Since the launch of SoylentNews in February of 2014, there have been 274,870 comment moderations made against the 412,100 comments that our community has posted to our site. Who has posted the most comments? Who garnered the most up-moderations? The most down-moderations?
Such simple questions, but they led to a fun bit of DB querying. The results surprised me, and I thought others might be interested, as well. Most surprising to me was the assessment of comments from Anonymous Cowards.
[Continues...]
Who received the most moderations?
For better or worse, to whom did Soylentils direct their greatest moderation effort?
| NICK | UID | TOTAL | DOWN | UP | NET |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Mighty Buzzard | 18 | 2260 | 626 | 1634 | 1008 |
| takyon | 881 | 2315 | 103 | 2212 | 2109 |
| aristarchus | 2645 | 2494 | 615 | 1879 | 1264 |
| c0lo | 156 | 2717 | 183 | 2534 | 2351 |
| Thexalon | 636 | 3225 | 83 | 3142 | 3059 |
| Ethanol-fueled | 2792 | 3447 | 1238 | 2209 | 971 |
| VLM | 445 | 4401 | 346 | 4055 | 3709 |
| Runaway1956 | 2926 | 4531 | 992 | 3539 | 2547 |
| frojack | 1554 | 5855 | 593 | 5262 | 4669 |
| Anonymous Coward | 1 | 78936 | 13002 | 65934 | 52932 |
The single greatest target of moderation was the "Anonymous Coward" with 78,936 moderations. This was followed by frojack, Runaway1956, VLM, Ethanol-fueled, and Thexalon who garnered over 3000 moderations each.
Who had the most down-moderations?
Here, only the number of down moderations was considered — it mattered not whether it was Flamebait or Troll — they all counted the same.
| NICK | UID | TOTAL | DOWN | UP | NET |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VLM | 445 | 4401 | 346 | 4055 | 3709 |
| Hairyfeet | 75 | 1620 | 387 | 1233 | 846 |
| MichaelDavidCrawford | 2339 | 1513 | 387 | 1126 | 739 |
| frojack | 1554 | 5855 | 593 | 5262 | 4669 |
| aristarchus | 2645 | 2494 | 615 | 1879 | 1264 |
| The Mighty Buzzard | 18 | 2260 | 626 | 1634 | 1008 |
| jmorris | 4844 | 2144 | 753 | 1391 | 638 |
| Runaway1956 | 2926 | 4531 | 992 | 3539 | 2547 |
| Ethanol-fueled | 2792 | 3447 | 1238 | 2209 | 971 |
| Anonymous Coward | 1 | 78936 | 13002 | 65934 | 52932 |
Once again, our prolific AC topped the list with 13,002 down-mods. Ethanol-fueled was the only other user who topped 1000 down-mods, coming in with 1238. Runaway1956 made a valiant showing with 992 down-mods.
Who had the most up-moderations?
In the eyes of the community, who most often received an up-mod? Again, no consideration was given for the nature of the up-mod — Insightful, Interesting, or Informative — all were considered the same.
| NICK | UID | TOTAL | DOWN | UP | NET |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| aristarchus | 2645 | 2494 | 615 | 1879 | 1264 |
| Phoenix666 | 552 | 2184 | 80 | 2104 | 2024 |
| Ethanol-fueled | 2792 | 3447 | 1238 | 2209 | 971 |
| takyon | 881 | 2315 | 103 | 2212 | 2109 |
| c0lo | 156 | 2717 | 183 | 2534 | 2351 |
| Thexalon | 636 | 3225 | 83 | 3142 | 3059 |
| Runaway1956 | 2926 | 4531 | 992 | 3539 | 2547 |
| VLM | 445 | 4401 | 346 | 4055 | 3709 |
| frojack | 1554 | 5855 | 593 | 5262 | 4669 |
| Anonymous Coward | 1 | 78936 | 13002 | 65934 | 52932 |
Once again AC reins supreme with 65,934 up-mods. This was followed by frojack with 5,262 and VLM with just over 4000.
Who had the highest net-moderation?
Putting it all together — subtracting the number of down-mods from the number of up-mods — who had the highest net moderation on our site?
| NICK | UID | TOTAL | DOWN | UP | NET |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| wonkey_monkey | 279 | 1754 | 117 | 1637 | 1520 |
| maxwell demon | 1608 | 1786 | 55 | 1731 | 1676 |
| Phoenix666 | 552 | 2184 | 80 | 2104 | 2024 |
| takyon | 881 | 2315 | 103 | 2212 | 2109 |
| c0lo | 156 | 2717 | 183 | 2534 | 2351 |
| Runaway1956 | 2926 | 4531 | 992 | 3539 | 2547 |
| Thexalon | 636 | 3225 | 83 | 3142 | 3059 |
| VLM | 445 | 4401 | 346 | 4055 | 3709 |
| frojack | 1554 | 5855 | 593 | 5262 | 4669 |
| Anonymous Coward | 1 | 78936 | 13002 | 65934 | 52932 |
Once again, the shy but prolific AC tops the list with a net of 52,932 mod points. Only one other Soylentil was able to surpass 4000: frojack with 4,669. Two other Soylentils exceeded 3000: VLM with 3709 and Thexalon with 3059.
Who hath pointy horns?
Who managed to acquire the most down-mods as a percentage of all moderations on their comments? For a tie, number of moderated comments is the second sort field. Who is the devil in our midst?
| NICK | UID | TOTAL | #DOWN | %DOWN | #UP | %UP | NET |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| scarboni888 | 5061 | 1 | 1 | 100.00 | 0 | 0.00 | -1 |
| MooCow | 6048 | 1 | 1 | 100.00 | 0 | 0.00 | -1 |
| cybergimli | 436 | 2 | 2 | 100.00 | 0 | 0.00 | -2 |
| rancidman | 769 | 2 | 2 | 100.00 | 0 | 0.00 | -2 |
| rmdingler | 1038 | 2 | 2 | 100.00 | 0 | 0.00 | -2 |
| SoylentsISay | 1331 | 2 | 2 | 100.00 | 0 | 0.00 | -2 |
| stupid | 2631 | 2 | 2 | 100.00 | 0 | 0.00 | -2 |
| contrapunctus | 3495 | 2 | 2 | 100.00 | 0 | 0.00 | -2 |
| killal -9 bash | 2751 | 5 | 5 | 100.00 | 0 | 0.00 | -5 |
Pfft, just a few minor imps around here. killal -9 bash topped (bottomed?) the list with 5 down-mods out of 5 moderations.
Who earned a Halo?
Whose comments had the best percentage of up-mods to total-mods? And in the case of ties, received the most up-mods? Who are the angels among us?
| NICK | UID | TOTAL | #DOWN | %DOWN | #UP | %UP | NET |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| dx3bydt3 | 82 | 69 | 0 | 0.00 | 69 | 100.00 | 69 |
| romlok | 1241 | 70 | 0 | 0.00 | 70 | 100.00 | 70 |
| Hawkwind | 3531 | 75 | 0 | 0.00 | 75 | 100.00 | 75 |
| jdccdevel | 1329 | 78 | 0 | 0.00 | 78 | 100.00 | 78 |
| rleigh | 4887 | 102 | 0 | 0.00 | 102 | 100.00 | 102 |
| DrMag | 1860 | 103 | 0 | 0.00 | 103 | 100.00 | 103 |
| SrLnclt | 1473 | 117 | 0 | 0.00 | 117 | 100.00 | 117 |
| Joe | 2583 | 126 | 0 | 0.00 | 126 | 100.00 | 126 |
| Aiwendil | 531 | 164 | 0 | 0.00 | 164 | 100.00 | 164 |
Here, it appears we've got a flock of angels, or at least people who know which way the wind blows. All folks listed here scored 100.00% meaning all of their moderations were up-mods. Aiwendil topped our list with 164, and we had 4 others — Joe, SrLnclt, DrMag, and rleigh — who each had over 100 such comment moderations... not even a single down-mod among them!
I must admit I was surprised to see the sheer number of positive moderations of AC comments, and the fact that 83.5% of those mods were positive.
[Update: Added two tables, one each for top percentage of down-mods and of up-mods. -Ed.]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @01:36AM
I don't know why the editor is so shocked that AC comments frequently get modded up.
Anonymity serves a purpose: you might be in a privileged position where you can add details to a conversation but don't want to be identified. It also is used by people who have nothing to really fear but just don't care to create a searchable record of all their opinions. Some people we know just can't handle certain opinions. If *I* wanted to id myself for all postings, I would just use Facebook.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by martyb on Monday October 10 2016, @02:01AM
It's because of the large number of complaints I've seen in the comments about comments posted by ACs and repeated requests to abolish it. It's quite wearying. I'm a firm believer in providing an anonymous way for people to comment a story. There may or may not have been a time when I have done so, myself. =)
The other factor is that I read stories at -1/-1 which means that when I read a story, I see *everything* that is posted. It takes a pretty strong stomach to see all the crap that gets posted to the site day in and day out and keep coming back for more. Though not a frequent occurrence, I've seen comments modded down to -1 that did not deserve it; viewing stories at -1 allows me to find and rectify those errors.
Thank goodness for the moderation system which offers a filtered view of the comments to our community.
So, in light of those, I was pleasantly surprised to step back and see, from a high-level perspective and, how well it actually works!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Monday October 10 2016, @02:09AM
if an anonymous comment can stand with out attribution, it should *absolutely* be modded up.
"Peer review" is of no use for new ideas, if it is the only criteria for discussion.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @02:57AM
I personally usually post AC.
There are people out there who literally want you to starve in the gutter for holding a different opinion. They will go after your job, family, friends, and business associates to shame you into their opinion and then keep going as it will never be enough for them. I have seen it happen enough to know better. I am also looking for work. The wrong comment searched for by the wrong person could mean the difference between a cool job and a continued search. Luckily USENET these days is a pain to search through or comments from 20+ years ago could come back to haunt me. Hell I have been burned IRL by people by stating the wrong opinion to someone I thought I trusted and they turned around and burned me as something I said a year ago is no longer considered 'nice'.
Most of my 'real' comments under my real name on this site are very boring and helpful.
Under AC I post 'unpopular' and 'popular' opinions but I usually back them up with whatever 'facts' I can. I have got +5 to -1 on a variety of subjects. If they could even in any possible way be considered controversial I post AC. As search engines are a thing. I post AC a lot here as a community we have drifted into a semi political site. It is also one of the reasons I am considering moving on. I used to enjoy it but these days it just makes me depressed and does no real good and only causes anger for both parties.
The only weird one I never got was gewg. He would SIGN everything. Might as well log in and make your life a bit easier......... Then if you want AC just check the checkbox or logout.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Monday October 10 2016, @01:39PM
we have drifted into a semi political site
TLDR of the below is politics is low effort and I/we need to post more/better story proposals.
Other people create infinite lists of political stuff to talk about. You could have the "techie opinion about Breitbart" but that does get old. At least everyone's got an opinion so we end up with like 100 comments. Its easy enough to do. How about that debate last night? Embarrassingly enough I fell asleep.
When we try to talk science, usually someone posts a journalist sites coverage of a press release so myself (or occasionally some other karma whore) will LMFGTFY and post a +5 informative link to the original NASA press release or the main mission page or whatever instead of some journalist (clickbait) site. Then we'll make fun of the journalist for being an idiot and still thinking rockets work because they "push against the air" in the current year, and a couple "merica F yeah" style posts will appear translated to "NASA F yeah" which we'll all agree with and upvote, and the story ends with like 7 comments. And that's the exciting ones!
On the "other site not to be named" they had a marketing contract no one is willing to talk about where every Wednesday at 2 PM central time they posted an e-ink story for years. At least we knew every wednesday afternoon we're talk about the glories of e-ink again and some shills would counterpost against any criticism of the holy display technology. Yeah yeah officially this never happened and Hillary never broke no law nowhere too. Anyway it might be interesting to schedule some stories, every Monday we'll round up whatever cool has happened on instructables and hackaday and similar hives of scum and villany (just kidding, or ... have you read the comments there?), then on Tuesday at 8am Eastern we'll talk about last weeks FLOSS weekly podcast topic or whatever. Back in the old days "the oil drum" used to post "the drumbeat" daily, talk anything you want about anything for one day. That might be an interesting idea. "A daily letters to the editor" or whatever.
I also miss /. book reports. Most of them were Packt and there's not much we can say about collated manpages. But maybe expanding it to all forms of media?
I've been continually agitating for a calendar post date on articles defaulting to submission date for ASAP I guess. Antares OA-5 might not be much of a story, but its still launching on oct 13th after 5 delays AFAIK. I'd suggest posting that story on the 13th exactly (unless its delayed again of course). Not last month and not some random day next week, the 13th.
Something I haven't seen in years is on the scene reports. Not to drop the docs I went to a "major city" makerfaire a couple weeks ago and I could write an interesting travelogue that might even be accepted. The point not being that I went to a makerfaire but we all have a lot of shared or shared-ish experiences that might make interesting general discussion. So I saw a giant robot arm. OK then. Also the amount of "little kid" stuff seems to be expanding which isn't so good because my kids are too big and I want to see adult stuff (adult as in IQ100+ college grad, not so much X rated, although the concept of a wing of X rated makerfaire is interesting... they used to have an scary wing at my local makerfaire so the costume zombie people don't accidentally scare little kids too much). Project Artemis was swarmed a year ago to the point of needing crowd control and abandoned this year, which was weird. Our tax dollars at work, NASA put on a hell of a good show, seriously was worth seeing the displays. I would have been happy to watch the blacksmiths outside for a long time or the fighting robots competitions but unfortunately I bought kids so its just like a zoo or museum where the kids think their grading metric is how fast they can visit each exhibit no matter how superficially. I'd like to see reports from tech-friendly tours, hamfests, makerfaires, cons, ...
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday October 11 2016, @07:39PM
Some very big changes are happening across the world, politically, at the moment. It's difficult to escape. For us whose beards are getting grey, the world is becoming unrecognisable.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Monday October 10 2016, @03:15AM
I read at 0/-1 and expand the -1s manually, and I do so precisely because ACs and mismodded comments need people with modpoints to help out. Good comments shouldn't be lost just because they're made anonymously, and people being dicks with "-1 = I don't agree with you" need their moderation corrected.
I also rarely downmod, preferring to save the modpoints for modding the good comments up. Sometimes I'll downmod obvious asshole behaviour or off-topic bullshit, but it's honestly not that common. In fact, I don't think I've downmodded any of the non-AC users in that top-ten list except for aristarchus.
He's the only user I can think of that I've downmodded frequently, not because I have a problem with him, but because his comments tend to be random, borderline insane word salad with only the most tenuous connection to whatever the subject is, so they frequently get off-topic moderation from me. Though I've noticed that I haven't had to do so as often lately, so maybe he finally started taking his medication.
(Score: 4, Informative) by fleg on Monday October 10 2016, @03:40AM
>random, borderline insane word salad
yeah i can see how it might come across like that, but mostly he's just dropping lots (lots!) of (potentially obscure) cultural references. if you know what he's referring too its pretty funny, but if you dont its going to come across as gibberish.
(Score: 2) by Marand on Monday October 10 2016, @05:26AM
Eh, if you say so. I personally haven't found the delivery to be particularly amusing, since it usually just reads like someone's attempt at writing a chatbot seeded with a bunch of memes and references. Still, that's not what I was talking about, because he really has gotten better about remaining vaguely on-topic and readable compared to earlier on. Older stuff was often incoherent run-on sentence gibberish that strayed way too far off topic.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday October 10 2016, @08:37AM
In fact, I don't think I've downmodded any of the non-AC users in that top-ten list except for aristarchus.
I love you too, Marand! You came out early as one of the alt-right/Pre-Milo/pretty much insane members! I am honored to be down-modded by you! But, I might suggest, there is this thing called "the principle of charity", especially in academe. It says that we should not immediately assume that someone is talking nonsense, instead we should check whether the fault in understanding lies within us! That means that maybe it only appears that word-salad is word-salad because you do no understand enough words, or the syntax of the too many words. So Marand, please continue your mods, they will be very useful in determining when I, and others, have exceeded the comprehension of the lesser intellects here on SoylentNews.
(Oh, I never mod you down, because that would be cruel, and pointless. Carry on!)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Marand on Monday October 10 2016, @01:01PM
I love you too, Marand! You came out early as one of the alt-right/Pre-Milo/pretty much insane members!
Okay, I suspect this is just trolling, but I'll bite, because I'm interested in seeing you justify this statement.
What convinced you of that particular assumption? I'm curious, because I don't generally participate in the political discussions, I normally avoid discussing my own political leanings, and I'm not "right" leaning anything, alt or not. Do you just label people that disagree with you as "alt-right" for easy dismissal, or is it something you throw around thinking it will piss people off? Next, what sort of label is "Pre-Milo" supposed to be? I also wonder what I said to earn the "pretty much insane" diagnosis, especially from someone whose writing style frequently resembles delirious rambling.
Finally, I find it interesting that, because I criticised your comments, you chose to insult me, personally. Given your self-proclaimed superior intellect, shouldn't such behaviour be beneath you?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @06:59PM
And you wonder why I called you pre-milo....
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JNCF on Tuesday October 11 2016, @02:40AM
I like to see aristarchus as the Batman to Ethanol-fueled's Joker. Like Ledger and Leto, Eth is a method actor. Ethanol-fueled didn't create aristarchus (contrary to Nicholson's portrayal), but he did kill the proverbial Jason Todd. [soylentnews.org]
Eth, thank you for the response. I will try to live up to your challenge. But please understand that I, and many others, do not understand what your issues are. You post, or as you put it here, "jewpost" in a way that does not invite or encourage the interesting intellectual exchange that should be the hallmark of SoylentNews. Maybe you are right. We should both take a time out. But I just have to say, If I come back to this place and it is like 8chan or Stormfront, I will SJW it until my karma goes permanent negative sub-alpha, prime. See you on the other side. No, I am not Adele.
Pushed over the edge, aristarchus returned as the lib-troll SoylentNews deserves. There's still more conserva-trolling all in all, but aristarchus is doing his work to bring balance to the Force.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @02:17AM
Adding-
Especially in today's climate, there are certain unpopular opinions (you know who you are) that get blasted regardless of any validity they might have.
Ending ACs is essentially tyranny of the majority, and I pleased there are venues available to express unpopular ideas.
Hell, the site might be better if it were completely anonymous.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday October 10 2016, @08:59AM
Ending ACs is essentially tyranny of the majority, and I pleased there are venues available to express unpopular ideas.
That's a specious argument. And I'm pretty sure you know that.
It is not required to provide a national id card and photo id to sign up with a totally made up name.
And even an unpopular idea can be well presented, without risk of it wrecking your career when using a pen-name.
But refusing to be responsible in any way for your postings just makes you a bomb thrower, a wall tagger who won't even sign his monograph, someone who wants his say, but no blowback.
This AC ruse has never been to preserve anonymity, and never been about unpopular ideas. Its always been about reserving the right to judge, while cowering from judgement. If there is tyranny afoot, its the AC.
Its rendered that green site virtually unreadable. Its slowly doing the same here.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @10:32AM
Really?
No one has perfect control over what they reveal and considering how many people have been doxxed with pseudonyms, perhaps your reality field could use some calibration. As the saying goes- the internet is forever, and several people using social media have come up against this unfortunate fact. I'd rather not.
Also, I'm under no obligation to fashion a well presented unpopular idea. Do you work under the same constraints? Then fuck off.
But refusing to be responsible in any way for your postings just makes you a bomb thrower...
Says the gentleman among the most down-voted. Hypocrisy much?
And in that, what difference does it make if it is you or AC making the comment, speaking of specious arguments?
Anonymity serves the the same purpose as it did when the Federalist Papers were published: to keep the raging mob from your door and to consider the argument, not the person.
Anonymity has always been an aspect of free speech, and you are too naive to consider some people may not be living in countries with as expansive free speech protections as the US.
By the way, you think Snowden will ever get to visit his motherland again?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @06:36PM
No one has perfect control over what they reveal and considering how many people have been doxxed with pseudonyms
People get doxxed mostly because they're Facebook-using suckers and give away their real information elsewhere and use the same pseudonyms in various locations. Only rarely is it anything more complex than that.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday October 10 2016, @10:15PM
Says the gentleman among the most down-voted. Hypocrisy much?
I think you meant to say, most UP voted. Oh, wait, you didn't because you are an AC, and only throw insults.
And in that, what difference does it make if it is you or AC making the comment, speaking of specious arguments?
Makes a lot of difference. Some I pointed out. Some other are obvious. You can't carry on discourse with random voices in the wind who throws a bomb into a crowded room and runs away blameless.
Anonymity serves the the same purpose as it did when the Federalist Papers were published: to keep the raging mob from your door and to consider the argument, not the person.
The federalist papers were not anonymous. Even in that day it was widely know who two of the authors were.
"Hamilton, Madison, and Jay did not invoke the pseudonym Publius in order to hide as individuals from being credited with authorship, in order to help their tenure chances, or in order to avoid embarrassment at the Thanksgiving dinner table.
"Rather, their reason was precisely to the contrary: to share authorship, and indeed credit, with all the Framers of the Constitution."
(Wendy Long, author an Law Clerk to Clarence Thomas.).
I've read Publius. He is friends of mine. You sir, are no Publius.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @11:15PM
"At the time of publication the authorship of the articles was a closely guarded secret, though astute observers discerned the identities of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. Following Hamilton's death in 1804, a list that he had drafted claiming fully two-thirds of the papers for himself became public, including some that seemed more likely the work of Madison (No. 49–58 and 62–63). The scholarly detective work of Douglass Adair in 1944 postulated the following assignments of authorship, corroborated in 1964 by a computer analysis of the text."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @10:39AM
How do you see this opinion of yours squaring with the statistics for moderation on AC posts listed in the article? It seems that AC posters are moderated positively with a ~6:1 ratio. (Granted, it may also be useful to see moderations as a percentage in relation to total number of user posts.)
For the record, I post AC out of laziness and the belief that an idea should be able to stand out on its own merits (and often making use of linked supporting evidence). My account was becoming fairly useless as I could see it starting to clog with the same topic, centered around replies to multitudes of authoritarians with pointed questions designed to provoke the reader into entertaining the idea that US government has limits to its authority and also what those exact limits are.) I also find being AC quite useful in limiting the scope of a discussion, as some past discussions get sidetracked by unrelated tangents in my post history. "Baffle 'em with bullcrap" is still a time-honored evasive approach and not one conducive to weighing the merits of original assertions.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday October 10 2016, @10:18PM
How do you see this opinion of yours squaring with the statistics for moderation on AC posts listed in the article?
Sheer volume.
How is that so hard to fathom?
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday October 10 2016, @10:29PM
I also find being AC quite useful in limiting the scope of a discussion, as some past discussions get sidetracked.
Exactly.
Once you've had YOUR say, the discussion should be over, right?
I refer you to to my previous statement: If there is tyranny afoot, its the AC.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday October 11 2016, @05:30AM
Perhaps 'sheer volume' indicates a need. I would be very sorry to see AC go away. I rarely use it, but when I do, it's because the alternative is to not post at all (having judged the risk too high).
As to the quality of discourse, it's good enough. Evidence: We're still here.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @07:59AM
"Sheer volume" of bomb-throwing cowards would generally produce a net negative moderation total. With 6 positive moderations for every negative, it seems on the surface that your assertion is in error.
We make a loss on every unit, but we'll make it up through volume!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Arik on Monday October 10 2016, @01:38AM
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @02:32AM
"I'm assuming AC's high scores are simply due to high input."
Or maybe there is just one AC that posts 90 percent of all AC posts? Or a very small handful.
It would be interesting to see statistics on how many different IP addresses post what percentage of those posts. For instance are 95 percent of all AC posts posted by, say, 1 percent of all IP addresses that post anonymously? Are 99 percent posted by, say, 5 percent of all anonymous posters?
I imagine I'm a pretty prolific anonymous poster. I don't have a handle though I would argue I get more overall up votes than down votes. Most of the time my comments aren't voted on at all, it doesn't bother me though, I don't comment to get up or down votes. I comment to try and give those interested enough a different perspective on things. I do get occasional down votes though but that doesn't bother me either. Or sometimes I get a disagree vote every once in a while, which I think is often more appropriate than a down vote, I don't mind people disagreeing with what I say. Heck, I'll admit I don't always agree with everything I post, often posting contradictory things, because I'm either on the fence on an issue or I just like to consider, present, and entertain different perspectives and allow others to do the same. Maybe someone might respond with something I find insightful.
I find a lot of comments insightful or at least worth considering and thinking about that don't necessarily get up votes. I try not to judge the merits of a comment by how it's moderated. However it is important to me that those comments don't get prohibited altogether, especially just because a moderator disagrees with someone on an issue. I always try to consider all perspectives, even ones I may disagree with. I consider anonymity important because it allows people to express opinions they may not otherwise express which gives me a broader perspective on issues.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 10 2016, @02:49AM
Just for clarity's sake, we don't store ip addresses of users; anonymous or otherwise. We store a one-way hash of the address and use that. Still useful for this purpose but not capable of outing anyone's location.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by toph on Monday October 10 2016, @03:23AM
With only 4 billion IPV4 addresses, inverting the hash with a rainbow table is trivial. For IPV6, the hash should work well enough.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 10 2016, @03:48AM
True enough, which is one of the major reasons why we don't make them public. We could always add a salt into the mix and make the rainbow table argument moot but there hasn't been a pressing reason to since they're not publicly shown.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @04:19AM
There might not be that many AC IP addresses...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @10:05AM
Even if you had unique salts for every IP address it would still be insecure because it wouldn't be that hard to crack an IP address if the salts and the hash list leaked.
Perhaps to make it more secure you can use a combination of IP address and hostmask + unique salt but given the fact that hostmasks tend to follow predictable patterns I would argue that's still not that secure, especially if someone had a list of all the hostmask/IP address combinations.
Even with IPv6 addresses it's possible that they follow patterns and various unused or not yet used addresses can be added to the list of addresses not to attempt to crack.
IP addresses were not meant to provide cryptographic security through being an address that's hard to crack, that was never the intent and it probably won't be good for that purpose.
I wasn't considering privacy when I wrote my above AC comment about posting those AC statistics. Obviously storing IP addresses removes privacy but storing a hash instead doesn't add that much more privacy. It makes it more inconvenient for hackers at best, which any degree of inconvenience is good but won't be good enough to thwart a determined entity with resources and access to tons of information (ie: from ISPs).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @10:09AM
Also this wouldn't be possible without either
A: Storing the IP address itself. Now you have a list of all IP addresses that post. It would be very trivial for someone with that list and with your hash to figure out who you are.
B: Having some kind of algorithm to go from IP address to salt and from salt + IP address to hash. That algorithm is ... another hash function, easy to crack.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 10 2016, @11:00AM
In theory, adding IPV6 addresses to the pile of IPV4 addresses before hashing easily solves this. In practice given how little IPV6 traffic there is? Someone besides me would need to do the math. I'm a crypto user not a crypto guru.
Worrying about the salt slipping out isn't much of a worry though.
I'd personally be more worried about the email addresses for everyone leaking. That's really the most sensitive bit of information we store (assuming you didn't do like I usually do and give president@whitehouse.gov whenever possible). Thankfully, I have yet to hear a credible report of the slashcode we started with having any SQL injection vulnerabilities (aside from the one I found that is utterly useless for actually pulling anything off) and we've made a point to keep up those particular best practices of our coding forefathers since forking.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @04:33AM
Actually, all of them are from me.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Monday October 10 2016, @02:43AM
AC comments that get modded all the way up can also earn more net mod points, since they start at 0 instead of 1 or 2.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @03:30AM
I'm assuming that mod-points from pre-modded comments were counted in these statistics. Which would make your point moot and in fact skew the results in favor of non-anonymous comments. Correct me if I'm wrong.
To be fair when reading comments I give a lot more credit to an anonymous comment when they are upvoted than to a non-anonymous comment. An anonymous comment earned all of its upvotes whereas a non-anonymous comment may have simply began with upvotes which, in my book, counts for nothing.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 10 2016, @03:38AM
Ironically, you have to be logged in to fix that. [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday October 10 2016, @08:06PM
As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as a pre-modded comment. Comment may start with different scores, but they all start with zero moderations.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 11 2016, @12:33AM
It would be nice if someone that knows for sure can clarify that point with regard to how these statistics were compiled. It could make a big difference in how these statistics should be interpreted.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday October 11 2016, @02:33AM
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by CoolHand on Monday October 10 2016, @01:46AM
Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @01:51AM
> It might be interesting on seeing average moderation ratio
Yeah, the ratio of moderations versus posts would be a lot more meaningful.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Monday October 10 2016, @04:57AM
Story has been updated to include two new tables — one listing those who had the highest percentage of their moderations being down-mods, and the other listing those who had the highest percentage of their mods being up-mods. Enjoy!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday October 10 2016, @07:05PM
I'm sorry, but we can't take this seriously until we have the percentage of people upmodded after typing downwind without their left pinky on a cool Saturday after getting indicted for beating up their wife.
I took a stats class at the NFL.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday October 10 2016, @02:42AM
Notice how none of the down-moderation winners had a net score below 0. Sad!
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 5, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 10 2016, @02:51AM
I'll try harder in the future. It's difficult to do it what with all my natural wit and talent though.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @03:14AM
Dude, I know you can do better than that.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 10 2016, @03:49AM
Nah, I've been drinking and it's hours past my bedtime. Even genius must sleep.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Monday October 10 2016, @03:15AM
I just ran the numbers for a "batting average" among the users mentioned above, consisting simply of net moderation / number of posts. Leaving out AC, who I couldn't get a count of posts on, we have:
The Mighty Buzzard +0.32
MichaelDavidCrawford +0.33
aristarchus +0.38
jmorris +0.41
Hairyfeet +0.43
takyon +0.47
Ethanol-fueled +0.48
c0lo +0.50
Runaway1956 +0.51
maxwell demon +0.53
frojack +0.59
Phoenix666 +0.62
VLM +0.66
wonkey_monkey +0.67
Thexalon +1.11
All of those had over 1500 comments. And no, I didn't devise the measurement just to brag or something.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @03:40AM
> The Mighty Buzzard +0.32
> MichaelDavidCrawford +0.33
This fact pleases me by confirming my beliefs.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Mykl on Monday October 10 2016, @01:46AM
It would be interesting to see the highest/lowest moderation of users relative to their number of posts (i.e. mod score divided by # of posts). This might unveil some particularly insightful (or trollish) users who just happen to post less frequency. It may be necessary to have a baseline number of posts to manage the skew from users who have only posted once or twice.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @01:49AM
A whole jolly club... with jolly pirate nicknames!
(Score: 5, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday October 10 2016, @02:15AM
What are you bitching about? You won.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @11:46PM
But I was trying to troll!
(Score: 1) by malloc_free on Monday October 10 2016, @04:03AM
A quote from 'The Crow' spotted. Loved that movie.
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Monday October 10 2016, @02:48AM
The meta story is interesting, but what's more interesting are the advanced moderation preferences available to logged-in users. Check them out if you haven't:
https://soylentnews.org/my/comments [soylentnews.org]
Reason modifiers (hey, I get to submit a bug report for "Touche"), people modifiers, an anonymous modifier, adjustable karma bonus (you can make the users who choose the karma bonus suffer instead), new user modifier, and length modifiers.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @03:20AM
The "overrated" or "underrated" options aren't mentioned explicitly. Were they counted?
(Score: 4, Informative) by martyb on Monday October 10 2016, @08:48AM
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by malloc_free on Monday October 10 2016, @03:50AM
I guess if I can't get a win here, I should be happy to be amongst the top 10 folders. Problem I have is that - most of the time anyway - someone else has said anything I may wish to say already (I usually have a look before giving my 2c). Quite possibly in a better fashion that I may have done. Redundancy avoidance FTW.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GungnirSniper on Monday October 10 2016, @06:05AM
Which posts got the most number of moderations? To 'win' this there has to be a lot of up and down votes.
Tips for better submissions to help our site grow. [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday October 10 2016, @01:57PM
Politics. About 10% of my posts are political and all of them are controversial and get downvoted and upvoted pretty wildly. I can click reload and my score at any instant is like rolling a D5.
GNU R has some interesting clustering packages which I'm no good at all with. However if someone figured it out, I bet the results would be interesting, and on the topic, I bet controversial mods cluster together in political discussions.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday October 11 2016, @02:55AM
Sorry that I took so long to reply... there is a 3-way tie for most-moderated comments. Each of these comments received 24 moderations.
One of the comments, though, manifested a known problem in our code. Alice loads a story and starts reading. Bob loads the same same story, sees a comment of interest and mods it up from a +4 to a +5 (the maximum). Alice, being a slow reader, finally reaches the same comment that Bob just up-modded. She also thinks the comment deserves an up-mod. Alice up-mods the comment... and nothing happens, (can't up-mod a comment that is already at +5) except that she used up one of her mod points. The moderation processing code, I'm told, is a bit hairy and in reality this is a rather rare occurrence. An analogous problem occurs when Alice attempts to down-mod a comment that is at 0 and Bob down-mods it to a -1 before she gets a chance to submit her down-mod it.
Without any further ado, these three comments each received 24 moderations:
(The last of these comments experienced 3 places where an attempted mod did not succeed (2 Insightfuls and 1 Informative); so the preceding is reporting 21 successful moderations out of 24 attempted mods.)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 10 2016, @01:56PM
A major PGA tournament such as the Masters starts with something like 125 golfers playing four rounds for the best overall score, so in a sense every golfer - even Tiger Woods in his prime - starts with long odds. The favorites (Rory McIllroy, Jason Day) are usually something like 3-1 or 4-1 against.
When a betting line is posted, you'll get odds on maybe 15 top golfers followed by "the field" (anyone other than those 15). "The field" usually has fairly short odds because it encompasses so many players.
AC is "the field" here.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Fnord666 on Monday October 10 2016, @05:46PM
Personally I wish that moderation went down to -5 so that the true sewage could be distinguished from posts that are just controversial.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday October 10 2016, @07:53PM
I think the percentage ranking tables would be more informative if there were added 1 to both the number of upvotes and the number of downvotes before taking the percentage. This is especially true for the "pointy horns" that had all single digit counts, which makes their values basically statistically insignificant noise. Adding 1 to each number of votes pushes low-vote users towards the 50% mark. Note that this method can even be formally justified: It's what you get from Bayesian theory if you start with an uniform prior for the probability that a moderation is up vs. down, and do Bayesian updating for each vote. On the other hand, it's easy enough to apply so there's no reason not to (a prior derivedfrom the general moderation behaviour would probably better, but also more complicated).
Note that this way, even those who never received moderations get a valid percentage estimate, which is 50% — a reasonable default given that there's not yet any data.
In particular, the "pointy horns" would get the following adjusted percentages:
scarboni888: 66.67% down, 33.33% up
MooCow: 66.67% down, 33.33% up
cybergimli: 75.00% down, 25.00% up
rancidman: 75.00% down, 25.00% up
rmdingler: 75.00% down, 25.00% up
SoylentsISay: 75.00% down, 25.00% up
stupid: 75.00% down, 25.00% up
contrapunctus: 75.00% down, 25.00% up
killal -9 bash: 85.71% down, 14.29% up
Since this is the only table which list "negatives" I cannot tell how those numbers are related to other heavily downmodded users, but consider the following: A hypothetical user who had a single upmod but a million downmods would still be considered better than scarboni888 or MooCow in the "pointy horns" statistics (as the percentage of downmods is still less than 100%, even if only slightly), although I'm sure most people would say that's clearly much worse than a single downmod with no upmods. The adjusted percentages would put that hypothetical user clearly in front of all the "pointy horns", as the adjusted percentage still would be close to 100%.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday October 11 2016, @12:22AM
You might also solve that problem by only posting the stats of people modded over n times, or at least people with n posts. 50 moderations wouldn't change the "halo" list, while 500 posts would, highlighting the no-life who keep this place alive.
A comparative list for various "n" would be fun useless information to browse.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday October 10 2016, @10:36PM
I'll send you my bill in the mail.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]