longer - Question: He hasn't posted since April, have you banned him?

    Same thing happened to EF as what happened to rDT... in this case his "offensive" posting (as you called it) caught up with him. He received enough downmods that it caused his karma to drop below a level where he could post comments.

    This poll has been up for a week, and this may have been the first reply by staff to the concerns people have brought up. It has been more disconcerting than I would have expected. No effort to assuage concerns, plus I learn that a mob can cancel even a logged in account.

    Several factors at work here. First, staff learned of TMB's departure when he posted it to his journal. Much scrambling ensued. And continues. There was much that was done over the past few years that was not documented. We've been discovering things, and documenting them, as we go. Each of us has taken on a part of TMB's former activities on top of what we had already done before. We also have a couple staff members who are on a leave-of-absence for personal reasons.

    So, today was the first day that I noticed this poll was here and I am making some time to respond to it.

    Let me take this opportunity to extend my personal thanks and amazement at the selfless extra efforts that staff has made during this period! The attitude has been all about "what can I do to help?" I count myself privileged to be a part of this organization. I've never before worked with such a selfless and talented group!

    That said, I need to step away from this discussion -- our pending story queue is running dry.

    --
    Wit is intellect, dancing.
    • (Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @03:15AM (15 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @03:15AM (#1141952)

      Same thing happened to EF as what happened to rDT... in this case his "offensive" posting (as you called it) caught up with him. He received enough downmods that it caused his karma to drop below a level where he could post comments.

      They both posted at similar rates, yet EF somehow kept clear of being cancelled for two years longer than rDT? How curious.

      It's apparent there was some sort of coup behind the scenes here, around the time Ncommander showed his self around. It doesn't look like anyone has ended up vocally pledging loyalty to him, but suddenly there was talk of "enforced niceness", Hemo and TMB left and erased their journals, and EF was cancelled.

      Fuck beta and all that, but how is the Green Site nowadays? As for me, it looks like I'll go perusing the Register more often. They have more stories and their comments have a fair share of dissenting opinions.

      • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @04:04AM (14 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @04:04AM (#1141959)

        Karma bans are temporary. EF can come back whenever he wants. rDT probably got bored of playing the character.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @05:03AM (11 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @05:03AM (#1141965)

          Even if rDT were allowed back, nobody with any energy and talent likes playing to empty seats.

          • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @10:04PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 16 2021, @10:04PM (#1146147)

            rDT the talented? Ha! More like people realized it wasn't a parody at all and just another user driving a rightwing agenda in a joking manner. Republicans beat troll humor into the ground and are busy skull fucking the corpse at this point. Actually, they switched from trolling into straight up psychopath behavior and are currently trying to generate support for a military coup.

            That shit ain't funny.

          • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday June 17 2021, @03:19PM (9 children)

            by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Thursday June 17 2021, @03:19PM (#1146520) Journal

            Even if rDT were allowed back

            He is free to return, there is no ban issued by SN. His karma went below the level that permitted him to post, thus he became silent. That was a result of community moderation. However, his karma has long ago returned to its default level and, if he wishes, he can resume posting again.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @03:54PM (8 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 18 2021, @03:54PM (#1146990)

              That's like Captain Edward John Smith saying, "All is forgiven. Come on back aboard, we miss you!"

              • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday June 18 2021, @08:17PM (7 children)

                by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 18 2021, @08:17PM (#1147116) Journal

                Except we are not sinking, personally I don't wish to see that persona back, and it is the community that moderated him into silence, not us.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @05:47AM (6 children)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @05:47AM (#1147943)

                  With bulkheads made of Perl. As the bo'sun orders you to take on ballast, and the first mate jettisons the lifeboats. And yet you blame it on the sharks.

                  • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday June 22 2021, @07:06AM (5 children)

                    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 22 2021, @07:06AM (#1147948) Journal

                    Nobody orders anybody here to do anything. We are all volunteers and we each get on with our own role. You have a very distorted and inaccurate view of how this site is managed and how we all function. Politics or personal vendettas do not exist. Views expressed in comments however are personal views and we each have a right to comment as does every other member of this community.

                    The only reason that I can see to explain why rDT stopped posting was because his karma was moderated down below a certain threshold - I think -5. It returned within a very short period of time, and had he chosen to do so he could have continued to post comments.

                    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @04:21PM (4 children)

                      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @04:21PM (#1148064)

                      You seem to take a very narrow view of the analogy. rDT is just a symptom, not some charismatic martyr. Review earlier posts. You can see the true theme here, again and again. And again. We are abandoning a sinking ship because...

                      • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday June 22 2021, @05:04PM (3 children)

                        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 22 2021, @05:04PM (#1148076) Journal
                        OK, bye.
                        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @05:32PM (2 children)

                          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 22 2021, @05:32PM (#1148082)

                          Okay, fine.

                          Somebody else must have figured something was awry. Otherwise, why did they start this poll about "Why Don't You Want Anything To Do With Us?"

                          • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Wednesday June 23 2021, @05:01AM (1 child)

                            by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 23 2021, @05:01AM (#1148276) Journal

                            You have made your decision to 'abandon ship' based upon erroneous information. What does it matter which language the site is written in? It makes no difference to how you interact with it. You seem to think that there is some sort of evil cabal overseeing this site plotting against certain community members - which is simply untrue. I have tried to correct this misconception but you have still decided to go. If you distrust us that much then I can only wish you luck in finding a community that you can join and enjoy being a part of.

                            The site depends upon Rehash - our fork of the original Slash code written in Perl. It has been proven to be robust and more than capable of supporting a community several magnitudes larger than our current one. A decade or more ago Slashdot was famous for remain operational despite several attempts to bring it to its knees by Denial of Service attacks. The same cannot be said of the vast majority of modern frameworks. Rehash depends upon an old version of Apache. Work has been continuing on converting it to work with a modern and fully-supported version of Apache but this work was invisible to the community and, for the time being, has come to a stop. However what we currently have is working fine - the problems experienced over the last few years have all been systems problems and nothing at all to do with the Perl code. If it ain't broke - don't fix it.

                            The the poll was run because we are always trying to recruit more staff. We have a very small editorial team, there are currently only 2 active sys-admins which is insufficient for 24 hour coverage and the amount of remedial work that a restructuring will require, and the last active developer for our software has just left the team with no warning. The software is fine but, currently, we are unable to make any enhancements or other changes. The problems have all been exacerbated by the arrival of COVID which has left many in our community struggling in their private lives and jobs with little time for giving support to the site. The poll, which was suggested by a member of the community - not a member of the site staff - is an attempt to discover if there are any other reasons why people are reluctant to join the team.

                            There is also a frustration amongst the current team that many in our community are not here to discuss the stories that are published, but are using the site to push their own political or social views or simply to troll other members of our community. They seem to think that it is acceptable to attack the speaker rather than debate the views that are being expressed. We are not unique in this regard - social media of all kinds is battling with exactly the same problems amid much publicity. We are constantly looking for solutions to this problem and we discuss various options from time to time. None have yet been implemented and none will be without consultation with the whole community. None of the possible solutions discussed will please every member of our community and none discussed so far will address every aspect so we have not introduced them. But the fact that we are looking at the problem is not something that the community should interpret as an attack upon themselves.

                            Good luck wherever you find yourself a home.

        • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @09:02AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @09:02AM (#1141996)

          Parody eventually gave way to the strangeness of truth. By the time they could post again, there was no challenging what is true, for truth is always strange but fiction has to make sense.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @04:15PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 05 2021, @04:15PM (#1142066)

            Should've started using realDrFauci last year, 'cause it's starting to lose its humour, now.

    • (Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Tuesday June 08 2021, @07:55AM (3 children)

      by shrewdsheep (5215) on Tuesday June 08 2021, @07:55AM (#1143059)

      Same thing happened to EF as what happened to rDT... in this case his "offensive" posting (as you called it) caught up with him. He received enough downmods that it caused his karma to drop below a level where he could post comments.

      Maybe that is a bad thing. If one wants to be offensive one can always go AC. I can block a user (can I?) but I cannot block AC. Will users with low karma first start at -1? This would seem sensible to me: do not ban but start posts at -1. With 10 mod points per day it seems that by using a couple accounts a given user can be banned in a few or even on a single day. BTW 10 mod points per day is to much IMO, bring it down to 7.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DECbot on Tuesday June 08 2021, @03:26PM

        by DECbot (832) on Tuesday June 08 2021, @03:26PM (#1143161) Journal

        It started as 5 points, but moderation was very sparse. TMB was the one who poked that the code to first make 5 points an automatic thing instead of random chance and then bumping up the point level to 10 to encourage more moderation. I agree that the original point scheme from slashcode doesn't work for a smaller community like SN. Perhaps the better solution was bumping up the chance you are awarded mod points to a number between the $orig_chance and the current 100% chance we enjoy now? That way you're more likely to receive points than what the original slashcode dolled out thus returning moderation into a reward for good karma and limiting users with sock puppets to a smaller pool of points to modbomb posts. Of course the way to defeat that is to just have more sock puppet accounts to increase your odds of getting an account with mod points that day--but with a vast quantity of puppet accounts to guarantee a daily pool of points, signs of abuse would be flagrant in the IP logs. Though take my recommendations with a grain of salt, I'm not staff and I haven't actually looked at the code. This is just what I recall from previous conversations about the topic.

        --
        cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08 2021, @07:47PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 08 2021, @07:47PM (#1143258)

        BTW 10 mod points per day is to much IMO, bring it down to 7.

        Especially if those points are used to punish your enemies.

        It depends on what your definition of "offensive" is.

        We've seen so many times here what the definition of "enemies" is.

        • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 22 2021, @01:19PM

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 22 2021, @01:19PM (#1147987) Journal

          Especially if those points are used to punish your enemies.

          We needz 15 pointz, precious. (grin)

          --
          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 22 2021, @01:12PM

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 22 2021, @01:12PM (#1147986) Journal

      He received enough downmods that it caused his karma to drop below a level where he could post comments.

      No redemption for the sinners, even if they were to repent, eh? (not that I imagine EF would)

      --
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford