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posted by martyb on Monday January 28 2019, @01:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the if-at-first-you-don't-succeed,-stay-away-from-skydiving dept.

[Updated 20190129_204134 UTC. Added background on prior restrictions with respect to commenting and moderating in the same story discussion. Added background and link to explain the number of mod points going from 5 to 10. Clarified example of what happens when someone tries to perform more mods than they have mod points. --martyb]

I had some information incorrect in my prior story SoylentNews, Moderations, and You.

But, before I go into that I just want to say how impressed I am at the community's participation and discussion regarding the site. From that I see how much people value what we have here and do not want to see anything happen that would potentially degrade it. I saw a lot of passion expressed and it makes me all the more proud to be a part of what makes it happen.

I see my misunderstandings caused unnecessary anxiety in the community and for that I humbly apologize. I've learned to ask for feedback and verification before putting out a site-related story in the future (including this one!)

It was intended as a solicitation of feedback from the community. As in previous site upgrades we will put out a proposal, accept feedback, and if deemed warranted, give it a try. None of this is permanent; if it doesn't work out, it can be tweaked or rolled back.

Read on beyond the fold for corrections, history, and an expanded explanation of the current thinking.

Corrections:

First, I had the threshold for a "mod bomb" wrong. It is five (not four) downmods by one account (nick1) of another account (nick2) in one moderation period (i.e. from mod point issuance at 00:10 UTC until the next set of mod points are released 24 hours later.)

Second, there are plans to put programmatic limits that would block excess mods beyond the limits from taking effect. (This would be much like what happens when you have already used, say, 8 of the 10 mod points that are issued each day, and then attempt to moderate 3 more; the first 2 will be applied but the 3rd will just "drop on the floor" and be ignored. We may want to put up a message that a threshold has been exceeded, but I am unsure about how technically feasible that would be and how we would go about actually presenting that.)

Third, we haven't handed out moderation bans for a long while (many months, possibly even a year). Instead, knowing that #2 was planned, I understand that what has actually been happening is the excess mods got reversed and, when deemed warranted, an admin-to-user message had been sent making note of the excursion beyond the limit.

Fourth, Moderation affects the comment score as stored in the DB, but you can make changes in your user preferences to increase or decrease the apparent comment score for friends, foes, Funny, etc. I personally browse with a threshold of -1; there's lots of dreck down there but there's also an occasional mis-mod and I gladly use my mod points to try and rectify those. In case you were wondering, the admins here get the same number of mod points as everyone else: 10 points per day.

Ultimately, personal vendettas are what we are trying to deal with. Focus on the comment itself, not on who made it. If you would mod a comment differently if you did not know who posted it... you might want to ask yourself if the focus is on the wrong thing.

We are trying to catch the (fortunately) rare abuses of the moderation system. If you accidentally upmod or downmod someone beyond the guidelines, don't worry about that. We do not want to be in the position of handing out bans. It's the repeated abuses of the system which we are trying to address.

What's the point of all this, anyway?

NOTE: What follows is from my memory of things happening 20+ years ago; there may be some inaccuracies. Don't shoot me!

Background: When Slashdot first appeared (I was reading the site before they even had user accounts), it was a small community and the comments were not that numerous. I actually read all the comments on all the stories. As its popularity grew, so did the number of comments. It got to the point where one could no longer reasonably read all the comments. Some were real gems that greatly contributed to the discussion. As in any community, it was soon also visited by trolls and the like whose comments just added noise to the discussion ("frist post" anyone?). Several approaches were attempted, but challenges were discovered in their being able to scale up to the rapidly increasing number of comments. Community moderation was the ultimate solution. Let the community "police" itself. Users would upmod comments that were especially interesting or insightful to give them greater visibility and downmod comments that were less, umm, germane. They ultimately came up with a scale for ranking comments and instituted "karma" as a means of selecting who would be issued mod points.

Moderations of a user's comments affected their "karma". A "positive" moderation (Informative, Insightful, Interesting, etc.) added 1 point to a user's karma. A negative moderation (Offtopic, Troll, Flamebait, etc.) deducted 1 point from their karma. Accounts that had attained sufficient karma (and had been around for at least a month, IIRC) were, in turn, eligible to receive mod points. Unfortunately, abuses soon appeared. There were the accounts that racked up massive karma and then went on a trolling spree wreaking havoc throughout the site. That led to a "karma cap": any positive moderation beyond the cap were discarded.

So, each comment had a "score" associated with it. A logged-in user's comment started with a score of 1. If the user had garnered sufficient karma, they were eligible to use a "karma bonus" to give their comment greater visibility; those comments started with a score of 2. Comments posted by Anonymous Cowards (users who had not created an account and logged in), or by logged-in users who opted to "post anonymously", saw their comments start with a score of 0.

From that starting point, through moderation, comment scores can range from -1 up to 5, inclusive.

The point of all this is that a visitor to the site could select a comment score "threshold" and self-select what comments they wanted to see. Comments having the same score should be of approximately the same caliber. From a score of -1 (dross, a waste of your time) to +5 (crème de la crème, wow! That's amazing!).

Present Day:

SoylentNews got its start as a fork of the Open Source version of Slashcode that had been published several years prior. It was out of date and not maintained. (Translation: Did. Not. Work.) Lots of head banging and cursing was able to bring up a version of the site that ran, albeit poorly. A great deal of effort went into bug fixing, and while we were at it, extensions.

Originally, mod points were handed out based on an algorithm. A subset of the community got some mod points to use within a limited period of time; when the time was up they were gone. Some tweaking and experimentation led to SoylentNews issuing 5 mod points to everybody who was eligible to moderate. (User had an account, account had been active for at least 30 days, and the user had good enough karma.)

There were some restrictions on using mod points. For example, one could not participate in a discussion )post a comment) and then perform moderations in the same discussion. Similarly, posting a comment to a discussion after doing mods in it would cause those mods to be reversed. (My memory is cloudy on that one, but it was something along those lines.)

Things seemed to be going along pretty well until the site was hit by a slew of troll comments posted by ACs. In August of 2017, the number of mod points issued to eligible users was increased from 5 to 10:

Moderators: Starting a little after midnight UTC tonight, everyone will be getting ten points a day instead of five. The threshold for a mod-bomb, however, is going to remain at five. This change is not so you can pursue an agenda against registered users more effectively but so we can collectively handle the rather large uptick in anonymous trolling recently while still being able to have points remaining for upmodding quality comments. This is not an invitation to go wild downmodding; it's helping you to be able to stick to the "concentrate more on upmodding than downmodding" bit of the guidelines.

Mod points are currently issued at 00:10 UTC.

Some new moderations have been added to the ones we inherited: Spam, Disagree, and Touché.

Operationally, there is one important consideration that may not be obvious. One can select a moderation reason and immediately click the "Moderate" button, and thus moderate comments one-at-a-time. One can also select a moderation reason on multiple comments within a discussion and then click Moderate. In this case, several moderations are submitted at once. Here's an extreme and contrived example. I open a story and see it has 15 comments all of which are currently scored "1". (update: they need not be posted under a single nick; each comment could have been posted under a different nick) I have not moderated yet today, so I have my full complement of 10 mod points to use. I mark all 15 comments as "Funny" and click "Moderate". As I am trying to use more mod points than I have, only some of the mods take effect; 5 of those moderations just drop-on-the-floor and are ignored. No big deal. No penalties or anything; the excess is just ignored.

In short, comment scores and account karma are a means to an end, not an end in itself. As I see it, the focus should be on the discussion and what the comments bring to support it. The comment should stand on its own; who made a comment is far less important than what was said.

The intent of moderation limits (be they for mod bombing or sockpuppeting) is to restrict the amount of skewing that a personal vendetta can bring to bear. Complaining about moderation in the discussion is "Offtopic" and is often modded that way. We're still trying to find out what works best for these.

Lastly, stuff happens. I've made typos and I'm sure I have mis-modded a comment, too. In the grand scheme of things, an errant mod now and then is not going to affect things that much. So I don't get too bent out of shape should my karma drop. I trust that if my intention is genuinely for the betterment of the site, it will manifest in my comments and things will work out in the end. On occasion I post something bone-headed and get called to task on it. No biggee. I own it, accept it, and try to do better the next time.

NOTE: Spam moderations are handled a bit differently. The idea is that, when warranted, the community can bring a bigger hammer to bear on problematic comments. Commercial advertising. Exact same comment being posted verbatim multiple times. GNA posts. Penis bird. Marrying young brides. If you see one of those, go right ahead and help clean up the place for the rest of us. On the other hand, if you accidentally moderate a comment as Spam, please send an e-mail to admin (at) soylentnews.org (along with a link to that comment) and we'll undo the mod with no penalty.

So, go ahead and use those mod points and make the site better for the next person who comes along.

PS: Thanks to all of you commented in the prior story. In general, the attitude I sensed was that the community did not want to mess up what was working well, the majority was against sockpuppet activity, was against mod bans being applied willy nilly (that was abundantly clear!), and the main disagreement was as to what the exact guidelines should be.

The current thinking is that some kind of limit would be established (maybe per day and per week) where attempts to exceed that would be ignored. Say the daily limit was 4. Much like the contrived example above with an attempt to perform 15 Funny mods, any attempt to moderate beyond the daily limit would just be ignored. The moderations up to the daily limit would take effect. If you think I've been especially witty today and try to upmod 5 of my comments, I will get 4 of those and I'll just have to wait for someone else to come along, recognize my incredible sense of humor, and leave it to them to take care of that additional moderation!

I'm looking through moderations performed last year and am getting the sense that 4 per day looks good. If there were to be a weekly cap, it's not yet clear to me what that should be. Seat-of-the-pants guesstimate suggests 20 should be safe and we would probably be okay (few if any users hitting the limit) if we went with 15 per week.


Original Submission

Related Stories

Meta: Welcome New Trolls! 241 comments

Welcome, new trolls! We're pleased as punch to have you aboard, unfortunately as you may have noticed our moderators are unable to give you the moderations you've been working so hard for. Since we can't really do much about people not moderating more, we're going to be giving out more points so that the ones that do can give you the attention you so desperately crave.

Moderators: Starting a little after midnight UTC tonight, everyone will be getting ten points a day instead of five. The threshold for a mod-bomb, however, is going to remain at five. This change is not so you can pursue an agenda against registered users more effectively but so we can collectively handle the rather large uptick in anonymous trolling recently while still being able to have points remaining for upmodding quality comments. This is not an invitation to go wild downmodding; it's helping you to be able to stick to the "concentrate more on upmodding than downmodding" bit of the guidelines.

Also, this is not a heavily thought-out or permanent change. It is a quick, dirty adjustment that will be reviewed, tweaked, and likely changed before year's end. Questions? Comments?

SoylentNews, Moderations, and You [UPDATED] 262 comments

[Update 20190127_200249 UTC: corrected number of downmods to qualify for mod bomb from 4 to 5. Clarified that no mod bans have been handed out in a long while. --martyb]

Our primary goal at SoylentNews is to provide a forum for the community; In as much as is reasonably possible, we try to take a hands-off approach.

The infrastructure provides a means by which the community can (among other things) vote on polls, publish journal articles, submit comments, and perform moderations.

There are, however, some things that require an active role by the admins.

One of these is dealing with moderation abuse, something which can come in different forms. See the FAQ for some background. Addressed there are "mod bombs" and "spam mods". A mod bomb is deemed to have happened when one user (user1) has performed 4 5 or more downmods against comments by another user (user2). Upon review, if a mod bomb has been found to occur, then the moderator (user1) gets a 1-month mod ban on the first occasion; 6 months on the second and subsequent times. Mod bans have not been issued in a LONG while; extra mods are reversed.

Sockpuppets: And now we come to the focus of this article: there is another form of moderation abuse: sockpuppet accounts. Wikipedia has a suitable description:

A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception. The term, a reference to the manipulation of a simple hand puppet made from a sock, originally referred to a false identity assumed by a member of an Internet community who spoke to, or about, themselves while pretending to be another person.[1]

The term now includes other misleading uses of online identities, such as those created to praise, defend or support a person or organization,[2] to manipulate public opinion,[3] or to circumvent a suspension or ban from a website. A significant difference between the use of a pseudonym[4] and the creation of a sockpuppet is that the sockpuppet poses as an independent third-party unaffiliated with the puppeteer. Sockpuppets are unwelcome in many online communities and may be blocked.

Right here I'll admit that I was sorely tempted to take unilateral action. Name names. Apply mod bans. And... you get the idea. Instead, I'm trying to take the high road. So, instead, I chose to present what I found to the community, solicit input, and then see what, if anything, needs to be done.

There may well be other cases, but the one I have discovered shows this history of upmods. Out of the 100 most recent moderations performed by "user1", 80 of those have been upmods of the same user "user2". And of these, there have been 10 upmods on January 21, 10 more on January 22, and yet 10 more on January 23. (For those keeping score that is 30 points in 3 days).

I cannot imagine in any way that 30 upmods in three days by "user1" on "user2" is reasonable or desirable.

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  • (Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @01:21PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @01:21PM (#792973)

    it can be tweaked or rolled back.

    MAY ALL THE GODS DAMN YOU!!

    -Sisyphus

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @01:33PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @01:33PM (#792977)
      • (Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @02:46PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @02:46PM (#793009)

        What kind of music did Sisyphos not particularly enjoy? Rock'n'roll!

        • (Score: 5, Funny) by maxwell demon on Monday January 28 2019, @08:46PM (1 child)

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday January 28 2019, @08:46PM (#793215) Journal

          And in particular, the Rolling Stones.

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:09AM

            by acid andy (1683) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:09AM (#793345) Homepage Journal

            Yes. As if his life wasn't hard enough already, he also had a great fondness for moss and they insisted they couldn't be of the slightest help for that.

            --
            If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
  • (Score: 1) by tftp on Monday January 28 2019, @01:28PM (11 children)

    by tftp (806) on Monday January 28 2019, @01:28PM (#792975) Homepage

    A fixed low daily limit might occasionally conflict with a large discussion, especially if many are ACs. It might be wise to restrict daily nin-AC per-person mods, though, down and up. All restrictions (modulo spam) must be soft - no penalty, just denial.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by martyb on Monday January 28 2019, @03:09PM (8 children)

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @03:09PM (#793015) Journal

      A fixed low daily limit might occasionally conflict with a large discussion, especially if many are ACs. It might be wise to restrict daily nin-AC per-person mods, though, down and up. All restrictions (modulo spam) must be soft - no penalty, just denial.

      As I understand it, moderation of comments by ACs do not participate in any moderation limits. For this purpose, they are anonymous and all look the same.

      Excellent observation, but no need for concern.

      And, yes, no bans; just denials.

      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing.
      • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday January 28 2019, @06:01PM (7 children)

        by bzipitidoo (4388) on Monday January 28 2019, @06:01PM (#793130) Journal

        I very much like softer approaches. I was banned from a subreddit a couple of weeks ago thanks to one idiot moderator deciding on his own that I was a troll. I contacted the other moderators, and they agreed the action was too severe.

        Turned the ban on its head too :). Told them I wasn't sure I wanted to participate even if they did lift the ban.

        • (Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:59AM (6 children)

          by fakefuck39 (6620) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:59AM (#793362)

          I gotta ask, honest question. You are posting on reddit to actually have a conversation? Why? Places like this/techdirt/hacker news have a somewhat specific type of person on it. Here we're all old, calmed down in life and have ample experience, and stand for ethics - reason stuff here doesn't get deleted and we don't have shadow bans. Yeah, some are corporate shills like me balls deep in the pocket of multimildollar "enterprise" tech, some are just pc support retards taking with strong opinions about shit they've never actually worked with, some are happy being quaint hippies who define redefine life success as I define the shit in my toilet, etc. But we're kind of all the same. Here you either make an account for life or just keep it anonymous and lose threads after answering them.

          Then you got the orange site, written by someone's highschool kid who "builds computers" from barebones kits and learned some 1990's html. Mostly smart tech people, but they mod to disagree, they upvote spam, and shadow bans and post deletions serve to lower the daily ssri intake of loser insecure mods. That's a great place for decent conversation. You create an account to have the option to show all the mod-deleted posts, and just recreate a new one weekly.

          Then you got reddit. That is literally like going to the DMV inside a highschool lunchroom. Mods on each subreddit are random, usually idiot losers from the world. Below average ones, because seriously what normal person would use any of their time modding thousands of comments daily. Only a complete loser. Then you got the actual comments. Those random highschool kids, and the random ugly idiots at the DMV. A nice slice of the statistical population distribution. Why, dear god why, would you ever want to communicate with a population cross-section like that? That just sounds really really painful and not enjoyable.

          I do go on reddit, usually while on the shitter. Once in a while, when the new vids of women getting punched in the face run out due to a long shit, I will just rip someone a new one and try to get deep inside of someone's head and cause them angst that will keep them from falling comfortably asleep. When the shit is over, reddit is over for me.

          • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:22AM (2 children)

            by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:22AM (#793406) Journal

            > Then you got reddit. That is literally like going to the DMV inside a highschool lunchroom

            I'd say reddit is more like a shopping district with seedy topless bars, pawn shops, and liquor stores at one end, and upscale retailers at the other end.

            > You are posting on reddit to actually have a conversation?

            Why, yes, yes I am. They have a lot of very specific subreddits. You're in to some obscure indie strategy game? There's a subreddit for that. You want some narrow technical area, like maybe one of the couple dozen Android replacement projects such as LineageOS or Dirty Unicorns, or the Brainf*ck, Perl6, or any of a few hundred other programming languages, or CAD software such as FreeCAD or AutoCAD? There's subreddits for each one of all that too.

            Now yes, I think SoylentNews has a superior system, and that shadowbans are especially ridiculous. And there's still Usenet. But it's like a justification I often have heard for the choice of programming language (or languages) for a project: it was the "right tool for the job".

            • (Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:12PM (1 child)

              by fakefuck39 (6620) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:12PM (#793594)

              That's like justifying going to a strip club in thailand because you like elvis and they play his music. You're still having sex with a tranny. Your indie game (I don't play computer games, so I assume) has an indie site with a forum. Reddit for Android talk? I go to XDA for my CarbonOS, not reddit. I must admin I also have zero interest in having Conversations with anyone about any of the stuff you mentioned. I'll give you an example of why - I did try.

              I've been doing enterprise storage networks for 20 years. I've also been a java/c/perl developer, an oracle dba, a unix admin throughout various points in my career. I know more about data storage than most people alive. There is indeed a subreddit for that. Is it useful? Only to make you angry and waste your time talking to complete idiots who have very strong and very wrong opinions. If I want someone to comment on replacing a $50mil enterprise storage solution with some hacked together old dell laptops, reddit is the place for it. Actual experts? They're not even on reddit - because it's a waste of time. Try to explain to those people that saving a few mil is never worth the millions per minute of unavailability, on systems in charge of billions of dollars? Why would I attempt that? If those redditors had the professional experience to talk about that, they wouldn't be on reddit in the first place. Try to post workout tips on fitness, as someone who is 40, with 6% bodyfat all my life who benches 400lb? I got banned - they're only interested in soccer moms on the latest cabbage soup diet.

              On reddit, knowledge of a subject means idiots disagree with you, remove your posts, feel personally attacked, and then everything you typed gets deleted so they can feel in control of their life. Example from here though: Intel came out with the optane crap. Local idiots start going on and on about its use in servers. I go into detail about how it's mostly for storage arrays, not your 1u dell pizza box - after all I just did a presentation to a fortune 50 company about this on behalf of the vendor. Here idiots with zero experience in the industry strongly tell me I'm wrong. But my shit stays up for non-idiots, who find the info useful. If it had a chance of getting deleted, why waste your time posting?

              • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday January 30 2019, @04:07AM

                by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday January 30 2019, @04:07AM (#793901) Journal

                Then let me ask this: where do you go for intelligent conversation about a highly technical subject that interests you?

                Usenet? An email mailing list? IRC? A more specialized site with a forum such as element14.com for the Raspberry Pi, or Arch or Ubuntu for Linux, or Tom's Hardware? You mentioned XDA, so it seems that you do. (What is CarbonOS? All I can find is that it's a fork of FreeDOS.) But I've seen too many proprietary, private, commercial sites decide that forums are too much trouble, and nuke their boards (I hear newspapers are especially notorious for that), or they run short of money and shut the whole site down, and maybe you can find old posts again on the Wayback Machine, or maybe not. And there's downright treacherous monetizing sites such as "Expert Sex Change". There's this Discord, but considering what happened to Skype, I'm not wild about them.

                I'm not a regular on reddit, visit only enough to see that there are an awful lot of posts, and good posts at that, by [deleted]. Not the sort of thing to inspire me to participate. But for lack of knowledge of better options, I occasionally lurk and even more occasionally post there.

          • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:48AM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:48AM (#793482)

            Here we're all old, calmed down in life and have ample experience, and stand for ethics

            This coming from fake fuck - Ha ha ha ha HA HA HA HAA HAAA HAAAA HAAAAAAHHH HAAAAAAAAAAAH HAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

            • (Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:55PM (1 child)

              by fakefuck39 (6620) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:55PM (#793585)

              I guess some of those highschool kids from the reddit lunchroom made it over here. Go back kid, this is not the place for you. I'm not nice, and you can't delete my comments by complaining. You can only fight in a battle of whits, and you've come unarmed.

              I once saw a kid at the grocery store. He was yelling real loud at the shoppers that it smells, drawing a lot of attention to himself. He of course had a large shit stain in the back of his red pants. Time for change of pants kid. I get it, you only speak english, so you don't understand my username. Other people are smarter. You are pointing out you're an idiot? We already knew that, no need to point it out.

              3 - 삼 (saam)
              9 - 구 (goo)

              "сам" in russian is pronounced "saam" and means "by yourself." My username is so idiots point to my username and show their stupidity and lack of knowledge. It translates to "you masturbate a lot." Go wash your crunchy floor sock kid, and stick to the incels subreddit, or I'll make fun of you in a couple of other languages.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @06:19PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @06:19PM (#793658)

                You can only fight in a battle of whits

                Let's just say you didn't whin this one, you halfwit. No-one gives a whit about your stories about feces or grocery stores or Velcro shoes.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @07:53PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @07:53PM (#793195)

      Hardly worth bothering about AC's. The topics that are posted here are so boring and uncontroversial that the comments are therefore hardly worth reading and replying to.

      • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:25AM

        by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:25AM (#793407) Journal

        You mean bashing the social conservatives for their latest idiocy is not controversial?

        There may yet be hope for us all.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Monday January 28 2019, @01:31PM (24 children)

    by pkrasimirov (3358) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @01:31PM (#792976)

    Thanks for all! Again, please consider adding mod option "+1 Thank you". Also would be nice to be able to vote/mod for the story itself. Then I'd "+1 Thank you" for the article above.

    • (Score: 1, Flamebait) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 28 2019, @02:11PM (21 children)

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @02:11PM (#792995) Journal

      That idea has floated around a few times. Yes, I'd like to be able to moderate the article. It would also be nice to meta-moderate the stories in the submission queue. A for instance? Another Aristarchus submission on alt-rights appears. Ari can't moderate his own submission, so the submission gets leventy-seven down mods, and zero up mods. The editors need not even think about justifying rejecting it. A week later, another Ari submission gets only leventy two down mods, and three up mods. Editors might consider running the story. Or not.

      Food for thought, anyway.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Monday January 28 2019, @03:41PM (4 children)

        by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @03:41PM (#793035) Journal

        The ancient slashcode that got wrangled into shape and that became this site had a "Firehose" where people could up/down vote story submissions.

        I had no role in the initial code wrangling, but from the plethora of expletives I saw on IRC, that code was apparently in far worse shape than the rest. There are still vestiges of it around, but for all intents and purposes has been deleted.

        Could it be resurrected or coded again? I suppose if there were enough of a demand for it, we could... but our resources for coding are limited (pretty much just TMB atm) and there is already too much on his plate.

        There is a simple, interim approach we could try if anyone is interested. Launch IRC [soylentnews.org] (or use your favorite client) and go to the "#editorial" channel (/join #editorial) and make a comment there. Obviously, if a lot of people take to doing that it would become unwieldy, but there's currently so little activity there it would function as a starting point and help us to assess how much interest there is for such a feature.

        Note: The preceding is from my personal perspective; I've looked at some of the code but by no means have I mastered it. Large handful of salt advised. =)

        --
        Wit is intellect, dancing.
        • (Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Monday January 28 2019, @04:13PM (2 children)

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @04:13PM (#793056) Journal

          You feed a buzzard on a plate? If I had my own pet buzzard, I'd just drag something dead into it's cage now and then. I believe they need the gravel and debris from the ground for digestion anyway.

          • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @06:03PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @06:03PM (#793131)

            You serve a buzzard on a plate! We're not cavemen anymore, except maybe during football season.

            • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday January 28 2019, @06:24PM

              by Thexalon (636) on Monday January 28 2019, @06:24PM (#793146)

              I'm sure realDonaldTrump serves the best buzzard on silver platters in the White House. He'll probably proudly offer it to whoever wins the Super Bowl.

              --
              The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
        • (Score: 3, Funny) by stretch611 on Monday January 28 2019, @11:36PM

          by stretch611 (6199) on Monday January 28 2019, @11:36PM (#793307)

          but our resources for coding are limited (pretty much just TMB atm) and there is already too much on his plate.

          Can you add to his work load to the point he doesn't have time to comment? =)

          --
          Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Monday January 28 2019, @08:06PM (13 children)

        by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @08:06PM (#793202) Journal

        A potential problem with moderating stories before they get 'published' is that it is also open to abuse, either intentional or otherwise. A niche topic that might only appeal to a small number of our community - but is still of interest to them - might be suppressed simply by the size of the majority of those that have no interest in it. This might appear in the interests of the majority but we do try to please all those in our community even if that means we sometimes publish a story that might have limited appeal. Providing that it is well written and factual, it should be open for discussion otherwise this site simply becomes an echo chamber for the majority. Many good discussions have resulted from stories that initially didn't seem to have a wide appeal.

        Publishing niche stories doesn't reduce the number of other stories that we publish; the number of stories that we usually publish in a typical day is more related to the small number of good submissions that we receive.

        • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:53AM (12 children)

          by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @01:53AM (#793360) Homepage Journal

          Wrong! And maybe you never look in the Editor Chat Room. So interesting. The Editors always, always put the Pause between the stories. They don't call it the Pause. They call it Spacing. Can we say, delay? Of, I think it's 93 minutes during the week. And 273 minutes on the week end -- thinking, I guess, folks are busy on the weekend. Don't have as much time to read. Possibly 91 and 271. Something like that. I don't remember the exact. They don't want us to remember. Or they would have made it an hour and a half, two and a half on the weekend. Which they call the Weekend Spacing. That's a Martyb number. The "pause" never ever gets shorter for, oh we got a lot of stories today. And it doesn't get longer if they run out. When they run out, big pause. But they didn't say, "oh, let's do a bigger Spacing, we don't have enough stories." It just got big because they ran out. Does that make sense? Does that make sense?

          And I don't know why they do the "pause." Making the stories come out in dribbles. Possibly they want folks to keep checking, checking, going, "oh, did they put up the next story yet?" Not knowing when it will show up, because 93, 91 minutes is hard to remember. So they bring in more traffic that way. So different from the Newspaper. Remember Newspaper? They had Editions. The daily or -- a few of them like New York Post -- the twice daily. They would get all the stories for the Edition, print them all at once. If they had less stories it was less pages. More stories, more pages. But with website, very hard to have more or less pages. So, they don't. They try to have the same number of stories every day -- except, less on weekends. They put up a story, so many times it means another story gets "rejected" -- I would say, almost always. Because of the Spacing. And they have Subs, right now, going back more than a week. Which, so many times they have them going back a week, sometimes 2 weeks. So many of which, they get rejected because there weren't enough pages to print them on. Because of Spacing. That's O. K. That's O. K.

          • (Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:02AM (11 children)

            by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:02AM (#793402) Journal

            You appear to be more of an idiot today than you normally are. You do remember that i was EinC for several years don't you?

            The pause between stories is there for several reasons. The most important of these is that we have to spread the printable stories over a 24 hour period; our community is worldwide and we should not be catering just for one particular region, The submissions arrive in peaks and troughs, but we can guesstimate pretty accurately how many usable stories we will get over a specific time period. This is the figure that has the most influence on our daily output rate. It is reduced at weekends because we tend to have fewer submissions and the editors also have lives to live. But if the submission count drops significantly then it is the editors who have to go out and find new stories. That is the reason that we sometimes have to resort to the use of software bots to find new material.

            Several years ago when we received far more submissions than we do today the rate of publishing to the front page could be as little as 30 minutes between stories. This requires not only a lot more submissions to choose from but also a significantly increased effort on the part of the editorial team. Today, the team manages to put out 12-15 stories per day during the week, and perhaps 10-12 at a weekend. This isn't a fixed number but by choosing a spacing between stories each editor knows when stories are due out and we can manage the editing task without all having to log on at the same time.

            But increasing the number of submissions alone does not always lead to an increased output. Many submissions are repetitive and have already been discussed, others are personal diatribes - often clearly showing the submitter's political views - and, of course, some are simply not good enough to be published. Putting out pleas for more submissions does have a short term effect but proportionally also leads to an increase of submissions that are below the desired standard. If we don't occasionally ask for more submissions then we do not get them, but asking sometimes only results in a disproportionate increase of unusable material. That is just human nature, I'm not trying to blame anyone.

            If anyone thinks that we should increase our output their first action should be to consider volunteering to train as an editor.

            • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday January 29 2019, @06:41AM (2 children)

              by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @06:41AM (#793451) Homepage Journal

              You say I'm an Idiot. But, you were the Chief Editor. And you didn't go to the Editors Chat Room. Interesting. I have a very High I. Q., one of the highest (Montreal Cognitive). And you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure,it’s not your fault.

              The Spacing, they don't decide about it. They have cyber. They must have decided once, now they use the cyber and it comes out exact. Because, very hard for a person to figure out, what time will it be after an hour and a half and 3 minutes goes by. Which as I said, they want it to be hard to figure out. So the folks that "view" won't figure it out. And the cyber does two Spacings. The regular and the weekend.

              Newspaper, they would bring it to the door. And if you left it there too long it might get rained on. Or stolen. Website, that doesn't happen. A story gets Approved, possibly it sits for days after that before anyone can Tweet under it. Or even read it. And somehow that's better than putting it out there as soon as it's Approved. For folks to read, to "reply" to when they want. It's better because of the "views." You get more "views." And you think that brings more money. I don't think so. I don't think so.

              • (Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Tuesday January 29 2019, @09:12AM (1 child)

                by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 29 2019, @09:12AM (#793465) Journal

                If you check the logs, you will see that I spent quite a lot of time on IRC. However, I will admit to spending more time in areas that you were unable to access than the 'Editorial Chat Room', whatever you think that is.

                They have cyber. They must have decided once, now they use the cyber and it comes out exact.

                Wrong. The setting of the release time on stories is a manual action. We can set stories for release days in advance if we so choose to, or we can release a story immediately as might be the case with a Breaking News item.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @11:04AM

                  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 31 2019, @11:04AM (#794478)

                  Come for the stories, stay for the views, do join in, but please, Do Not Feed The Trolls

            • (Score: 2) by Debvgger on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:05PM (7 children)

              by Debvgger (545) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:05PM (#793503)

              I don't really understand why is a pause necessary when a lot of submissions arrive on a burst. If some day there are 20 and next one there are 0, then that's just a random event and I don't think it makes the site or the experience worse for any reason. In fact, maybe it's the opposite, as I may be in a hurry and check the site once then be unable to check again and I may have missed a few stories.

              • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:38PM (6 children)

                by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:38PM (#793517) Journal

                The principle reason is because we are not a traditional news site, but rather we are trying to promote a discussion on the stories that we publish. If you got all your stories at once you might comment on 1 or 2 of them, but you are unlikely to contribute to many others. The paced released allows the community to read, digest and contribute to the discussion before moving on to the next topic. There is nothing stopping you from only looking once a day and then joining in any of the stories that you find, but others can be enjoying a discussion rather than waiting for you. We are not all in the same timezone you know?

                • (Score: 2) by Debvgger on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:18PM (2 children)

                  by Debvgger (545) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:18PM (#793544)

                  I'm not sure I can fully agree with that, but thanks for the explanation :-)

                  • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:02PM (1 child)

                    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:02PM (#793559) Journal
                    I'm happy to chat about the bits you don't agree with, if you wish? Please feel free to offer your suggestions for improvements or tell us if we are getting it wrong.
                    • (Score: 2) by Debvgger on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:24PM

                      by Debvgger (545) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:24PM (#793570)

                      Well, it's just that I don't get why I would be more engaged to discuss something if the submissions arrive from time to time instead of arriving in bursts. If someone checks the site once per day that person's going to read and contribute to the same number of discussions over time. The difference I see is that this person could jump in the discussion earlier. Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe the time zone of the editors makes a big chunk of the readers reach always late to the majority of submissions and that can be considered bad, I don't know. Maybe this information could be shown at some place in the form of "current submissions are being published every X minutes, next one due in Y minutes".

                • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:29PM (2 children)

                  by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:29PM (#793572) Homepage Journal

                  Time zones, always a problem when we make Long Distance phone calls, right? But, a website is not a phone call. Very easy to let the stories wait for the people. Instead of having the people wait for the stories (Spoon Feeding). And maybe you don't know this, more than one story can go on the page -- if it's not too big. And folks can look at the ones they want to look at. And not look at the boring ones. Just like with Newspaper.

                  By the way, New York Post. Started out as evening. Then they did morning and evening. Then just morning. Because folks "read" at different times!!

                  • (Score: 2) by Debvgger on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:34PM (1 child)

                    by Debvgger (545) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:34PM (#793575)

                    "Letting the stories wait for the users instead of the users waiting for the stories" is a nice way of saying what I meant to say, thanks.

                    • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday January 29 2019, @05:19PM

                      by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 29 2019, @05:19PM (#793625) Journal

                      But that would mean holding stories each day for publication the following day, simply so they could be released together, wouldn't it?

                      Currently, anyone can log on and see the last 24 hours worth of stories, which is exactly what you are suggesting, but we would have to set up tomorrow's releases all together later today. That requires 1 editor to do all the stories - a difficult and unreasonable demand on an editor's time - or we all have to log on at the same time to process the stories together. As long as that suits my time zone then maybe I would be happy, but editors in Australia or the US would probably find that a little bit inconvenient. However, as it stands each editor can log on when it best suits them and edit a number of stories for the next available time slot(s).

      • (Score: 2) by Hyper on Monday January 28 2019, @10:17PM

        by Hyper (1525) on Monday January 28 2019, @10:17PM (#793257) Journal

        Add a way to upvote and downvote like stories in Pipedot?

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:01AM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday January 29 2019, @04:01AM (#793423) Homepage Journal

        Personally, I'd rather folks comment on why it's a shit article as opposed to moderating it without explaining. Conversation's kind of our core thing here, ya know?

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by kazzie on Monday January 28 2019, @04:12PM (1 child)

      by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @04:12PM (#793055)

      I'll add my thanks martyb, for the clarification and also the exhaustive history. Much of it I sort-of knew, but it's nice to get some of the thinking behind it.

      The good ship Soylent has a fine crew at the helm.

      • (Score: 2) by martyb on Wednesday January 30 2019, @03:30AM

        by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday January 30 2019, @03:30AM (#793885) Journal

        Much appreciated!

        I updated the story to provide more info as to why we now issue 10 mod points per day. Also added a bit about prior restrictions on moderating and commenting on the same story that have been removed. And that update was prompted in large part by your comment! =) Glad you found it informative.

        --
        Wit is intellect, dancing.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by inertnet on Monday January 28 2019, @02:26PM (6 children)

    by inertnet (4071) on Monday January 28 2019, @02:26PM (#793000) Journal

    Maybe you could hand out (karma / 5) mod points daily, rounded up, instead of a fixed number of 10? And a weekly maximum equal to the user's karma?

    If you would mod a comment differently if you did not know who posted it

    Going with that thought, it would be logical to only allow moderation for users who opt to read comments without seeing who wrote them. Don't think of this as a suggestion, because I don't think that it's a good idea, but it would be logical. Sort of a Vulcan reading mode.

    • (Score: 2) by martyb on Monday January 28 2019, @04:03PM (4 children)

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @04:03PM (#793048) Journal

      Interesting ideas!

      Last one first, it would be all too easy to view the site, say as an AC, and see who posted comments, and then go to another machine, or come back at a later date, etc. and then match up comment text to identify the poster and continue with one's vendetta. I find the concept interesting, but making it work seems... problematical and unlikely to succeed.

      As for mod points being some sort of fraction of one's karma? It seems to me that it would lead to too much of an echo chamber effect, marginalizing those just joining and giving too much 'say' to those who have been around for a while. (Don't pin too much on the choice of words there, go with the concept, okay?)

      In essence, when mod points are handed out, all eligible nicks are treated the same. That seems to be working fine. We want people to have mod points and to use them but they have to have demonstrated some contributions to the site (by earning karma through making story submissions and having comments upmodded) as well as having been around for at least a month. Seems clear to me what abuses those were trying to avoid.

      So, we want mod points to be used and are trying to guide their use in a way that is most beneficial (spread them around).

      Note: I'm struggling to find the exact words to express my thoughts here; hopefully the concepts made it through okay!

      And, thanks for the suggestions! One idea can spark another and something wonderful may come from it... so keep those ideas coming!

      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing.
      • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Monday January 28 2019, @05:11PM (3 children)

        by bzipitidoo (4388) on Monday January 28 2019, @05:11PM (#793088) Journal
        How about using the spoiler concept on authors' names?

        Would want it optional of course. However, not a high priority. I try not to look at the author's names, and if I see them anyway, try not to let that influence me. Works okay.

        Here I always have mod points, mainly because I don't mod much. I mod much much less on the green site, because when I do see something I want to moderate, I usually don't have any mod points thanks their stinginess.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday January 28 2019, @05:54PM (1 child)

          by bob_super (1357) on Monday January 28 2019, @05:54PM (#793122)

          It is useful to know who wrote a comment in many cases, because knowing the usual suspects' take on a topic helps with Poe's Law. We have lots of sarcastic and cynical people around here.

          • (Score: 3, Touché) by stretch611 on Monday January 28 2019, @11:41PM

            by stretch611 (6199) on Monday January 28 2019, @11:41PM (#793313)

            Sarcasm?!?, what's that?

            --
            Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
        • (Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday January 29 2019, @08:09PM

          by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 29 2019, @08:09PM (#793712) Journal

          A spoiler-like hiding of nicknames has a certain attraction to it, but there is already some pretty hairy stuff going on in the comment header code to facilitate comment tree hiding and expansion; I suspect that adding this to the mix would be problematic and far from trivial.

          Thinking about trying to test it in all its possible permutations, on top of all that other stuff that is going on is... strongly unpleasant.

          OTOH, if the community thinks it is worthwhile, and it is deemed practical to implement, then I'll abide by the community's wishes of course and add the experience to my résumé!

          --
          Wit is intellect, dancing.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:29PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:29PM (#793571)

      To me, the main purpose of the names (with the exception of realDonaldTrump) is to be able to follow a conversation (i.e. this seems to be a direct answer to a reply, is the commenter also the GP?)

  • (Score: -1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Monday January 28 2019, @02:58PM (10 children)

    by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Monday January 28 2019, @02:58PM (#793011) Homepage Journal

    I just tweeted at The Mighty Buzzard about, why did you change your story? From, we're giving out Double Down Mods, start Down Modding Anonymous because they're doing too much "trolling." To, we gave out the Double Mods because of one guy. And this "exact" same guy now has many accounts. Uses many accounts. Makes terrible Tweets. And does too many Up Mods, that's the big problem now. And I asked, why did you change your story? That one changed big time. Very interested in, why is there a totally new story?

    But don't get me wrong. As an Actor, I know better than anybody -- sometimes we have to change our story. To keep things interesting, keep folks tuning in. The set-up for the next episode. And a Witch Hunt makes a great story -- something I learned from the great Roy Cohn (RIP!!). Many reasons. You change it because you're smart. Doesn't have to be, someone forced you to lie. Like they've done to so many of my campaign guys. Nothing wrong with changing the story. And we love the story! We are with you, wherever it leads. And it's been a very successful campaign so far. Big donations coming in -- you're not doing this on the Taxpayer's Dime & Time. But don't forget, my FBI is there for you. If you need them. And when you need them.

    But you're fighting a very politically correct war here. And the other thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families. When you get these terrorists, you have to take out their families. They care about their lives, don't kid yourself. But they say they don't care about their lives. You have to take out their families. Think big!

    • (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @03:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @03:21PM (#793021)

      -1 retarded

      Learn to read.

    • (Score: 2) by martyb on Monday January 28 2019, @03:22PM (8 children)

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @03:22PM (#793022) Journal

      I just tweeted at The Mighty Buzzard about, why did you change your story? From, we're giving out Double Down Mods, start Down Modding Anonymous because they're doing too much "trolling." To, we gave out the Double Mods because of one guy. And this "exact" same guy now has many accounts. Uses many accounts. Makes terrible Tweets. And does too many Up Mods, that's the big problem now. And I asked, why did you change your story? That one changed big time. Very interested in, why is there a totally new story?

      Maybe I missed something, but where did we say we were giving out double down mods or suggesting people start downmodding anonymous because they're doing too much trolling?

      There is certainly nothing in the article that I am aware of that states anything like that or makes any such suggestion.

      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing.
      • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Monday January 28 2019, @04:06PM (5 children)

        by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Monday January 28 2019, @04:06PM (#793052) Homepage Journal

        You must not have read the Tweets to your last episode, Moderations & You. Very successful episode, there were hundreds of Tweets to that one. I say successful. Because so many websites, they want folks to Tweet. To put up their photos. Whatever. But you seem to want, less Tweets. Very few photos. Very different.

        "When we moved up to ten points a day to give folks more ability to downmod the same exact guy's garbage and often spam posts.............." The Mighty Buzzard.

        Maybe you don't know, it used to be 5. His Administration changed it to 10, they wanted folks to Down Mod much more -- as he just said. Big announcement at the time. And if you had looked at the tweets to the last episode, somebody tweeted the Link to the Announcement about that. From August of 2017 -- long time ago. Entitled, "welcome new trolls." Being sarcastic because, I wouldn't call it a welcome. It said, too much Anonymous "trolling." Maybe you weren't around or just didn't care. And don't care. You're changing a bunch of things, you don't know what happened in 2017. But it's there, I just looked at it. Thanks to whoever made the Link. And it's very easy to find by Search. You do Search, put the Title, there is the announcement. So easy. If you want to. If you actually want to, right?

        It says, they thought they needed more Down Mods. Because of so many bad people going Anonymous -- they said it was people, not one guy. Now the story is, it's one "guy." Not a bunch of people. It's somebody with many accounts. Not Anonymous. Complete change to the story. And you're not aware, you say you're not aware. O. K.

        By the way, 10 is double of 5. So I call it what it is, Double Down Mods. You don't call it Double Down Mods, O. K., it doesn't matter, you can call it what you want. I'll call it what it is. And, I'm sure, get so many of Down Mods. As I did just for saying, look, they changed their story totally. Anonymous went away, for whatever reason. Now you're going after the so-called "one guy." And all the Down Modders still have double the Down Mods that they used to have. It's a lot for just one guy. So there's a lot of Down Mods left over. And folks, I guess, are bored. They went after fakefuck39. Who, very bravely, continues to Tweet. When he can, I guess. And they're going after me too. So many folks don't like what I say. Or, they don't like me. Because I'm very very rich. They're not. They're haters. They're losers. And they're very envious. They put "Offtopic" when I tweet about the topic. They put "redundant" when I put one Tweet. And they love sending someone's Tweets to, they call it "oblivion." Blocking people from tweeting. For, you said it was a month. Which was news to me. Stopping folks from looking at the list of Fans. Stopping folks from voting. Stopping folks from making Subs. Fun little powers to have, I guess. They're very appreciated -- folks are paying up. Which you, as Treasurer, know more about than anyone. Big bump to the donations. Again, congratulations. Enjoy!!!

        • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @07:49PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @07:49PM (#793191)

          We don't tweet around here, retard. If you want to tweet, go join the bird brains on that other site you love so much.

        • (Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday January 29 2019, @11:29PM (3 children)

          by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 29 2019, @11:29PM (#793824) Journal

          realDonaldTrump (6614) wrote [soylentnews.org]:

          "When we moved up to ten points a day to give folks more ability to downmod the same exact guy's garbage and often spam posts.............." The Mighty Buzzard.

          Quotation marks signify an exact quotation of what was said.

          Here is what was actually posted on 2017.08.25 18:26 https://soylentnews.org/meta/article.pl?sid=17/08/25/2248202 [soylentnews.org]:

          Welcome, new trolls! We're pleased as punch to have you aboard, unfortunately as you may have noticed our moderators are unable to give you the moderations you've been working so hard for. Since we can't really do much about people not moderating more, we're going to be giving out more points so that the ones that do can give you the attention you so desperately crave.

          Moderators: Starting a little after midnight UTC tonight, everyone will be getting ten points a day instead of five. The threshold for a mod-bomb, however, is going to remain at five. This change is not so you can pursue an agenda against registered users more effectively but so we can collectively handle the rather large uptick in anonymous trolling recently while still being able to have points remaining for upmodding quality comments. This is not an invitation to go wild downmodding; it's helping you to be able to stick to the "concentrate more on upmodding than downmodding" bit of the guidelines.

          Also, this is not a heavily thought-out or permanent change. It is a quick, dirty adjustment that will be reviewed, tweaked, and likely changed before year's end. Questions? Comments?

          I fail to see what you claim was stated in that story. In fact, I see what was actually posted got seriously twisted to say something else in your rendition of it.

          Nowhere did it suggest "downmod the same exact guy's garbage". What it does clearly say, and I'll quote it in bold to make it absolutely clear:

          This change is not so you can pursue an agenda against registered users more effectively but so we can collectively handle the rather large uptick in anonymous trolling recently while still being able to have points remaining for upmodding quality comments. This is not an invitation to go wild downmodding; it's helping you to be able to stick to the "concentrate more on upmodding than downmodding" bit of the quidelines.

          The focus and intent was "to have points remaining for upmodding quality comments".

          BTW, I had actually forgotten about that story; thank you for bringing it to my attention. (NB: It would have been helpful to include a link to the story (which you already had in hand) rather than a snarky suggestion to search for it. Now, if I wanted someone to take action on something, and I already had information that would be helpful, I would make darn sure to include it in my request.)

          When I read the story, I recognized it was an important part of the site's history and have updated this story to include it. It provides background on how moderation evolved into what it is today.

          Separately, I don't remember which discussion it was, but about a week ago I saw a comment of yours about spam mods.

          I logged onto our servers and made a query of the database looking at all moderation activity pertaining to your account. It was that investigation which led me to discover the sockpuppet modding. Which, by the way, is a new issue, above and beyond the now-basically-solved AC trolling that the additional mod points were intended to address.

          So anyway, I found 22 of your comments that had been modded spam. Of these, all but 3 had already been reversed. I personally reviewed the remaining 3 and after confirmation by another member of staff, reversed those spam mods for you.

          Next. Yes, I was mistaken on our handling of mod-bombs and I acknowledged and apologized for it in this very story. (I updated the prior story, as well.) It has been something like close to a year(?) since a moderation ban had been issued for mod-bombing. What it was changed to was (1) reverse the errant moderation, and (2) maybe send an admin-to-user message with a suggestion to avoid doing that again. (3) No bans.

          Lastly, You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar [phrases.org.uk]. So far, I have always tried to take the upper road and ignore disparagement, snark, and outright antagonism..

          So, should you have any further issue with moderation, here's a simple request that you can copy: "Hey, it seems one of my comments was mis-modded; would you please look into it? Here's the link: https://soylentnews.org/meta/comments.pl?sid=29810&cid=793052 [soylentnews.org]

          I have strived to remain polite and professional; I kindly ask you to do the same.

          --
          Wit is intellect, dancing.
          • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday January 30 2019, @09:18AM (2 children)

            by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Wednesday January 30 2019, @09:18AM (#793957) Homepage Journal

            I said, why don't you read the Tweets to your other story. Can we call it a story? The Moderations & You. And I did the quote of Mighty Buzzard from those Tweets. I guess you haven't looked at them yet. Which, if you wanted to know what folks had to say, that's too bad. Because how can you know what they say if you don't read what they say, right?

            The "............" means, leaving out. You want the exact, it was the exact. But here's the exact without the leaving out. "When we moved up to ten points a day to give folks more ability to downmod the same exact guy's garbage and often spam posts, I did say in the announcement that the cut-off for a mod bomb would still be five." The Mighty Buzzard. And I left out the part about Cut Off. Because I don't care about that, I wasn't tweeting about that.

            And you found the Welcome New Trolls, that's great. And that's the announcement that Mighty Buzzard was talking about. It says, Down Mod the Anonymous people. As anyone can see. And now he is saying, it was one guy. Not people. A guy with accounts. Not Anonymous. Very different story. I asked about that. He won't say why he changed the story. And you're not saying either. You're calling me a liar. So "polite." So "professional." I didn't call you liars. And I didn't lie. I will never lie to you. I asked, the Administration totally changed its story, why? But there's no answer. Not even, "oh, it's a secret."

            And thank you for looking at the Spam Mods. But it sounds like, you didn't look at everybody's. And you didn't look at, should there be Spam Mods at all. It sounds like you only looked at the ones on my tweets. I've always said, the Spam mod punishes a lot. Puts a lot of power in the hands of the administrators. Who -- as you know -- can do what they want. And I guess, they had looked at some of the many Spam Mods I got. But not all of them -- until you just did. Finding those were wrong. That's great. But I'm not self centered. People think I'm self centered, I don't know why. I'm the least self centered person. I do speak up for myself. But I wasn't just thinking of myself. I was thinking of everybody. And I speak up for others. Because a lot of folks get Spam Mods. The purpose of which, you say it blocks somebody from tweeting for a month. And so many are unfair, I tweet about that a lot. But out of the 22 Spam Mods I got, 3 had never been looked at. For me, for somebody who speaks up for himself. Ethanol-fueled, very popular guy. Very famous, loved by the Administration and by many people. But, he got Spam Mods. And was blocked for a long time because of it. Nobody noticed for a long time. And eventually the Administration did notice. And took away the bad, the unfair Spam Mods so Ethanol-fueled could tweet again. What about somebody -- the Anonymous or the account -- that makes a couple of tweets and gets hit by the Spam Modders? That person, possibly gets blocked for a month. Right? And maybe the Administration never looks at it. I don't think that person will come back. I don't think so. I don't think so.

            • (Score: 2) by martyb on Friday February 01 2019, @03:13AM (1 child)

              by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 01 2019, @03:13AM (#794857) Journal

              Cool Hand Luke put it succinctly [wikipedia.org]: "What we've got here is failure to communicate" =)

              It all started with a genuine question in a prior comment of mine. [soylentnews.org] titled "Citation Needed":

              Maybe I missed something, but where did we say we were giving out double down mods or suggesting people start downmodding anonymous because they're doing too much trolling?

              There is certainly nothing in the article that I am aware of that states anything like that or makes any such suggestion.

              (emphasis added)

              My context for the conversation which followed was with respect to the story.

              I failed to notice the change in context when you referenced a comment in a story instead of a story itself. So I searched, as you suggested, found the story -- https://soylentnews.org/meta/article.pl?sid=17/08/25/2248202 [soylentnews.org] -- and still failed to find the text you quoted.

              I wish I could say hilarity ensued [tvtropes.org], but that was certainly not the case. Had you provided a link to the comment you were quoting -- e.g. https://soylentnews.org/meta/comments.pl?sid=29773&cid=792184 [soylentnews.org] -- I would have seen the change in context, followed along, and there would have been no misunderstanding.

              If you, or anybody else, have any questions on how to go about creating a link on this site; the syntax is:

              <p>Here is a <a href="https://google.com">link</a> to a popular search engine.</p>

              would be rendered as:

              Here is a link [google.com] to a popular search engine.

              Notice, too, that I admitted right up front "Maybe I missed something". A simple link pointing to the story or comment being referenced would have sufficed... no further words would have been necessary.

              I apologize for my misunderstanding and the tone of my response.

              P.S. It is not an excuse, but hopefully provides context. I had an Aunt pass away a week before Christmas. In the past month, two of the staff here have had a parent pass away. I encouraged them to take time off; family first. That, of course, left the rest of us to pick up the slack so we've been stretched thin during that time. Then, in the past week, a co-worker with whom I was friends had a stroke and passed away a few days later. So, let's just say that I have times when I've been 'distracted'. Lastly, dealing with mod bombs and spams and the like is something that TMB pretty much took upon himself. Much in the same way that I have been updating the site funding status slashbox. I am not the treasurer, but I took it upon myself to maintain that using whatever information I could glean from subscriptions. There's too much to do in maintaining this site for one person to do it all, so we each scratch the itch that interests us and that, quite amazingly, seems to cover all the bases. We each do what we can to keep the site running, bringing to bear whatever expertise and time we have available.

              I've had a very full day and am struggling to stay awake. Hopefully not too many mistakes made it through!

              --
              Wit is intellect, dancing.
              • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday February 01 2019, @04:59AM

                by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Friday February 01 2019, @04:59AM (#794877) Homepage Journal

                I'm so sorry. I saw that you were doing the Money, I called you the Treasurer. But you're not the Treasurer. It's always good to have a Treasurer. Somebody that's not part of your Family -- replaceable. So when a lot of Money goes missing he can take the fall. You don't want it to go missing, right? The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. Those are the kind of people I want counting my money. No one else.

                You found the Tweet by The Mighty Buzzard. That's great. I would never do a Fake Quote.

                Your Aunt. And so many other folks dieing. It's a part of Christmas, they did a study. And saw more folks dieing on Christmas than any other day. They call it the Merry Christmas Heart Attack. Otherwise known as the Merry Christmas Coronary. Could happen to me, could happen to you -- anybody. So many folks loose their lives every year. We mourn for the lives lost. We pray for the victims and we pray for their families. But we must go on. We show incredible courage in the face of grave danger. When we eat our Christmas Feast. And whenever we have a HUGE meal or go on a big shopping trip.

      • (Score: 3, Funny) by kazzie on Monday January 28 2019, @04:19PM (1 child)

        by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @04:19PM (#793060)

        Well, he is famous for his alternative facts...

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:08AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:08AM (#793365)

          So true. He probably legit believes this is tweeting

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @03:23PM (11 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @03:23PM (#793023)

    As a very occasional poster here (but I do read SN every day) I've never understood or engaged with the moderation system. I rarely log in to my account (because my browser is set to delete all cookies when it shuts down, and I don't have to log in to read stuff, or to post as AC).

    However, the system as described seems very complex, and I wonder if it's worth it. Not for me, it isn't.

    What I find annoying is having to click to read the hidden comments. IMO there should be a big, friendly button on every page, just below the summary, marked "Show all comments! (But you may regret clicking me.)" And it would be remembered for the session, using a cookie.

    I'm quite happy to scroll past comments I don't want to read, as I do for various other sites I visit daily.

    An AC from the UK

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @03:54PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @03:54PM (#793042)

      maybe i am doing it wrong but thru trial and error i have figured out to select at the top in the two boxes the same numbers, that is the first number is a "-1" and the second one is the biggest one that is selectable.
      not doing the server a favor (i guess) but this is how i get the most text to read ?

      also "AC forever"!

      p.s. can we maybe get a collective karma for "Anonymous Coward"? it seems a waste to mod on "AC" if it doesn't reflect in a "value" (e.g. karma).

      • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday January 28 2019, @04:05PM

        by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @04:05PM (#793051)

        Maybe a cumulative (or week-to-date?) karma score for AC could be calculated and put in the footer text. Though I'm not sure if it's wanted badly enough for someone to code it...

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by bob_super on Monday January 28 2019, @06:00PM

        by bob_super (1357) on Monday January 28 2019, @06:00PM (#793128)

        I mod AC comments based on their contents, and my opinion that they need to be promoted or hidden.
        It's not a waste, even if nobody gets a pat on the back.

        Last time someone ran the stats, AC was the leader in up and down mods, I believe, with a lot more up than down. Yay for ACs who contribute!

      • (Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Wednesday January 30 2019, @10:02AM

        by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Wednesday January 30 2019, @10:02AM (#793965) Homepage Journal

        August 2017, The Mighty Buzzard said something that's very true. He said, Anonymous isn't one person. It's a bunch of folks. And someone will say, that's not the exact of what he said. No it isn't, it's not exact. But I think it's what he meant. I have to say, I think. Or they'll give me a Pinocchio. And I don't like Pinocchios.

        And he's right about that one. If you think about it, Anonymous, what if it was one person? Then it's not Anonymous anymore. Then it's, "oh, that guy we call Anonymous." Or a lady, right? That didn't happen, that's not going to happen. It's a bunch of folks. Who, sometimes they tweet something very smart. Or very nice. And sometimes, not so smart. Or not so nice. And that can happen with one person. But it happens so much more with a bunch of people.

        The Administration wants more Down Modding. And less Up Modding. And with your idea, very easy for Anonymous to get Negative Karma. Be blocked for a month -- they call it Algorithm. And be tweeting with Negative Score -- the -1, otherwise known as below zero -- after that. Some many folks would love that. But I don't think that's what you want.

    • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday January 28 2019, @04:03PM (6 children)

      by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @04:03PM (#793047)

      That's interesting. My personal experience is that on the Green Site, I read many articles, very occasionally posted an AC comment, but never felt the urge to create an account there. When I found this site (some time after the slashcott), I made an account almost immediately, and have ended up subscribing too. I got on board with the moderating, but then I'd seen it used so often on the Green Site that it was quite familiar. (Plural of anecdote is not 'data', etc.)

      As to your "show everything button" idea, have you tried using the threshold/breakthrough settings between TFA and the comments? Set the second drop-down menu to -1 and click 'change' to show everything. Not quite one-click, but I suppose we're not Amazon...

      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday January 28 2019, @05:58PM (5 children)

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday January 28 2019, @05:58PM (#793125) Journal

        If AC makes a user account, they can just browse at -1/-1 forever.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
        • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday January 28 2019, @11:38PM (4 children)

          by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @11:38PM (#793310)

          The AC question said they have an account, but as they clear browser cookies regularly, they tend not to bother logging in.

          Your suggestion may be useful for others, though.

          • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday January 28 2019, @11:38PM (3 children)

            by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @11:38PM (#793311)

            * AC in question

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:13AM (2 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:13AM (#793367)

              Well accept this as another +1 vote for having a grace period to edit a post (5 minutes or until a reply is posted?)

              • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:17AM (1 child)

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:17AM (#793370)

                s/well/we'll/g
                echo "sigh"

                • (Score: 2) by kazzie on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:31PM

                  by kazzie (5309) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:31PM (#793513)

                  That'll be another +1 then, I presume.

                  {stops to proof-read post three times before clicking submit.}

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @03:33PM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 28 2019, @03:33PM (#793027)
    Personally I think that people found to be using sock puppet accounts to mod their own posts up should have their accounts deleted and their IPs banned from the site. It's just doucheness at a very high level and is toxic to the community. Play by the rules or don't play at all.
    • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday January 28 2019, @07:10PM (4 children)

      by acid andy (1683) on Monday January 28 2019, @07:10PM (#793170) Homepage Journal

      I get the sentiment but how would we know the IP is really theirs? Not everyone has a static IP. They could be using a proxy or we could wind up blocking an ISP IP that then stops another Soylentil posting here.

      How about instead making the moderation completely transparent so everyone can see who did the upmods and downmods? I like the idea very much myself but just throwing it out there. It would likely create even more division, resentment, vendettas and tribalism than already exists in the site.

      --
      If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
      • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday January 28 2019, @07:12PM (3 children)

        by acid andy (1683) on Monday January 28 2019, @07:12PM (#793173) Homepage Journal

        Shit--that was supposed to read "I don't like the idea very much myself"!

        Never enough coffee...

        --
        If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
        • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday January 28 2019, @08:56PM (2 children)

          by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday January 28 2019, @08:56PM (#793218) Journal

          Or maybe the "don't" was just dissolved in the acid. :-)

          --
          The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
          • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday January 28 2019, @09:11PM

            by acid andy (1683) on Monday January 28 2019, @09:11PM (#793225) Homepage Journal

            Sounds as good an explanation as any.

            --
            If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
          • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday January 28 2019, @10:36PM

            by acid andy (1683) on Monday January 28 2019, @10:36PM (#793270) Homepage Journal

            Or maybe your demon redirected waste heat from my RAM chips into bit patterns representing six backspace characters that erased it. ;)

            --
            If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by insanumingenium on Monday January 28 2019, @07:13PM (1 child)

      by insanumingenium (4824) on Monday January 28 2019, @07:13PM (#793174) Journal

      As a good actor, I occasionally browse this site from a public IP assigned randomly (DHCP), blocking me for my neighbors shitposting ain't right. Conversely, at work, I share a static IP with many other people, blocking me for my boss's shitposting ain't right either.

      If I was a bad actor, I know enough to make my IP change absolutely at will, an IP ban wouldn't stop me.

      In short, IP bans aren't effective, and are rarely/never worth the effort.

      • (Score: 1, Troll) by realDonaldTrump on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:06AM

        by realDonaldTrump (6614) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @03:06AM (#793405) Homepage Journal

        Too late! And, too bad. They already made the effort. And they're already Banning. They call it IP Karma. And they don't tell you, "oh congratulations, your IP Karma is tremendous, so beautiful." But you'll know when it's terrible. You'll try to tweet, you won't be able to tweet. Try to write in your Journal -- you can't. They'll tell you, "oh, you can't Post to this Page." You go to vote, you want to look at your list of fans -- you can't. "Oh, you're not allowed to use this Resource." And they don't say IP Karma. I asked the Administration about that one -- no answer. But, I think it's IP Karma.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Pino P on Monday January 28 2019, @03:46PM (3 children)

    by Pino P (4721) on Monday January 28 2019, @03:46PM (#793039) Journal

    In the grand scheme of things, an errant mod now and then is not going to affect things that much. So I don't get too bent out of shape should my karma drop.

    Unless you just registered, and the first moderation to a comment on your account is an accidental negative moderation. This changes your karma from the starting value of 0 to -1, which in turn changes the starting score of your comments from 1 to 0, making it less likely that moderators will see your other comments in order to correct the problem. This affected my account.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Monday January 28 2019, @04:12PM (2 children)

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @04:12PM (#793054) Journal

      In the grand scheme of things, an errant mod now and then is not going to affect things that much. So I don't get too bent out of shape should my karma drop.

      Unless you just registered, and the first moderation to a comment on your account is an accidental negative moderation. This changes your karma from the starting value of 0 to -1, which in turn changes the starting score of your comments from 1 to 0, making it less likely that moderators will see your other comments in order to correct the problem. This affected my account.

      Ouch. That's an edge condition with a painfully sharp edge!

      I'm glad you persevered!

      That's really ugly and I have no easy solution off the top of my head. Mayhaps you could have mentioned it on IRC or sent an email to admin (at) soylentnews.org but I'll admit that's a big ask of someone who is also new to the site.

      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing.
      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Monday January 28 2019, @09:01PM (1 child)

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Monday January 28 2019, @09:01PM (#793221) Journal

        A simple solution would be a starting karma of 1 instead of 0. That way you'd need two accidental downmods without an upmod in between to trigger that behaviour, which is far more unlikely. While a truly bad poster will likely collect two downmods quite fast.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:34AM

          by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:34AM (#793478) Journal

          Start new accounts with a karma of 1 sounds... brilliant! Should be a simple enough coding change and cannot off the top of my head think of any downside.

          If you are reading this and are in the situation described above (initial comment was mismodded and you are stuck at -1 karma), post a reply to this comment. We can investigate and upmod your reply here to get you out of the "karma hole".

          --
          Wit is intellect, dancing.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday January 28 2019, @05:01PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Monday January 28 2019, @05:01PM (#793083) Journal

    Thank you for all your hard work on making SN actually work.

    It's probably not a completely thankless job, but I suspect you don't get as much thanks as you (collectively everyone responsible) deserve.

    So: Thanks!

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Monday January 28 2019, @09:31PM

    by Sulla (5173) on Monday January 28 2019, @09:31PM (#793228) Journal

    Here's an extreme and contrived example. I open a story and see it has 15 comments all of which are currently scored "1". I have not moderated yet today, so I have my full complement of 10 mod points to use. I mark all 15 comments as "Funny" and click "Moderate". As I am trying to use more mod points than I have, only some of the mods take effect; 5 of those moderations just drop-on-the-floor and are ignored. No big deal. No penalties or anything; the excess is just ignored.

    This is completely unacceptable behavior and anyone doing this to day old articles to improve their moderation ratio flogged in public. But I suppose that in the name of general decency, peace among soylentils, and friendship, we should impose upon ourselves some common sense limitations and not punish people who have done this in the past and instead only look forward.

    I think in this situation we should take the advice of people with good ratios, of which I just so happen to be at ~97%, and show leniency.

    --
    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
  • (Score: 1) by Sulla on Monday January 28 2019, @09:33PM

    by Sulla (5173) on Monday January 28 2019, @09:33PM (#793231) Journal

    Registered users get that +1 on their posts, they can get that additional +1 later on if they have a good score. You can turn off that second +1, but it would be nice to be able to voluntarily decline the first. I would like as a registered user to be able to have my posts start at 0 if I so choose.

    --
    Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
  • (Score: 3, Touché) by stretch611 on Monday January 28 2019, @11:29PM (1 child)

    by stretch611 (6199) on Monday January 28 2019, @11:29PM (#793302)

    The intent of moderation limits (be they for mod bombing or sockpuppeting) is to restrict the amount of skewing that a personal vendetta can bring to bear. Complaining about moderation in the discussion is "Offtopic" and is often modded that way. We're still trying to find out what works best for these.

    If I complain about comment moderation in this article would I still be moderated as offtopic?

    --
    Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
    • (Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:29PM

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:29PM (#793688) Journal

      If I complain about comment moderation in this article would I still be moderated as offtopic?

      Only if you complain about the moderation of your own comments. You are, however, free to complain about unreasonable downmods of my comments. =)

      But seriously, that is an important clarification. How about this, instead:

      Complaining about moderation of your comments is "Offtopic" and is often modded that way.

      Better?

      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing.
  • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:02AM (3 children)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:02AM (#793321) Journal

    I'll echo previous sentiments and say thank you for all that you do and for your hard work.

    One thing I'd highlight:

    The current thinking is that some kind of limit would be established (maybe per day and per week) where attempts to exceed that would be ignored. Say the daily limit was 4. Much like the contrived example above with an attempt to perform 15 Funny mods, any attempt to moderate beyond the daily limit would just be ignored. The moderations up to the daily limit would take effect. If you think I've been especially witty today and try to upmod 5 of my comments, I will get 4 of those and I'll just have to wait for someone else to come along, recognize my incredible sense of humor, and leave it to them to take care of that additional moderation!

    In the previous thread, I wrote about the importance of separating out moderation of individual posts (which is partly designed as a simple filter for good content) from karma (which should be a longer-term reflection of the community's view of a user).

    To my mind, no user1 should be able to affect user2's karma by 4 points per day. That's already too much to my mind (if I understand the basic karma cap to be 50). I think user1 affecting user2's karma by 1 point/day is plenty -- perhaps 2 points at the most. Why not just put a limit on karma effect rather than limiting moderation as much? Mod bombing and sock puppetry would be much less effective if user1 can only affect user2's karma by a small amount each day. (Obviously there are always ways to game the system, but any attempt to do so in such a system would likely be more obvious.)

    I'm not sure I've modded a particular user up or down more than 4 times in one day -- perhaps I have, but it's rare. Yet I definitely think some users might have posts that deserve that number of mods in a day -- they don't, on the other hand, necessarily deserve a huge karma bump or a huge karma decline because of a single other user on one day.

    I wrote about this idea of separating out karma effects from individual post moderation a bit on the other thread, and it got some attention and some other posts on the topic. It seems these are related goals for moderation, but they aren't quite the same thing. I don't know what's easy or hard to implement. Just my two cents, though.

    • (Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:44AM (2 children)

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:44AM (#793481) Journal

      That is a VERY interesting idea. There is something nagging at me that there is some edge or corner case where there may be issues, but I can't think of anything specific ATM. Need to think about it some more after I have had some coffee!

      Thanks for the suggestion!

      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing.
      • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:59AM (1 child)

        by acid andy (1683) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:59AM (#793486) Homepage Journal

        It sounds fair in theory but I think it would need a fair bit of fine tuning. You might find that given the small size of the community, there aren't enough people modding for someone's karma to accurately reflect the popularity of their posts anymore. I don't know.

        --
        If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
        • (Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:17PM

          by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:17PM (#793683) Journal

          Agreed. The devil is in the details.

          Currently, nick1 could upmod enough comments by nick2 in one day to boost nick2's karma by 10.

          So... just pick a number from 1 to 10! =)

          But seriously, so far this month, we've averaged 350-500 mods per day. Also, most people use only a few of their mod points each day. So, it seems, that most of the moderation is already pretty well distributed. Whatever is chosen,m it should be easy to remember and to understand. Something like this:

          No matter how many of a user's comments you moderate, your impact on their karma is limited to 2 points per day.

          Has an element of K.I.S.S. [wikipedia.org] to it.

          (Do remember that users earn 3 karma points when a story they have submitted is accepted and posted to the site.)

          Just tossing that out for discussion; feedback welcome!

          --
          Wit is intellect, dancing.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by engblom on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:59AM (1 child)

    by engblom (556) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:59AM (#793485)

    This site has a few trolls that are not even hidden behind AC. Yes, I look at you MichaelDavidCrawford, theRealDonaldTrump especially. These two have been spamming this site with nonsense and I am growing tired of visiting this site. Several times I have considered to abandon this site. I just hope someone takes care of this problem so the discussion can be a bit more ontopic.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by acid andy on Tuesday January 29 2019, @11:09AM

      by acid andy (1683) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @11:09AM (#793487) Homepage Journal

      If they really bother you that much, you could add them to your Foe list (or even Friends list, as you're not using it), then click the Edit Preferences link, click the Comments tab, scroll down to the People Modifier and set Foe to -6 and never be irritated by their contributions again.

      --
      If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
  • (Score: 2) by Debvgger on Tuesday January 29 2019, @11:38AM (1 child)

    by Debvgger (545) on Tuesday January 29 2019, @11:38AM (#793494)

    The interesting thing is that -1 comments are usually not that bad. Yes, many swasticas and people commenting on the political scumbag of the time. But among these, there are many SUPER INTERESTING comments whose only problem is that go counter the main groupal opinion.

    • (Score: 2) by martyb on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:25PM

      by martyb (76) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:25PM (#793686) Journal

      I read with a threshold of -1 so I see all comments, with an intention to rectify any errant mods I see.

      Sadly, I don't have enough time to read all the comments on this site, so I could well have missed the ones you've seen.

      Should you ever see a comment unfairly modded to -1, please mod it up!

      --
      Wit is intellect, dancing.
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