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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: 4, Insightful) by hubie on Tuesday December 30 2014, @08:37PM
If someone who wants to moderate can't be bothered to browse at -1, I don't think they should be allowed to moderate at all. The moderation system is supposed to both promote posts for discussion as well as correct abusive moderation or to keep unpopular positions from being buried. If you're only going to moderate comments that have already been modded up, you're just promoting group-think and burying dissension.
(Score: 2) by tynin on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:12PM
That makes a lot of sense, considering you have to check the box to volunteer for moderation. While you still have mod points you should see everything, including the bottom of the barrel.
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Tuesday December 30 2014, @10:30PM
It's certainly something to consider. Perhaps it shouldn't be done on this run of testing for the sake of not adding another variable, but done by itself at some point so its effect can be evaluated.
I normally mod at -1, but scatterbrain that I am, I have been known to not make the change from default 0. I'm sure others do this as well.
(Score: 2) by hubie on Tuesday December 30 2014, @11:13PM
Conceptually I think it could be done pretty unobtrusively. If you're not browsing at -1, then the moderation drop-down boxes would disappear like they do when you've commented in a thread. On the page where you are notified that you have mod points, perhaps a button to put you into "moderation mode" whereby your browsing level would change to -1. I don't think it would be widely accepted if one's browsing level were automatically changed when they get mod points, and by that same token I suppose it would work better for people if un-selecting "moderation mode" would put you back to your default browsing state.
Not having looked at a lick of slashcode I have no idea what magnitude of change this would be, but looking at it from the outside it appears at least that all the pieces for it functionally exist. I see on the left side of my screen that there is a Bug List, but is there a feature request list maintained anywhere that I can add suggestions like this or provide positive or negative feedback in general?
(Score: 2) by Geotti on Wednesday December 31 2014, @02:04AM
+1, I think this is a good solution for the mods that don't read at -1 all the time anyway.
PS: TMB++ #keep it up!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 30 2014, @11:01PM
Informative posts do not suffer from group-think and full points helps those who cannot judge the trustworthiness of the post themselves.
(Score: 2) by hubie on Wednesday December 31 2014, @03:52PM
I disagree. It is easier to see on the "hot button" topics such as politics, religion, anything tangentially related to the NSA, etc., that minority held views can get modded down pretty quickly. If you're only browsing at +1 or above, you're only reinforcing the majority or popular opinion and in my opinion you're not much better off than "conservatives" getting their news from one news network and "liberals" getting their news from a different network.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 31 2014, @04:25PM
"hot button" topics usually lack informative posts. +5 informative posts are usually limited to more objective topics with a higher signal/noise. Interesting and insightful are used much more often as "I agree".
A moderator that has knowledge on a topic can reinforce correct informative posts and downmod incorrect posts that are improperly upmodded.
Each user can set their Threshold/Breakthrough as they please. I read all the posts in discussions that I am knowledgeable in and post/moderate as needed to improve the discussion and very rarely post/moderate "hot button" topics.