Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by NCommander on Tuesday April 01 2014, @07:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the now-with-longer-half-lifes dept.
*cough*

Ok, I meant to have an open forum about moderation *way* before this point. I did read the various feedback and comments left on my journal and the last moderation, and have made some changes to the moderation system.

First, mod points now expire after eight hours. I'm willing to extend this to 12 or 16 hours after I'm sure comments will still reach +5 fairly regularly. With luck, we'll get to the point we can extend mod-points to last a full 24 hours which I suspect will end most of the complaining on them vanishing too soon.

Second, I'd like to open the floor to making a more fundamental change to the moderation system. Specifically, allowing people to post AND moderate in the same discussion. We've seen plenty of posts get up to +5, which means 3-4 people gave up their right to post to keep our comments high quality. This was brought up during our last plea for stories, and I wanted to solicit more feedback before unleashing this upon the site.

I've floated the idea on IRC, and it seems there's a fair bit of support for removing the post/moderate split, though we'd need to make some changes to prevent rampant abuse. Here's what was suggested to keep things sane:
  • Mod points won't roll back after a post
  • Moderators can post in the same discussion (either before or after moderating), but can not moderate replies to their posts.

I've heard various ideas such as limiting it only after mods have expended their points (this will require implementing a cooldown to prevent a user from getting points again too soon). I want to hear your feedback, and I'll roll together something for the next major update of the site. Leave your comments

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 2) by zocalo on Tuesday April 01 2014, @08:35AM

    by zocalo (302) on Tuesday April 01 2014, @08:35AM (#23970)
    Actually, I preferred the revamped Karma system on the other site. Behind the scenes I'm pretty sure it was still a numeric score, but all that really matters is what level of trust your current score puts you in. If there are a range of trust brackets, from "Troll" to "Buddha" say, then just telling people which bracket they are in should be good enough.

    Karma aging and perks sound like interesting concepts though. I think the rate and method of expiry could prove contentious, and it might lead to a lot of people posting mediocre stuff just to get a +1 to avoid the aging. In addition to perks, what about penalties; perhaps people with negative karma don't get to see (or just post in) stories until some time has elapsed? That should remove some of the "value" in troll accounts like the GNAA and so on since they wouldn't be able get first posts and so on except on new/anonymous accounts.
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 3, Informative) by NCommander on Tuesday April 01 2014, @08:52AM

    by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Tuesday April 01 2014, @08:52AM (#23980) Homepage Journal

    Unless they've changed it from 2009, the systems are identical. The only reason we show numeric values as we don't set the hide karma flag in the database. As defined by Slashcode, these are the values:

    -10=Terrible
    -1=Bad
    0=Neutral
    12=Positive
    25=Good
    99999=Excellent (I suspect this is a placeholder for when capped, but I need to check)

    Every moderation is worth 0.5 karma, and submissions are worth 3. Different moderations can give/take away different amounts of karma; this is defined as a database in the database. Incidently, its also possible to make some types of moderations cost multiple mod points to do (i.e., marking someone troll might cost two modpoints instead of one).

    --
    Still always moving
    • (Score: 2, Informative) by Alphatool on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:29AM

      by Alphatool (1145) on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:29AM (#24007)

      Please don't stop giving a numerical karma score. It's nice to have a clear number rather than a named category that could mean almost anything. One of the things I really like here is that details aren't hidden just to look good.

      • (Score: 2) by NCommander on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:42AM

        by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:42AM (#24012) Homepage Journal

        On my (very long and growing) TODO list is to have a Transparency mod. Slash collects an absurd amount of information. Its on the list to try and decouple Stats.pm from the admin interface and allow anyone to look through our raw numbers, as well as having a user specific page where they can see various information about themselves, or if they've been banned/etc.

        On the other site, you could be marked "-1 posting" or such and you'll never know it short by checking each of your posts. Staff on the other site for instance are marked +5, so their posts *always* show up no matter what. We leave it as the default for staff, though when we re-add the subscriber module, all staff will get subscriptions, so they'll get the +1 subscriber bonus right out of the gate.

        --
        Still always moving
        • (Score: 1) by Alphatool on Tuesday April 01 2014, @01:43PM

          by Alphatool (1145) on Tuesday April 01 2014, @01:43PM (#24139)

          Sounds fantastic, it's great that we'll be getting more information about what's going on rather than having it dumbed down like on many other sites.

        • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday April 03 2014, @02:24AM

          by Reziac (2489) on Thursday April 03 2014, @02:24AM (#25295) Homepage

          Firstoff, a small bug that seems new since 30 Mar, when last I was here (I was on the road, it's not my fault! :)

          I click Reply (actually RClick & Open in new tab) and instead of being at the same font size as the page I came from, it's two sizes smaller.

          I noticed immediately cuz I need the font set at 120%, and here it was back to default. SeaMonkey sets font on a per-site basis, so it's not a per-page-SM issue, far as I can tell. It had worked normally here until today (or some day since last Sat. anyway).
          ======

          In "stuff we can see", I like being able to see all the mods done to any of my comments.

          I'm not sure what I think of karma aging... I think another reply has the right of it, that it's liable to encourage a certain type of karma-troll rather than make the rest of us 'work harder'. Good posters post because they have something to say; for good posters, karma is merely a nice byproduct, not the goal.

          --
          And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
    • (Score: 2) by lhsi on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:45AM

      by lhsi (711) on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:45AM (#24013) Journal

      99999=Excellent (I suspect this is a placeholder for when capped, but I need to check)

      My Karma on /. shows as "Excellent", however I don't know what the numerical value is.

    • (Score: 2) by TheloniousToady on Tuesday April 01 2014, @12:30PM

      by TheloniousToady (820) on Tuesday April 01 2014, @12:30PM (#24071)

      Incidently, its also possible to make some types of moderations cost multiple mod points to do (i.e., marking someone troll might cost two modpoints instead of one).

      That one actually sounds like a very good idea. I think Troll is used too many times when Overrated would do the job (and is fairer - I've had things marked as Troll many times when I was just expressing my honest opinion), so it would be nice if the moderator paid an extra cost to use Troll, which, frankly is a bit offensive to those who receive it.

      • (Score: 1) by VanessaE on Tuesday April 01 2014, @05:18PM

        by VanessaE (3396) <vanessa.e.dannenberg@gmail.com> on Tuesday April 01 2014, @05:18PM (#24339) Journal

        I'd upvote this with the caveat that moderators be given more than the bare minimum of 5 points, on a regular basis. If and when this site becomes popular enough, there will be far too many shit posts that will need modded into oblivion, just as a matter of course, making it too easy to run out of points that other good posts would otherwise be deserving of.

    • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday April 03 2014, @02:28AM

      by Reziac (2489) on Thursday April 03 2014, @02:28AM (#25297) Homepage

      And confirming the new reduced-font-size bug noted before. (Font returns to normal when the "Comment Submitted" page comes up.)

      Anyway: I suspect people who like to downmod also do a lot more of it. So, yeah, downmod being more 'expensive' might not be a bad thing -- might discourage groupthink.

      Well, you can always try it, and if it has unforeseen consequences, then ditch it.

      [We've kinda been taught by That Other Site that any change WILL be set in stone and will never ever be backed out. :( ]

      --
      And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
      • (Score: 2) by NCommander on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:33AM

        by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:33AM (#25347) Homepage Journal

        The purpose of my posts is to show that we aren't going to be other site 2.0, and that we intend to build a community, through and through.

        --
        Still always moving
        • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday April 03 2014, @01:35PM

          by Reziac (2489) on Thursday April 03 2014, @01:35PM (#25514) Homepage

          And there was much rejoicing! :D

          --
          And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:12AM

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:12AM (#24005) Journal

    A delay for posting in a story if having negative Karma is definitely a good idea. One could also say that for anonymous and low positive Karma accounts, posting is possible immediately, but on "empty" stories (i.e. stories not yet having a post) takes effect only a minute after posting (so the post is in the database, but gets a time stamp of one minute in the future, and won't get displayed until that time arrived). That would greatly diminish the probability of getting first post with low or no Karma.

    (Also note that showing that posts exist as early as possible also reduces the number of attempted first posts, because if the existing posts are not visible, FP trolls are encouraged to try their luck, although they cannot succeed anyway.)

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2) by NCommander on Tuesday April 01 2014, @01:15PM

      by NCommander (2) Subscriber Badge <michael@casadevall.pro> on Tuesday April 01 2014, @01:15PM (#24120) Homepage Journal

      There's a cleaner way to deal with this; I never want a user to be unable to post (short of us applying a ban due to a bot spamming). Subscribers can see the Mysterious Future, which I thought was kinda a lame perk of subscription on the other site, so I rather change it that people with high karma can see articles a bit before they go live. Not sure if I'll implement it, but one of many ideas ...

      --
      Still always moving
      • (Score: 2) by unitron on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:03PM

        by unitron (70) on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:03PM (#24271) Journal

        That kind of gets into something I'd like, over there and here when here gets bigger.

        Either subscribers or logged-in account holders (depending on whether there ever are subscriptions and of what, exactly they consist, get to see "firehose" stories and comment on them before the "unwashed masses" can, and when it turns into a regular story/goes live/whatever you want to call it, you don't put up another entry of the same story, you just change the classification of it, and the comments already made are still there.

        People are, I would think, more likely, by and large, to load the story if there are already comments to read as well, since we're the kind of "audience" that comes here to listen to and talk with each other.

        --
        something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
        • (Score: 3, Funny) by unitron on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:14PM

          by unitron (70) on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:14PM (#24278) Journal

          ...if found, please return to parent of this post.

           

           

          Oh, wait, here it is. It must have come unstuck and fallen down here.

           

                                                                                                                  )

          --
          something something Slashcott something something Beta something something