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Moderation: Discussing !(post^moderate)

posted by NCommander on Tuesday April 01 2014, @07:00AM   
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

• Inspiration from elsewhere (Score: 1) by FakeBeldin on Friday April 04 2014, @07:03AM

  by FakeBeldin (3360) on Friday April 04 2014, @07:03AM (#26072) Journal

  The other day, I logged in to PipeDot once again. I was greeted with the option to moderate posts. I've been a registered user here longer than there, and I have never seen an option to moderate posts here (perhaps I overlooked it). The way I experienced PipeDot's model (which may be completely incorrect, but that's how it came across to me) is that you could post and moderate in the same story.
  The ability to moderate made me feel appreciated, and more a part of its community.
  It also radiated (to me) the concept "we're all adults here" - no need to pick some and elevate them over others. And I realised the moderation of bash.org is similar.

  So, what could be a viable model? Based on the above, I see two options, 1 and 2:
  1. all logged in users to moderate all posts not made by themselves.
        (how I experienced PipeDot and Bash.org)
  2. all logged in users get 5 modpoints per story, not to spend on their own posts.
        (a slightly reduced version)

  Just to add: I've had so few options to moderate on this site, that to me, the option to moderate would be something very valuable, to be used only in the utmost important cases. If I see a good post, that already has a +2, I might not spent my treasured modpoints on making it a +3 - even though I think it deserves that.
  On the other hand, if everyone can moderate, people will moderate as they think is appropriate. And if everyone can moderate, the inevitable "bad" moderations will be undone by others.
  (it works on Bash.org, and they don't even require anyone to log in to moderate)