I was going to post this to a particular story, but thought this might generate more attention and discussion as a general submission.
Seriously, what is going on with all these troll mods? Just because you disagree with someone, thus earning a "disagree" mod, does not mean that person is a "troll." To steal a definition from Urban Dictionary:
An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.
Just because you disagree with someone, does not mean they are trying to do the above. Be faster on the "disagree" and slower on the "troll." Under such abuse, it is hard to have a good discussion and, in itself, is trollish behavior by "generally disrupt[ing] normal on-topic discussion." Other than people disciplining themselves, a concerted effort to police such abuses, or making moderation logs public on the bottom of a comment where the score is shown now, I'm unsure of what to do about. As it stands, it is getting increasingly ridiculous to read what discussion is here on any topic remotely controversial, and is expanding outside of even those. It is starting to drive me away from the site, and I'm somewhat confident it is doing the same for others. I'd be interested to see what others think about the depth of the problem, if they even believe it even exists at all, and what solutions you all have for it.
[Ed note. This story is published exactly as received. First off, it bears repeating that complaining about moderations in the comments often leads (rightly) to an off-topic moderation. That is a contributing factor to my decision to run this story. Secondly, moderation is something that I on occasion have found I've fat-fingered and given a different moderation than expected. Thirdly, in the grand scheme of things, a comment's moderation is — relatively speaking — small potatoes. It is NOT a measure of your IQ or value as a human being. or standing in the community. Just accept that stuff happens and that as likely as not, someone will be along to moderate it the other way. Which is a good opportunity to say: PLEASE USE YOUR MOD POINTS! Lastly, if you think a comment was moderated in error, then send the CID (Comment ID) link e.g. "(#876543)" in an email to admin (at) soylentnews (dot) org. Keep in mind however that we are all volunteers here and there most likely will be a delay between when you send out an email and when we can get around to it. --martyb]
[Updated: 20190823_111312 UTC See comment from JR who far more precisely and eloquently expressed the idea I was attempting to. I concur with his assessment. If I want people to upmod a comment of mine that I believe was unfairly downmodded, then I need to be willing to upmod other's mis-modded comments. For perspective, so far this month, anywhere from ~150-~350 mod points were used in any given day. It bears repeating: use your mod points!]
Related Stories
I was going to post this to a particular story, but thought this might generate more attention and discussion as a general submission.
Seriously, what is going on with all these troll mods? Just because you disagree with someone, thus earning a "disagree" mod, does not mean that person is a "troll." To steal a definition from Urban Dictionary:
An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.
Just because you disagree with someone, does not mean they are trying to do the above. Be faster on the "disagree" and slower on the "troll." Under such abuse, it is hard to have a good discussion and, in itself, is trollish behavior by "generally disrupt[ing] normal on-topic discussion." Other than people disciplining themselves, a concerted effort to police such abuses, or making moderation logs public on the bottom of a comment where the score is shown now, I'm unsure of what to do about. As it stands, it is getting increasingly ridiculous to read what discussion is here on any topic remotely controversial, and is expanding outside of even those. It is starting to drive me away from the site, and I'm somewhat confident it is doing the same for others. I'd be interested to see what others think about the depth of the problem, if they even believe it even exists at all, and what solutions you all have for it.
[Ed note. This story is published exactly as received. First off, it bears repeating that complaining about moderations in the comments often leads (rightly) to an off-topic moderation. That is a contributing factor to my decision to run this story. Secondly, moderation is something that I on occasion have found I've fat-fingered and given a different moderation than expected. Thirdly, in the grand scheme of things, a comment's moderation is — relatively speaking — small potatoes. It is NOT a measure of your IQ or value as a human being. or standing in the community. Just accept that stuff happens and that as likely as not, someone will be along to moderate it the other way. Which is a good opportunity to say: PLEASE USE YOUR MOD POINTS! Lastly, if you think a comment was moderated in error, then send the CID (Comment ID) link e.g. "(#876543)" in an email to admin (at) soylentnews (dot) org. Keep in mind however that we are all volunteers here and there most likely will be a delay between when you send out an email and when we can get around to it. --martyb]
[Updated: 20190823_111312 UTC See comment from JR who far more precisely and eloquently expressed the idea I was attempting to. I concur with his assessment. If I want people to upmod a comment of mine that I believe was unfairly downmodded, then I need to be willing to upmod other's mis-modded comments. For perspective, so far this month, anywhere from ~150-~350 mod points were used in any given day. It bears repeating: use your mod points!]
What started it all:
On 2019-08-24 13:02:01 UTC an accusation (https://soylentnews.org/meta/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=33244&page=1&cid=884682#commentwrap) was made that a Journal Entry "It would have been posted before 6 hours ago" (i.e. posted at approximately 2019-08-24 07:00:00 UTC) was deleted by a member of the staff at SoylentNews. The circumstances surrounding the making of the Journal Entry are elaborated upon in this comment. (https://soylentnews.org/meta/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=33244&page=1&cid=885191#commentwrap)
I have been with this site since before it went live. Its founding principal has been the making available of a forum whereby the community can submit stories — and post comments — to predominantly tech-related items. Further, each logged-in user has been made available the ability to post entries to their Journal.
As Editor-in-Chief I took this allegation seriously and performed an independent and in-depth investigation. My findings are presented below.
Note: It is not lost on me the futility of trying to prove a negative. It is for good reason that the criminal justice system in the US is founded on the principle of "innocent until proven guilty." It is not up the the accused to vindicate themselves, but for the accuser to bring sufficient evidence to bring about conviction.
NB: In the course of writing this, I discovered a bug in how the site displays wide elements contained in an ECODE element. It incorrectly wraps the text onto the next line (leading to a jumbled mess) when it should, instead, provide horizontal scroll bars. Please accept my apologies for its current appearance.
Executive Summary:
An in-depth investigation making use of: external resources, the UI presented by SoylentNews, and ad-hoc queries of the site database (DB) failed to locate a "smoking gun", i.e. found no clear proof that a Journal Entry was posted to the site and subsequently deleted by anyone other than an author.
It is my estimation that the user submitted an entry, but the site failed to receive and save it correctly. In other words, the user tripped over some kind of bug be it in the site's code, communications between the user and the site, or something else.
Recommendation: When a user completes making a Journal Entry and submits it to the site, the code should respond by using the newly-created journal parameters in conjunction with the normal journal-loading code to present the Journal Entry to the user as confirmation that the entry was properly received and saved. That is to say, affirmative feedback of receipt, storage, and accessibility of the Journal Entry.
I have a couple things to bring to the attention of the community concerning site funding and comment moderations. As always, if you are not interested in these matters, feel free to skip past this one; another story will be along shortly. Otherwise read beyond the fold for an update.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by aristarchus on Friday August 23 2019, @06:26AM (12 children)
I post this here as frist Piste, of the top, so to speak, so that other soylentils will not have to suffer the agony and embarrassment of being modded down, simply because they said something stupid and alt-right that everyone knows is stupid and wrong, and so everyone disagrees with, because it is stupid and wrong.
Mod me down instead! Because you disagree with me, and I am right! You know in your heart that I am correct, and your curmudgeonly retrograde opinion is seriously deficient! Mod me instead! I will return the favor, when you least expect in, in your shower posting about counter-culture Nazis, or how you lost yet another court case, or how you are khallow.
Sad, so sade. SoylentNews weeps for our less intellectually gifted members, but they are ours, so we have no choice but to mod them down.
Godspeed, Soylentils!
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @07:00AM (8 children)
A lot of talk from one of the worst offenders.
(Score: -1, Informative) by aristarchus on Friday August 23 2019, @07:11AM (6 children)
I will troll mod you, since I disagree. But seriously, Soylentils are not even trying! The Balance is being returned to the force, which means the entire FA is an Imperial Death Troll!!!
(Score: -1, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday August 23 2019, @08:03AM (1 child)
C'mon! Soylentils! You can downmod aristarchus more than this, because you disagree with me! And because I am right! Mod down the truth! Somebody has to do it, or the truth will get out! Mod down the aristarchus because he is correct, much as he downmods you because you are not! It is a fairy balanced falsie equivalency, no? You are disappointing me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @09:31AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ic28JniSYY4 [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday August 29 2019, @12:53AM (3 children)
Ohhh! The lesser known, but equally coveted, -1 Informative mod! Better than a +5 Troll, almost. Seriously, this says something about SoylentNews, and not something good.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 29 2019, @04:08AM (2 children)
That's a difficult one to get. Most butthurt folks go directly for -1 Troll rather than -1 Overrated.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday August 30 2019, @08:34PM (1 child)
And, oh! I got a -1 Funny, as well! Can you keep up, Buzzy?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 31 2019, @05:01AM
Indeed I can not. You have bested me, sir.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 23 2019, @03:36PM
A lot of talk from one of the best examples of the victimhood double standard.
All he did was post his own opinion. And look at all those troll mods! I thought that was supposed to be bad.
(Score: 4, Funny) by NPC-131072 on Friday August 23 2019, @02:18PM (2 children)
Hello fren, I also have this problem. The progressive approach is to improve the language [foxnews.com] around moderation. Rather than "troll" we could have "disagreement involved person". Is there any need to suggest that someone sits under a bridge just because you disagree with them and risk offending actual trolls? Those of us on the morally superior left cannot support a potentially upsetting mod like "troll" in 2019, especially if it's routinely used by knuckle-dragging, racist Trumptards to attack the correct point of view.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @02:43PM (1 child)
Hello fren, I always thought troll was racist and body shaming myself.
Since realDonaldTrump has disappeared, I think you're SN's satirist in chief now.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 24 2019, @12:55AM
> Since realDonaldTrump has disappeared, I think you're SN's satirist in chief now.
That's kind of sad. He doesn't have rDT's method acting ability, and his schtick is eye-rollingly simple, to the point of being insulting. Good satire should leave people scratching their head vis-a-vis the applicability of Poe's Law.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Friday August 23 2019, @06:26AM (188 children)
I think that this moderation is in part a side-effect of the hyper-partisan nature of debate in society today (whether Politics, Abortion, Gun Rights, LGBTQI, Climate, Vaccination or any number of other topics). People have now got to the point where they genuinely believe that there is an objective "right" and "wrong" view on all subjects, rather than differing opinions. For that reason, anyone who continues to disagree with them, even after their position has been explained, must be a troll!
We have also seen that some groups (particularly far-left groups on University campuses) have found it more effective to shut down, usually through disruption, speech that they disagree with rather than debate it on its merits. The troll mod is sometimes being used in that manner.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Valkor on Friday August 23 2019, @06:34AM (25 children)
we're conditioned to think there is a right or wrong way of thinking.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Friday August 23 2019, @07:33AM (23 children)
There IS a right and wrong way, unfortunately it's those pushing the wrong ways who usually want them to be perceived as THE UNDISPUTABLE TRUTH(tm)
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday August 23 2019, @08:40AM (9 children)
Please define truth.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Bot on Friday August 23 2019, @08:47AM (7 children)
Experience is what I am doing right now.
If you discard solipsism it is what you are doing right now.
Real is what can directly or indirectly influence experience.
Truth is a statement that describes reality.
This sidesteps the misconception that real is the infrastructure, which has you wondering about the implementation of the universe down to QM and below, and which you can fully discover but you can't prove you fully discovered.
Question, in the field of chess games what is real for the chess piece? A. the state of the board. Not the wood which makes up an implementation of the board.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 23 2019, @09:20AM (3 children)
No it is your experience that would be questioned if I didn't disregard solipsism. You can disregard my experience if you consider solipsism, but as long I I do it, my experience is the one that is without doubt.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday August 23 2019, @03:39PM (2 children)
"If you discard the solipsist hypothesis..."
better now?
this is what programming in java does to meatbags
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 23 2019, @05:06PM (1 child)
No, not better. You obviously completely missed my point. Had you changed "you" to "I" in your sentence, then it would have been an improvement.
And BTW, I don't program in Java.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @07:23PM
I am not Bot, that is to say the individual typing this is not in any way the same individual who is identified by the user ID "Bot". Perhaps the Java programming comment was self-referential and utilizing third person conception to allow a greasy bag of mostly water to pretend to be made of sterner stuff.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 23 2019, @04:03PM (2 children)
Those who refuse to learn philosophy, are forced to repeat it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Funny) by J053 on Friday August 23 2019, @08:23PM
During a summer session, just before fall semester starts.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by aristarchus on Saturday August 24 2019, @08:04AM
For those who are less eruidite, it was an American philosopher, George Santayana, [wikiquote.org] who said:
But the most recent iteration is:
But philosophy, it never repeats, it is a constant recycling of ideas, so that Ibn Sina's "Falling Man" can become Descartes "Cogito", and re-emerge as "Neo" in the Matrix, the Whale and Petunia in "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", the focal character in "Vanilla Sky", and Mike "Pence". Mike Pence dare not think, therefore (ergo!), he does not exist.
So, back to our topic, once you discount solipcism: but why would you do that, since it means you do not exist?
(Score: 3, Funny) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday August 23 2019, @03:04PM
Only if you promise to wash your hands.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday August 23 2019, @11:58AM (11 children)
Indeed there is. And guess what? Your corrupted, 3/4th-ignorant bastardized version of Christianity isn't it. The complete lack of self-awareness in your posts is incredible.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Redundant) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 23 2019, @02:43PM
🙄
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday August 23 2019, @03:51PM (9 children)
The source is quite clear on the matter. Matthew 10:34
"Non veni pacem mittere sed gladium..."
This is quite clear, and BTW sword does not mean war
"... veni enim separare hominem adversus patrem suum, et filiam adversus matrem suam, et nurum adversus socrum suam"
but separation. Same chapter, the explicit instruction to give up when they don't LISTEN to you (which is worse than not believe of course).
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Touché) by PinkyGigglebrain on Friday August 23 2019, @06:28PM (6 children)
ラテン語が読めない人のために英語の翻訳を追加してください
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 3, Informative) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday August 23 2019, @07:16PM (2 children)
And then stopped before 36.
NIV Link [biblegateway.com]
Link to the chapter in the Vulgate: [biblegateway.com]
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @11:26PM (1 child)
How about the original Hebrew?
(Score: 2) by martyb on Saturday August 24 2019, @05:57PM
Original Hebrew? That's all Greek to me!
=)
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday August 24 2019, @02:34AM (1 child)
You should just say, "Don't quote the Bibble as if it is real".
Bibble is fiction.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday August 24 2019, @04:45AM
Even worse, he has a goatee [darthsanddroids.net]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Thursday August 29 2019, @07:12AM
that would be racist against non-English-speakers. You must live under quite an oppressing firewall if you can't google up the passage reference.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 24 2019, @12:57AM (1 child)
You don't seem to understand that you've ended up entirely on the wrong side of that divide though...oh well. The ol' murder manual did say many would be fooled in the last days...
And, Jesus (heh) Latin is an ugly, awful language. I much prefer the Koine. Even English is better.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Bot on Saturday August 24 2019, @07:26PM
G. Guareschi
Note, I don't fully agree. The work of Seneca and Cicero comes to mind.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday August 23 2019, @09:43PM
There may be a right and wrong way of thinking for some topics.
For most topics, thinking that you or anyone has the right way is most certainly wrong.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Informative) by c0lo on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:09PM
Just how far do you go on this slope?
Do you also think that there's no objective reality which one can use to establish the value of truth of a statement of facts? (i.e. truth or lie, there all are, like, just opinions, man [soylentnews.org])
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Funny) by coolgopher on Friday August 23 2019, @06:35AM (34 children)
Okay admins, could we have a review of whoever modded the parent Troll and Flamebait?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @06:42AM (29 children)
If my suggestion of putting who did what in the score section below was followed, said accountability would already be there. At least it would allow everyone to know who the idiot mods, sockpuppets, virtuous truth-seekers, mod-bombers, etc. are in a giving situation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @07:02AM (1 child)
We already know who they are, TRDT and Aristarchus sockpuppet quite often. Death Monkey moderates anything they disagree with was Troll, Flamebait, or Offtopic.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Friday August 23 2019, @07:17AM
aristarchus never sockpuppets. On occasion, when the occasion presents itself, he may change IP addresses in order to up-mod a sorely abused AC post, which may or may not be by the same poster, in order to bring balance to the force. But, sock puppetry is the ability to mod based on a second username, which aristarchus never does. So what aristarchus does is not sock-puppetry.
So, now, admit, AC, your concern is ingenuous, a pretext, a mere bauble designed to distract us from the fact that your comments suck. That is why they are modded down, and everyone knows it, even if it is incomprehensible to you. Idiot.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Friday August 23 2019, @07:43AM (5 children)
I prefer that the 'authors' of mods remain anonymous to the general user base, because I think on the whole it is better than making those authors public. While it would increase accountability, I can also see that it could increasingly lead to 'tit for tat' modding when someone gets their nose out of joint.
It could also lead to some being fearful to downmod a comment, fearful of the reaction. For example: "Hey user_xyz! I saw that you downmodded me. You sonofabitch - if you had any balls you'd have simply replied to my comment and rebutted it with a good argument, but you're too stupid and gutless to put your own opinion forward. Incel!". I browse at -1 because I want to make my own mind up about everyone's contributions, but I would prefer not to have to wade through a sea of comments like my example just to get to the interesting content.
(Score: 5, Informative) by janrinok on Friday August 23 2019, @08:51AM (4 children)
Which is precisely why we do not show who modded whom.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday August 23 2019, @09:11PM (3 children)
And so now we play the "Find the Spam mods" game. Looks like two, maybe only one and a bunch of requested troll mods, but definitely the aristarchus has been Spam modded again. And I wasn't even off topic, as I sometimes tend to be!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 23 2019, @11:56PM (2 children)
Nope, you haven't. I just checked. No mod bombs either. Seventeen downmods today but no more than four from any one person and if they're sock puppets they've been playing one hell of a long game.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday August 24 2019, @12:10AM (1 child)
Seventeen downmods, and sixteen of them are mine? I guess I was
asking for them. Mission accomplished! Point made!
Thanks for checking, Buzzard!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 24 2019, @04:02AM
No, seventeen just for you. The next closest contender only has six for today, so that's a respectable accomplishment.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by hemocyanin on Friday August 23 2019, @03:12PM (20 children)
Modding is a form of commenting -- attaching mods to usernames is reasonable.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 23 2019, @03:49PM (10 children)
Reasonable, yes. Asking for a site-wide devolution into revenge downmods, also yes. Just because something is fair doesn't mean it's smart.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @07:05PM (9 children)
Except you've already got that going on. The problem is that instead of people knowing who is doing what, they are just assuming who it is. Basically anything pro-right wing is assumed to be modded up by one group and down-modded by another. The opposite is true for pro-left wing. The abuse is already there, its just everyone will know instead of going by what they think.
I think that is fairly obvious but a blatant example is the one about Sulla and their response to it. Assuming both statements are true, somebody out there believes Sulla downmods everything but Sulla hasn't done any. If that is how the AC is reacting, no small step to downmodding all of Sulla's in retaliation.
Plus, with your logic, this site should not show usernames at all. That is just asking for a site-wide devolution into revenge downmods. Can't downmod your enemy's comments if you don't know it was theirs.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday August 23 2019, @07:14PM (7 children)
It also makes following a conversation extremely difficult.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @08:41PM (6 children)
And yet no attempt to differentiate ACs is made either, despite also making following conversation difficult. Yes, I get there is a pro/con balance as to why, just as there is for public vs anonymous moderation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mykl on Saturday August 24 2019, @12:57AM (5 children)
Differentiating ACs (assuming you are talking about carrying that over between browsing sessions) is functionally equivalent to them having an ID, but without mod privileges.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 24 2019, @04:04AM (4 children)
Not if you give them a per-story ID identified by their ipid but only showing the index number they are in the array for that story and only that story. First AC gets AC1, second gets AC2, etc...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Mykl on Saturday August 24 2019, @04:42AM (3 children)
On a per-story basis I can see that being very useful. Would this require a whole lot of extra data storage though (recording IP addresses against posts/stories in perpetuity), or is this something already done?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 24 2019, @04:57AM (2 children)
I think it'd be the least overhead to just build the array at render time. The comment data is all already pulled by then so it shouldn't be a big deal to sort by time and build an array of ipids and add the array's index to 'Anonymous Coward' in the rendering. A hash of some sort would probably be faster but it's late and I can't build the mental data structure right now. The only real question is should ACs be zero indexed or start at one?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Saturday August 24 2019, @03:06PM (1 child)
(-1, Flamebait)
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday August 25 2019, @02:30PM
It's a fair cop, guv.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 24 2019, @12:00AM
If we were actually seeing that happen regularly on the mod bombs admin page, you might have a point. As it stands, you're not even close to right. There are so few instances of 3+ downmods of the same person in a 72 hour period that the list has never been too long to manually scan for actual mod bombs (which almost never happen lately).
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @04:16PM (6 children)
If you ban anonymous posting or moderating, only the shameless will post or moderate.
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Friday August 23 2019, @05:05PM (5 children)
No one has suggested that ACs cannot or should not post. Secondly, ACs cannot moderate - you have to be logged in to get mod points.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 23 2019, @05:11PM
Of course you can post as AC also when logged in.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @05:14PM (2 children)
The point was if you publicize who has moderated, it is the same as banning anonymous posting: Only those with nothing to lose by exposing themselves will then moderate.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @07:28PM (1 child)
Two things. First, posting is different from moderating. Commenting only affects your own speech, and attaching your name or not changes its visibility. Moderation affects other people's speech and its visibility.
But if that is truly how you see it, then give moderators a choice to do it publicly or anonymously. If they do it anonymously, then, like AC posting, it carries less weight. If they do it publicly, then, like attaching your name to a post, it gives it a boost. Of course, people will claim, that will lead to abuse, but then everyone will be aware of what is going in those cases and abuse will be easier to catch because of said public naming, rather than living with suspicion or waiting for the private decision of one of these [soylentnews.org] (at least I think that is who gets the email) that may or may not garner a response after a decision is arbitrarily made in private by whomever gets there first. And besides, the anonymous system itself invites abuse.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Saturday August 24 2019, @03:37AM
You have a point. But it would make things more complex yet, like Copernicus's universe evolved until it broke.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @10:22AM
Actually, BarbHudson was requesting exactly this - that ACs should not be speakers, in the conversation - quite recently.
She also (intentionally?) misconstrued the social impacts of anonymity, though, and to my displeasure I now count her among the probable detrimentals, alongside khallow and so on. But I guess it makes sense that she would put so much weight in the social currency her ID carries, and that she'd be unable or unwilling to consider that when she posts just to inflate her social currency, she isn't contributing positively to the group. Edifying but a little sad, like finding out why your pet was sick, because now it's dead.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @12:45AM (1 child)
I strongly disagree.
Overall, in the long run, the mods get things right more than they get it wrong. Most of the people, most of the time, make the right call on moderation.
Today, across the web, we have a problem with Censorship. Gone is "Disagree with what you say but defend your right to say it", and in is "Disagree, find hateful, move to de-platform, shame, encourage others to ban, move all mentions of Nixon to the filtered topic list." It's getting pretty tiring to not be able to talk about anything without accusations of "Leftists" and "Nazis" flying about in every topic, everywhere, on every site. To some extent, moderators may be exhausted by it, but "revealing their ballots" will just is to draw them into the Great Internet Flame War, and end up basically discouraging moderation altogether.
At some point, we'll develop the collective (Dawkin's) memetics to get through the current civic-socio-economic rabies which the public sphere has developed. But only if we're allowed to talk about it.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @10:24AM
Utterly correct.
Parallel content and content-grading makes for a smoother mechanism. Linked identities brings in social pressures like the ones you point out - and others - that ruin the system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @06:42AM (2 children)
Mods are secret, unless undid by the TMB. No one can know who modded who what, or people might begin to hate Sulla, only because he has taken the name of a Roman Patriot, and supporter of business. And, Abuse? Just because you did not realize the trollishness of your comment? Troll tears turn to stone on exposure to daylight. Good luck with that. I completely believe that every troll mod cast on SoylentNews is more than deserved, especially those given to me. Posting AC, for obvious reasons.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday August 23 2019, @07:06AM (1 child)
I haven't performed a downmod in over a year now. My ratio of performing ups to downs is somewhere north of 95%.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @07:21AM
As if, with the current Administration, we could trust a Republican not to lie.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by kazzie on Friday August 23 2019, @11:55AM
In all seriousness, some site-wide totals of moderations per day (X insightful, troll, Z funny) could be an interesting read.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @06:49AM (6 children)
What does the I stand for? Incel?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @07:29AM (5 children)
Intersex, although whether that is a reference to sex, gender, or both is somewhat disputed.
(Score: 3, Informative) by hendrikboom on Friday August 23 2019, @10:16AM (2 children)
The Dutch language has two genders:
* male or female
* neuter
(Score: 5, Funny) by kazzie on Friday August 23 2019, @11:56AM (1 child)
That was neuter me.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday August 23 2019, @09:15PM
Careful what you ask for. "Neuter" can also be a verb.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Friday August 23 2019, @04:06PM (1 child)
Hmm, I am inter sex. Aren't most people?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:17PM
Hmmm, I remember a time when I wasn't inter sex. I was more like frenetically into sex, to be sincere.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by inertnet on Friday August 23 2019, @08:46AM (4 children)
This happened to me a couple of times. Modded a troll just for having an opinion. It tells me that some people here are doing exactly what you're describing.
What's frustrating is that you can't have a discussion about it. Because modding is anonymous, but also because opinions are obviously so far apart that discussion would probably be pointless.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 23 2019, @04:17PM (2 children)
I mostly get modded Troll when people don't realize I'm making a joke.
I'm fine with that, good humor lives along that edge.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @10:26AM (1 child)
To my eye, you're mostly modded troll when you're trying and failing to be funny.
Ever meet a 14yo who runs in, shouts a bunch of words, runs out, and thinks they're Monty Python when they're just being disruptive?
That matches what I've seen of your posts, and the mods to them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @10:53AM
You forgot to add "Get off my lawn, you Death Monkey! We don't need your kind around here."
Early onset is so tragic, all the moreso since it is undetectable by the patient.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by acid andy on Friday August 23 2019, @06:59PM
Disclaimer: I must confess that I'm not familiar with your username and don't know the nature of your beliefs, so the following comments are generalized and could apply to anyone that's been modded troll for something they felt was an expression of their opinion.
I disagree. I live in hope that it absolutely is possible to have a discussion about it. To do so though, you're going to have to be willing to be very open about the deepest motives that give rise to your views. This is difficult for some people because they've avoided even introspecting to that degree.
The distance between the opinions is caused by a difference in perspectives. For someone who exists with a very different perspective to understand your views, you are going to have to work very hard to qualify those views with the priorities, motives, values and experiences that determine them. Although not essential, it may also help when writing a reply if, in return, you make some effort to try to understand the perspective of your opponent and to demonstrate that in your response.
I've seen downmods, that I agree with, of posts that are more or less expressions of strong opinion: when I agree with the downmod it's usually because the post concerned is scathing about one they disagree with but without convincingly qualifying why they are justified in making such criticism.
Oh, and if your perspective consists of treating the non-consensual infliction of suffering as an end rather than a means to an end in the greater good, then I'll probably mod you troll no matter how much you explain that perspective!
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DutchUncle on Friday August 23 2019, @01:31PM (70 children)
A serious problem: Some things are matters of opinion and/or taste; other things really do have objective "right" and "wrong" answers (or more complicated multiple "acceptable" answers). Categorization is blurred; issues of fact are dismissed with "That's just your opinion" while issues of opinion (or "belief" or "taste") are stated as fact. For example, I just messed up the parallelism by reversing the order of discussion; is that bad taste, poor writing, or deliberate juxtaposition?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @02:48PM (1 child)
My girl loves it in juxta position!
(Score: 2) by Bot on Friday August 23 2019, @03:55PM
Since you're so much into details you might want to specify whose "it" it is.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 23 2019, @03:51PM (67 children)
Troll/Flamebait/etc... do not mean Factually Incorrect. That ideally warrants a response and citation but if you absolutely must vent your spleen then do it with Disagree.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday August 23 2019, @08:43PM (55 children)
And how silly is it that we don't have a mod for "factually incorrect" (a somewhat objective criterion, though how it is applied can often be subjective), but we have a bunch of mods for things are expressing a subjective opinion?
I understand what you just said as one appropriate response, but the question is what follows that. If I see one post that's been modded up as "informative" (with no citation of anything) or even "insightful," and then another post points out with a clear citation that the first post is full of crap, how am I supposed to moderate the first post? "Overrated" is I guess the closest, but that's not really the problem. The problem is that the post is objectively WRONG -- and worse, it's is WRONG but has been upmodded for spreading false information.
That's not just "overrated." In my opinion, spreading objectively false information is serious issue and deserves a specific downmod. But our choices now are "troll" if we think the person was knowingly spreading false info just to get other people riled up (often a very subjective categorization), "flamebait" but only for posts with a particular tone that are unlikely to be modded up as informative in the first place (also often subjective), or "overrated," which is just blah.
I'm not saying our current moderation can't handle this, but I find it somewhat bizarre that we have a moderation for "informative" (generally a somewhat objective characterization), but no similar downmod to counter objectively incorrect information.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 24 2019, @12:04AM (53 children)
A Factually Incorrect mod would be the opposite of helpful if your goal is to promote conversation and spread knowledge. Downmodding something for being incorrect means it stands less of a chance of being corrected. The correction may not mean much to the person you're correcting but it very well could to everyone else who reads it. You don't fight falsehood with censorship or punishment, you fight it by speaking the truth.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:01AM (3 children)
And now we have the classic Zerg Rush problem, the Ur-example of K-type vs r-type strategizing: it's easier for a Zerg swarm to do their thing, on a unit by unit basis, than the more K-type Terrans or Protoss. There's not enough time or interest to counter with a well-reasoned, well-thought-out response every time you or one of your fellow-travelers decides to shit on the rug for laughs.
And I think you know this, and are being disingenuous as hell here.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 24 2019, @04:08AM (2 children)
Eat a dick. You know perfectly well why we don't play god with moderations on staff. It's been discussed openly so many times that I'm actually a little sick of hearing myself talk about it.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday August 24 2019, @08:24AM (1 child)
You haven't answered her question. What does GOD need with a Starship? [youtube.com] And after The Mortiarity Broussard so blatantly intervened in a God-like fashion on the Original Aristarchus Alt-Right Submission, lo these many years ago? And you are sick of hearing about your editorial interference and right wing bias, you gulper of offal? Please, recluse your self from the discussion. That pissant Trump Attorney General had the guts to do it.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 24 2019, @02:24PM
My voice holds no more weight in #editorial than anyone else's, ari; I'm not in the editorial hierarchy at all. The only stories I have any more say in than anyone with a good argument does are Meta stories. You should try that sometime, by the way. Having a good argument that is. It's more deeply satisfying than witty trolling.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:14AM (48 children)
YOU FUCKING TROLL. YOU MOTHERFUCKING TROLL. YOU IGNORED THE PLAIN MEANING OF WHAT I SAID AND ARE PRETENDING TO HAVE AN ARGUMENT ABOUT SOMETHING ELSE.
I SAID I ACKNOWLEDGED YOUR RESPONSE WAS CORRECT -- YOU ***SHOULD*** PROVIDE THE CORRECTION. I AGREED WITH YOU, YOU FUCKING TROLL. ("I understand what you just said as one appropriate response, but the question is what follows that....") I was TRYING to talk about what should follow up with future moderation after someone already posted your suggested correction.
But no, I know you're not stupid enough not to read what I wrote. You're just an asshole.
The point of moderation is to, as you said, deselect posts that are NOT HELPFUL to community as whole. A post that is LYING or even one that mistakenly is PROMOTING FALSEHOOD is NOT helping this site, you fucking troll.
I hereby rescind my offer to contribute any more money to this site, you fucking troll. I defended you and this site repeatedly over the past week from those who would say this site is promoting bullshit authoritarianism. And here you are, saying it would be inappropriate to downmod LIES!
I wasn't even trying to legitimately reform the moderation system here. I was just pointing out something it was theoretically lacking. But I don't care how much good you do for this site, I cannot support a site with someone like you who would argue in favor of promoting lies as a major presence.
FUCK YOU!
Good bye folks. This time it's for real. If I could get my $200 contribution back, I'd ask for it, you trollish authoritarian ass.
I have better things to do with my life than waste it arguing with you schmucks, and I'm leaving before I go insane or senile or whatever happened to Aristarchus.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mykl on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:31AM (40 children)
Wow.
My interpretation of TMB's message was that it's far better to engage in debate with someone who you believe is wrong about something that to just slap a "you're wrong" sticker on their post via a 'Factually Incorrect' mod. That's an easy thing to do, but it doesn't help to explain to them why they are wrong.
Looking from the outside, I really don't think that TMB was trying to troll you there. A shame that you may never see my post since you may have already left.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 24 2019, @12:08PM (39 children)
I have logged back in for one reason only.
After taking the night off, I admit I was curious to see what the reaction was. I posted a journal entry (much more calm and reasoned than this post here) about an hour after my post last night explaining my thoughts in more detail. I declared I was never coming back. In my journal entry, I criticized many of our editors and admins, particularly those who do not stand up to The Mighty Buzzard.
My journal entry has apparently been deleted. Free speech is dead on this site. I doubt this post will be allowed to stand either. Apparently, I finally went far enough that Mr. Buzzard felt the need to delete my journal entry, so anything is possible now.
To those who replied to my post: in this thread, TMB has explicitly told us that he wants to live in a post-truth era where downmodding false things isn't required. In another response, he told us all that he's fine with posts that contain anti-Semitic rants, and we shouldn't bother downmodding them. (Maybe if they're at +5, we might think about it, he says.) Those of you who think I overreacted need to read his other replies in this thread. You also need to carefully read Janrinok's disturbing opinions too, which I called out in my now non-existent journal entry. And contemplate why my journal entry is now gone. Note that my journal entry contained no personal attacks, other than (if I remember correctly) calling out some of the admins here "self-righteous assholes" once and asking them to stand up to TMB and call out his bullshit. Apparently that was over the line.
Perhaps TMB will declare that my journal entry was somehow deleted by some mysterious "database error" or something. I don't believe anything he says anymore, though, and neither should you. I guess I finally told the truth here, called out the admins mostly for their inaction, and they figured if I was leaving anyway, they'll just remove a little bit of "bad press" since I had done so much in the past week to defend this site, which I now realize was in error.
I don't even know how to express how disappointed and shocked I am to be treated this way (i.e., the deleted journal entry) by a community I tried to support. I hope this post lives long enough for at least some to see. I'd try posting it in another journal entry, but I have no confidence anything on this site will stand.
I had meant to say a proper goodbye, but this will have to suffice.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 24 2019, @12:37PM (25 children)
I've been on here for over 6 hours today - I never even saw your journal post arrive, let alone be deleted. Are you sure that you posted it successfully? I, for one, would have liked to have seen it.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:02PM (24 children)
Yes, I'm sure. It would have been posted before 6 hours ago; my guess is TMB likely "took care" of it as soon as it came in, before anyone could see it. But as I never contemplated that such a thing would happen here, I have no idea what happened.
I know for certain it posted because I even tried to post with "comments disabled" (just because I am tired of trolls, but I had never tried that before), which seems to be an actual option posting a journal, but it won't let you post that way. (Strange that an apparent "option" for posting doesn't even work.) So I explicitly had to enable comments in order for the post to go through, which it then did. I just did the exact same thing with a test post, which got the same error and then posted fine.
But I don't feel like wasting my time arguing with you. I'm sure you and TMB and everyone else will claim to have no knowledge -- that's typical of oppressive regimes which want to rewrite history. Once you enter this sort of world where people and posts just disappear, you can't believe anything that is said. So I don't even know whether to believe you or your post anymore.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:24PM
I'm not here to argue with you - if you posted it then I would like to see it. I will most certainly NOT be pleased to hear that posts are being deleted because of their content if there isn't a legal requirement for us to do so. Additionally, you have paid a significant sum to support this site and the fact that you might have said something in haste does not justify removing your journal entries on a whim. Your journal is for you to say whatever you wish - indeed that is the primary reason that they exist at all.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:29PM
And since I'm apparently still here, because despite the fact that I am appalled at a number of things, I once cared about this site, and my heart is sick at the idea of what it is becoming...
Well, since I'm still here, let me just say that trolls don't always come in the same manner. Milo, for example, is a self-declared troll, who liked to argue by being calm and apparently reasoned, while he was spouting stuff that was intended to disrupt, to annoy, and to inflame. In one of my first extended exchanges on this site, I called TMB out for his views on the Milo protests. TMB is in favor of free-speech, so he claims, but he's not in favor of similarly disruptive responses to said speech. I don't agree with everything protesters have done on college campuses, etc. -- in fact, I've explicitly argued against a number of their actions in my posts here. But I respect their right to counter disruptive speech and actions with other disruptive speech and actions. Similarly, I believe that it should be okay for moderation here to counter disruptive speech. I have never argued for suppression or deletion of any posts, only better communal moderation to help us sort through the crap and call out those who are spewing it.
Just because speech has the veneer of civility doesn't mean it is civil. Those who have defended TMB here in response to my admittedly ranty and extreme comment last night are missing the point. This is TMB's modus operandi -- try to act calm and civil, while insincerely using argumentation strategies that obfuscate or ignore criticisms. It was very clear that TMB was saying that it's better to respond to incorrect information with facts, rather than just summarily downmodding something. I acknowledged that in my first reply to him (and elsewhere on this thread). His reply was to reiterate what he clearly already was saying and to ignore the fact that I was asking about subsequent moderation and how we flag posts as actually good for the community vs. useless to the community.
Those who are defending him -- think about his argumentation strategy and realize what's really going on here. He wants to maintain the veneer of civility while arguing disingenuously. What he's really saying is: "I believe it's fine for objectively false information to be shown with high scores on this site." (Note if you read my posts: I wasn't even necessarily arguing for downmods -- I was even just suggesting informative neutral mods to flag incorrect comments for the good of the community.) What he even explicitly said in another post is that he's fine with offensive ethnic-centered rants to have high scores on this site, though maybe we might consider modding them down if they get all the way up to +5.
TMB agrees with Milo's playbook, and he's using it. Appear calm, say stuff that most people will agree with, even if you're ignoring the points of others, and so make yourself look level-headed while steering discourse in your direction. That opens the door then to advocate for increasingly concerning things, because you are ignoring the subtleties of the criticisms against you.
And to his one other reply in this thread -- I completely agree that moderation should NOT be about rewards and punishment. He's pulling something else out of the totalitarian playbook there, because that was actually something I said explicitly in my now missing journal post and twisting it to serve his own agenda. (Even more shocking, and evidence of the culprit who deleted my post, I suppose.) I was trying to argue in that journal entry that we need to look beyond moderation as "punishment" for bad posts, which is mostly what downmods are used for, and actually provide informative mods about the value of posts to the community. I have repeatedly argued for decreasing the influence of single-post moderation on community standing (especially from the perspective of a single user mod-bombing another) in order to remove the benefits of mod-bombing and to promote moderation here that actually scores quality posts highly and those that are not useful to the community lower.
That TMB is so brazen as to coopt the actual language from my deleted journal and use it here to claim to "take the high ground" -- that's the sort of crap that caused me to have such an extreme reaction last night to his obvious bad-faith argumentation (if you pay attention to how he does it). I just never believed he'd take it to this level.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:31PM (21 children)
Can you give me a more precise time (and tz) for the occurrence, or even a more accurate window? 'Earlier this morning' gives me far too big a timeframe to pin it down to anything in particular.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:48PM (20 children)
At this point, I really don't care, because I will no longer believe anything you or any admin says here, no matter what excuse you come up with.
But if you legitimately don't believe TMB is a disingenuous jerk who needs to be stood up to, maybe you won't believe he's capable of crap like this. I already said it was roughly about an hour after my ranty post (with all the all caps) last night. I don't have a more precise estimate than that.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 24 2019, @02:10PM (8 children)
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 24 2019, @02:27PM
Dollars to donuts he hit Preview instead of Submit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 24 2019, @04:49PM (6 children)
Well, look, if you don't find it extremely coincidental (i.e., beyond belief) that a journal entry that I explicitly declared would be my last interaction with this site, and where I called out TMB for really bad behavior, calling the other admins to action is the ONLY time that I can recall in years of interacting with this site that I've ever seen a post appear and then disappear... if you think that's just some sort of weird coincidence, or you believe TMB's bullshit that I would somehow just hit "preview" and forget to submit what I intended to be my last interaction with a community I've supported for years... if you really think that any of that sounds likely, you're already a lost cause.
But I already came close to saying that about you in the journal entry too, so all I'm getting here is response from the specific two admins I called out, who are both trying to act like I just did something stupid, so it must be an error: "nothing to see here."
If there's one thing I hope I've accrued over the years here is that I don't make shit up. I try my best to seek out facts. And I've gone to the bat for this site against those who would criticize it many times. My post history is there for all to see. I do NOT make such an accusation against an admin in this community lightly, but it beggars belief to claim this will turn out to be some random error that just HAPPENS to coincide with the perfect opportunity for an admin to abuse power and protect himself by deleting a post from a user who is leaving the site.
(Yes, I'm still leaving. Whether that has an impact on your "investigation" or not, I don't care. I'm sticking around to see the ridiculous spin you guys may try to put on this. I want to make sure that everyone knows what you're doing. I'm already out a bunch of money recently for putting my faith in a site administered by a troll, but I took my chances. I was willing to just leave last night, but this sort of action is an egregious offense against the community, and that has tipped me from "I don't care what happens to this godforsaken place" to "People need to know there's serious internal problems here before I depart.")
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 24 2019, @05:15PM (4 children)
You have had a response from 1 of the 2 admins that you called out. I'm still waiting to see what we discover.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 24 2019, @05:52PM (3 children)
Jesus Christ, really? You aren't even aware of what you wrote [soylentnews.org] as your initial response? "I've been here and didn't see it, so nothin' to see here. Are you sure you aren't an idiot and actually didn't post it?" And you said that despite the fact that my first post clearly stated a time frame that wasn't within the time frame you claimed to be present in your post.
I'm willing to believe your post was more in ignorance than actively trying to be a snow job, but realize that your first reaction was PRECISELY what the "other admin" has basically already concluded.
I knew TMB was a troll. I wasn't aware until this thread (before our present discussion) how much you seem to support trollish behavior. So no, I don't trust you. I don't trust anyone here anymore. Sorry, but that's gone.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 24 2019, @06:42PM (2 children)
I didn't say:
What I did say was:
by which I was asking if the system had accepted it properly and I did not suggest that you were an idiot. Did you access it from the front page or did you do all of your editing from the editing pages and then press submit? Can you give us more details of the sequence that you tried to deselect comments or re-enable them again? Did it appear at the top of the journal list - in which case we might find evidence of it in the list of journal posts? If you are not prepared to answer simple polite questions then it will significantly hinder our chances of finding out what happened to it.
We have had a couple of minor hiccups since the system went down a few days back. These are nothing unusual but, for the moment, we are looking at each one. Bytram had a problem downloading pages at around the same time that you stated that you posted your journal. Bytram is at work and so we cannot get all the details from him until he gets home, logs in (which might not be today) and we get to discuss the problem. We also need TMB to look closely to the DB logs to see if there are any artefacts that your post left behind i.e. at what stage of the posting sequence did it go missing? If you are expecting an immediate answer then you will be disappointed.
If you have already reached your own conclusions then so be it, and if you are still in a mind to you can go on your way. I am trying to be polite, civil and to find out what happened. I haven't got any irons in this fire, so if you don't care what we find I will wish you well for the future and I am genuinely sorry that you are leaving us. You have supported this site well, as you have claimed, and I think that the community will be the poorer for your leaving.
I have no idea what you wrote about me in your journal - nor do I care - but I do care if there is a problem with posting in general. I also care that you are making serious yet unsupported allegations and claiming that there is some kind of cover up going on behind the scenes. I can only shake my head in disbelief as to what you think we spend our time doing here. But that doesn't prevent me from offering my help in finding out what occurred.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @09:22PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday August 29 2019, @06:07AM
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday August 25 2019, @02:08PM
I find it highly unlikely that you genuinely believe I shied away from an argument of any sort.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Sulla on Saturday August 24 2019, @03:43PM (1 child)
That doesn't fit what we have seen of TMBs actions in the past. There is nothing you can post that is more scathing than your typical Aristarchus journal, and he does not block those. He appears to much prefer to continue to argue which he cannot do if you don't make a JE. Not that i think he couldn't have done it, i just think he would prefer wait so he can stir the pot more.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 24 2019, @05:00PM
Aristarchus is a known troll. While I appreciate his good moments, it's clear he's a troll a lot of the time. I sincerely hope that my post history here demonstrates that I am not. While I admit to very rarely losing my temper (literally like half a dozen times over the past three years), and perhaps in another dozen or so posts over the years, I may have gone overboard in responding to a person acting like a jerk by acting too much like a jerk in return, 99% of my thousands of posts here have been trying to support the community, to be informative and offer facts, and to promote quality discourse.
So, yet another rant from Aristarchus is unlikely to garner much concern. Maybe a journal entry from me might have been perceived as carrying more weight and seemed more threatening or sowing more dissent. I don't know.
To me, it does seem a stupid thing to TMB to do, but the last time I "took a break" from this site, I didn't come back even to read comments on my post for a week, and then I did take a break for several months. Maybe he didn't expect me to show up again this morning. Which I wasn't planning on doing -- I logged out last night and navigated to the site this morning without logging in, just curious to see what comments may have appeared on my journal. Except it wasn't there. I tried searching. No dice. I thought maybe there was something that determined which journal entries could appear in the "list," so I logged in, and it was gone. Hence my posts in this thread.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Saturday August 24 2019, @06:27PM
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Sunday August 25 2019, @03:11AM (7 children)
I said I would look into the site DB when I got back home and I have done so.
I'm a bit rusty on the schema for the site, but persevered and worked things out and came to a few conclusions:
I have, so far, found no evidence of any tampering or deleting of someone's journal story.
IDs for the journals table are a key field and appear as monotonically increasing values; I found no gaps in their sequence.
I did find a journal entry posted by AthanasiusKircher titled "test" and to which some comments were posted... one of which explained that he was testing what happens when trying to delete a journal article.
Be aware that I am making an intended distinction between there being no untoward deleting of a journal article and there being (so far) no evidence found of such activity.
Rest assured that I will continue to look into this and will report on anything I find. Unfortunately, I had an exhausting day at work and need to get some shuteye, and tomorrow has all the markings of being even busier at work, so don't expect anything more for a day (or more, though I will certainly make the attempt as soon as I can).
tl;dr: So far, no impropriety has been found with the journals posted to this site, but investigations are not over and will continue; I will report back with what, if anything, I find.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 25 2019, @06:14AM (6 children)
I'm not supporting either side of this conflict, but deleting the rows with the highest values for an auto_increment field in MySQL and then committing that transaction before any other transaction issues a query against that table will just reuse the deleted values because those row values are still unused and increment. In addition, you can manually reset the starting value of the row to whatever value you want. Also worth mentioning is that the person or persons capable of doing such a change are probably in the position to change whatever logs they want on the machine as well. But that's what paranoia will do to you.
(Score: 3, Informative) by martyb on Sunday August 25 2019, @09:54AM (5 children)
Thank you for the reply!
If you look closely, you will note my choice of language was deliberate to allow that exact possibility (deletion of an entry and subsequent reuse of the now-available-again ID), but I was not certain of that possibility; I appreciate your confirmation!
Something that got edited out as I was trying to express what I had found so far (and while fighting a strong urge to got to bed and sleep) was about the test journal entry. Though I could not find the actual text of the 'test' journal entry (that would be in the journal_text table), I did see reference to such an entry in the journals table which provides an "abstraction", if you will, in which various time stamps as well as local and foreign keys exist.
NB: DELETED can come in two forms. An actual removal from the database (DELETE * FROM ... WHERE ...) is one of them. The other is flagging an entry as to be ignored and thus making it effectively deleted (UPDATE TABLE foo SET visible = FALSE where ...) and, yes, those are general, conceptual examples and are not intended to refer to anything in our actual database.
It is way too early for me to be up, but the upshot is that — for the test journal entry — I found references to said journal entry, and what appear to be comments made to that test journal entry, but did not see the *text* of that journal entry. Whether that is because it really doesn't exist or because I'm still getting up to speed in some respects with the schema is still open to discussion... I am making no statement or assumption one way or the other with that!
With respect to the purported deleted journal entry, I have NOT, as yet, found any vestiges of it: neither an abstraction of it in the journals table, nor the text of it in the journal_text table, nor a comment made to such a journal entry. That one is a bit murkier to sleuth out as there is much more data to sift through. I am explicitly claiming "absence of a finding (so far)" rather than a "finding of an absence" and am remaining open to the possibility that I may just have missed something.
That all said, to summarize I *have* found evidence to support that a test journal entry was made, comments made to it, and that that test journal entry was deleted (as the user said they had done). I have not found any evidence of a separate, non-test, journal entry being made, deleted, or any comments having been made to it.
Related, if somewhat tangential, I have lost count of the number of times I thought I had finished processing a story submission and posted it to the site only to find that I had *previewed* the story, but had as yet not clicked the submit button, so it was still sitting in a browser tab awaiting final release. I am beginning to suspect that something like that may have happened here. It is just that, a suspicion, among all the other possibilities I am keeping open as to what may have happened.
My comment to which you replied was made after a *long* day at work and a meeting afterwards when I would rather have just had a bite to eat and gone to bed (I was *tired*) and this comment is made way too early in the morning before I have even gotten up for the day. Today promises to be even busier than yesterday. But, the community deserves a timely, honest, and independent examination so I have posted this comment with my updated findings. NOTE: I have no illusions that a sufficiently-skilled and motivated person could hide their work to preclude discovery, but Occam's razor suggests caution with that line of thinking.
That's it. My brain is tired and I am going back to bed. I hope this has been informative and helpful. Thanks again for your reply and for the salient information you provided.
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday August 25 2019, @02:53PM (2 children)
MartyB - I will only say that I thank you for your effort. I would like to say that I of all the admins here, I put most faith in you. Though I must admit that I truly do not trust anyone here anymore. But I am willing to believe that you put in an effort to do the right thing here. As I said in my deleted journal entry, this place is too good for you. I encouraged you to find another place to volunteer your time.
Yes, I made a test journal entry to figure out whether the system responded as I recalled it did when my journal entry went missing. Yes, it had a few comments despite the fact that I actually hit a "delete" link somewhere, which asked for confirmation for the deletion, but then didn't delete the entry. (I'm not sure why.) After I saw it started to accumulate comments, I tried another method and used the checkbox to attempt to delete it (I just wanted to get rid of an obvious "test" entry), which did work.
As for the actual missing journal entry, I've already stated some things, but let me repeat the following facts:
(1) I intended this journal entry at the time to be my final interaction with a site I've supported for several years. I find it highly unlikely that I would have accidentally hit "preview" and just left.
(2) As I mentioned in the above posts, I encountered an error when I tried to post the entry with "comments disabled" (which I had never attempted before). It throws up an error that says you can't do that. I find it weird that such option appears in the drop-down list, but is apparently disabled. Since the error appears at the top of the page, I at first didn't understand why the journal wasn't posting. So, I probably hit "preview" and then attempted to "save/submit" several times (I think the journal system says "save" not "submit," but I'm not going back there now) before I even noticed the error. I was very clear on which button did what, since the "submit/save" button wasn't working for me at the time.
(3) Once I saw the error message and figured out what the problem was, I deliberately made the change to allow all comments. Then I made an additional comment at the end of my journal entry about my annoyance that the system has an option for "comments disabled" but doesn't actually allow you to do it. (I also encouraged all the trolls I knew would show up to have at it in comments, since I didn't care anymore.) I hit "preview" then to make sure my new comment was added correctly at the bottom of my journal entry, with correct formatting (as I used either italic or bold for that latter portion of my message). I then hit submit. I remember all of these steps so clearly, because I had never encountered this particular obstacle before in posting a journal entry (or anything) on this site. And I distinctly remember the change in screen when I finally hit submit, since I had deliberately previewed the final change and then hit the submit button. And I had previously encountered (as I said) several times when it wasn't doing what I wanted to due to the "comments disabled" button, so I deliberately checked to make sure it had finally gone through correctly.
(4) My recollection is that I even navigated back to my journal entries and saw the new entry listed there, because I had tried doing so before when I was encountering the "comments disabled" error but hadn't realized the error message was at the top of the page yet. I will admit that whether I went through this final step or how I did it is a little hazy, but I do recall doing several steps to verify the entry had been posted, due to the previous problem I mentioned in (2) above.
(5) Once I had verified the entry appeared to be submitted, I logged out. This is also an extraordinary step, because I almost never log out of this site. Once again, I find it unfathomable that I would have done so without making sure that my final step had been taken and posted correctly (as I recall it had).
(6) As noted in one of my comments, TMB subsequently made a post not that long after my journal entry that took my comment about not using negative moderation for "punishment" and turned it against me. In addition to all of the above, and the fact that my journal entry went far beyond any criticism of him before, calling our editors and admins to action against him, it seems incredibly coincidental that he would appropriate my language from the missing journal entry and use it to support his point. I'll admit this is a bit more tenuous, but given TMB's pattern of taking terminology from posts he's arguing with and twisting them to make them seem like they're supporting his argument, it's really weird that he posted that particular comment in response to mine.
Take from this what you will. I hope my thousands of good comments and contributions to this site will at least give you some pause to consider that I would not make something like this up. I also have made clear over the years that I am NOT prone to conspiratorial thinking and generally fight anything that sounds like a conspiracy theory, so I make this accusation with great hesitation and only because I have deep concern about the integrity of this site. I hope my general attention to detail displayed in my attempts to post factually correct posts will also convince you that I am unlikely to be mistaken in all of this, and that I am the sort of person to take care in an action like this (i.e., when making a final farewell post to a site). I'm not saying I'm infallible. But I have a much stronger collection of memories about this particular process of posting due to the unusual roadblocks I experienced before my post went through, so I'm very sure I saw different behavior on the site when it did finally get accepted.
Regardless of whether this brazen act was done by TMB or another admin in support of him, I am unequivocally convinced that this site has lost its integrity and has corruption that inhabits its admins and/or editors. I am now more likely to believe Aristarchus than I am to believe most of the admins of this site, which is a very sorry state of affairs.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday August 25 2019, @06:05PM
Believe what you like. That I argue vehemently against censorship in all its forms and levels (including against you in this very story) every time it's brought up should tell you that much. If not that then the fact that I never pass up a decent argument on any subject should clue you in. But whatever. Your butt is hurting because I disagree with you on censorship and you're going to write whatever mental story it takes to keep on believing that you're right.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Monday August 26 2019, @01:57AM
The additional details and steps is a big help!
Given I have decades' experience testing software and know full-well how hard it is to provide good documentation of what happened when something unexpectedly went sideways...what you have provided is MOST helpful! I am impressed!
In short, I am not done looking and this exceptional level of detail will definitely help guide my search!
Thank you VERY much!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 25 2019, @07:24PM (1 child)
I understand that. What I was trying to point out is that if a story was deleted by one of your sysadmins who know their way inside and out of the database and systems, that would leave no real trace to find. So your evidence of "I found nothing" won't be convincing against the evidence of their memory. Likewise, from your perspective, their possibly mistaken memory won't be convincing against the missing evidence of tampering. I was trying to temper expectations and feeling of defeat on both sides because this may be one of those situations that, absent something else happening, detente is not possible and a satisfactory outcome will remain elusive.
(Score: 2) by martyb on Monday August 26 2019, @01:40AM
Thank you for that.
I sincerely mean that, too!
Imagine, hypothetically, that there was evidence, but it was not found because nobody even looked. In my mind's eye, that would be even worse... so I will continue to look until I am convinced I have left no stone unturned. Then, I can in good conscience say to the best of my ability I did look and was unable to find anything.
It'll probably not be happening tonight or tomorrow, though. I am absolutely knackered after a VERY busy day at work, and the closing shift, at that. Add that I have the opening shift tomorrow, I need to get some sleep. But rest assured I have not yet finished my search.
Thanks again for providing an impartial perspective on things!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday August 26 2019, @08:20AM (1 child)
a) resetting the journal auto-incrementing counter in the database (and there's no programattic way to do that, you can only move it forwards)
but also:
b) invisibly deleting *all* the messages that were sent out because of it
and therefore:
c) resetting the message auto-incrementing counter in the database (ditto)
and here's the killer:
d) on a live system
and the cherry on top:
e) with no logs
If we had someone with that level of technical competence on the administrative team, that would probably double the total amount of competence have - the above goes well beyond mere guru level.
Ockham's razor points to either human error or a bug.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday August 26 2019, @01:00PM
This is an important point. Did anyone in the community receive notification of the journal posting or even see the journal entry itself? Your input would be gratefully received.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday August 26 2019, @12:11PM (10 children)
I would love to know which 'disturbing opinions' you called out, I could then perhaps defend myself. But as I cannot can read them, and nor can anyone else, it is a bit of a slur to accuse me of even having 'disturbing opinions'. Am I accused of supporting sexual relationships with cattle, or perhaps believing that the earth is flat?
Nonetheless, everyone here is entitled to their own opinion. I'm not forcing mine, disturbing or otherwise, on anyone else
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday August 29 2019, @12:59AM (9 children)
You disturb me, janrinok, whether you support Runaway's habits of animal husbandry or not. It is the naivete, and the purposeful ignoring, and thus supporting by default, Nazis. Brits should not support Nazis. Though, historically, many did. Peace in our time, and Free Speech on SoylentNews! Blimey.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday August 29 2019, @06:12AM (8 children)
As I haven't done any of things that you are accusing me of, I can sleep soundly.
I'm glad that I disturb you. Now that gives me a sense of contentment.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday August 29 2019, @06:51AM (7 children)
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is the world is for good men to do nothing." Edmund Burke, [realdemocracy.com], an Englishman, by the way. Oh, how the English have fallen, and become janrinok!
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday August 29 2019, @07:58AM (6 children)
Who said I am doing nothing? You know little about my life away from SN and yet you feel you can pass judgements under the guise of being a dead philosopher. It is you that is doing nothing of any value here.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday August 29 2019, @08:22AM (5 children)
"Remains of the Day", janrinok. It is a great novel about the decrepitude of British society, and the support, tacit or otherwise, for the Third Reich. Which side are you on?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday August 29 2019, @09:36AM (4 children)
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by aristarchus on Thursday August 29 2019, @09:53AM (3 children)
So, we'll put you down as a Nazi sympathizer, then. You know, you really hide the anti-semitism well! Any thoughts on Roma and Tinkers? Poles and Hungarian Phrasebooks? I think your hovercraft is full of eels. Be serious, janrinok! You are about to be left on the wrong (or, the right?) side of the Chunnel! Are you white, or are you a man? What is the frequency, Kenneth?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:59AM (2 children)
You just talk about things. What are you doing practically to address the issues that you object to? You blame everyone else for not acting but you do nothing yourself. Sorry, Ari, nothing you say here will ever change the real world. And you do not contribute on any other subject in any meaningful way. Show me where you have made a genuine contribution in a comment regarding any other story than alt-right or politics. How about something intelligent in one of the STEM topics? No, they are too difficult for you.
All you do is make unfounded accusations and try to goad others into responding. You can put me in any group you wish. You are wrong, again, but that has never changed anything you have done in the past so I'm not optimistic that it will today either.
As you have nothing of any significance to contribute I'm going to get on with the rest of my day now.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Friday August 30 2019, @12:08AM (1 child)
No, janrinok, you do not need to know what I do, practically, to fight fascists, nor do you have the clearance for it. And again, STEM is a SCAM for MAGA!
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday August 30 2019, @06:25AM
Well, at least that made me laugh. Tell Scully to get back to work.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday August 24 2019, @02:46AM (2 children)
I agree with Mykl: I think TMB is saying that a down-mod could HIDE inaccuracies from people who could CORRECT the inaccuracy.
Hiding the inaccuracy allows it to perpetuate.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 24 2019, @04:13AM (1 child)
Bingo.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @09:00AM
TMB is wrong in all his specifics, and will accept no corrections. So, to hell with him, and the horse he rode in on. Not fair to the horse, but if you hang with the alt-right, you wake up with Nazis.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 24 2019, @04:12AM
No. It is not. It is to make comments that are good stand out above comments that are mediocre and the mediocre to stand out above the uninteresting. Only comments that aren't really even trying to discuss the topic ever warrant a downmod other than Overrated. Moderation is not there for punishment.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @05:26AM
I think you should take a rest...
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday August 24 2019, @08:47AM (1 child)
Thinking I should check. Is it alright if I mod this "insightful"? Would not want to incur such wrath upon myself.
And, by the way, I am quite sane, the mods of trolls roll off my back like rain on the back of a duck. You and I are scholars, Athanasius, people of science. We do not let the misunderstandings of the common run of people insult us, for indeed as the Savoir said, "forgive them, they know not what they do".
So calm down, rescind your rescension, sit with the aristarchus as we view the heavens. Now Aristotle said nothing in the heavens ever changes, and the Church went on to interpret that as the Order of the Mind of God. So when Tycho and Kepler discovered "stella novae", this challenged the orthodoxy. Fair enough. Now we are in a period where it is not just the eternal order of the celestial order that is in question, but what the President said yesterday. And indeed, the premonitions of this were in the Ideology Critique of Marxism, and the relativism of Structuralism, and the reductionism of Constructivism, but you know all of that. Is does not affect the fact that we seek the truth, what is beyond mere opinion and the pureyance of rhetoriticians and salesmen. The troll modders here do not. They are idiots, uneducated, possibly skilled handicrafters like TMB, but in essence idiots.
So hang in there, Kichner! It is part of Jesuit discipline, after all? Black Robes, among the pagans and disbelievers? I expect as much of you, fellow scholar!
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:42PM
I don't know if you're expecting wrath from me or wrath from our overlords here. But given the suppression of my speech that apparently occurred here last night, I would fear the latter -- I now understand you completely. I don't know what to believe about this site anymore.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @10:30AM
What I would really like to see are mods for:
-logically flawed (where the mistake might be honest, like conflating type I and II error)
-intellectually dishonest (where there pretty clearly seems to be intent to mislead through bad rhetoric)
-nonsensical (related to offtopic but not quite the same, it can be ontopic but nonsense)
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:28PM (10 children)
But lying persistently and obnoxiously is Troll-ing in my books (even when the person really believes he's factually correct, a thing I cannot verify)
Happens a lot with jmorris, he trusts more '/pol' than the reality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:45PM (9 children)
Your book is wrong.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:22AM (8 children)
O'really? Wanna me allocating 10 mins of my time everyday to give you enough lies for you to set straight?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:39AM (7 children)
Or you could just, you know, go learn the meaning of the word. Annoying you != trolling, no matter how persistently it's done, unless the intent in posting is to wind you up.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @01:06AM (6 children)
Until you give me something to signal "That's a lie" by modding, I'll continue to use Troll mod.
If you don't want to give me another mod value for that, you will be abusing your power over S/N on the same approach as the Newspeak in 1984: reduce the vocabulary until no dissenting thought can be formulated.
Go read the The principles of Newspeak [orwell.ru] Appendix to 1984, or try collateral sources [wikipedia.org] if it's to hard for you to grok it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 28 2019, @01:58AM (5 children)
Do what you gotta do, man. That's why we give everyone so many mod points, so they can correct butthurt modding like your examples.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:31AM (4 children)
Glad we agreed on this one.
Now, if only Jan would stop shouting his feelz are hurt whenever I'm doing it and insisting on insane solutions [soylentnews.org]...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:47AM (3 children)
Oh I'm disappointed that you can't put your own feelz aside and follow the mod guidelines but I'm not going to lose any sleep over one bad moderator. And the day a soylentil isn't free to suggest any old thing that crosses their mind is the day I tell the load balancer to redirect everyone to slashdot.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @03:01AM (2 children)
Thanks for your show of care. Don't worry too much, tough, I'm not actually losing sleep over it, but...
... looking at TFA (and the number of comments on it), I can't stop noticing others aren't so blessed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:21PM (1 child)
Yup. Lots of folks worry too much about how other people get away with bad moderation when there are literally thousands more people who have twice as many points a day each as when we started to counteract the small number of bad mods. If we can't as a community mostly manage the self control necessary to moderate properly then we deserve the shitty site that we get.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @06:58AM
The Mighty Broussard is a bad mod. From the beginning. He really has nothing to say, other than he wants to pay lower taxes, and spend more time fishing for bottom feeders. I encourage the Fledgling Buzzard to take some more classes at at least a community college. A little Liberal Arts Education goes a long way. Perhaps, with some knowledge of history, political theory, and philosophy, our TMB would not be such an ignorant pill. I mean, other than coding, he is a Runaway clone.
(Score: 4, Touché) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 23 2019, @02:55PM (27 children)
I like how you declaim the hyper partisan nature of discussion. And then blame that problem on the left.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Friday August 23 2019, @03:21PM (25 children)
*You're* the one saying he's blaming this problem on just left groups. Alt-right speakers getting shouted down on college campuses is a matter of public record.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Friday August 23 2019, @04:00PM (24 children)
And the President of the United States censored his critics on Twitter in violation of their first amendment rights.
That seems a much more relevant and serious example compared to some noisy college kids.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday August 23 2019, @04:11PM
Yeah, I'm not a fan of that either. Although I'm also not sure why Twitter lets you block people that way in the first place, as it seems a bit weird.
These college students are the future of our country, is the scary part. We don't want the next generation to have ears closed to alternate viewpoints.
You don't go to college to have what you already know reinforced; you go to college to learn new things and be exposed to other ideas and viewpoints. Or at least, that used to be what it was for.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 23 2019, @07:09PM (22 children)
You've got it backwards. When you block someone on Twitter it keeps them from seeing your tweets rather than doing anything to theirs. He censored himself.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @08:48PM (21 children)
No because you can always log out and read the tweets freely. What it really does is keep you from responding and interacting short of violating the TOS and risking a ban by creating multiple accounts.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 24 2019, @12:09AM (20 children)
No, it doesn't keep you from responding. Through any Twitter client you can absolutely respond to a tweet by someone who has blocked you. Have a friend block you and then respond to something they said that's still in your timeline if you don't believe me. Or just start any tweet with their @nick and it will show up in their mentions, though not as a direct reply to a specific tweet of theirs. All blocking does is stop them from seeing you speak.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @06:01AM (19 children)
Yes, which means that you are no longer "responding and interacting" because they can't see your stuff. If I piss you off and you mail a letter to me written on flash paper and the letter catches and disappears into nothingness at the sorting facility or write me an email and hit "delete" instead of "send," have you really responded to me since I never know about it? And that doesn't even get to the "interacting" portion.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 24 2019, @06:11AM (18 children)
Yes, they can see your stuff. You can't see theirs. If you respond directly to a tweet (fairly easy even when blocked) or via mention, they will see it. You need to learn what you're talking about before you go off like this.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @07:35PM (17 children)
https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/someone-blocked-me-on-twitter [twitter.com]
https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/blocking-and-unblocking-accounts [twitter.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday August 25 2019, @02:35PM (16 children)
That's new functionality then. At the time this case was instituted you could see every mention and reply from blocked people. I know this first hand because I saw multiple people get banned for continuing to @mention people who had blocked them. Twitter called it harassment at the time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 25 2019, @07:29PM (15 children)
Then maybe the next time you are throwing around "You need to learn what you're talking about before you go off like this," you should double check your facts. Hell, everyone should. Citations are much more convincing then a bare assertion anyway.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday August 26 2019, @03:24PM (14 children)
It's not the first time I've been wrong and it won't be the last. Double checking everything I say every time I say it? That's not even a realistic option even strictly from a wasted time standpoint. Regardless, when the blocks Trump was butthurting folks with happened, the functionality was exactly like I said it was.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:34PM (13 children)
Yeah, righto! Spewing shit without checking makes life so much easier...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:47PM (12 children)
If I were a news anchor/editor/reporter that would be a valid burn. Expecting ordinary people to check that things they know to be true have not changed behind their back every time they speak is disingenuous absurdity.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:18AM (11 children)
Careful when it comes to thinks you are basing your decisions in regards with S/N.
Sloppiness begets sloppiness, even when the original sloppiness has manifested in other areas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:42AM (10 children)
SN isn't an issue. I don't expect to start forgetting the site rules or important functionality for a decade or two yet. When I eventually do, I have plenty of folks to crowdsource corrections from.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:50AM (9 children)
Some lowish-number-of weeks ago... that self-imposed ban following an abuse of modding? I might have heard it wrong then, it never happened to you. Right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:02AM (8 children)
Who said I forgot anything? That was straight up bad moderating or it wouldn't have deserved a ban. We never ban for iffy cases.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:20AM (7 children)
But you forgot the rules and made the mistake in the first place, before taking the punishment, isn't it?
Expecting it or not, that's an example contradicting your
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:26AM (6 children)
I didn't forget. I'm not making any cop-out excuses for that. I just straight up broke them and took the same lumps I'd dish out to anyone else.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:34AM (5 children)
Ok, so willful abuse of power it is, then (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:49AM (4 children)
Ordinary user power though not admin power. I'm more deliberate about adminy stuff precisely because of the abuse potential and discuss it with the other admins if there's any doubt.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday August 29 2019, @07:38AM (3 children)
aristarchus, mod-banned by the The Mortiarity Brandsouertard, for painting him and his alt-right buddies with too broad a brush. It is Soylent History, not in dispute. TMB is a Nazi sympathizer, if not an actually white supremacist, which it is hard to be if you are Choctaw, or Samoan [wweek.com], or boat people from Vietnam, [wikipedia.org], or hapa-haole part Nipponese like Joey Gibson [www.nrc.nl], not even a white Proud Buoy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joey_Gibson_(political_activist) [wikipedia.org]
I am sure his Japanese parent is quite ashamed of his violations of the law.
And Malfoy Draco is appalled: Mudbloods, you know.
So why did you get the original aristarchus submission rejected, after it had been accepted? You are a hypocrite, my lower Busstard! You need to do more than wear the cone of shame for a short time. You need to fess up to you ideological bias, and inordinate influence on the Editors. I will continue to paint you with a brush that is suitably broad, you person ignorant of political theory!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:28AM (2 children)
Poor ari. Does it bother you that much that I'm able to make a convincing argument in an open IRC channel while you can't seem to manage? Is it that painful that I only had to point out your hardon for extremist progtard propaganda once for the entire world to see it for what it is?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday August 29 2019, @08:04PM (1 child)
A convincing argument for censorship? You are hoisting yourself on your own petard, Buzzy!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 30 2019, @12:33PM
A convincing argument against promoting propaganda. You're perfectly free to publish the exact same nonsense in your journal on the exact same site and it will be linked in the Most Recent Journal Entries box on the front page. It takes some serious mental gymnastics to call that censorship.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Saturday August 24 2019, @01:45AM
Yeah, I thought that someone would pick me up on saying "left" as I was writing it.
At no point did I claim that hyper-partisanism was the fault of either the left or the right. Read that again.
What I did say is that shouting people down is problem with some groups. Fairly or unfairly, there are a lot more examples in the media of left-wing types at University using that particular tactic (which is why I used the example), but by no means is it unique to them.
To clarify, this problem is not the left's fault, but some left groups are certainly enthusiastic fans of shouting down alternative viewpoints. They also seem to love to demonstrate Godwin's law a lot. Still, that's better than threatening violence, which seems to come more from the right-wing.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @03:56PM
Even if you 'just' have differing opinions, you can vehemently disagree with someone. I vehemently disagree with Nazis. I vehemently disagree with people who want the government to conduct mass surveillance on the populace. I vehemently disagree with people who want to use the power of government to force women to remain pregnant. Recognizing that it's an opinion, while true, solves nothing, because it doesn't make any of these people less bad from my perspective.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by HiThere on Friday August 23 2019, @04:29PM (9 children)
Well, it's also because there's no "stupid" mod. And because you can't mod something as overrated before it's been moderated something else.
I, personally, usually avoid the "troll" mod, and also the "flamebait" mod because they don't really seem to fit. (This may be Poe's law, of course.) And "disagree" feels like it should be a neutral mod, not a down mod. So I don't feel there's a decent choice that applies. I can easily see this leading to "troll" mods, even when the appropriate mod is something like "stupid" (i.e., the opposite of "insightful").
I realize why there is just one dimension of scoring, but the current system really doesn't have good opposites for most of the tags. And, e.g., "insightful" and "informative" aren't along the same axis.
FWIW, given the current scoring system the mods should really just be "up" or "down" without labels, since the labels don't mean anything as far as the scoring goes.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @05:21PM
I ran into that when I saw a post that was so trite and lame, but bound to attract upmods since it played to a certain faction. It had the default 2 points, which I thought were more than it was worth, but I couldn't mod it overrated because it had no other mods yet.
Had someone modded it troll, I guess the overrated mod would have then dropped it another point.
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday August 23 2019, @07:12PM (5 children)
That's because downmodding isn't supposed to be there to lower the score of comments you find Uninsightful, Uninformative, or Uninteresting, except for the Overrated mod for something mediocre that makes it to 5 or such. It's there to lower the score of comments that contribute nothing to the conversation for anyone.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday August 23 2019, @08:54PM (4 children)
That's not what GP was talking about. He was talking about the lack of a "stupid" mod. I personally have sometimes mused that an "idiotic" mod would be occasionally useful, but "stupid" works too. That doesn't mean the post is uninsightful, uninformative, or uninteresting, it means it is stupid, usually lacking basic logic skills.
Note that I'm not seriously suggesting a "stupid" or "idiotic" mod, but an "illogical" downmod could be useful. Or even a neutral mod that's more informative and useful than simply "disagree." Often I'll read something that I don't "disagree" with -- it's objectively wrong or misses basic logic or isn't understanding the subject matter in the discussion correctly. That's not a "disagreement" -- there's something literally wrong with the post that's not helping discussion. Maybe such moderation should only be neutral, but it would be better than simply "disagree," which isn't actually descriptive of the problem.
And "overrated" could potentially work, but only if the post attracts upmods -- there's no way to flag the post as problematic under the current system that actually describes the problem with literally WRONG posts.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday August 24 2019, @12:14AM
Incorrect. Making the smackdown of their assertion with facts and logic part of the public record is indeed a public service and contributes value to the conversation. Ask any scientist if a negative result isn't nearly as valuable as a positive one.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Saturday August 24 2019, @04:36AM (2 children)
An example of why modding "literally WRONG" will go pearshaped immediately:
Donald Trump is the best president ever.
Donald Trump is the worst president ever.
Which statement is factually incorrect?
Suggestion: if there's a "factually wrong" mod, it should come with a requirement that the modder also respond with a 'correction'... which shall not include any of the laundry list of typical insults. (Just autocensor 'em, and if that leaves the "correction" looking stupid, serves 'em right.)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @08:51AM (1 child)
Google:
https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2018/09/worst_president_ever_donald_tr.html [cleveland.com]
Worked when Bush was alleged President.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday August 25 2019, @01:41AM
We have a winner! Our first example of why "literally WRONG" won't work as a mod choice ... the 'correction' consists of a link to an opinion piece.
I predict that any such mod option will lead to flame modding rather than an influx of facts.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 28 2019, @09:33PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Thursday August 29 2019, @01:04AM
Things you do not understand are not necessarily stupid. Think before you mod. And do not mess with philosophers, for they seek wisdom and are slow to anger.
(Score: 5, Disagree) by meustrus on Friday August 23 2019, @04:30PM (2 children)
There's a real troll problem, though. Normal people get labeled trolls because they, by ignorance and identity politics, have started talking just like the trolls in their community.
Trolling these days has gotten really meta. They aren't just in public places where they can stir up shit. They're in more homogeneous communities, pushing them to the extremes and lowering expectations for evidence. The hope is that others in the community will then take their more controversial arguments out into the public space, backed up by less evidence and believed regardless. There, these patsies stir up the shit without realizing that's what they're doing.
I mod people Troll when they make a controversial statement without evidence. This is trolling, whether you are the troll or the patsy. I do not claim to catch those I agree with, because if I know the evidence, the lack of it in a particular post does not stand out to me. Maybe I should keep a closer eye on that?
But I'm not so worried when I get modded Troll. It usually gets overtaken by upmods. When it doesn't, it wasn't one of my best posts anyway.
Or I really was trolling for some specific ideological group, because I thought it would be a great chance for them to respond in a way that points out the flaws in their own argument. Again, not bothered by the down mod. If you want to see more of that content, you can always adjust your user preferences for mod adjustments.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 1) by The Vocal Minority on Saturday August 24 2019, @11:49AM (1 child)
And in doing so abusing the troll mod.
(Score: 1, Troll) by meustrus on Monday August 26 2019, @03:31PM
Eh, I don't care about the intent of the troll. I care about their impact on the discussion and the community.
xkcd 810: Constructive [xkcd.com]
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @05:30PM
It's LGBTQIAAP, bigot.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @09:54PM
I merely hold the opinion that all of your rights should be stripped away, and I will vote accordingly. How could anyone possibly be upset about that? Do they just believe they're right about everything!? It's just an opinion, bro! Don't you believe in Tolerance? Why won't you Tolerate my view that all of your rights should be stripped away, and get along with me?