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NCommander is publishing a Meta story today: https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=22/11/20/0342250 It will be published on the front page with all of the restrictions that apply to such stories and discussions.
In it NCommander explains how he sees the future of the site developing with regards to software, hardware and administration. Some of those views are different now from the views that many of us held in 2014. The requirement for some of our servers is no longer justified, and there are better technologies available for achieving what we are trying to do thus also reducing our running costs. The administration of the site is placing an increasing burden on the relatively few administrators that remain in the support team. Society has also changed. Some discussion has been replaced by intimidation and threats. It is much more polarised than it was in 2014. In many ways this is the same as for numerous other web sites. However, the abuse and toxic atmosphere created by a small number of Anonymous Cowards is unacceptable and must be reversed if the site is to survive. The responsibility for some of the problems that we are experiencing, and the resulting actions that we have had to take, is placed entirely at their feet.
A few months ago the majority of the community opted - albeit very reluctantly - to remove AC posts from the front pages of the site. This action has successfully removed the vast majority of the abuse from our discussions. We are seeing a slow increase in the number of comments week-on-week and the signal-to-noise ratio is now much higher. It is only right that we also reconsider the implications of that change.
This journal entry is to enable anyone who wishes to remain anonymous to express their views. I promise that I will read it and will ensure that genuine views are considered when the community decides which path it wishes to follow. I cannot make any assurances that other members of the site's administration will read it - although I expect that at least some will. If you have an account then I strongly encourage you to leave your views under NCommander's Meta story and not here.
I further my promise that I will try to represent your views as honestly and fairly as I can.
If you abuse this journal then you are simply giving more support to the alternative options that might be considered than you are to the status quo. I encourage you to expresses sensible, logical and considered views but should you decide that abuse is what you prefer then this journal entry can simply be removed. You are being given an opportunity - do not throw it away.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 21 2022, @11:02PM
I understand it is a balancing act between accountability and revealing negative data that only assist those with bad agendas. But there are processes to fix what you are complaining about. If someone reports a post or the admins find a bad content have a standard process to delete the post.
Roughly: prevent the live comment from being displayed, report the material to either NCMEC (Hopefully you all do remember you are required to submit CSAM to NCMEC) or the FBI (hopefully you remember to submit required tips to the FBI too) or the anti-spam groups, notify the legitimate archive services to remove the posts there as well (which they do). After acknowledgement by the responsible authority, the comment is deleted completely and purged from tainted backups, after acknowledgement from the archive services, log that the comment was deleted. The only slow part in the chain is the archive services but even they are pretty fast once they know you don't do spurious reports.
I'm also not saying to open the entire database to public scrutiny. Again, there is a balancing act. But Trust requires transparency. There is a reason for sunshine laws and the various exceptions to them after all. There is a balance to be reached and I personally think that it is closer to the fully-open side than the fully-closed side. I also understand they require a programmer, but you have one that is literally volunteering his time and will have to make much more drastic changes than just adding a template or two and a few SQL calls. Y'all asked for thoughts and NCommander originally brought up the idea of expanding the deleting and other powers of the admins, so there you go: a suggestion.
Lastly, I meant the actual spam posts in journals. I get that certain companies are paid to spread the word far and wide about AC companies, for example. But they don't do the site any good. In fact they hurt the website. Real life users may never see them, but I guarantee the search engines, spam monitors, and other bots do. And they react accordingly.