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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: 1) by DECbot on Monday June 08 2020, @04:49PM (14 children)
That's where you have to set your user preferences. I like to have anything at or above to 0 to be fully visible. anything at -1 will have the subject visible but content collapsed. Below -1, is hidden. That way, subjects with a more thought out subject line than "frost piss" I can quickly review while not having to bother with stuff that looks like obvious spam. Of course this setup isn't a panacea; it won't expose legit comments mod-bombed to -2.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Monday June 08 2020, @05:19PM (13 children)
DECbot, your response is great, but is exactly the the thinking problem- you're over-focusing and missing the big-picture. It seems so obvious that I'm a bit frustrated trying to explain it.
I, and most here, know about setting the reading threshold.
BTW, AFAIK there is no such score of -2.
1) Right now, your post is a "1" score. Average person with no login visits SN. Default reading threshold is 2. That person won't see your post!
2) Yes, anyone can change global threshold, or click the "+" in box icon, but will they? What percentage will? 50%? 20%? Your post is invisible to many.
3) What are the stats on registered users' reading thresholds? Mine is usually 0, but not always, and I rarely click on -1 posts.
Do you see my point? It is NOT a balanced system! By definition, everyone will see a score 5 post. And, almost no-one will see a -1 post - - to be able to rescue it if they were so inclined.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DECbot on Monday June 08 2020, @05:30PM (9 children)
If the decision was up to me, logged in users with mod points would be forced to see at least the subjects of comments at -1. If you want your default returned, use up your mod points. As for those not logged in, yeah I can see your point. For a user with no login, the default shouldn't be set so high. Though it may be deliberate to encourage people to get a login so they can set their own reading preferences to something more reasonable.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Funny) by RS3 on Monday June 08 2020, @07:22PM (3 children)
Wow, excellent ideas- thanks!
I may switch to -1 if someone can guarantee I won't see a goatsee...
(Score: 5, Touché) by coolgopher on Tuesday June 09 2020, @05:52AM (2 children)
Look, if it helps any, you're not safe from that at higher settings either.
I mean, anyone might try to sneak a +1 Funny past the filters just for the lolz. We're certainly known to have some such jesters here. And I mean, it's a classic by now. What self-respecting site would NOT have that in its history?
Besides, it's not like there isn't an arms race between the comment filter and the posters anyway, so something it bound to slip past onto unsuspecting eyes. To quote that timeless movie1 - "Life is pain, highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something". As for a goatse, let me continue to quote that same movie - "As youuuuuu wiiiiish"...
1) By which I of course mean The Princess Bride [imdb.com]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:17PM (1 child)
Thanks for reminding me, time to clear them out since nobody's tried to get around any of them for probably six months or more.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Funny) by coolgopher on Wednesday June 10 2020, @01:29AM
That compression filter is mean. In the end I had to code up a small entropy generator to get past it. Definitely discourages random crap posting and forces some dedicated trolling :D
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hubie on Monday June 08 2020, @07:50PM (1 child)
I think this is a great idea. I'm one of the 10% mentioned that always browses at -1, and I always have even on the green site. I have always shared the concern that there is a lot of very good stuff at or even below 0 that gets missed by people who refuse to lower their threshold. Perhaps to use mod points, you need to click a button to enable them which then kicks in a forced -1 viewing threshold. Forcing this will probably somewhat reduce participation in moderation, but I personally like the tradeoff. I've always viewed slashcode moderation as being sort of like voting, where you are performing a civic duty to make your society better.
Is browsing at -1 really that much of an annoyance? Maybe after all these years I'm just used to scanning by obvious troll/spam posts, but I really don't see it as a problem. Lately there are these "boomer" posts, which are easy to pass by, and the "apk tranny hate" posts, but I really don't see it as that big of a problem. The goatse stuff you need to actually click on, so you never see that stuff either unless you can't resist seeing where a link is going.
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday June 09 2020, @05:28AM
Likewise I always read at -1, skipping some posts that are obviously not worth reading. Here, I assumed most read at -1 as it isn't like there are that many posts. On the green site, I often use most of my points up-modding AC's who actually have something to say that is worth reading. Here I don't moderate as much due to assuming most read at 0 or -1, which it seems was a bad assumption.
(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 09 2020, @12:21AM (2 children)
Hmmm...
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Tuesday June 09 2020, @02:26AM (1 child)
If you do it, make sure to post a banner explaining what happened or you'll get a billion but reports.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday June 09 2020, @04:51AM
FTFY.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Monday June 08 2020, @06:10PM (2 children)
I'm one of those who views at -1 all the time. Otherwise a response I may agree with and need to upmod will have the same visibility as GNNA style posts which I don't need to see. There's an enormous issue on this site with people conflating opposing opinions with troll/flamebait posts.
One way this could somewhat be addressed is to give controversial posts two scores -- a negative and a positive -- and an option to view controversial comments. I've seen posts with 12 or more moderations back and forth at the extreme end. The way things are now, the moderation is mostly controlled by the last mod unless it has gotten up to +4 or 5. Anyway, if a post has a sufficient number opposing moderations, instead of seeing just a "+1", it could show as "-3 | +4" and not be treated in the same way a GNNAish post would be because it is more likely to have that sort of mod war (of course trolls can try to create controversy by upmodding a troll post but if you require 4 or more opposing mods, that would limit that issue).
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday June 08 2020, @07:24PM
More excellent thoughts- thank you!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 09 2020, @12:30AM
I'd say that's more a failing in human psychology than anything specific to us.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.