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[Update 20190127_200249 UTC: corrected number of downmods to qualify for mod bomb from 4 to 5. Clarified that no mod bans have been handed out in a long while. --martyb]
Our primary goal at SoylentNews is to provide a forum for the community; In as much as is reasonably possible, we try to take a hands-off approach.
The infrastructure provides a means by which the community can (among other things) vote on polls, publish journal articles, submit comments, and perform moderations.
There are, however, some things that require an active role by the admins.
One of these is dealing with moderation abuse, something which can come in different forms. See the FAQ for some background. Addressed there are "mod bombs" and "spam mods". A mod bomb is deemed to have happened when one user (user1) has performed 4 5 or more downmods against comments by another user (user2). Upon review, if a mod bomb has been found to occur, then the moderator (user1) gets a 1-month mod ban on the first occasion; 6 months on the second and subsequent times. Mod bans have not been issued in a LONG while; extra mods are reversed.
Sockpuppets: And now we come to the focus of this article: there is another form of moderation abuse: sockpuppet accounts. Wikipedia has a suitable description:
A sockpuppet is an online identity used for purposes of deception. The term, a reference to the manipulation of a simple hand puppet made from a sock, originally referred to a false identity assumed by a member of an Internet community who spoke to, or about, themselves while pretending to be another person.[1]
The term now includes other misleading uses of online identities, such as those created to praise, defend or support a person or organization,[2] to manipulate public opinion,[3] or to circumvent a suspension or ban from a website. A significant difference between the use of a pseudonym[4] and the creation of a sockpuppet is that the sockpuppet poses as an independent third-party unaffiliated with the puppeteer. Sockpuppets are unwelcome in many online communities and may be blocked.
Right here I'll admit that I was sorely tempted to take unilateral action. Name names. Apply mod bans. And... you get the idea. Instead, I'm trying to take the high road. So, instead, I chose to present what I found to the community, solicit input, and then see what, if anything, needs to be done.
There may well be other cases, but the one I have discovered shows this history of upmods. Out of the 100 most recent moderations performed by "user1", 80 of those have been upmods of the same user "user2". And of these, there have been 10 upmods on January 21, 10 more on January 22, and yet 10 more on January 23. (For those keeping score that is 30 points in 3 days).
I cannot imagine in any way that 30 upmods in three days by "user1" on "user2" is reasonable or desirable.
This would be purely academic except that comment moderation affects a user's karma. All registered users start with a karma of 0. Submitting a story that is accepted on the site earns 3 points. Each upmod to a comment of yours earns a point. Similarly, each downmod deducts a point from your karma. Get enough karma and when posting a comment you can give it extra visibility so that it starts at a score of 2 instead of at 1. (Comments posted anonymously or by ACs start at 0.) Get a low enough karma and you earn a "timeout" against posting comments for a month.
Inasmuch as "user1" was able to perform 80 upmods of "user2" in 19 days ("user2" had hovered near the karma cap of 50 when this all started), that means that "user2" received approximately 80 downmods from the community. Excluding the actions of our sockpuppet ("user1"), "user2" should have been in negative karma and thus in a month-long "timeout".
What I see is that the community has spoken (the comments posted by "user2" are not of the kind the community wants to see on the site) and that has been intentionally countered by the sockpuppet activity of "user1".
Rather than the admins taking a unilateral action, I am asking the community what should be done in this case (and any others like it that may come up)?
I offer a proposal that is analogous to our handling of a "mod bomb."
What is a mod bomb? Four (4) or more downmods in 24 hours by "user1" against comments posted by "user2". qualifies as a mod bomb and earns "user1" a 1-month moderation ban (initially; subsequent mod bombs earn a 6-month mod ban) It's been a long time since mod bans have been issued..
Proposed: Four (4) or more upmods in 24 hours should also be considered a mod bomb (sock bomb?) and should receive the same treatment.
The point of moderation is not to bestow karma points, it is to help improve the visibility of well-written comments and reduce the visibility of the lesser ones. The karma is simply an incentive to actually perform the moderations.
I've toyed with various values for number of upmods per unit of time (4 per day? 20 per week?) I keep coming back to the same metric we use for our existing "mod bomb" definition: 4 down mods in one 24-hour span that commences when mod points are handed out at 00:10 UTC.
So, now it's your turn. I'd appreciate your feedback and thoughts on this. If we should choose to implement it, it would probably have a soft launch with any "violations" being met with a warning.
Ultimately, it's your site. How do you want us to deal with sockpuppets?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by rigrig on Friday January 25 2019, @01:47PM (5 children)
Those numbers look fine to me, and applying the same numbers for sock bombing as for mod bombing has a nice feel of simplicity.
And maybe a daily karma limit per user-user is an option?:
* If user1 mods 10 different users, those users all gain/lose karma.
* If user1 mods 10 user2 posts, the posts all get modded, but user2 only gains/loses 1(?) karma maximum.
Aside: I just noticed the FAQ states "Simply disagreeing with a comment is not a valid reason to 'down mod' it.", which seems contrary to there being a "Disagree" mod.
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mmarujo on Friday January 25 2019, @02:56PM (1 child)
I thought the "Disagree" mod didn't change the "score" (neither up nor down)...
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 26 2019, @04:50AM
You are correct. It's a null mod but can show up as the $reason if it's the most common moderation.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 25 2019, @04:09PM (2 children)
I doubt anybody wants to go here, but I've had similar thoughts about mod-bombing...
If the mod/karma points are kept in floating point behind the scenes, a single mod by a user on another user in a given day has the normal 1 point effect. The second mod by user A on user B in a given day has 1/2 effect, the third 1/3 effect, etc. so, the sum of the series E(1..10) 1/n = 2.928, a 70% reduction in sock-puppet effectiveness.
Still, like the FBI pointed out in our cybersecurity threat review, some cultures play the long game... and your patient sock puppeteer might just go for that single point of karma per account per day, flying under the radar so to speak, and in a very short time max out their puppet's karma scores anyway...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday January 25 2019, @08:28PM (1 child)
You are thinking mathematical answers to human problems. Recall the lessons of Slashdot, you had assholes like me working our way up to karma heaven from nothing, because we kinda-agreed with the general gist, said all the right things, and when we felt comfortable started spitting out dissenting views that we knew others felt. Soon, we appealed to the dark-sides of what many of those readers felt and started becoming modded-up for outright troll posts on the basis of our celebrity. Hunter S. Thompson was a master of doing that, you make things believable enough to be true and sensational enough to be embraced.
Slashdot eventually performed the traditional response to those types of motherfuckers -- try to neuter them or ban them outright. But cybersecurity was traditionally about things like hacking, scanning your ports and shit. Now, it is also about the narrative just like in the J. Edgar days. And as we saw with Alex Jones, the overlords apparently haven't adapted beyond clumsy techniques like covert or overt outright banning on account of the generic term, "disruptive behavior," or "Russian hacking," or whatever. Seems their AI needs a little more work.
(Score: 4, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 26 2019, @12:46AM
I might have a nifty blocking solution that uses the hosts file. Perhaps I'll mention it in every story four times and get you all banned.
Sincerely,
Not Really That Person
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 25 2019, @01:48PM (9 children)
As small as Soylent News' active community is, I'd say use the algorithm (whatever algorithm) to flag potential sock puppets, let a mod review the situation and take appropriate action.
If the algorithm is published and there is no human review component, it can and will be gamed and abused.
FWIW, I received my first mod-bomb yesterday, in apparent retaliation for a negative mod on an AC.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 25 2019, @01:50PM (7 children)
Thinking that bit through for a millisecond, AC seems to encourage some of the more.... controversial commenting on Soylent News. Perhaps sock puppet and/or mod bomb activity can result in loss of AC privilege as a warning to the offender.
All such penalties could be escalating: 1 day for first offense (in effect just a warning), 1 week for second, 1 month for third, 1 year for fourth (in effect a ban), etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by kazzie on Friday January 25 2019, @02:13PM (6 children)
Are you suggesting withdrawing the ability of a logged-in user to submit a post as an AC? How would you stop them from logging out or opening a different browser?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 25 2019, @02:21PM (4 children)
Some ideas - keep in mind that all are a response to a problem, not a utopian implementation of a free speech forum:
Require a certain amount of karma to post AC.
Require a certain amount of time after account creation to post at all.
Require a certain amount of time after account creation from a particular IP address before allowing another account to be created from the same IP address.
Code the site such that new or low karma accounts see their own posts but nobody else does for 24 (48?) hours.
Code the site such that comments multiply downmodded by long established high karma accounts simply disappear.
etc.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday January 25 2019, @02:49PM (3 children)
At a glance, those solutions assume that you need to log in to post, which isn't currently the case for ACs.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 25 2019, @03:49PM (2 children)
Ah, never tried to post AC that way.
If you don't need to log in to post AC, then the site is wide open to SPAM bot DNS floods... A creative SPAM bot could scrape reddit.com/r/TheDonald (or wherever) and repost random crap from there in response to every comment on every article.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @04:59PM (1 child)
You've never needed to login to post on a slash-based system.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @08:49PM
Apocalypse Now: Charlie don't surf! ACs can't mod!
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 26 2019, @04:52AM
Go to their house and break their fingers.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday January 26 2019, @12:52AM
Because I sometimes lack a certain... finesse? diplomatic outlook? I've been mod-bombed a couple times. More than four mods each time--it wasn't just disagreement, it was very very strong disagreement.
At the time, I just shrugged, with the idea that the mods will average out over time (which they have). It didn't occur to me at the time that the mod bombers should be detected and mitigation steps be taken, although that makes perfect sense in hindsight. Since it has happened to me for a day at most, a single digit number of times, in multiple years, I don't think my attack-bombers are likely to be up there in the punish-them camp, though.
Congrats on being noticed, btw.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by SunTzuWarmaster on Friday January 25 2019, @01:57PM (23 children)
I'm not sure what "max karma" is, but I think I'm there. 50?
Here's the thing though - I effectively have unlimited mod points. We get, what? 15/day? I have never tried to use moderation points and *not* had them. From my perspective, it seems infinite. My total moderation is probably 10/month.
As a neutral actor, I really don't care. I don't up/down vote very much. Also, apparently, I've both positively and negatively mod-bombed people. Every once in a while I see a good and well researched comment that I click on the users' history and see what *other* things they have said. If there are other insightful/interesting/funny things that they said in their last 10 posts, I'll mod 'em correctly. Similarly, sometimes I see something so staggeringly ignorant/wrong/unresearched that I think the person could have said other things in a similar category. I do my best to mod the ignorant jerk into oblivion (based on the content), if appropriate.
But here's the thing - what if I'm not a mostly-neutral actor? What if I'm a bad actor? What if I decide to try to turn my "unlimited points" into "people must listen when I speak" ? Well, here's a plan. Phase 1 is create 10 accounts. Phase 2 is use my points to upvote those accounts. Phase 3 is to have a primary account and just have all the other 10 accounts upvote me. This is pretty much enough to override any/all neutral actors (does anything ever get more than 15 total moderation actions?). It is not, however, enough to override even-more-bad-than-me actors.
The only way that I can see doing it, really, is to make it so that people don't have unlimited points (limit to, say, 2/week?). In this way, the Phase 1-3 plan takes ~4 months, rather than 4 days.
The other thing that you can do is try to balance it - "for every upvote, there must be a downvote" or equivalent system. However, the bad actors would just start randomly downvoting.
The other solution is the /. solution - you get mod points for metamoderation. I really don't like that solution, because I don't like metamoderating and don't do much of it. That said - "the users police themselves" is the only viable plan for long term scalability.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 25 2019, @02:25PM (10 children)
That's the art / slippery-slope of the situation: who decides what is neutral vs what is bad?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Friday January 25 2019, @02:55PM (9 children)
Eh - I find it kinda hard to classify myself as a bad actor if I comprise a total of 10 actions/month. Perhaps, rather than "neutral actor", the description of "non actor" is more accurate.
Generally - I propose limiting individual actions. You don't want this site to turn into reddit (silence those with whom you disagree! unlimited accounts! unlimited up/down votes!). The general Slashdot limits seemed pretty okay:
1 - Moderation is harshly limited. I think it was a year before I got my first mod point? I kept getting "you only get 10 and you have to use them in the next 7 days" situations (don't care). There is so little moderation around here that I think a 5/month limit might be appropriate.
2 - Moderation is a reward for encouraged activity. You get mod points for contributing to discussions, meta-modding, and having articles approved. Maybe something like a you-get-1-point-for-every-point-someone-give-you system? 1 point for a comment being modded positive (-10 points for a comment going below 0?), 1 point per 5 meta/mods (10 if you do 10), and 20 points for an article? Meta-modding focused on the "-1" threshold?
3 - "Moderation is a privilege, not a right." You can only have mod points if you aren't an A-hole (new accounts don't get points, negative karma accounts don't get points).
In this way, you can't really sock-puppet (unless you have multiple accounts all doing metamoderation, contributing, and submitting... in which case GOOD!). You need to have accounts which contribute - then those contributions are rewarded.
At the same time, if you get 10 points/month and choose to spend 5 of them all on one person (either up or down) - good! I don't care about mod-bombing then. You can't mod a single comment more than once, so you have a 20% chance *at best* to influence an individual discussion. Further, let's say you do the "10 sock puppet accounts" thing - you spread your 10 points among the 10 accounts, then the following month you have 100 points under your control. You use them to upvote yourself in 10 places. Then the real community downvotes you, trashing your karma, stripping you of mod points, and calling into question your next post. I guess you still have 100 points available next month to get it back, but the system seems to correct pretty quickly.
The current system of effectively-unlimited points encourages bad actors and is creating the modbomb up/down problems. It just wouldn't be a problem if you didn't have points.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @03:35PM (6 children)
4 - Sell mod points: $100 membership gets you 10 mod points per day for a year.
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Friday January 25 2019, @04:50PM (5 children)
No disagreement here - you pay the server costs; you get more votes on what is on the servers.
(Score: 5, Funny) by RandomFactor on Saturday January 26 2019, @12:15AM (4 children)
I have it!!!
Lootboxes. Hear me out before downmodding this in a righteous fury.
$1 loot boxes - 1 roll (1 roll)
$5 loot boxes - 1 roll every day for a week (7 rolls total)
$20 loot boxes - 1 roll daily for 31 days
25% +2 mod pts/day for next week after opened
15% posts get automatic +1 for next 48 hours
15% posts get automatic +2 for next 24 hours
5% posts automatically start at level +3 for next 48 hours
5% Launch all Upmods - Upmods count double for 24hrs
5% Soylent but deadly - Downmods count double for 24 hrs
5% posts automatically start at level +4 for next 24 hours
5% One Post Immunity - can make one post permanently immune to downmods (except by site admins) (can be combined with +5 automatic post level)
5% OMG its full of mods - first mod on any soylentil in 24 hours doesn't cost a mod point
5% Can Upmod a post more than once
4% Can downmod a post more than once for 24 hours
1% Journtal News - Next Journal entry shown on the main page as if a news story (will have suitable disclaimer)
1% SoylenTeflon - Users posts are immune to downmods for 24 hrs after opening (except 'Soylent set us up the bomb' mods)
1% Soybling - Name displays with background highlight for a week
1% Soylently Saintly - Immune to all positive overmod bomb checks for one week. +5 mod points per day,
1% Soylent set us up the bomb - immune to downmod bomb effects for 48 hours AND +10 mod points
1% Soylentry Accepted - Can accept one submission from Queue (will have suitable disclaimer)
You may now downmod this idea into the oblivion it so richly deserves.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Touché) by SunTzuWarmaster on Saturday January 26 2019, @12:43AM (3 children)
First - that's awesome. You're now a 'friend', susceptible to random posi-bombs when I feel like it (2x/year).
Second, you left out some names. Can I do them? I'm going to do them.
25% SoylentDouble - +2 mod pts/day for next week after opened
15% SoylentMushroom - posts get automatic +1 for next 48 hours
15% SoylentFireball - posts get automatic +2 for next 24 hours
5% SoylentCape - posts automatically start at level +3 for next 48 hours
5% SoylentStar - posts automatically start at level +4 for next 24 hours
5% BulletproofLentil - can make one post permanently immune to downmods (except by site admins) (can be combined with +5 automatic post level)
5% SoylentCoupon - first mod on any soylentil in 24 hours doesn't cost a mod point
5% DoublePlusGood - Can Upmod a post more than once
4% UnDoublePlusGood - Can downmod a post more than once for 24 hours
1% ReadingMyDiary - Next Journal entry shown on the main page as if a news story (will have suitable disclaimer)
(Score: 2) by Hyper on Saturday January 26 2019, @12:46AM
Great guys, just add a bit where the user has to pay $1 to open the loot and we'll be covered for site upkeep forever.
(Score: 2) by RandomFactor on Sunday January 27 2019, @03:54AM (1 child)
Nice tweakage :-)
I have this cheerful vision of TMB screaming at the screen at the amount of coding that would be involved.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 27 2019, @05:25AM
No worries about that. tl;dr
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday January 25 2019, @05:16PM (1 child)
Wait - - - WHAT?!?!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @08:50PM
Self-defense, one of the most basic of instincts. Even assholes have it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @02:53PM (1 child)
don't mod old posts, and then you're safe.
I guess that's also easy to implement: if there have been no new comments on a story for the past week, no comments to that story can be modded in any way.
people can change their opinion. I know I did. so don't judge their entire life every time you come into contact with them, at least not for this particular type of discussion forum.
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Friday January 25 2019, @04:52PM
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday January 25 2019, @03:34PM (7 children)
Perhaps an automated "self-policing" system could be implemented?
Rather than caring that account X up/down modded account Y's comments a bunch, you compare their mods patterns with with the mods by the rest of the community. E.g. If I mod up a bunch of your posts, but nobody else does, or worse, most everybody else mods them down, then the odds are good that I'm a sock puppet trying to bolster your karma and visibility (or a member of a "mutual admiration circle", which is potentially just as bad)
Now there would be some risk of promoting groupthink moderation, but I think as long as you're looking for patterns where user1 is predominantly moderating user2 contrary to the opinion of the broader community, you could probably identify many/most mod-bombers without catching up more benevolent bulk modding (You tell me - how often do you end up downmodding a bunch of high-modded bull, rather than shoving someone a bit closer to oblivion?)
The possibly more difficult pattern to detect would be when user1 has a pack of sock-puppets all reinforcing each other...
Hmm, perhaps a two-stage system that first looks for systematic bias in who you mod - if most of your modding is to one person, or a small group of other people (for bolstering your other sockpuppets), then you're flagged as a suspected sock puppet. If your mods *also* strongly tend to disagree with the broader community (not counting other accounts flagged as suspected sock puppets), then it's considered confirmed.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SunTzuWarmaster on Friday January 25 2019, @04:32PM (6 children)
To some extent, all communities are biased. But let's keep it real - this is a biased community. At best it is "nerds" (Star Wars/Trek good! Animated non-anime movies bad!). At worst it is alt-right libertarian technocracy. There is going to be a fair amount of circle-jerk generally. Any system which looks for systematic bias is going to come across it in a variety of ways.
That said, I probably consistently mod https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=29754&page=1&cid=791758#commentwrap
and
https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=29754&page=1&cid=791376#commentwrap [soylentnews.org]
Would be nega-bombed if they were associated with accounts. I like to think of it as that they "earned" a nega-bomb. Note that I would read the posts to make sure they were deserving, and they nearly always are. Negative contributions are rarely singular. I also like to think that people start to self-reflect a bit if they aren't allowed to talk. Maybe not the first time... but by the 10th... I occasionally try to peel the onion back a bit further to see if there is a situation of "people that disagree with this poster always seem to get insulted by AC", and punish the original poster as this behavior is pretty obvious.
Posi-bombs here are usually of the "of I forgot about that guy" nature. On Slashdot, when I had excess mod points, I would go and posi-bomb the people on my "friends" list. There was so much traffic on Slashdot that good posters were frequently simply overlooked. The type of person that I always tried to friend was the "Whoa, that guy did the math! Whoa, it looks like he does the math... a lot." The people on my friends list here don't seem to need my help, possibly simply due to less traffic. Leafing through my friends list reveals them all to have roughly 50% of their comments modded positive, with the occasional disagree/troll. I just investigated the disagree/troll modded comments w/in the last 60 days - moderation in those instances was correct and not needing my correction (they were wrong/offtopic and got modded as wrong/offtopic). No moderation performed. System working as intended.
I find it very irritating that, on Reddit, arguing with actual numbers and insight *never* seems to be upvoted. As an example, consider a couple of posts from me:
https://www.reddit.com/r/changemyview/comments/ajey86/cmv_the_1_isnt_the_problem_its_the_00001/eevp2l8/?context=3 [reddit.com]
That post took >20 minutes to prepare and research and was in response to a general question. It has *3* upvotes. Someone disagreed with my math, I posted why I was right. They deleted their post (why?), and my correction has *0* upvotes. WTF? How the hell does the factually wrong and deleted post get more points than the factually right one?
https://www.reddit.com/r/IntellectualDarkWeb/comments/ah1mxa/a_cnn_analyst_called_out_a_fox_news_contributor/eesty1y/?context=3 [reddit.com]
That post took ~10 minutes to prepare, used facts, and invited discussion. It has *0* upvotes, even when posted to a circle-jerk community.
https://www.reddit.com/r/financialindependence/comments/ainuiy/should_i_hide_my_power_level_at_work/eeq0hh9/?context=3 [reddit.com]
That post has *8* upvotes in a thread where thousands of upvotes were floating around. It is to a financial independence forum and compares inflation rates against S&P500. It took ~10 minutes to prepare. The *provably factually inaccurate* disagreement had more upvotes.
PS - reddits' up/down vote system is TRASH and it BELONGS IN THE GARBAGE. Unfortunately, it is where a lot of good discussion happens nowadays, as long as it isn't political.
In an effort to prevent SN or Slashdot from turning into Reddit, activities like the above need to be rewarded. That said, it is easy to overlook that type of content (it is *always* a 2nd or 3rd level post). Posi-bombing users like that has two effects: 1) providing a modicum of incentive to continue, and 2) making it so that cream rises to the top. As far as I'm concerned, being able to posi-bomb "friends" is the *point* of having a friends list.
Further, I'd like to add that, in a town hall debate, some people are respectable and others are not. In a town hall debate, it is easy to see respectability (people defer to them, they dress nicely, they are articulate, etc.). It is ... harder on the internet to see which people are respectable. I'd like to think that a moderation system coupled with a friends system helps to bridge that gap a little bit.
Also note that I care more about the moderation system here more anything else.
I think the solution here is to simply limit the ability of individual users to shape the discussion. Maybe something like 1 mod/week? 10/day is enough that an individual user can shape entire discussions, and 10 individual group-thinkers can bury disagreement. Changing that number to simply be "10 individuals can shape a discussion, 100 individuals can bury disagreement" may be enough to limit abuse. It can be scaled up later by further restricting mod points across the community, and the roll-over makes it so that individuals can mod the heck out of an individual discussion on which they have expertise (a part of the mod system that I would like to keep).
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 25 2019, @04:56PM (3 children)
Is that a thing?
You cherry picked 3 personal examples out of potentially, what, billions?
Example 1 has score hidden still so we can't confirm. Probably it got lost among the 771 other comments.
Example 2 is bad since you came into the discussion 6 days late, when nobody is paying attention to it probably.
Example 3 is at +9-10, and includes another comment of yours at +17. Expecting hundreds or thousands of upvotes on your comment is probably unrealistic. I'm not sure which provably wrong comment you're referring to because I see score +5 for the comment you replied to. Reddit doesn't report real scores btw, they are offset by some amount as an anti-abuse tactic.
It's easy to find low scores you think are unjustified in any comment system. It just happens. There are various factors involved and not every comment can be a viral hit. I don't think you've proven that Plebbit vote system bad whatsoever, and over the past couple of years I have found myself wondering how Reddit's system could be better than our own. If we wanted to test it here, it could even be run in parallel: just keep the old system with moderation reasons, but with unlimited Agree/Disagree mods to produce user scores. Then compare to see if the "best" comments are getting consistently high scores, and vice versa.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by SunTzuWarmaster on Friday January 25 2019, @05:39PM (2 children)
3 examples in the last week. I have 5K karma on a 4 year old account, and have been gilded twice. According to this graph (http://puu.sh/AsOo3/1a46334ca4.png), that puts me in the top 20% of users by total karma. I'm a generally helpful guy. I've had 6 100+ karma posts, one of which was viral-ish at 700 upvotes. I've been modded-to-oblivion 23 times, primarily for making off-color jokes in the /r/jokes section (WTF?).
Reddit's system is really really good at getting the pageviews right - the things that show up in best/hot at things that people are talking about.
Reddit's system is truly awful at having good discourse. Consider this thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/airguq/government_employees_that_voted_for_trump_what/?sort=top [reddit.com]
53K upvotes, nearly none of it for Trump supporters. Trump supporters, even when asked a direct question, were modded to oblivion.
Consider this answer - https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/airguq/government_employees_that_voted_for_trump_what/eeq9852 [reddit.com] - this user lost ~6 months of positive karma for answering the question that was asked in /r/askreddit. Note that I found that post by doing a "sort by controversial", so he is getting roughly as many upvotes as downvotes. There are almost certainly people at the bottom of "sort by best" whose opinions are just beyond saving, and were permanently punished for it.
The "chilling effect" there is substantial. You CANNOT say anything against the majority and preserve status. Note that negative karma accounts are essentially blocked in all of reddit due to the laziness of moderators. Also note that, even when moderators are not lazy, negative karma accounts are limited in abilities to the subreddit that they posted to. The user who got that negative karma blow for "I think the president is doing a fine job" will be subject to limitations in /r/askreddit essentially forever (he got more negative karma there in the last 2 days than I had on my entire account for 2 years). So it ends up being hard to just "have negative status". Note that I've been banned from a couple of places on reddit and I'm relatively uncontroversial.
Reddits' up/down vote system manages to simultaneously silence discussion, enforce mob rule and groupthink, and provides disincentive to thoughtfulness. It really is pretty awful. Every subreddit ends up being a circlejerk as a byproduct. Soylent/Slashdot have much better systems (capping max moderation up and down is really good in preventing groupthink, a user community which doesn't rally use moderation is another), but they are systems better suitted to a community which is smaller.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @09:28PM
Looking at his user info, he apparently purchased a "Reddit Premium" subscription this month. Maybe that will help avoid the consequences of negative karma.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 26 2019, @12:48AM
Groupthink
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @05:07PM (1 child)
So are you pissed off because *your* effort was not recognized? That's not something you can expect to happen anywhere. Here at SN, your post could have been down modded because someone didn't like what you said in order that others would be less likely to see it.
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Friday January 25 2019, @05:50PM
I don't expect to be recognized every time - but look at my posting history at here and slashdot. Generally, about 20% of my contributions are valued by the community. Probably about right - most of my contribution is neutral. Then look at reddit, where virtually none of my contributions are valued. They are the same contributions.
I'm not trying to win internet-points here, but the moderation system serves a few purposes:
1 - Make the site better for the reader/community. Reddit is really good about serving up good content. Soylent/Slashdot aren't as good. 4chan doesn't give a shit.
2 - Make the site better for the contributor. Slashdot/Soylent generally reward contributions. Reddit only rewards contributions in accordance with the groupthink (groupthink varies by subreddit). 4chan doesn't give a shit.
3 - Make the site better for the owner. Reddit is really really good at this. Slashdot/Soylent are bad at this. 4chan doesn't give a shit.
As a byproduct, you get Reddit Corporate overlords, Slashdot/Soylent community efforts, and 4chan doesn't give a shit.
If you want this to continue to be a community-driven site, it is important to focus on (2).
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 26 2019, @04:58AM (1 child)
Nah, the site's not big enough that we can't spot something like that if it's a regular occurrence. It's pretty easy to tell if someone's sock-puppeting and from which accounts. Anyone who routinely mods only one person, always the same way, and rarely if ever comments is probably a sock puppet.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Saturday January 26 2019, @09:06AM
So we have isolated The Mighty Buzzard as a sock-puppet of his own self? Interesting.
(Score: 2) by rcamera on Friday January 25 2019, @02:00PM (6 children)
1) why not post a hall of shame list of the beneficiaries of "sock bombing"? that provides the community with the information which allows each user to choose whether to set an individual user to "foe" for "people modifier" purposes.
2) being a well-defined "sock bomber" gets you a status image (stinky sock?) next to username
3) (combining 1 & 2) being a well-defined "sock bomber" gets you a "sock bomber" status, which can get a "Sock Modifier" modifier in settings
/* no comment */
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Alfred on Friday January 25 2019, @02:07PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by rcamera on Friday January 25 2019, @02:22PM
fair points. i figured such a situation would be caught during the admin verification level. i can't imagine there's so many instances of this that the admins would be unable to do a sanity check (age of sockpuppet account, history between the two parties, ips of the two parties, etc) before marking someone as "stinky".
/* no comment */
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 26 2019, @05:01AM
This ain't Soviet Russia. We don't do sock redistribution.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @09:47PM (1 child)
So some sort of social credit score?
(Score: 2) by Hartree on Friday January 25 2019, @10:22PM
Hey, if it works for 1.4 billion Chinese, it's gotta be great. Just ask the Winnie the Pooh. ;)
(Score: 2) by Username on Saturday January 26 2019, @01:05PM
What did I do to deserve being next to stinky socks? ಠ_ಠ
(Score: 5, Funny) by Alfred on Friday January 25 2019, @02:04PM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Username on Saturday January 26 2019, @01:16PM
Yeah, that Anonymous Coward is such an insufferable twat. He thinks he's the bee's knees just because his UID is 1.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @02:10PM (2 children)
Raise the cost of votes|user the way skill increases cost more in RPGs. Store w timestamp, apply exponential decay on next use.
Raise the cost of votes|article in the same manner, every 3? votes/article. Store w timestamp, apply exponential decay on next use.
Shard preallocated db? or just track data in fs symlinks for cheap, low overhead atomicity guarantees, age out unchanged entries.
next question..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @02:28PM (1 child)
replying to myself. omg. .. forgot to include vote-cost|ip. add take trunc(cost|user +cost|ip +cost|article -2) to price a mod-vote.
perhaps start with the costs at usercost=ipcost*2=articlecost*3, then monitor and refine.
i think public shaming is toxic and divisive, moderator time too expensive and an automated system to create a bit of 'multi-d' homeostasis simply better. ... perhaps add 30..60% of the prior days remaining mod points into the new day so that one can still burst-mod at times. just make sure the exp decay of the 3 indiv costs is there to limit ppl from playing games.
evolve to let the system be more lenient with the costs on time-windows(exp decay total mod points spent over 12hrs?) that show themselves to need more variance.
if you have idle ram, consider once more if its not in fact much easier to let the os cache and dist a fs based db. its not quite ACID, but we have a bunch of these unbreakables in place as routing/rate-limiters and they are sweet retro joy.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Friday January 25 2019, @03:05PM
Also add a per IP decay such that several accounts from one IP are grouped? Is there VPN traffic that'd be a problem for?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @02:38PM (2 children)
Fsck it. You're the admins.
Put in the rules you think work best.
Don't tell us except to provide guidelines.
IP and account ban and shadow ban as needed.
Thanks for doing a great job.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 26 2019, @05:03AM (1 child)
We don't do shadow bans. It takes all the fun out of swinging the ban hammer. Plus I don't want to have to write the code to even be able to.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Saturday January 26 2019, @03:12PM
"You are not allowed to use this Resource." It says so many times when I go to vote. When I want to tweet. When I want to see my Fans List. Looks like the Shadow Ban. And possibly there's a lot of people getting that one. Much needed Conservative Voices, silenced. Not good!!!
(Score: 0, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @02:44PM
<sarcasm>Help! Help! Someone's hand is shoved up my ass! Its making me do strange things on the interwebs! What should I do?!</sarcasm>
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @02:54PM
Make it look like they are modding up, but only to them?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @03:00PM (2 children)
Seems to me the system here is working quite well, even better than the green site, stingy motherfucken sour pusses they are, Please don't take away my ability to mod up TMB and aristocrak and methane man and Runaway, and that crazy levis chick. They are all truly funny and insightful, and they troll pretty good too. Eh, maybe it's just me, pining for Red and RWS... I hope you will use other ways of routing out the sockpuppets. The moderation system is amongst the best in the business.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @03:28PM (1 child)
I've probably modded the same user 4 times in a single discussion, mostly when I see users being personally attacked and their comments being modded unfairly. I've even modded Aristarchus up on occassion but we're in danger entering #FreeAristarchus territory here.
Picking a low ball arbitrary number is probably not the way to go, looking for sustained patterns of moderation abuse would be better.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @08:58PM
We are already in it, have been for nearly two years. Time for the "Final Solution"? We just ban aristarchus, and then all our troubles will be over.
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Friday January 25 2019, @03:20PM
...after the trial, of course.
People who are just being assholes don't deserve much in the way of consideration. They don't bring anything of value to the community, and their purpose is to cause harm. We need not provide them much respect. I hate getting to a story early, before moderation has had much impact, and wading through some of the dreck that gets posted.
Suggestion: Reduce the impact of multiple up (or down) mods of the same user. If user1 mods user2 up twice in a 24 hour period, the second mod is only worth 1/2 a mod; the third mod is only worth 1/3 a mod, etc. 10 upmods by user1 only results in a bit less than 3 total upmods. There's a lot of room for tuning here - maybe this only applies after the third mod, maybe the acceleration is a bit higher or lower. Lots of fun to be had.
This has the advantage of being fully automated, working for both up and down mod bombing. It allows people like SunTzuWarmaster who actively seek out other comments by the same poster to up/down mod to keep following that pattern, though it does reduce their (quite positive, IMHO) impact. It does not solve the problem of the really dedicated asshole who registers 10 or 20 or 100 sockpuppets and only mods a couple of times from each - but someone willing to go through that amount of work is essentially dedicating their life to tearing down the community, and needs an individualized response.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by iWantToKeepAnon on Friday January 25 2019, @03:22PM
I sparingly use downmods, I think a lot of us do. I really have to disagree or think the comment is flame/troll/etc... before I downmod. Maybe I just don't understand where they are coming from? So if I use 4 in a day that is rare and 4 on one user would be extraordinary. But I am more liberal with upmods and I don't generally look at the username before using them, so upmoding the same user 4 times could be something that unintentionally happens.
rigrig suggested to limit karma gains/losses per day; I think that is a good idea, but maybe simplified : limit +/- 5 karma pts per 24 hours?
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @03:52PM (1 child)
Look, I had to log in to mod down some alt-rights. I mistakenly looked at my own posts, and accidentally posted them up while doing so. It won't happen again, guys. - ArchyStarchy
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @04:27PM
Really? Honest Injun? Well, I guess we can overlook this transmogrification, one time.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Quicksilver on Friday January 25 2019, @04:32PM (2 children)
Instead of taking it upon yourself to "name names", delete posts/mods, or delete accounts which comes with a rather autocratic stigma, why not write an algorithm and have it "name names", delete posts/mods, or delete accounts? There is no possibility of personal bias and it evenhandedly deals with antisocial behavior that can't be tolerated.
(I would add a dispute process for deleted accounts as any mistake there should have recourse.)
- How about a 2 tier system where at a lower threshold you give them one warning with lesser punitive action and when the higher threshold hits more decisive action takes place. For example when they hit 'threshold 1' it warns them and adds their identity to a 'bomber list' on any post that of any Sock/Mod Bomber activity effected. At 'threshold 2' they are subject to mod ban, account deletion, or other more severe measure.
- As a possible metric idea: If a threshold percentage of a users Mod points are on 5 (or less) user's comments that is pretty clear abuse and should be dealt with. If you run that standard over a longer period (such as quarterly) it will be very hard to hide a pattern of abuse.
(I would set the threshold percentage to 50% or less. There is no reason that it should ever get that high.)
- In addition to other "Mod bomb" ideas: How about disclosing the identity to the target. Knowing that your anonymity has been stripped is a good social deterrent?
(This is in addition or an alternative to public disclosure listed above.)
When creating the metrics I would test for both short term abuse and long term abuse. If you limit someone to 4 abusive mods in a day they will just do less mods and open more sock puppet accounts. If you apply the behavior test over a longer time period abusive behavior becomes obvious.
(I would run long term metric tests as batch processes, as doing it on the fly would probably be overly intensive.)
Also I wouldn't publish the actual metrics as that makes it easy to game the system. Just publish the spirit of the metrics.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @04:46PM
Clinton on Assange: "Can't We Just Drone This Guy?"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 26 2019, @05:10AM
A) I know better than to try to make something like that idiot-proof. There's always a better idiot.
B) Our code's on github exactly as it runs on the productions servers except for config files. The only secrets we have are our passwords/private keys/etc... and takyon's cross-dressing fetish. He really should just go ahead and come out about that though, I mean it's twenty-freaking-ninteen.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Funny) by DannyB on Friday January 25 2019, @04:34PM (1 child)
I'm not sure what, if any, limitations there might be with the software stack used for SN, but what if you could check the incoming packets to see if the Evil bit is set?
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 26 2019, @05:11AM
We'd lose half our community and several staff members.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Friday January 25 2019, @04:34PM (4 children)
The high number of daily mod points makes it easy to use them flippantly.
Anyway, perhaps downmods could cost two points (or some other number). That would be a barrier to negative mod-bombing, but wouldn't do anything to prevent sockpuppet upmods.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 25 2019, @04:38PM (1 child)
But, then, there are the users who truly are argue until they turn to stone when the sun comes up trolls... is it a mod bomb to call all the kettle's comments black?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @04:47PM
I resemble that remark!
(Score: 3, Funny) by acid andy on Saturday January 26 2019, @12:23AM (1 child)
Yeah we did then [soylentnews.org] and still do now. The spammers will win otherwise.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 26 2019, @05:20AM
Security theater or the terrorists win!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by conn8d on Friday January 25 2019, @04:52PM (1 child)
We should moderate only down mods, because if effectively silences a person. Up mods however, to make someone appear prominently on the comments, can be easily remedied by adding the blocking functionality on our individual accounts. I think we should even encourage the use of sockpuppets for up modding, it would waste their time and give people yet another reason to create an account.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Saturday January 26 2019, @05:22AM
Hi newuser41, we notice you are participating in sockpuppeting, but thats okay! We have revoked your IP address from accessing the site until you make a donation. Thank you for being a SN user.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Friday January 25 2019, @04:58PM (1 child)
While there certainly are issues with the moderation system, I think that, on the whole, it works pretty well.
With respect to mod-bombing, there are any number of ways to address that (a bunch of which have been suggested here).
I've found it rather annoying to see others (and at times, myself) being modded down apparently because the downmodder doesn't like (for whatever reason) what the downmodded poster has to say. Personally, I prefer to respond to said posters with an actual argument as to the issue(s) I have. This generally promotes discussion, which is what this site purports to be about.
There are obvious spam/troll posters (most famous here is Ethanol-Fueled, who has earned his exalted place as asshole-in-residence. Hail to the asshole!) who generally get modded down fairly quickly.
Given that it can be complex to determine (especially if both a poster and a modder are pretty active) if mod-bombing is happening, looking to the admins to address this manually is attractive.
That said, admins are *volunteers*. Most have jobs and families and lives. They are already overworked and adding the task of going through mods to determine if there's an issue isn't fair to them, IMHO.
I suppose that there could be tools that can assist (db scripts to identify potential mod-bomb(er)s) and I'm sure the devs have some of this already. Any thoughts on this TMB?
At the same time, any automated system (as many have pointed out) can be gamed. Which brings us back to manual review.
As to sockpuppets, except for medium to long term statistical analysis (and that's not a panacea either) it would be difficult to identify intelligently used sockpuppets. Again, this puts additional burden on the admins.
Several people suggested mapping accounts to IP addresses (and IIUC, is already done), which sounds like a good idea. However, it's easy enough to disguise this via TOR, VPNs and proxies.
Given the issues, it seems like there aren't (m)any good solutions to either problem when there are folks that operate in bad faith.
I wish I could be optimistic about that, but then again, I'm NotSanguine.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 26 2019, @05:16AM
You should have perms to see this [soylentnews.org]. Nobody ever booted you from staff. paulej72 cursed quite a lot but managed an unholy bit of SQL that makes it blindingly obvious at a glance.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by pkrasimirov on Friday January 25 2019, @05:15PM (1 child)
With SN visibility growth comes more reward for trolls and hybrids. Good thing you asked for opinions and opinions you get (tons of). Good luck swiping trough all of them. Here's another one.
First, let's take a step back and ask why do we do all the stuff. You wrote "to promote the good content". But then you know there is no one good content, everybody can find something interesting and there goes Reddit with its countless topics. Why is this site judging differently and how? The phrase "common sense" comes to mind but also immediately the phrase "common sense it's not so common". Then what to do, how to tell "the good" from "the bad"? And here's the thing: different people have different judgement, up to their level of understanding, knowledge and experience. From that PoV now you cannot have one karma system to "rule them all" and call it fair for everybody. It should look more like a web of trust. So there goes the Google/Fb way of feeding you more of what you liked before, in your own personal bubble. Then there will come the problem of gullible people down the drain who can't climb back out from all the stuff algorithms throw their way.
I don't have the solution. Tell everyone if you find one, please.
P.S. Here's a guide for "people with agenda": https://cryptome.org/2012/07/gent-forum-spies.htm [cryptome.org]
Knowing this helps to counter the measures.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 26 2019, @05:20AM
Fascist libertarianism is the answer, obviously. That was a joke when I typed it but on reflection it's proven to be one of the better models on the net when you can find someone who actually believes you have the right to say absolutely anything you like as long as you're not pulling some shady bullshit like sock-puppeting.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @05:21PM
This is a tricky situation because there are legitimate examples of the same behavior pattern. user2 could have been getting slammed by an organized group and then upvoted by user1 for being underrated. PR agencies have teams of people working every website from their homes so they look just like normal users, and they aggressively abuse any site that has an autoban system. Then they gloat about being "the community" after they've kicked everyone else off.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday January 25 2019, @05:36PM (3 children)
Sorry but I'm going to have to tender very strong disagreement with this definition of mod-bombing. I am damn well going to drop all the -1 Flamebaits, -1 Trolls, and -1 Overrateds on all the comments that deserve them, because this place is going straight to shit and leaving them alone only encourages it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 26 2019, @05:25AM (2 children)
Whatever blows your skirt up. We haven't been mod-banning for it for some time but we have still been undoing all of the mods in a mod bomb (Justified or not. We're not arbiters of value but of rules. And we don't even like being that.) when we check the mod bombs page. They're your points though, so you can do with them what you like.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday January 26 2019, @06:49AM (1 child)
Pray to whatever deity you believe in I don't ever figure out how to smack people upside the head over TCP/IP.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 26 2019, @06:08PM
SYN/SMACK is it?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by insanumingenium on Friday January 25 2019, @05:49PM (2 children)
The problem I see is that this site can be kinda cliquish (and usually along party lines), and I could see upvoting someone who is making a series of points throughout the day that are informative and interesting, and who is continuing to respond to someone who just isn't persuasive (or worse is actively trolling [like the hero we don't need above]). I could easily see accidentally triggering either of those limits in the course of a single conversation.
The question is where to put that number that maximized positive effect and minimizes negative effect.
Obviously, like most here, my concern is false positives. Do we have any kind of a metric on how many users currently would violate that limit based on current data vs how many of those mods/admins would uphold on manual review? End of the day, I am willing to trust y'all to do your business, if you say 4 is the magic number, run 4.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 26 2019, @02:15PM (1 child)
All reviews are manual. I dunno about you but I prefer if there are going to be negative consequences dished out for something, I want a human being making the decision rather than a machine. Machines are not smart; they're high-speed idiots.
As for metrics, no. Mod-bombs are rare enough to be not really worth tracking. There are months without any and weeks with two but the latter is far less common. Sock bombs were far less common even than that but one asshat has changed that recently.
The magic number is five though. Four is okay, five is not. Martyb got confused.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Monday January 28 2019, @04:25PM
I do like having human effort attached, especially from a fascist libertarian. I didn't want to suggest manual review in case it was a bigger job than it now sounds like it is, and of course for fear it would turn all moose turd pie on me.
Thanks again for all your help.
(Score: 2) by donkeyhotay on Friday January 25 2019, @05:59PM
https://giphy.com/gifs/human-cannonball-DlJqDfBkYxG5G [giphy.com]
(Score: 2) by realDonaldTrump on Friday January 25 2019, @06:04PM
"Inasmuch as 'user1' was able to perform 80 upmods ...........that means that 'user2' received approximately 80 downmods from the community." The Summery.
Well, I think that's either a lie. Or just plain WRONG. Because I've seen many Tweets that only have Up Mods. Or, only have 1 Up Mod. With no Down Mods. And if Up Mods could only be given after Down Mods, to balance out the Down Mods, so many people would have Negative, or ZERO Karma. Not just User #2. But everybody that ever received a Modd. And nobody would have Positive Karma. I better say "think," otherwise they'll give me a Pinocchio. I don't like Pinocchios!!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by istartedi on Friday January 25 2019, @06:06PM
How about letting the sock-puppets and mod-bombs run wild, and introducing a new axis to moderation? The Slash mod system is a huge leap vs. simple thumb up/down systems because it has "flavors", but it's still a single axis of positive/negative. Since administrators already have a sense of what's considered manipulated moderation, they can measure it, display it, and allow us to decide if we want to include manipulated results.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Friday January 25 2019, @06:17PM (5 children)
"Naming names" runs counter to the spirit of this site. We could; however; publish a list of comments that were flagged for review.
To use the terminology from the submission: don't name "user1" - instead publish a list of comments with questionable moderation. (This way the flagging could be done automatically.) This allows the community to determine if the moderation is appropriate and adjust accordingly - and additionally moves the workload away from administrators.
Many people have chimed in on how they use their mod-points, so here's my two-cents worth: I probably up- and down- mod in equal amounts. I will happily kick the obvious dross, the redundant and especially the racist trolls to the kerb - in the hope that others won't have to waste their time reading a worthless comment (or worse, feed the troll). I certainly appreciate coming to read an older article and finding the community has already done the weeding. I rather prefer to moderate upwards but I suppose we all have to take turns cleaning the latrines.
There may have been times I have up-modded the same person multiple times in a day - as many others have pointed out sometimes they just get on a roll and write a lot of good stuff. I most certainly have down-modded ACs multiple times - those instances where an AC posts something idiotic, gets modded down, and then re-posts again and again come to mind.
All things considered I believe the site runs pretty well. It wouldn't be the end of the world if nothing changed - the deciding factor will likely be how much work the administration team has to put in to keep it ticking over.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Friday January 25 2019, @11:27PM (2 children)
a quick site:soylentnets.org search would reverse that if you were really worried about not naming names...
(Score: 2) by lentilla on Saturday January 26 2019, @05:20AM (1 child)
"User1" is a sockpuppet. "User2" is the manipulated account. By not "naming names" I was only referring to "User1". "User2" will be obvious because it is their comments flagged for review.
We assume that "User1" is a (potentially) guilty party. "User2" may be guilty of collusion (because they are a sockpuppet, or belong to the controlling party); or they may be innocent (just happen to express a differing opinion).
I'm not sure I understand. Given a comment made by "User2", we (non administrators) have no way of knowing who moderated it (unless I am mistaken). Yes, "User2" would be published - it doesn't suggest they are guilty of sockpuppetry - only that their comment attracted an algorithmically interesting amount of attention.
(Score: 2) by insanumingenium on Monday January 28 2019, @04:39PM
I had misinterpreted your idea, I thought you were saying we should publish the content of the comments and not the names of the posters. In retrospect, I am not sure how I got that wrong.
(Score: 4, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday January 26 2019, @02:17PM (1 child)
It's currently all one person, so publishing a list of names or comments amounts to the same thing.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday January 26 2019, @03:08PM
Wow, so one, lone, Soylentil has spawned an article with 214 comments and still counting. They must feel very special, what with all this attention.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by slinches on Friday January 25 2019, @06:32PM
I was just thinking that trying to set hard limits on mod-bombing is a bit too easily gamed. What about a metric for the difference in diversity of users up-modding vs down-modding a specific account? If the % of unique mods (total unique up-modder accounts/total of up-mods) is much lower than the same for dow-mods, then it's clear that a set of sock-puppets or a small group of users are driving up the user's visibility. Looking at that plus a similar calc for the user's mod activity (how many unique accounts they mod up vs down) would be quite telling and you should even be able to pick out whether it's a sockpuppet or a group of users collaborating to keep each others karma up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 25 2019, @06:36PM
one could add a "processed" icon-image -aka- a computer generated image from numbers next to each username.
this "icon" would have like three bars.
the first bar would be like 10 pixels height. full ten pixels would mean that of total karma points, all came from 1 - 3 other users.
the second bar, same height, would represent, when full, from all karma points, points that came from 3 -15 different users.
the 3rd bar, same height and when full, would show that all karma points came from more then 15 different users ...
so for example, some has... uhm ... errr 3 karma points all from different other user, the 3rd bar would be full?
-
if it is anything that the internet has thought me, is that when people interact on-line they will always try to find a way to "(ab)use" the system -aka- hack the system. what is happening with sock puppets is this.
i recommend, that instead of trying to fight it (like any legacy admin/op would) to instead embrace it, setup some rules that give leeway to let creativ juices flow.
if someone wants to go thru the troubles to gimp the system, then it should be obvious and elicit a smile.
ofc this is easier recommended then implemented : )
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Friday January 25 2019, @07:12PM
First, thanks to Martyb for the good work.
But, seriously: how pathetic do yoy have to be, to up-mod your own posts? That's just sad...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.