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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!]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Friday August 23 2019, @08:38AM (13 children)
Rehash is the software powering this site. I'm pretty sure it's not the software that does these troll moderations (well, in a sense it does). Thus the topic of this post should be Soylent, not Rehash.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Touché) by janrinok on Friday August 23 2019, @08:58AM (2 children)
Yes, I know. But if moderations are meaningless then we might as well simplify the software by removing those parts that are involved with moderation, comment filtering and maintaining karma.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @10:11AM (1 child)
yes. but that's a different discussion.
first you figure out what the community wants (and that discussion is filed under "soy"), then you decide how to bring it about (and that is filed under "rehash").
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday August 23 2019, @11:07AM
You are not reading what I have said.
This is a counter to martyb's assertion that moderations should be ignored or disregarded. If they should be ignored - which is NOT what I am saying - then why did we spend all that effort implementing the entire system of moderation? In fact, because we have expended that effort it indicates that, at some time in the past, we actually believed that moderation was important. I believe it still is. I am debating the need for moderation and not arguing for a change in the software. Moderation was important, is important and, providing it is not abused, it will remain important.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday August 23 2019, @11:23AM (4 children)
I stand corrected - I can now see the point you are making. It is the topic indicator that you are objecting to - correctly in my opinion also - and not to my comment which I how I had interpreted it.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 23 2019, @05:01PM (3 children)
I guess I should have been more clear (I thought "topic" would be clear enough, but I obviously was wrong). Yes, it was the topic indicator that I was talking about.
BTW, on the topic of using the mod points:
Back when mod points were given only occasionally, I tended to use them all; after all, you never knew when you'd get the next ones (also, I suspected that using them all might increase the probability to get new ones sooner). Now as I have them everyday, I've become lazy in moderating. I can imagine I'm not the only one. So maybe that change overall had not as positive effects as one might expect.
Do you have any data on how the amount of moderation changed after the change in awarding moderation points? (Probably not immediately afterwards, because habits take time to change, but a curve of moderation activity a few months before and after the change might show some effects).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by exaeta on Saturday August 24 2019, @03:07AM (2 children)
The Government is a Bird
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday August 24 2019, @08:14AM (1 child)
Who chooses who gets mod points? Based on what criteria?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @10:39PM
I think the GP and GGP were referencing quantity of mod points, not adding some sort of other requirement or hoop to jump through.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday August 23 2019, @12:16PM (2 children)
I've added 'Soylent' to the topics. I haven't removed 'Rehash' because some have already seen it under that topic and might use that as a search key at a later date.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @09:58PM (1 child)
Sorry about that. I swear I looked for that option and didn't see it. If I had, I would have used that is a much more appropriate option. But, the ones I did see, "Rehash" was closest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @10:01PM
When I go to submit a story, this is what I see:
/dev/random
Answers
Business
Career & Education
Code
Digital Liberty
Hardware
Mobile
News
OS
Rehash
Science
Security
Select Topic
Slash
Software
Techonomics
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Friday August 23 2019, @12:42PM (1 child)
Never knew that...
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 23 2019, @05:53PM
I mean, who cares about what a semi-retarded mod flares you? they are engineers for the most part so they know shit about what they talk about (but they always do so with a know-all attitude)