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posted by martyb on Friday August 23 2019, @06:17AM   Printer-friendly
from the tragedy-of-the-commons dept.

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!]


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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:28PM (10 children)

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday August 27 2019, @01:28PM (#886060) Journal

    Troll/Flamebait/etc... do not mean Factually Incorrect.

    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
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:45PM (9 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday August 27 2019, @11:45PM (#886490) Homepage Journal

    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)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:22AM (#886519) Journal

      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)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday August 28 2019, @12:39AM (#886535) Homepage Journal

        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)

          by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 28 2019, @01:06AM (#886558) Journal

          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)

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday August 28 2019, @01:58AM (#886587) Homepage Journal

            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)

              by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:31AM (#886600) Journal

              Do what you gotta do, man.

              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)

                by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:47AM (#886605) Homepage Journal

                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)

                  by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday August 28 2019, @03:01AM (#886608) Journal

                  Oh I'm disappointed that you can't put your own feelz aside

                  Thanks for your show of care. Don't worry too much, tough, I'm not actually losing sleep over it, but...

                  and follow the mod guidelines but I'm not going to lose any sleep over one bad moderator.

                  ... 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)

                    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday August 28 2019, @02:21PM (#886795) Homepage Journal

                    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

                      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 29 2019, @06:58AM (#887197)

                      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.