I've been hinting around about this for a week or two, so here it is. I circulated this proposal around the staff mailing list before Thanksgiving and got nobody telling me it sucks and to die in a fire, so it falls to you lot to do it if necessary. Let's be clear beforehand though. This is not a complete solution; no meta-mod consideration included for instance. Nor is it a permanent change. What it is is an experiment. Unless you lot are overwhelmingly opposed, we'll run it for a month or two and either keep it, keep parts of it, or trash it entirely based on staff and community feedback. We're not the other site and this isn't Beta; what we as a community want is what's going to happen.
So, here's the deal with the bit that's likely to be most controversial right out front. Bad downmods and mod-bombing both suck hardcore but you can't really get rid of them and still have downmods even with meta-moderation because you still have the same ideologically driven few who think Troll/Flamebait/Overrated means Disagree. To that end, I converted all the downmods to +0 mods and added a proper Disagree +0 mod. They affect neither score of the comment nor karma of the commenter but will show up beside the comment score (and be subject to user adjustment from their comments preferences page) if they hold a majority vote. It'll be entirely possible, for instance, to have a +5 Troll comment and equally possible that the same comment will show as -1 Troll to someone who has Troll set to -6 in their preferences.
Underrated and Overrated are also out. For Underrated, I for one would really like to know why you think it's underrated. For Overrated, it was almost exclusively used as Disagree, which we now have.
Second, everyone who's been registered for a month or more gets five mod points a day. We're not getting enough mods on comments to suit the number of comments; this should have been tweaked a while back but we quite frankly just let it slip through the cracks. Also, the zero-mod system will need the extra points to reliably push comments from +5 insightful to +5 Flamebait if they warrant it. We may end up tweaking this number as necessary to find the right balance during The Experiment.
Third, we're introducing a new Spam mod. As of this writing it's a -1 to comment score and a -10 to the commenter's karma; this may very well change. Sounds easily abused, yeah? Not so much. Every comment with this mod applied to it will have a link out beside the score that any staff with editor or above clearance on the main site (this excludes me by the way) can simply click to undo every aspect of the spam moderation and ban the moderator(s) who said it was from moderating. First time for a month, second time for six months; these also are arbitrary numbers that could easily change. So, what qualifies as spam so you don't inadvertently get mod-banned?
Caveats about banning aside, if something is really spam, please use the mod. It will make it much, much easier for us to find spam posts and attempt to block the spammers. One SELECT statement period vs one per post level of easier.
Lastly, if I can find it and change it in time for thorough testing on dev, we'll be doing away with mod-then-post in favor of mod-and-post. Without proper downmods, there's really just no point in limiting you on when you can moderate a comment.
Right, that's pretty much it. Flame or agree as the spirit moves you. Suggestions will all be read and considered but getting them debated, coded, and tested before the January release will be a bit tricky for all but the exceedingly simple ones.
(Score: 2) by prospectacle on Tuesday December 09 2014, @12:28AM
My humble opinions:
- Good: Regular mods points to all long term subscribers
- Good: Getting rid of some often abused tags (underrated, overrated)
- Good: Making some negative tags +0
- Bad: Making all negative tags besides "spam" +0. I may well be proven wrong but it seems way to easy too abuse this. If you can find five accounts (friends, sock-puppets, co-conspirators) to upvote a comment, then it will always be +5 no matter what a thousand people think (unless it's spam). Perhaps we could have some downvotes worth -0.5, (or if it's an int field then two downvotes are -1, to achieve the same idea). These might include "abusive", "irrelevent", or "incoherent"
- Great: Spam mod
- We'll see: Punishment levels for false spam-modding.
- Extra suggestion: Remove the ceiling on karma for users, and on scores for posts.
In conclusion it's a most worthy experiment, and and I expect most of these measures will prove good enough to keep. Thank you.
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 09 2014, @02:18AM
Not really possible given the size of the columns they're stored in in the db. We can raise the crap out of at least karma though and very well might before this all goes live. Comment scores though, that's a bit more tricky. Lot of places for things to go wrong and would need significant testing that I'd rather not subject you lot to as guinea pigs.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday December 09 2014, @08:14AM
I think the limits for moderation are OK. However user-defined modifiers should IMHO not be capped. So if you set a +2 modifier to Insightful and the post happens to be +4 insightful, you would see it at +6.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by tadas on Tuesday December 09 2014, @03:46AM
I agree that the "spam" mod is great, including the penalty for misuse. I'm not thrilled that this "tactical banhammer" is the *only* available downmod. Given the penalty for misuse, there should be a way to add a comment for non-immediately-obvious sins (eg. "The link is to goatse.cx")
However they are rated, I like the idea of more descriptive downmods, and I think we should add prospecticle's "abusive" "irrelevant" and (I particularly like) "incoherent", along with "citation needed" suggested elsewhere.
I'd also like some more upmod and neutral categories -- sometimes "Interesting" (to me it means "coherent and brings something I hadn't considered") "Insightful" (to me: "coherent and expresses its viewpoint very well") and "Informative" (to me: "provides additional correct facts") don't really cover it all. I'd love to have the ability to rate a comment in an argument chain "+1 Touche", for example.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday December 09 2014, @03:58AM
Oooh, I dig the +1 Touche. Yoink.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.