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The full site update and post is coming up this weekend (barring unforeseen complications) but this is deserving of its own news update being as we had so many weigh in on it alone. While most of you really dug or were neutral on the idea, there were a few criticisms and most of them had some degree of validity. Most specifically the one that said you can see cause and effect more clearly if you change less at once. We absolutely cannot argue with that, so there's been a change to the Experiment.
The Spam moderation and abuse checking mechanism thereof are still going in. The Disagree moderation is still going in and Overrated is still going away. Moderation and posting in the same discussion in any order is still going in. What's not going in is moving all the current downmods to +0 mods. We're going to hold off testing that until we see if this solves most of the problems or not.
Because of another criticism, we'll also be changing how mod points are given out for the duration of the experiment. You may or may not have noticed but we already tested that over Christmas day and the day after by giving everyone who'd been registered a month or more and had "willing to moderate" checked mod points. The dataset is pretty small to infer much from but for the most part the people who said "give us more points and we can self correct" were correct within that two-day span. Not all the bad downmods were corrected by any means but quite a lot of them were. If we can keep this level or better of self-correction-of-jackassery going, I don't see much need for more drastic changes to the moderation system or even for meta-moderation really.
On a personal side note, I dig the fact that basically every comment out of the 150 that the Experiment post got was positive, constructive, or some combination of the two. Calling us bloody idiots is all good from a free speech angle but pretty much every one of our naysayers stepped up and added useful criticism as well. This makes me proud as hell to work for a project with a community that much better than the other site. Hats off to you guys.
(Score: 3) by jackb_guppy on Tuesday December 30 2014, @05:44PM
What is the clear list of changes?? No high level over view. It into the weeds!
Losing OVERRATED is overrated. It very handy since the other categories are not matching the reason to down grade.
(Score: 1) by Buck Feta on Tuesday December 30 2014, @07:29PM
Clear List of Changes
1. All Insightful mods will now be +3.7
2. Mod points are issued in synch with phases of the moon
3. Still no talking about Fight Club
4. Overrated -1 will be replaced with Your Mom -1
5. Even numbered UIDs will be intelligible for moderation
6. Underrated +1 can only be applied by the judges of Dancin' With the Stars
7. Ultramod Mondays will be replaced with casual day for logged in users
8. Double karma for moderating while drunk
- fractious political commentary goes here -
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @07:26AM
Maybe, if you can't explain why you are downmodding a comment, that's a pretty good flag that it shouldn't be downmodded in first place.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday December 31 2014, @09:21AM
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @10:36AM
Disagreement is not a valid cause to downmod. Even if you don't find a comment contributive is not a valid cause to downmod. Unless you show what your "unbroken" logic is, your reply shows utter lack of respect and would deserve the kind of strong words that have no place in civilized discussion.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Wednesday December 31 2014, @02:05PM
Disagreement is not a valid cause to downmod.
I agree! Mod parent... uh... sideways?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Wednesday December 31 2014, @02:07PM
"Disagreement is not a valid cause to downmod."
For you, perhaps. Maybe that is or could be true on this site. Other sites seem to almost exclusively use disagreement to downvote, so it's clearly not a universal truth. Perhaps you'd care to explain *why* you think a non-contributive comment should not be downvoted here on SN?
(Score: 2) by jackb_guppy on Wednesday December 31 2014, @03:22PM
I ev3en suggested a different method. The "score" does not have to match the "reason", by breaking the two object apart.
To go further allow each person to add or subtract up-to their entire points for the day to one comment (so: -5, -4, -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5). So if you find one comment really good or bad you can swing that one comment higher. With this we also take off the max of 5 points for comment make it 10 or more. You could even mod yourself, would be logical addition to this change.
The reason would be a form of meta grouping. So you can mark some thing as a troll but not punish the person for trolling. trolling can be used a in good way to, like trying to get a serious conversation started in a comedy thread.
Now reasons are grouped larger classes, example Humour would include funny, sarcasm. LOL and the like. Then with that classing, you can subscribe to meta classes you want to follow. (think V-chip with more channels). So if I want to follow Humour & Trolls, then the comments that mean more to me can be enhanced for my viewing pleasure. If I give/remove points from comment, then the points tallies associated to all meta groups will get the plus/minus.
For me through, I am not wishing to part of the grand experiment without more information about the changes and will logging out. One voice voting by feet and walking away. This feels to me as if BETA at slashdot was back. We are making changes but not telling you full facts. Over Christmas the mod system was broken, ever time use up my 10 and 5 points, another 5 points were added on. Then the mod options willl no show which ones you add modded so modded again. And then we find out by the top post that they were playing with us. Thanks facebookish admins!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 02 2015, @08:17AM
A non-contributive comment (by your opinion, anyway) doesn't mean that it substracts from the discussion, just that you think it doesn't add. Current downmods are oriented towards punishing substracting comments (troll, flamebait, even the projected future spam mod), not just to show disagreement. Hence the logic:
- jackb_guppy "I feel like downmodding this, even if I can't find why. Where's 'overrated'?"
- AC "Maybe you just disagree. It doesn't mean it deserves downmodding"
- Tork "Tork! Tork! Tork Tork Tork! Buahahah! Tork!"
- AC "..."
Once you group all motives to moderate a comment in just one score, downmodding just because you disagree puts the comment in the same land as the obvious trolls, the obvious flamabaits and spam, while some really worn out jokes about sharks, ponies and Natalie Portman get moderated like they were pearls of humor, quite above normal discussion. Do you really feel good with it?
(Score: 2) by FakeBeldin on Saturday January 03 2015, @09:01PM
No, that's not necessarily ideal.
I like JackB_guppy's idea (right above your post). The way I see it, anyone could attach "labels" to a post ('troll', 'overrated', 'excellent', 'informative', 'disagree', 'agree'). Moreover, moderators could assign a score (+1, -1, or perhaps even more than just a +/-1) to a post. That score would solely be based on an ephemeral value such as "does this post add value to SN?".
I think a problem with the moderation system is that there are a lot of dimensions (insightful, informative, troll, underrated, ...), but they all are combined into a single number and, possibly, one single label. As if a post couldn't be funny, informative, and trolling at the same time. Heck, we even have some subscribers here on SN who typically shoot for exactly that with their posts!
The extent to which they're successful is less clear... but if each post is just (a la GMail) attributed labels, then we can just balance out the number of "funny" labels vs. the number of "not funny" labels and arrive at one number for funniness - without deciding if it's a troll or not.
Anyway, that would be a vastly different moderation approach. I don't know if this would fit the community, but it would be interesting I think.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday January 02 2015, @01:31PM
What's hilarious here is that this thread started out by someone asking for detailed information from the editors, and is now a plea for a *lack* of detailed information from the mods!
If you want a disagree option, then ask for a disagree option. Don't ask to keep overrated because it was always used as disagree. That's the whole point of removing it!
But the bigger issue is: Yes, every other site uses -1 as 'disagree'. And every other site has truly awful comments. This isn't CNN; we don't come here for the reporting; we come here for the discussion. You can't have a discussion if you just try to hide and censor everything you disagree with. If it's a troll or spam or whatever, go ahead and downmod it as such. That's why those are still downmods. But 'overrated'? There's really no good use for that. There's only three possible options that I can think of, and all of them have more useful alternatives than an 'overrated' mod.
1) The comment isn't modded yet. This is obviously an abuse of the moderation system, because it can't be 'overrated' if it isn't rated. If it's spam, flag it as spam. If it's just a well-intentioned but slightly shitty comment, leave it at +0 where it belongs.
2) The comment is modded 'informative' or 'insightful' or something. So it's modded that it provides good info, overrated would mean it doesn't. The question you should ask is: Why? Post a reply and explain. Is it factually incorrect? Overrated doesn't tell people that, posting a reply does. Is it just not that insightful? Clearly other people though it was, so maybe leave it alone, or maybe explain why because apparently not everyone is thinking about it the same way you are. If you can't explain, you're either wrong or you're trying to justify using overrated as 'disagree'.
3) The comment is modded 'funny'. Here 'overrated' means 'it's not that funny'. But clearly other people think it is. Modding overrated is just you saying 'I don't think that's funny so nobody else should be allowed to either!' If it's a troll, mod it troll. If it's offensive, call them out. If you don't want to see jokes, change your funny modifier.
Of course, the unstated fourth option is you admit you just disagree and we don't have a disagree option. But again...if you care so much, explain why you disagree, don't just try to censor the comment. That's what makes it a discussion instead of the random noise you see on other comment sections. Moderation is here to prevent abuse, not to silence dissent. Someone posting a comment that you personally disagree with is not abuse.
(Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday December 31 2014, @11:18PM
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