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As promised, here's the round-table discussion post that I said on Wednesday was coming. We have a long history at SoylentNews of listening and responding to our community; I genuinely hope that never changes. I also recognize that I may have ruffled some feathers in the last few weeks with original content postings so here's the best place to get this all out.
I am mindful of the community's support and goodwill; I don't want to squander any of it. Yes, there are times where my hand may be forced (e.g., DCMA takedowns). Still, I'm always a bit hesitant whenever I post on the main site for anything that isn't site update news or similar. I may be the de facto site leader, but I want my submissions to be treated like anyone else's — I want no favoritism. The editorial team does review my stories and signs off before they go live (unless it's an "emergency" situation such as the last time we blew up the site). However, as the saying goes, the buck stops with me.
SoylentNews accepts original content. I'm also aware that I've probably submitted the most original content so far (See "Previously", below for some examples). I'm grateful for the community's apparent acceptance of my submissions and the positive responses to them. What I don't know is if there is an undercurrent of displeasure with these. Maybe everyone thinks these are all fine. Then again, maybe somebody has an issue with them. Rather than assume anything, let's get it all out in the open.
What I want to cover in this round-table discussion is original content and having images in posts as well as topics such as yesterday's Live Show on Improving Your Security -- Wednesday June 3rd, 2020.
So, contributors and commenters to SoylentNews, get that Reply button hot and let me hear your feedback. As usual, either a member of staff or I will respond to your comments below,
73 de NCommander
Previously:
(2020-06-03) Live Show on Improving Your Security -- Wednesday June 3rd, 2020
(2020-05-24) Retrotech: The Novell NetWare Experience
(2020-05-14) Exploring Windows for Workgroups 3.11 - Early 90s Networking
(2020-05-10) Examining Windows 1.0 HELLO.C - 35 Years of Backwards Compatibility
(2020-05-15) Meta: Having a Chat about SoylentNews' Internet Relay Chat
(2018-10-25) My Time as an ICANN Fellow
(2017-10-09) soylentnews.org experiencing DNSSEC issues
(2017-04-20) Soylentnews.org is Moving to Gentoo...
(2017-04-17) SN Security Updates: CAA, LogJam, HTTP Method Disable, and 3DES
(2017-03-13) Xenix 2.2.3c Restoration: Xrossing The X (Part 4)
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @04:07PM (21 children)
Yeah I think there should be some way to algorithmically determine abuse based on something like this. If somebody is much more often than not modding things as troll or off topic or whatever else that end up getting upvoted by a number of other users, it makes it pretty easy to flag that user for engaging in abuse. At the minimum, it'd bring the search pool down from every post with a negative mod on it to a very tiny chunk that end up being let's say 'disputed'.
Beyond this, I think the worst penalty should basically just be removing a user's modding privileges for a while - so the cost of a false positive isn't the guillotine but just a bit of mild inconvenience for those who somehow stumbled into an inappropriate abuse flagging.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday June 08 2020, @04:26PM (19 children)
I couldn't understand your first post- seemed to contradict itself, but this post makes sense. I may have some of the stronger opinions about the mod system, and I like your ideas.
I'll propose an idea at the root level. I think we need ongoing discussions of things like this whole topic, and subtopics like mod system.
Basically I advocate for a more democratic mod system- one where 1 person doesn't have the power to drop your comment below people's reading threshold. And maybe some people would have a stronger vote, but even that gets complicated for too many reasons to write here now.
Obviously I have much more to say about it, and that's why I'd like to see a side discussion dedicated to meta topics like mod system.
In fact, the mod system HAS been discussed on SN before, with great ideas put forth by martyb, tmb, and other top admins. IIRC tmb even lost mod privileges for a month or so due to something I forget, so there is that penalty potential in place here.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 08 2020, @04:49PM (3 children)
Yup, I spanked myself for improper use of the Spam mod.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Funny) by RS3 on Monday June 08 2020, @05:04PM (2 children)
Hogged all the pleasure to yourself again, huh? :)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 08 2020, @05:36PM (1 child)
Knowing the sense of humor around these parts, I wouldn't trust anyone to not "forget" a safe word.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by RS3 on Monday June 08 2020, @07:33PM
Safe word? Never heard of one.
(Score: 5, Informative) by martyb on Monday June 08 2020, @06:48PM (3 children)
Yes, I noticed a spam mod TMB gave to a comment and took exception to it. Had a vigorous discussion with him about it on IRC. Although I could see his point, that comment did not meet the criteria for a spam mod as it was currently described in the moderation FAQ. He ultimately concurred. To his credit — and without hesitation — he owned up to it AND of his own volition gave himself a one-month moderation ban.
As for the outcome of the discussion you mentioned, it has been put on hold for the simple reason of lack of resources. There are a very limited number of minor changes that can be immediately made to the site (templates). Most others need to be checked into source control and a new version of the slashcode ("rehash") released. That is something that needs another pair of eyes to review and roll out. At the moment, TMB is stretched already with some construction work that should wind down in a couple months or so.
We are, however, far from idle! Juggs (aka Deucalion on IRC) has been studiously trying to bring our IRC server up to date... and making steady progress, too! This is on our new server, aluminum, which is slated to eventually replace our one-and-only CentOS server. There are a bunch of other services that run on that box, that are in line to get transitioned over after IRC. At the same time, TMB has been transitioning some of our Ubuntu boxes over to Gentoo.
So, we are aware and making progress to where we can actually do something about it. ATM, everything still works, we have backups should things go sideways, and we are slowly (but surely) on the right path!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday June 08 2020, @07:26PM (2 children)
Wow, thank you so much martyb!! It's all making perfect sense now. I guess I only wish I could help somehow... But thank you all for making this a great site.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @01:18PM (1 child)
You can help by browsing at -1 when you have mod points.
You have that power. Use it.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday June 10 2020, @01:35AM
No, not going there, that's where the goatsee lives...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2020, @08:00PM (10 children)
*No one* has that power unless you *you* give it to them. Which is why I always read at -1.
As PinkyGigglebrain's [soylentnews.org] current sig reads:
That's the beauty of the moderation system we have -- all comments are visible -- if you choose to see them. As such, if you don't read at -1, *you* are the one denying yourself knowledge. Which is fine, as long as it doesn't impact others.
What's more, and perhaps TMB could chime in here with statistics about this (not putting you on the spot, TMB -- just wondering if you can tease some info about this out of the DB), posts which get downmodded often get upmodded as well -- reflecting the sensibilities of the people who matter -- Soylentils (SoylentNews *is* people, after all).
In my experience, that generally leads to (mostly) reasonable moderation. No system is or could be perfect. Since you don't think it works well:
Given that this article is a community roundtable, I can't think of a better forum to have that discussion. Please do elucidate and let's discuss.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 09 2020, @12:04AM (9 children)
Not really clear on what you were asking but you don't want me giving out stats on bad moderations any more than you want me giving out punishment for moderating improperly, either way puts me in a position of deciding what's good and what's not. If you were asking about posts that get downmodded and upmodded both, I'll look into it in the morning and get back to you. It's a pain in the butt query to figure out without slamming our db and my brain's better at taking that sort of abuse before it's awake enough to object.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @01:18AM (5 children)
Quite so. My apologies for being vague. What I was asking for were statistics about moderated messages.
I posited that in many cases, messages that were downmodded were also upmodded. I further speculated that the interplay of those moderations leads to a (mostly) fair assessment of comment quality.
In that context, I wondered if my initial premise was valid, and if so, how that affected total moderations.
To be specific, the data I was requesting was some or all of:
1. The average number of upmods/downmods for messages that get moderated;
2. A frequency distribution [wikipedia.org] of comment moderation scores that received moderation;
3. Ratio of upmods to downmods across comments that receive *multiple* moderations;
4. The mean and median moderation scores for comments that receive moderation;
5. The above statistics broken down by comments posted by AC vs. registered users.
Are most comments which receive a single moderation usually an upmod or a downmod?
How does the universe of *moderated* comments break down in terms of moderation score?
What's the story with comments that receive multiple moderations? Are those moderations generally split between upmods and downmods, or mostly just upmods?
And lots of other questions that didn't just pop off the top of my head.
The statistics I mentioned could give a useful window into how the moderation system is being used.
(Score: 5, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:07PM (4 children)
Well, for starters, out of our million and small change comments, only 65005 have been downmodded at all. Of those, 36336 have also been upmodded. Now for your specific requests, all of which I'm excluding Spam and Disagree from and rounding to four decimal places...
AC comments only:
Registered users only:
Yup, that's all I'm doing for the morning. Had to redo the multi-mod ones from scratch because I flubbed the SQL when I went to count up the mods for registered and AC. Keep in mind that if the numbers don't precisely add up, it's because I did this while people were still posting and moderating. If they're badly off, I probably needed more coffee when I ran that query.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @05:31PM (3 children)
Thank you Buzzard!
That didn't really play out the way I expected in several respects -- which just goes to show that the exercise was useful and worthwhile.
It's interesting that despite all the complaints about downmods, Soylentils upmod significantly more than they downmod.
I won't quote the AC vs. registered user splits here (you can view them here [soylentnews.org]).
That said, I find it a little surprising that ACs are less likely to be downmodded than registered users, but not by all that much (AC: 1.2284 vs. Registered Users: 1.4192). I'd have expected the reverse.
Registered Users are less likely to be upmodded than ACs, but not by very much (AC: 1.878 vs. Registered Users: 1.7607).
So. based on a quick eyeball analysis, it seems that comments:
1. Are more likely to be upmodded than downmodded;
2. This holds true for both AC and Registered User comments;
3. ACs are slightly *more* likely to be upmodded and slightly *less* likely to be downmodded than Registered Users;
4. Registered Users get more upmods than ACs when the comment score is already at 2+;
(4) may be due to selection bias (with those who read at >= +2 seeing those comments and not those below that threshold).
I suspect that AC comments get fewer *total* moderations than registered users for the same reason.
So (at least to me) it seems that for comments *that get moderated* ACs and Registered users are treated pretty much the same, except for those comments which are already significantly upmodded.
It might be instructive to also see how the total number of comments break down (AC vs. Registered Users) and how many AC comments receive any moderation vs. how many Registered User comments receive any moderation.
Given the quick review, I conclude that the moderation system *is* working fairly well and that it would likely work better if registered users would browse at -1 when they have mod points.
Does that seem a reasonable conclusion, or am I missing something important?
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 09 2020, @05:41PM (2 children)
4 is most likely largely from registered users starting at 1 and nearly all of them getting an additional +1 good karma bonus unless they have it turned off.
There were 353532 AC comments when I checked 20 minutes or so ago. I'll let you do the math from the cid of this comment and the frequency distributions from there, I'm headed for a nap.
No idea on the conclusion. They might get annoyed that they had to see all the lower scored comments and be in a bad moderating mood. Only way to tell would be to try for a while and find out. But everyone who's been here a month has mod points every day, so that would effectively make all registered users browse at -1 every day until they'd used up that day's mod points.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @05:49PM (1 child)
That certainly makes sense. Especially given that the statistics you provided didn't include the karma bonus.
So about 1/3 of comments are AC. I'd have expected it would be more, but there it is.
Thanks again for providing these details Buzzard. And sweet dreams!
A reasonable point. Perhaps folks could consider doing so a couple times a week?
That said, I always read at -1 because I don't want to miss interesting stuff that doesn't get upmodded -- and to upmod those comments.
It's a small price to pay, IMHO, to highlight the good stuff.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by martyb on Tuesday June 09 2020, @09:58PM
Late to join in here, but my $0.02 is that I have *always* read comments at a threshold of -1.
Accidents do happen. I know I've mis-modded (is that a word?) a few myself. Something something being human something.
Not withstanding the foregoing, abuse can happen. I have a great deal of empathy for the "little guy (or gal!)". I've been on the short end of things enough times to know how it feels... and don't like it one bit. So if that means that when I am reading comments, I am looking at everything>em> right from the start, then so be it. If I see what I think is an incorrect moderation -- I'm on it with a quick reverse-mod to balance things out!
I wonder how many of those who complain about down-mods actually view comments at -1? Hmmm?
It bears mentioning that staff gets the same number of mod points as everyone else: 10 per day.
That said, I have little enough time to get to read comments here; I spend too much time trying to get stories pushed out to the community! Call it a labor of love, whatever. I've been with the site from before it went live... and have no plans to leave any time soon!
Wit is intellect, dancing.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:31AM (1 child)
When you figure that query out, maybe stash it in a stored procedure for reuse?
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 09 2020, @11:49AM
Save useful effort for later?! He's a witch! Burn him!
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09 2020, @08:56AM
Just do what they do around here, set your terminal to launch the job to beat the shit out of the server at 4AM so less people notice. If possible, do it when most of the IT people are on vacation so that way why you bring everything down to its knees, it's that much easier to recover from the bonus features of your hastily written code.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Mykl on Tuesday June 09 2020, @12:30AM
Disagree.
I tend to use my mod points to mark things as Interesting or Insightful. I tend not to use the Spam or Troll mods. However, there are likely people out there who are interested in 'keeping the site clean' who mostly use their mods to get rid of trash rather than marking up good stuff. Both are valid uses of the mod system, but I don't think that the person using most of their points for taking out the trash should be penalised for that activity versus my use.