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posted by on Sunday April 19 2020, @03:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the economics dept.

So, COVID-19 (coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, whatever you call it) sucks a bit for your health but it turns out it sucks a lot for the economy. So we're extending any subscriptions that were going to expire before then out to June first (this may be extended a time or two depending on how well our savings hold up). Yeah, we know we're an extremely small cap entity and that's not going to make a whole lot of difference but it's something we felt we should do anyway for a couple reasons.

First, we as a corporation do not have paid employees. The only people we give money to are our hosts, our registrar, our CPA, and the revenooers. Which we're going to have to continue doing regardless and which we can currently afford to do for a month or two without dire risk of having to make infrastructure cutbacks. Putting money into us during this nonsense doesn't help much in directly putting food on someone's table or keeping jobs from going poof, so we'd prefer you guys put anything you were going to send us to work where it will help at least a tiny bit in keeping the businesses that your neighbors work at afloat. Which is to say, spend it locally.

Second, we're quite fond of the folks who've chosen to financially support the site and we don't want them to get dinged because of something that wasn't remotely their fault.

Now we're not shutting down the site's subscription functionality. If you feel a desire to contribute anyway, we're happy to oblige and we're not going to tell you that you can't. We're not the bosses of your wallets and it would mean extra work for me when I don't really have time to do much of anything code/admin-wise.

Also, we're only doing this automatically for current and new subscribers; we don't want to hit people who weren't interested with an unsolicited email about subscription expiration when we have to shut the extensions down. They may have quit subscribing or even frequenting the site and it's annoying as all get out to keep getting emails from sites you stopped doing business with on purpose. We're happy to handle it manually, though, if your subscription ended any time since the first of the year. Just drop a comment to this journal entry (NOT to THIS story!) and I'll take care of it as often as I have time (at least once a day).

That's all. We now return you to your regularly scheduled mix of discussion, debate, yelling at each other, and trolling.

(Oh, and you can still submit stories, too! Hint hint! --martyb)

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @06:05PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @06:05PM (#985171)

    If I had to guess, people might be reluctant to use the spam mod because of this statement in the FAQ: "If you are unsure of whether a comment is spam or not, don't use the spam mod." They might also be unfamiliar with it because it's not one of the options at Slashdot. It might also be useful to explain the disagree mod. I think it's a +0 modifier, but I'm not entirely sure what it does.

    Maybe if someone uses the spam mod in good faith, genuinely believing the comment was spam, and the mod is overturned, it could be handled differently from actual abuse. If the user calmly emails the admins to explain why they believe the comment was spam, if it's a good faith difference in the interpretation of the guidelines, the one month penalty could be lifted. Obviously if this happens several times with a user, it's abuse. But if it happens once or twice and they discuss it in a civil manner with the admins, perhaps there could be a judgment call to lift the penalty.

    Another option might be to allow users to hide all comments that are modded spam, even if they're browsing at -1. Spam mods are reviewed by the admins, so they'll get reversed if they're applied incorrectly. But it would be helpful if moderators read at -1 to reverse other incorrect moderations that don't get reviewed by the editors. That way, they can read at -1 and moderate up good comments that are at -1 while not wading through all the spam. I think a few minor tweaks like that and perhaps the comment score modifiers would be helpful. But I hope you don't actually change the moderation system. I don't think it's needed.

    I don't think the system is broken as-is. These are just a couple of ideas to allow logged-in users more flexibility with how comments are displayed.

  • (Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday April 20 2020, @06:44PM (2 children)

    by janrinok (52) Subscriber Badge on Monday April 20 2020, @06:44PM (#985181) Journal

    Maybe if someone uses the spam mod in good faith, genuinely believing the comment was spam, and the mod is overturned, it could be handled differently from actual abuse. If the user calmly emails the admins to explain why they believe the comment was spam, if it's a good faith difference in the interpretation of the guidelines, the one month penalty could be lifted. Obviously if this happens several times with a user, it's abuse. But if it happens once or twice and they discuss it in a civil manner with the admins, perhaps there could be a judgment call to lift the penalty.

    Which is a good description of exactly what we do now

    It might also be useful to explain the disagree mod. I think it's a +0 modifier

    Just because someone disagrees with a statement doesn't mean that the person making the statement is trolling. People have differences of opinion in regular conversation all the time. The disagree mod is exactly what it says - but it is only useful if you then make a comment explaining why you disagree. The 0 modifier is there intentionally - the fact that someone disagrees doesn't mean the statement is incorrect, so why should it be penalised?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @07:02PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 20 2020, @07:02PM (#985187)

      If that's your current policy for handling spam mods, that's good. I have no issue with that. I'm familiar with Slashdot but am less familiar with some of the tweaks that have been made here such as the spam mod. Thank you for clarifying.

      I was suggesting that an explanation like that of the disagree mod might be a good addition the the FAQ. I agree with you that a disagree mod shouldn't be a -1. It should either be +0 or +1. The latter could be justified on the grounds that if the user disagrees with the comment yet finds it worthwhile enough to merit further discussion, it's a quality comment. I'm suggesting that you add it to the FAQ because if users understand it better, they're more likely to use it as you intend. A lot of the political discussions on this site would be better if people used the disagree mod to express their disagreement instead of troll or flamebait. And I think it's pretty easy to tell distinguish someone making good points that you disagree with from someone who is just trying to provoke angry responses. Actual shitposts try to be inflammatory and don't actually make an effort to defend their position.

      I agree that it's up to the users who moderate to do their part to improve the site. Like I said, I think moderation works pretty well as-is and I don't think you need to adopt the tweaks that Azuma Hazuki is proposing. If you decide that something needs to change, I've made a few suggestions that could be considered but stop short of actually changing the moderation system. These are only suggestions. Do with them as you wish. I have no problem if you adopt them or choose not to.

      Thank you for your time. I appreciate you discussing this with me.