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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

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:50AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:50AM (#24015)

    Another thing to think of is measures to make moderators more aware of the fact that they are doing mainly a service to the readers, not to the posters. Too many people consider mainly the effect their moderation does on the authors (affecting their Karma, giving them feedback), and due to this for example don't moderate up AC posts by principle (because the AC won't profit from that anyway, or because they are generally anti-AC). But the main point of moderation is to have good posts stand out for the reader, while at the same time saving the reader from having to sift through the bad posts. That is, the moderators should have mainly the reader in mmind when moderating, not the author.

    I have no idea how that could be encouraged (other than by trying to educate the moderators whenever they publicly say something about having such a policy), but every step in the direction of encouraging the moderators to consider the readers before the authors when deciding on moderation would be a good step.

  • (Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:25PM

    by mrcoolbp (68) <mrcoolbp@soylentnews.org> on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:25PM (#24290) Homepage

    It is outlined in the first few sentences of the Moderation Guidelines. [soylentnews.org]

    Maybe we should make a big link to this doc the first few times a user receives mod points.

    --
    (Score:1^½, Radical)
  • (Score: 2) by Reziac on Thursday April 03 2014, @02:45AM

    by Reziac (2489) on Thursday April 03 2014, @02:45AM (#25304) Homepage

    Well, one way to encourage sifting thru AC posts might be to only charge half a point to mod AC comments. OTOH, that could make downmodding 'cheaper'. :(

    Personally I don't pay much attention to the userID, or lack of, when I mod. I was amused the other day to discover I'd given an upmod to a friend's post without realising it was his handiwork.

    --
    And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.