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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 RamiK on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:03AM (1 child)

    by RamiK (1813) on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:03AM (#887224)

    Not that I don't enjoy some sophistry every once in a while but opening up the definition of deity is just another excuse for magical thinking. Why not argue for skepticism on the matter of the world being flat since we haven't determined the dimensions or "flat"? Why not say gravity isn't the work of infinite angels dancing on the pin of needles? This post-modern Derrida framework resolves nothing and certainly adds nothing to the practice of a moderation system.

    Keep the philosophic banter to the comments. It doesn't deserve moderation since you can't logically critique wordplay anyhow. Maybe a "+1 Found Godo" and "-1 Waiting for Godo" should be reserved for the lot of it. Though I'm sure someone will complain it ought to be "-1 Found Godo" and "+1 Waiting for Godo".

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  • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:49AM

    by acid andy (1683) on Thursday August 29 2019, @10:49AM (#887231) Homepage Journal

    Not that I don't enjoy some sophistry every once in a while but opening up the definition of deity is just another excuse for magical thinking. Why not argue for skepticism on the matter of the world being flat since we haven't determined the dimensions or "flat"?

    Flat-Earthers aside, I expect the (meta)physics of the Earth's geometry is a less popular topic than reasoning about deities. Some people are much more concerned with deities because they could have implications for their destiny, perhaps after death (Note: I am not attempting to argue for an afterlife here myself--just discussing what concerns are popular) if not in life. For the Earth's geometry, we seem to have a model that works well enough to satisfy most people in their daily lives. It's probably something to do with our social ape brain, often being more interested in other minds than the minutiae of one particular (apparently) inanimate object.

    Why not say gravity isn't the work of infinite angels dancing on the pin of needles?

    See my argument earlier about more specific definitions being vastly less probable.

    For stuff that goes on within our universe that we can observe and measure, there's very little room left for magical thinking because we've left very few gaps. Outside of space and time, though, we have no, or almost no, information at all, to make claims about the existence or non-existence of anything. Hence an agnostic saying that there's no way to prove or disprove the existence of a deity is being more intellectually honest than a devout atheist that simply insists that deities do not exist.

    You could ask, if a deity is somewhat like a conscious mind, then why should such a thing be more likely to exist in such a realm than anything else of lesser complexity, such as a block of cheese. First off I'm not completely convinced that a block of cheese isn't more complex than the fundamentals of a mind (not a brain). Secondly I think people instinctively get the idea that the conscious self that has subjective experience could very well be something distinct from the stuff that we study through objective physics. We experience space and time and matter and forces, but we seem to be a point of view onto them. In that way it's easy for people to suppose that a consciousness could exist outside of the universe, hence the plausibility of one out there that we could call a deity.

    I've no idea whether that's a coherent argument, but it's damned hard for any atheist to refute it!

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    If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?