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There has been some discussion about moderation on this site leading to some misconceptions and misstatements. This story is an attempt to set things straight. It lays out the historical underpinnings for moderation, history of its implementation on Slashdot, and its later refinement on SoylentNews.
Before that, though, I am going to take this opportunity to thank fnord666 who is out Alternate Editor-in-Chief. I could not handle the load alone and his efforts have made a huge difference! Further, please join me in thanking him as he reached a new milestone: over 6,500 stories posted to the site! Many a late night or rare free moment has been generously given to the site. Teamwork++!
History:
The code for this site is a fork of code written for Slashdot. In that site's early days, it was apparent that some comments were much more interesting and informative than others. It was just as apparent that some users would just as gleefully troll the community. Moderation was conceived as a way to sift the wheat from the chaff and help users more easily avoid the "lesser" comments and more easily find the "gems".
Further, to encourage posting "good" comments, Karma was introduced. "Good" comments earned Karma; "bad" comments lost Karma. Moderation was a mechanism by which Karma could be allocated.
Slashdot experimented with several ways to moderate comments. First, it was just the staff who could moderate. Soon, there were too many comments to keep up, so a select group of members from the community were invited to moderate comments. Again, that failed to scale up, so those who had been selected were invited to recommend still other users to moderate. And, again, there were scaling issues.
Solution: make Mod Points (modpoints) available to every registered user in good standing and who indicated in their preferences that they were willing to moderate.
Originally, mod points were handed out randomly and expired after something like 6 hours: "Use 'em or lose 'em".
For the most part, that seemed to work. But there were some perceived issues and meta-moderation was implemented and introduced — moderate the moderations. Unfortunately, it experienced many of the same issues that it was supposed to rectify with comments, just one level abstracted. Further, it was unwieldy and when all was said and done, didn't work all that well, anyway.
Early Tweaking:
Such was the state of things when SoylentNews started. Well sort of. The code base we started with was not current and the meta-moderation code was broken. So much so, that meta-moderation was ripped out of the code just so regular moderation could be made to work. With that behind us, we finally we had a working moderation system on our site. Yay!
That worked okay for a while, but we found ourselves with complaints from many users that they wanted to moderate and lacked mod points. Nice problem to have, right? This was combined with many more comments than moderations. It was thought that we needed more mod points made available to the community. So, after unsuccessfully tweaking the mod point allocation algorithm, it was decided to just not expire mod points until day's end. Every user in good standing got 5 mod points each morning (00:10 UTC) and those were available until day's end whereupon any remaining modpoints were reset and a new set of 5 of modpoints were allocated.
That helped! But jerks will be jerks.
Mod Bombs:
We started to run into problems with "mod bombs" where one user "A" would apply all 5 of their mod points to downmod one other user "B". So code was written to allow checking for such moderations. Staff could generate a report and find such activity. It was decided that:
If you used ALL of your modpoints to downmod ONE user, that was a modbomb. IOW, 5 downmods bad; 4 downmods were permitted.
Initially, anyone who "modbombed" was manually given a "timeout". The first time earned a one month suspension of moderation privileges. A second occurrence earned a six month suspension.
Later, because there were still many more comments than moderations, the number of modpoints allocated to each registered user having good Karma was increased from 5 to 10 per day. The modbomb threshold was, however, kept the same: 4 downmods was still okay, 5 (or more) downmods to the same user was "bad".
A complication arose in that there is no easy way for users to keep track of how many downmods they had made on one other user. User "A" may do 3 downmods of user "B" in the morning and 4 down mods of other (unrelated) users. In the afternoon they might perform 2 more downmods of user "B". Purely unintentional transgression. When you only have 5 mod points it was reasonable to assume that a user could mentally track how many times they downmodded a single user in one day. With 10 daily mod points available, that became less reasonable.
So, along with the allocation of 10 modpoints per day (easy) it was intended to have code written that would kick in when processing moderations: when the threshold was exceeded, the excess downmods would be automatically rejected. And that is still the intent.
The upshot of all that is that when checking for modbombs, we no longer give a "timeout" for 5 downmods against a single user in one day. We just revert the excess mods. We do take note of repeated excesses and are fully prepared to issue a "timeout" when warranted. (e.g. 8 downmods in one day, or several days in close proximity targeting the same user. This is not done unilaterally but rather in consultation with other staff for confirmation.)
Sock Bombs:
First, there some who failed to take the hint that, maybe, they should take a look at what they were posting when they received repeated downmods. We are a community, not your personal soapbox. So, they created new ("sock puppet") accounts and proceeded to upmod their own comments, aka a "sockbomb". Staff have ways to note such behavior based on the IPID and SUBNETID that is recorded with every comment and every moderation. We try to give the benefit of the doubt. But, certain patterns do become apparent and are not tolerated. Upmodding your own comment is grounds for an immediate moderation ban.
Second, just as there is a limit on how many downmods can be targeted at one user in a day, so there is a limit on upmods. The same limits apply, each user "A" is limited to 4 upmods of user "B" in a given day, just like for "modbombs". Again with the caveat of no up-mods of your own account..
Summary:
Our experience is that the current system could stand some refinement, automation of transgression detection and mitigation is in plan (but it will be a while), but for the most part, what we have works well in the vast majority of cases. In short, Wheaton's Law still applies: "don't be a dick". Following that seems to work the best for the most. (With apologies to anyone named Richard. =)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Friday June 25 2021, @06:56PM (15 children)
Think of it from the point of someone new coming to the site. If the first story they look at is all EF or similar shit posting, do you think they will join us?
What about those who want to have a serious discussion? I have to read at a threshold of '0' because many ACs have posts that are useful for the discussion taking place. Having to cut them out by having a higher threshold means that posts by ACs - any ACs - will not be seen.
I've been here long enough to see that the amount of political, personal and crap posts has increased significantly. As others have pointed out - many of our good contributors have already cut and run. I want the community to grow - but not just as a place where people come because they have been kicked out of everywhere else. I would prefer to see a place where intelligent discussions can take place, where I and perhaps others can learn from what the comments have to say, and where people don't act like children throwing stones and then crying to the staff when they get hurt.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 25 2021, @06:58PM (1 child)
If they're that feeble-minded, then perhaps they shouldn't be on the internet. One of the reasons for the current dark age is that people have completely lost any ability to manage their own emotional state. Trolling versus unpopular view point can be rather tricky to distinguish.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 26 2021, @04:07AM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday June 25 2021, @07:15PM (2 children)
My read is that's a consequence of the times we live in, not anything Soylent is doing or not doing in particular. The ability to listen to and tolerate differences of opinion is essential to civilization, but it's an ability that has been allowed to atrophy, or that has been outright destroyed for mercenary purposes.
The pendulum will, however, swing back in the other direction. We're at peak division now, so it can't be long.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 25 2021, @11:51PM
You naive optimist you... of course the things can go worse and of course they will, nobody has managed to prove Murphy wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 28 2021, @07:03PM
You aren't a full RWNJ but you've been parroting their misinformation and misleading rhetoric for a long time. The pendulum swings back once people start returning to reality. Currently I see no change from conservatives, and actually an increase in pushing misinformation.
The best litmus test we have is the 1/6 insurrection. Once conservatives can admit that as a group they tried to betray our very democracy then we'll see the pendulum swinging back. Until then we're dealing with people in an alternate reality who are seriously considering a new Civil War.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 25 2021, @10:34PM (4 children)
And EF is to blame for all that? Why don't you start deleting or rendering "bad" posts unreadable, then, since everybody browses at 0 or -1? Why didn't you do this years ago? Why don't you use the spam mod as a marker for deletion? When free speech is the only novelty your site has because every other site is full-woke, what differentiates you from superior competitors now that SN is full-woke? Surely your staff all trust each other to make the right decisions regarding which comments deserve the spam mod, right? And if those comments are modded spam then they would do nobody any good to be read, right?
But it's probably easier just to blame EF.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Friday June 25 2021, @11:21PM (3 children)
No, not on his own. But the significant increase in 'noise ', trolls and flamebait from some community members and ACs has certainly contributed. As have the personal insults and attacks that are frequently made.
Because when the staff do it we get accused of censorship. When the community moderate down it is acceptable to the community.
If i knew what you mean by 'full woke' I would reply. I'm sorry but it isn't in my dictionary. However, even without knowing what it means then I can reply to the following:
You are always free to leave this site and use the services of our 'superior competitors' - where you are suggesting that you wouldn't have free speech? Not sure what you are actually looking for in a site.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 26 2021, @12:09AM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday June 26 2021, @05:38AM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 26 2021, @10:32PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 25 2021, @11:48PM (4 children)
Howzdat relevant?
Will you miss the "new subscribers" target and won't get your Christmas bonus? Aren't you able to charge the ad industry higher because your eyeballs basket has to few of them?
That's a consequence. Of the real world outside. What do you expect, enter the S/N cocoon and live the bliss forever?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 26 2021, @12:12AM
(Score: 3, Informative) by janrinok on Saturday June 26 2021, @05:44AM (2 children)
Nobody has ever been paid for working on SN - there are no bonuses, no payments, no salaries. Everybody is an unpaid volunteer. Similarly, there are no subscriber targets - but we would be pleased if the community grew and attracted new voices.
Where have you ever seen advertisements on SN? We don't do it, and our intention is that we never will.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 26 2021, @03:01PM (1 child)
Got a pretty good idea who he is.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 28 2021, @07:06PM
Oh really? Who am I?