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After experiencing extensive spamming, ad-hominem attacks, and trolling it became necessary to protect the site by preventing all Anonymous Coward (AC) comments by anyone who was not logged in. This was a reluctant measure but it proved to be 99.9% effective. It was however, far from ideal. It partially isolated many of the responsible ACs who contribute regularly to the site and provide a valuable input to many of our discussions. They are still able to use journals for posting as the editors of SoylentNews have no control over the content of journals or the comments made in them.
I sought an alternative solution and provided access to some of the stories on the front page and marked them as AC Friendly. I had hoped by demonstrating to those abusing the site that there was a simple solution that they would perhaps cease, or at least return to previously manageable levels. Unfortunately this was not to be. The abuse restarted almost immediately and has continued in every AC Friendly story that has been published. It has clearly demonstrated that this isn't a case of the abusers defending free speech or any other laudable and justifiable aim but simply an attempt to prevent the majority of the community from holding any form of discussion at all. I am not continuing the AC Friendly stories on the main page with the sole exception of this Meta story.
I next tried to switch the attempts to include our AC community around by providing stories from the front page initially to my own journal, but subsequently to the journal of a new account named 'AC Friendly'. This was rather labour intensive and was not something that I could continue to do in the long term. These efforts have been ignored and do not seem to be of any interest to the AC community. Likewise I will not continue this effort unless there is evidence that it is wanted.
There are many perfectly understandable reasons for wishing to post comments as an Anonymous Coward. This was recognised when the original Slashdot code was written and provision was made for such individuals in the software. It is a straightforward matter to log in to the site and then automatically post as AC from then on. This both protects the site itself and those using it. If your justification is that you do not trust the staff then I must question why you would want to remain on the site.
Free speech is an essential part of our ethos but it is necessary to realise that free speech and anonymity are not necessarily related. We want people to be able to express their views without fear of harassment, abuse, or unfair moderation. Only by doing so can we truly claim to have free speech. It means that even those with whom we strongly disagree have the right to express their opinions. Subsequent attempts to argue against those views should not involve any form of harassment of the individual making them. Any attempt to prevent someone from expressing their views is directly counter to the very concept of 'free speech'.
Likewise, anonymity is something to be valued. Attempts to unmask either named or anonymous accounts is unacceptable to this site's administration and will not be tolerated. Those who publish information that appears credible to us must be deterred from continuing by whatever means are necessary. We cannot verify every claim made regarding the personal information of a community member and we must therefore assume that it is has some basis in truth and is an attempt at doxing. It does not matter where the information stated in the claim originates or whether it has been stated on this site or elsewhere previously. If it has the potential to unmask a community member it will be treated as doxing. The site will do all it can to protect community members. We are also fortunate that in the 8 years we have been operating we have only had one account that felt it was an acceptable thing to do. That account has been closed.
There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that the toxic environment that has developed on the site has cost us numerous valued community members - both staff and regular contributors of submissions and comments. It cannot be allowed to continue. There is also no doubt that there is a straightforward and simple solution, and that is to prevent AC participation without the creation of an account. The software was designed to do this and it is wasted effort trying to find alternatives when it is unnecessary to do so.
There has been quite a bit of discussion over the last week or so. We have had a former community member (who was also once a member of staff) return to the site with his own story. Initially he chose to remain anonymous but subsequently decided to continue his comments under his username. I encourage you all to read the link given and the subsequent comments given in reply. I am very grateful that has taken the effort to explain why he has did what he has done and I welcome him back to our community if he choses to stay. As part of my reply to him I made the following statement:
It is vitally important that everyone is able to express their own point of view without harassment or intimidation or even unfair moderation. We do not all agree with each other. That is the same in any community. But by full, frank and honest discussion we can at least understand each others point of view and possibly identify potential solutions. The freedom of expression is still essential on the site - but it can only exist if we can ensure that it can be conducted in a suitable environment.
I stand by that statement. Since that comment was published I have received other views and experiences of the toxicity of our site from a significant number of individuals, including regular community members and both current and former staff. Quite simply, if we do not change then in all likelihood we will not survive much longer. It is not too late to make the necessary changes but time is running out.
I promised you that no changes would be made to how the site operates without first giving you all the chance to express your own opinions. But you have to decide now which path you want the site to follow. This cannot be a simple vote - as an extreme example we have no way of verifying that AC comments are not the result of a single person, or if some sock-puppets are still active on the site. Everyone has the right to be heard. However, let me point out a few rules:
- Any attempt to disrupt this Meta by spamming, ad-hominem attacks or trolling abuse will count as someone expressing an opinion that we should insist on accounts for all those wishing to post as AC. If anyone thinks that by abusing the site they will be helping their case they are mistaken. However, such actions will clearly show to the community that those who have been making the most noise about being prevented from expressing themselves are not actually fighting for free speech, but rather they are determined to prevent you from exercising your right to it.
- It will be pointless to keep repeating the same views as an AC. We cannot separate them. You want to be anonymous, you choose to have the account ID #1, and this, unfortunately, is a direct consequence to that decision.
- All views will be collated and then a decision will be made based upon them by the staff. This will include the SN Board who may accept that decision, but who have the right to choose the path that the site eventually takes. It may not be the decision that any of us want.
This is an important issue. It cannot be a simple vote but I encourage as many people as possible to express their opinions. It might be the last chance for you to do so. The Meta will stay active for several days to at least mid-week - but if it is abused excessively then it will be taken down and we will be forced to make a decision base on whatever views we already have or can get from elsewhere. I will endeavour to move the Meta in the story queue so that it remains on the front page. Many of our community log on at different times of the day or only on specific days. I would like to give everyone a chance to see the Meta story and to make their views known.
This is your opportunity - please do not waste it.
[Ed's Comment: See bold text - warning 2022-07-10 12:36 UTC]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by rleigh on Saturday July 09 2022, @01:35PM (4 children)
I used to comment on a semi-regular basis on various articles. However, I've ceased contributing almost entirely, and my reading of SN articles has also reduced. I also didn't contribute to the last request for funding, not solely due to this, but it was a contributing factor.
The primary reason for my lack of participation is AC spam, plus ongoing arguments between various people which persist across articles. None of it is relevant to the articles, or of general interest to others. It's noise generated by an insular clique of misfits which have found a home here and gradually increased their activity and output relative to actual constructive and informative discussion in the absence of any pushback against it, and it's utterly detrimental to the site. It's not worth my time to bother with it. I'm not going to spend time providing considered and (hopefully) insightful discussion on a forum which is more interested in irrelevant nonsense. For a while now, I've spent much more time reading Hacker News and selected Reddit subreddits. It's more relevant and focussed, and it's not plagued by off-topic stupidity. It's worth noting that all of these have strong to moderate moderation policies. SN started out well, but the decline in comment quality has been noticeable for some time.
Personally, I would previously have been one of the people in favour of permitting anonymous posts, from an idealistic point of view. Unfortunately, as I think is painfully clear from the direction this site has taken, idealism is often incompatible with reality. It's one of the reasons we tend to become more conservative in our views over time. Permitting AC posts from logged-in accounts is I think about the best compromise which can be reached here. While I can agree that the hypothetical benefit of true anonymity is important, it is not really true that the topics under discussion here are of such significance that this really comes into play in the vast majority of discussion on this site. Posting on a privately-owned website is not a right, it's a privilege granted by the site owners and operators, and it's a privilege which has been badly abused by others due to (IMO, misplaced) tolerance for that ongoing abuse. That abuse has to be ended, or people such as myself will cease reading, participating and funding of the site entirely.
All the best to everyone, and in particular the site admins who have to deal with all this. Roger.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @02:07PM
Maybe the existing moderation which was working from my perspective was too much effort but I was never much-affected by the AC-spam. The thing that distracted me the most was the back-and-forth. Even this thread at present emotionally reads like it's half bickering.
There used to be a saying, "Don't feed the trolls." Maybe now it's, "Don't touch the poop." It seems to me you have a handful of individuals motivated to do harm, but you have an equally large number of people who can't help but to engage with them. Sometimes compulsively so. That creates a positive feedback loop of negative outcomes.
I recognize that solely ignoring or moderating them does not quickly lead to change, but it also doesn't sound to me like the proposed changes are going to stop motivated actors either -- as others have said, it's trivial to sign up for some random email and then create an account.
I suspect there are some technical approaches which might be more successful, but it's demotivating to consider those with the knowledge that currently no one's around to attempt to implement them.
I recognize that absolute adherence to idealism isn't practical, but one of my own ideals is don't-get-accounts and right now the benefit of upholding that arbitrary belief is worth more than the ability to post on this site.
If the game of whack-a-mole continues to escalate, try to keep in mind that failed approaches don't necessarily need to be kept in place. I'm not saying that requiring accounts will fail to stop the problem, but if it does, don't forget that there was a time that accounts weren't required. And that you still have the problem (in that hypothetical).
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hubie on Saturday July 09 2022, @02:27PM (1 child)
I browse at -1 and the spam/troll posts don't particularly bother me. I just scroll by them and for me they are easy to ignore, like tuning out ads in general. If a thread devolves into a political back and forth, I just scroll by and ignore it (because it seems EVERYWHERE these days any thread on any topic can devolve into a political sides issue and I'm not interested in that here), though the addition of being able to collapse a whole thread can be very useful as well.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Common Joe on Saturday July 09 2022, @06:15PM
Not everyone is like you. For me, it's not easy to scroll past gobs of garbage comments looking for the occasional good one. My time is very limited, and when I get home, I'm very tired.
I browse Reddit sometimes, but the people here at Soylent News are much better informed and insightful. I'd rather have my intellect challenged. I can't do that in an echo chamber.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Sunday July 10 2022, @11:53PM
Agree.
Broadly speaking, I enjoy the difference of opinion on the site as it allows me a greater view of different opinions and their supporting arguments. I won't always agree with everything everyone says, but I do like to see their reasons behind it.
I am not a free speech absolutist. There need to be reasonable limits and I definitely advocate for the deletion of posts that include blatant advertising, spam, doxxing, direct threats of physical violence etc. A certain individual has been sitting in the theater with us shouting "Fire!" for some time now while we are trying to watch the movie - it's time to shut them down. If the only way to do that is to ban non-logged in users from posting then so be it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by srobert on Saturday July 09 2022, @01:42PM (15 children)
Just a thought, what if, instead of disallowing the AC without an account, AC comment were to be removed by the ratings of logged in users? An AC comes in, and after a specific number of "offtopic", or "troll" ratings, the comment gets wiped. Could even create a new category in the ratings,"Remove". Would that be desirable? Would it be too difficult to implement? Would it lead to a tyranny of the majority?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @01:53PM (1 child)
Advercereal attacks aplenty.
Besides, no perl programmer, no code changes, no voting on posts nor hiding spam.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Monday July 11 2022, @11:45AM
"New Kelloggs' Advercereal Attacks, part of this nutritious breakfast!"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Saturday July 09 2022, @03:35PM (2 children)
Ripe for abuse. Hard pass.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by srobert on Saturday July 09 2022, @06:56PM (1 child)
Even if the "Remove" needed about 500 votes to remove the comment? Or 1000?
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Saturday July 09 2022, @07:33PM
...which would make the feature functionally useless since I doubt we even have 500 active users on the site.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @05:04PM
oh yeah, just what all the cowardly Useful Idiot bitches who mod everything "troll" would love.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @08:40PM
I think the way to do it would be a stored procedure that wipes comments that were marked as Spam and are older than a certain length of time allowing plenty of time for the Spam mods to be reviewed by admins and other users and for the poster to appeal against the Spam moderation if they feel it was unfair.
Ideally we should probably do SELECT INTO another table to preserve the original content, or do something in SQL that stops the text arriving at the user's browser. Without looking at rehash, I would guess it might be possible to do the whole thing or almost the whole thing with SQL, HTML and CSS without anyone needing to know any Perl.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by quietus on Sunday July 10 2022, @04:14PM (7 children)
If you want to have an interesting discussion, you need to have worthwhile comments.
Allow people to submit comments as an Anonymous Idiot, without making an account. At the same time, do not allow people who just made a user account to comment freely.
For all users with karma below 50, and all anonymous users, send their comment to a number (say 5) of regulars with a 50 karma bar. If 3 or more regulars decide that the comment is not worth it, discard the comment before it gets posted. Vice versa if 3 or more decide that the comment is worth it. Only publish a comment after it has gone through this quality filter.
While this adds a delay to those comments, it will also impress that having something worthwhile to say is not the same as just having a throwaway opinion.
This was how plastic.com worked, in its heyday -- and the result was that it ended up just behind BBC, but before CNN, in terms of news readership.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Monday July 11 2022, @01:13AM (4 children)
If there was a perl programmer on staff willing to sink some time into, it'd be an interesting approach I reckon, but I fear it'll fall on the first point.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Monday July 11 2022, @05:08AM (3 children)
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Monday July 11 2022, @06:03AM (2 children)
I can't claim mastery, and it's been a long time since I had to touch any code written in the pathologically eclectic rubbish lister language, but my main issue is lack of time & energy. I did have a look-over of the code last week, but it's simply too large for me to have time for I'm afraid.
The code itself looked remarkably devoid of the typical line noise one would associate with the language, so I wouldn't expect anyone would have too much trouble understanding it provided they have the time to invest.
What about yourself? Not many these days would even remember that alternative backronym.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Monday July 11 2022, @02:20PM (1 child)
Doing this on your own, for free, is a guaranteed path to burnout.
If we had a team of 4, 5 people willing to invest an hour each day, we could properly document the code base in about 6 months.
Alternatively, we could instead set out to gather requirements, develop a design, and fill in the functionality in a different language, for which there are more developers available. This will take longer than the first scenario (wild guess: 12-18 months), but it could make the site future proof.
(Score: 3, Informative) by coolgopher on Tuesday July 12 2022, @01:26AM
There is already a bunch of documentation over on the wiki [soylentnews.org], and the code itself has extensive perldoc comments.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Ken_g6 on Wednesday July 13 2022, @02:26PM (1 child)
This leads to an idea that should be easy to implement. Make all Anonymous Coward posts score -1 by default. Only people with a Karma Bonus could then post anonymously at the default 0 score. Maybe the Karma Bonus could even be bumped to +2?
Though I tend to think requiring an account to post is likely the best solution.
(Score: 2) by quietus on Wednesday July 13 2022, @06:39PM
That would nicely distribute the load of post quality analysis across all members with enough karma -- good idea.
I do think that Anonymous is a roadway into becoming a member, at least that's the pathway I've observed with myself. There's nothing more engaging than seeing a post being picked up by one of the regulars here. Testing the waters, as it were -- and checking out the ambiance.
In the end though, we'll circle back to the problem touched upon by coolgopher: there's need for a team of grunts, doing the behind-the-scenes programming.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @02:09PM (4 children)
I come and visit not to chat nor converse.
I arrive and gander around to view the stories in which the hive has submitted.
Keeping up with current events, you are about 3 days late.
But you have content from the most random of places.
--- Just sTrolling thru...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hubie on Saturday July 09 2022, @02:34PM (3 children)
Keeping up with current events isn't the main thrust of this site, it is commenting on the events. Sometimes something makes it into the story queue quickly, but it takes a while to get out of the queue with the current story release cadence. You shouldn't come here expecting breaking news (and I'm guessing you probably don't). Though you should think of chiming in from time to time. You might have an interesting perspective on something, or even if you don't know anything about a topic, it isn't unusual that a "dumb" question asked can be insightful or lead to interesting discussion.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by kazzie on Saturday July 09 2022, @04:58PM
I have to confess that I use the site primarily as an aggregator of news and events that I might not come across elsewhere, and secondarily to see some other peoples' thoughts. That includes views from a different geographical area, political outlook, or life experience, many of which would require hard work to encounter elsewhere.
Those people include some I disagree with, and a few who's views I find shocking, distasteful, or bizarre. I try to use this as a reminder that there is a wide spectrum of individuals in the world and a prompt to look at things from their viewpoint too. It's a lot easier to do that here than on a social media site where you see content that's bubbled and curated by algorithms.
I've seen plenty of posts I'd rather not see on this site (the season of D*N* first-post spam comes to mind), but it's out-weighed by the good stuff. A lot of the nastier stuff quoted upthread and in similar discussion is material that I've not seen/noticed. Whether that's because it was modded down before I read the page, or that it came and went on a day that I didn't happen to visit the site, I don't know.
On the posting side of things, I certainly don't chime in as often as some on this site. A lot of the time, I don't feel I have any particular knowledge or insight on the topic involved. Most of my posts tend to be on the humorous side of things, as that seems to come easier to me. I kinda feel that I ought to contribute more, but if it's not useful, thoughtful, or light-hearted, I'd rather abandon it at the preview and click the 'back' button instead.
I've held an account for as long as I've read and posted here. While I don't make much use of (coward) anonymity, I do value my pseudonymity, in keeping my work, personal, and online lives in their own corners. Back on the green site, I'd been a reader of that site for maybe a decade, but never made an account over there. The few times I really wanted to contribute, I made a post as an AC. (Why did I never make an account there, but did so here almost immediately? A part of that was because of the hierarchy of n-digit UIDs that was part of the green site's society. Signing up to get a seven-digit UID and sit at the bottom of a big pile didn't seem to be worth it. Soylent felt fairly new when I found it, and I've never encountered any judgementalism based on UIDs here. The odd "You must be new here" quip is of course universal, and fine.)
Elsewhere, I follow a few content creators (e.g. Technology Connections among many others) on Youtube, though it's done by visiting the channel page periodically, instead of clicking any subscribe buttons. There are times when I may want to respond to a point (or another comment), but I have NO interest in doing so using a Google-linked account. I'd rather hold my tongue.
So there's a rambling overview of my thoughts and experiences on the topic of anonymous contributions.
The 'olde way' of this site is an important part of its makeup and character. Granted, the modern interweb is a different beast to that of ten or twenty years ago, and what seemed to work okay back then isn't necessarily the best course today. I value the fact that the operators of this site are so keen to gauge the community's views on things before making changes. I don't feel I have strong opinions on how to proceed, but I figured I ought to throw the above thoughts into the mix.
While I might think that things aren't that bad, that viewpoint probably exists because the editors and administrators are shovelling so much of the muck away out of sight. As such, I'm happy to defer to the reality of those who are fire-fighting these issues on a daily basis. I hope this circle can be squared somehow, and that a good way forward can be found. If worst comes to worst, and things don't work out, then it would be churlish to forget all the good that this site has brought over the years.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @09:40PM (1 child)
I would have (past tense) been more likely to constructively comment on good main page articles, if they were to remain on the front page longer, instead of hammering them down the list, like some streaming news site. Why comment on a good topic, if it'll be replaced by a dozen inane fillers, within hours. Good ideas take time to develop; if a stimulating topic is being actively supported, don't feel obligated to replace it with articles about clickbait or political agenda.
It's obviously not a news site. It's a not a chat room, either. The few Journal pages with staying-power, showed what could have been a thriving — albeit screwy — community.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday July 24 2022, @05:23AM
Every story ever printed by us can be accessed via the front page. You just have to start looking at the previous front pages. There is a link at the bottom of the current front page. Is that too difficult?
At weekends we aim to publish 5 stories a day, and at other times 8/9 stories a day. We also try to vary the content so that there is something there for most people on most days. We cannot achieve that all the time but it is something that we do try to do.
No, its a discussion site - but you have known that for 8 years now, this cannot be a surprise to you.
Which is why you have chosen a discussion that began 14 days ago to make a point? Just because they are not on the front page doesn't mean you cannot comment in them. They normally stay active for at least 2 weeks. The cut off is to prevent them from being modified much later to appear to change the line of the discussion. Yes, surprisingly, we have community members who used to do such a thing.....
People DO read them. I found your comment, didn't I.....?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @02:15PM (7 children)
I mean you get like 100 comments on a story at most. If you fix the delete you can just remove the comments that APK post or whatever. If you want transparency just put a deletion log people can see.
I post here because it's easy to. If I have to sign up for yet another account it doesn't really make sense. A lot of times it's just an echo chamber of the same handful of people over an over again.
SN isn't that massive. At least it's not reddit where groupthink is enforced and other sites make you give up PII to even get an account. In the days of 1984 you kind of have a beacon here where people can still let opinions fly. Even 4chan blocks VPNS and tries to get some kind of identity information recorded.
And think about it this way. If you had some critical information you had to get out, let's say a meteor was about to hit earth and the government was covering it up. Could you disseminate such a thing on today's internet? My guess is no. Your accounts would be banned, posts hidden and whoever was doing the covering would be tracking you quickly. Now on the 2001 or 2005 internet? Yea real voices could be seen. Just food for thought.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Common Joe on Saturday July 09 2022, @06:32PM (2 children)
SN isn't massive, but a couple of apples are spoiling the barrel. Groupthink hasn't fully entrenched itself here because Janrinok and the other admins are very much aware that if the admins moderate, it will become group think. They want to avoid that and rather let the community moderate itself -- a sentiment that I fully support. By turning off AC and forcing people to login, they are trying to preserve that.
And yes, if you had some critical piece of information that had to get out, you could publish it on today's Internet. It's called putting up your own webpage for a few bucks. If anonymity is required to disseminate that information, SN won't save the day by keeping AC turned on -- which leads me to I think you don't properly understand how information dissemination in today's world works.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @11:58PM
Hmm, appears you don't get what I mean about information spreading. You can put up your own website just as you can put up a leaflet on the street. The problem is that absolutely nobody will see it.
Back when we... uhhh.. had discussion forums, you could post things and people would discuss it. Its a really foreign concept, I know. Information dissemination in today's world works that some group or company has an agenda and they astroturf it as best they can. They try to make it look organic and quash any poor schlub that tries to call it out. It's usually pay to play, a page from the old entertainment and print industries. We've taken the great info equalizer and are most of the way to returning it to passive consumption with an AI twist.
But enough about problems bigger than us. I know how it's going to go with SN. The accounts won't work because people that want to grief you will just make accounts. Then it will be captcha or real emails or phone numbers. And SN becomes yet another place where you just can't post sans bullshit.
So I'm going to be real. Nobody goes to slashdot anymore. Double now that anonymous posts are gone. The "community" moderation still enforces "The MESSAGE!!!" for some reason. So while you are busy debating deleting spam and apkposts, you miss that its killing the main feautre that makes up for this site's tiny tiny population and day old news stories.
And if the code is 90s code then you've got to fix it.
To browse this site I view ALL comments because otherwise there is literally not enough. In this thread "The lefties ran off TMB, now they can't code" (not my words), but it's moderated to "troll" and what have you, despite being funny. You're not all sitting here telling me it's true, right?
The most I've ever gotten "offended" by the spam posts was that they were HUGE and took forever to scroll past. Were there more and they got deleted or something?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @11:59PM
It would save the day when people are lied to right here.
Which is exactly why this anti-AC campaign is happening now, on a silly pretext.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday July 09 2022, @06:45PM (3 children)
My understanding is that they can't simply delete posts for technical raisins. The old Slashcode doesn't allow for it, and apparently deleting a post manually breaks things. Not surprising, really, since this code was written in the late 1990's.
Also, for practical reasons, this is a bad use of volunteer time: It turns into a contest over whose script is faster, the bad guy running spam through Tor and the good guys sitting there with a deletion script. And eventually, the bad guy will win.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2022, @12:04AM
Creating accounts will just go down the same path. And then volunteer time will go into securing that.
Someone dedicated to griefing won't give up but casual users just might.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2022, @06:14PM (1 child)
Yes, I'm guessing it's correct that one does not simply DELETE FROM Comment, because that will violate referential integrity, probably if the comment has any replies or has been modded, probably other referential constraints. Hierarchical comments would be implemented as a self-join FK. Moderation is an FK between User and Comment. The "IsRead" flag is probably one of those too with a 2nd User JOIN Comment FK.
Yet Reddit can pull this off while implementing all 3 of these use-cases (hierarchical replies, up/down vote, IsRead flag). You have a flag in the Comment table IsDeleted. Where IsDeleted = 1, you just render a placeholder "comment deleted."
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday July 10 2022, @06:29PM
We can now - having spent several hours looking at what the code was trying to do. It isn't intuitive, or perhaps not even logical, but it works.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by rigrig on Saturday July 09 2022, @03:19PM
Nobody is happy about it, but it looks like it needs to be done.
No one remembers the singer.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Barenflimski on Saturday July 09 2022, @03:24PM
I don't pay much mind to any of the ridiculous stuff. I think you're doing a good job Janirock and crew. Keep up the good work.
As far as AC. I rarely use it, and when I do, I'm always logged in. I don't see that as a big hill to climb.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by UncleBen on Saturday July 09 2022, @03:30PM (1 child)
I started to read the comments and desperately wanted to leave Soylentnews forever. Then I realized I’d stumbled in to the sausage-making kitchen.
The original posted opportunity to comment, I shall take: Soylentnews is still a community I wish to remain a part of, and will try to contribute fruitfully to. That entrails, beaks, and feet are ground up to make the tasty mixture I’m enjoying, I’ll try to ignore.
To Soylent: you’re doing great. Ban the AC’s. This audience will drift over time, people will leave. For now, I find it surprisingly inclusive, especially in light of some of the comments seen here.
To the Soylentils: I look forward to your growing out of your reactionary behavior.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday July 09 2022, @05:01PM
Interesting thoughts, thanks for sharing them. When you say "I started to read the comments and desperately wanted to leave Soylentnews forever.", were you referring to the comments on this article, or others in general?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Saturday July 09 2022, @03:33PM
Thanks for all the work you've been doing, janrinok. You have my support.
And to the offending party: This is really how you want to spend your life? Basically conducting a terrorism campaign on an obscure discussion website, not even on ideological grounds, but seemingly on some sort of personal vendetta? As a general policy I don't say this, but dude: Get a life.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Tork on Saturday July 09 2022, @03:38PM (1 child)
My apologies if this has already been suggested, I haven't had time to follow the entire discussion. I do want to mention one other thing, though: No matter how 'free speech' you want to be, you've also made it clear that keeping conversations on-topic is a higher priority. I don't have anything actionable to say about that, rather I just wanted to say that's why I don't think booting troublesome users should put you in conflict.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 2) by The Vocal Minority on Sunday July 10 2022, @06:34AM
Probably another "cannot change code" issue.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Saturday July 09 2022, @03:38PM (9 children)
I haven't heard of any other online forum that has a better solution to spamming, doxxing, and trolling. Reddit is too nuclear. I've seen way too many posts, decent posts at that, by user "[deleted]". Policy also varies greatly by subreddit. Then there are those that are too free, and end up with a reputation as havens for trolls and nuts. 4chan comes to mind as one of those. Twitter is in the uncomfortable situation of having to exercise censorship of some sort. FaceBook deliberately amplifies hateful fearmongering melodrama, for the clicks, which brings them more $. Maybe a newer platform, such as Discord, has figured out how to better stop abusive posting?
The 1980s BBS culture didn't have too much problem with this, because to work, spam needs scale, and BBSes didn't have sufficient scale. Usenet in 1994 is where and when this first started to become a big problem.
A technical angle to this is that computer systems as currently designed give people too much power. It's this broadcast nature that makes it so dreadfully easy to spam the world.
For example, in the days before salting and hashing passwords, the /etc/password file was plaintext. Also had telnet sending passwords over the network in the clear. Anyone with root privileges could look, and see at a glance what all the users' passwords were. For a school project, I was given root privileges once, with dire threats of expulsion from school if I abused it. I took a look at the password file once. One of the professors' passwords was nothing, length zero, just press enter. Was scary what that gave me the power to get into trouble over. I could have logged in as anyone, and done a Joe Job, or deleted all their files, or run a DoS attack, or try for more subtle stuff like installing back doors and editing a few grades. I didn't do anything, and I was sweating over the possibility that if anything did go wrong, I could be suspected and blamed, despite having nothing whatsoever to do with the problem. Felt like I had a seat next to the Big Red Button with the big sign "do NOT push this button!" Today, I feel more easy about doing sysadmin work, with it being a bit more work to compromise users' passwords. Yes, could still insert a Trojan to harvest passwords, or run a search of users' files to find any that slipped up and left some passwords somewhere in plain text, but at least it's no longer as easy as "cat /etc/password".
Maybe a better example is text editing. There are too many ways to lose an entire document with a couple of keypresses that are too easily done by accident. I have seen many a writeup lost when the user meant to type capital A, and hit the ctrl key instead of the shift key. Ctrl-a of course is "select all", and then, the very next key typed, whatever it is, is taken as the one character with which the user wanted to replace all that selected text. Often, my elderly family members frantically called upon me to restore that 10 pages of writing that the word processor just erased in that fashion. Worst cases were when the user didn't notice right away that this had happened, thinking the text had merely scrolled off the top, and kept typing. Then I have to copy the new text elsewhere, undo until I reach the point where the text replacement occurred, if that is still possible and hasn't fallen out of the undo history, then append the new text. I have never wanted to replace an entire text with one letter. It's ridiculous that text editing has empowered the users to do that so easily, and the design ought to be changed to put some sane limits on that functionality. Another bad one is ctrl-w. You were writing something in a text box in a browser, you meant to type 'W' but hit ctrl instead of shift, and *POOF*, the whole dang window is gone, and there's no getting that text back with a ctrl-z. Similar prob with ctrl-q to exit everything. Another nasty is ctrl-n for new window that the idiotic GUI places directly over the previous window, completely obscuring it, unless you have transparency enabled. I like to have my new windows come up blank, no home page. But this in combination with the system making the new window the exact same dimensions and position easily misleads the user into fearing that all their text was just blanked out. Erased. Gone.
Similar to that is the 'a' key of death in the game EverQuest. In EverQuest, by default 'a' was mapped to the action "attack". The player meant to speak, and just started typing, forgetting to put a "/shout" or similar such command, or that the keyboard focus wasn't in a chat box, and that their current target was some nearby NPC. So when the hapless player gets to a word that contains the letter 'a', he or she accidentally starts a fight, probably in a city with some NPC that is way more powerful than they are. The usual result is instant death. Players soon got wise to this problem and changed the options to make attack be "ctrl-a" instead of just 'a', or just not have a keyboard shortcut for that.
So where am I going with all this? Towards a rethink of forum interfaces, to make it less easy to spam. AC functionality simply grants too much power and anonymity. One bad AC can easily hide amongst 99 responsible ACs. So, yes, limit AC posting to logged in users. What those who wish to remain anon can do is share accounts. Why not? Set up some accounts for that purpose. It could also serve to sort the good ACs from the bad ones.
The Earth wouldn't last an hour, maybe not even a minute, if there was some magical button with the power that, when pushed, could completely destroy the Earth, and anyone in the world could push it. We're too scarily close to that now, what with this "nuclear football" that a leader can use to launch a nuclear attack.
(Score: 1) by liar on Saturday July 09 2022, @05:02PM (7 children)
The problem's plain to see, too much technology
Machines to save our lives. Machines dehumanize.
The time has come at last
To throw away this mask
Now everyone can see
My true identity
I'm Kilroy! Kilroy! Kilroy! Kilroy!
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday July 09 2022, @05:05PM (6 children)
Too much technology? I'll reply to your post as soon as I find my carrier pigeon.
(Score: 3, Informative) by liar on Saturday July 09 2022, @05:21PM (5 children)
"Mr. Roboto" was written by Styx singer/keyboard player Dennis DeYoung, who sang lead on the track. In the early '80s, the First Assembly Church of God in Ankeny, Iowa, made news by burning albums with what they considered "Satanic influences." Styx was one of their targets because of the band name: In Greek mythology, the River Styx runs through Hades (hell). This got him thinking about censorship, which formed the central concept of the song. Later, he saw a documentary on robots put to work in factories. DeYoung had been to Japan with the band and was intrigued by their culture. He merged these concepts of censorship, robotics and Japan into "Mr. Roboto," the story of a human/robot hybrid who is called upon to save the world."
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/styx/mr-roboto [songfacts.com]
I noted it for the theme of censorship. Perhaps I should have labeled it further...
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Saturday July 09 2022, @05:45PM (1 child)
Don't worry. My brain picked up on the contrast of excess technology on a tech news site, and went in the direction of a funny retort.
Though I'm familiar with the song, I hadn't recognised the quoted lyrics. So thanks for the signpost. :)
(Score: 1) by liar on Saturday July 09 2022, @06:04PM
Not a problem! I was reading the post and the arguments about the value of anonymous posting/wearing a mask, the First Assembly Church of God burning the albums/ the burning down of this site, the river styx/ the forking from Slash... the song just kinda froombed into my head. Secret secret, I've got a secret...
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Common Joe on Saturday July 09 2022, @06:37PM (2 children)
This is part of why I come to SN. This interesting, obscure stuff is gold.
(Score: 1) by liar on Saturday July 09 2022, @07:04PM
Yeah I just maybe used an obscure reference : froomb : Fluids Running Out Of My Brakes. From the cartoon.
From Amazon: FROOMB! A famous cartoon, published first in The Detroit Messenger and later in all countries, depicted the world at the wheel of a motorcar which was rushing at great speed down a slope to the final abyss and crying out, "The fluid's running out of my brakes!" Shortened to Froomb! it so perfectly fitted the international picture that its cynical truth caught on very widely. It posed so many questions: Why didn't he try the brakes before he started down: Who made the brakes leak? What difference does it make, anyway?
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Gaaark on Saturday July 09 2022, @11:07PM
The album and concept made Styx a lot of money, but the rest of the band hated it: they wanted to play 'real rock and roll' instead of doing 'opera'. Styx fell apart soon after if i remembers correctly (and i never do, Batman!)
Watch and enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yGnE12Cig0 [youtube.com]
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @11:51PM
I always wondered why there are no gateways from common forum software to Spamassassin and other antispam email tools. Or at least they are not easy to find, only one when I looked time ago while trying to help some niche forums. Hacky but should work as means to reuse tools: new posts are first transformed into pseudo emails (IP into Received, account into From, etc) then are feed to the system, that has been trained with previous posts. The returned veredict is used to reject pretty bad posts and premoderate down the dubious. You can label it AI if you want to be hip, the thing is just a classifier based in hand coded rules, Bayes and other things that have been working for a long time.
Yes, it looks like technical solution to a people problem so I prefer to call it a tech helper, as people will still be involved retraining it, so people solution for people problem, just less friction. Yes, I have read about the need of a Perl coder. I mean in general terms, after following tech for over 2 decades, it is rare the reuse has not taken place. I have seen all kind of tools for phpBB, etc... mostly lots of manual ones that spammers quickly bypass and only make admins tired. A thing that checks what is said and acts accordingly is near non existant. The only one I remember that could work like the above idea is a blackbox SaaS and at a price (bad for the niche forums I mentioned), meaning it could be something else (instead of Bayes/fixed-rules/so-on), it could also leak information... I forget the name.
PS: Currently a funny fortune at bottom of pages: "Give thought to your reputation. Consider changing name and moving to a new town."
PS2: Yeah, I guess I will need to create an account even if I like to post as AC (the post stands or falls by content, no "oh, this guy leans X"). Which makes me think: will trolls also create accounts and just keep on? See what I mean? Back to a tool to reduce the admin load and show the trolls that their work is not going to be easy.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @03:43PM (4 children)
not about Soylentnews and its views.
"...that you do not trust the staff then I must question why you would want to remain on the site."
Hope. That the site can somehow resist the effort to destroy the LAST thing that makes it an attractive Slashdot alternative at the expense of scapegoats, "spam" and "troll" dictators.
Here, there is a power struggle of opinion.
Those who hold the keys to the comments, decide that whatever is in disagreement, is therefore "troll".
VERY counterproductive to debate and thus invites "Spam" as a last resort to fight back against those who do not allow other viewpoints.
Thereby, the owners here, as I predicted back in the IRC channels when Slashdot, (Commander fucking Taco) sold its soul and we forked the site and had simply foisted Soylentnews.org on the participants without sufficient discussion, are now at the predicted turning point were there is just one owner.
Kill AC, then you kill this site. Period.
If I want to log the fuck in, then I'll go to Slashdot.
No one with half a brain will trust anyone with their information and frankly it is a show of stupidity that you even ask that here.
Seriously, wake the fuck up!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by janrinok on Saturday July 09 2022, @06:49PM
Who is this one owner that you are talking about? We have a Board (which is almost certainly much smaller than you imagine...) but no members of the board currently check in here regularly, and if they did you wouldn't recognise their names. All of us work for free - any subscriptions go to paying for the servers etc. The community own SoylentNews - not a single person or even a small group of people. Every member of our community is what makes SoylentNews different from any other site. The hardware we pay for, but together we all make up the community. I think that is valuable in and of itself.
The people who put up the initial seed money have all now left without having their seed money repaid or seeing any return on their investment, not that they saw it as an investment opportunity. It was a technical challenge and something that they felt was worth doing. They departed sorely disappointed and ashamed of what the site had become after they had expended so much effort setting it up 8 years ago. The rest of us who remain are all volunteers - nobody has ever been paid a single cent for their work here. Several of us have suffered from burnout - some several times - and had to take a back seat to recover. There is no slack in the system now that even makes having a break possible. Some have suffered medically much more severely. MartyB /Bytram is recovering slowly but it will be probably be a long time before he can come back here to work on a regular basis - despite him being desperate to do so! He has managed despite severe difficulties to process 3 stories this week. Take care MartyB, and best wishes to you!
You were NOT involved with the forking of slashdot nor the work setting up the hardware. You did not contribute any software. You did not do any bug squashing. You joined about a month after the site went live, if I remember correctly. But your own bio proudly proclaims :Mod-banned by TMB in 2017, 2019, 2021. By FatPhil in 2021. That sums up your contribution quite well.
So I just cannot follow your argument. It seems to me that you are simply trying to justify what you have done by blaming others again. There are loads of comments here saying that people do not agree with you. Have you ever considered, even just for a moment, that it might be YOU that is wrong?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Common Joe on Saturday July 09 2022, @06:49PM
I agree: don't trust anyone with their information.
Disagree: Kill AC, kill this site.
Look, all things mature, age, and die -- every person, every country, every website. They will all die at some point. It is inevitable. This will eventually happen to SN too in the future. It's part of the way things work in life. I knew SoylentNews's days were numbered when I first signed up. I knew it would one day die. (If you look at my user number ID, you'll see I was here at the very beginning.)
The big question is: how are we going to spend our time between birth and death -- as a person, as a country, as a website, as a planet.
All things change. I wish I could turn the clock back and make it "like the good ol' days". Janrinok does too. With every post he makes, I can tell he loathes having to turn off the AC comments. But he feels it is necessary. And he's desperately looking for a different solution. I have no solution to give him, so I'm right there with him supporting this decision. His heart is in the right place. Turning off the AC comments seems to be the most reasonable response I've seen so far to make SN continue to operate at a level most of us enjoy. And I say that as a person who occasionally posts as an AC for reasons I will not get into here.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 12 2022, @03:56AM (1 child)
"Kill AC, then you kill this site. Period."
It's not a matter of disagreeing with this, it's a matter of seeing it as obviously wrong. It may have killed what you liked about the site, but it seems clear as day the site would live on to some definition of 'just fine'.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 12 2022, @06:39AM
One to five comments per article. Pipedot levels of "just fine".
Yep, killing the ol' SoylentNews! Lock 'er down! Corporate Sponsers! Introduce Web 2.0 and all the white space. And, most importantly, load to polls so we do not have to listen to the will of the community.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by requerdanos on Saturday July 09 2022, @03:45PM (29 children)
I shall state my opinion simply: Because of its proven effectiveness, the way moving forward should probably be to require one to log in and then check the AC box to post anonymously.
This will not eliminate all spam, junk, toxic nonsense, and the like... But it will run it all through regular channels that can at least be affected by actions of moderators and admins where necessary; it will put everyone playing by the same set of rules.
I thank all the poor administrative souls working to keep the site up and going.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @04:33PM (24 children)
Then a few years forward, after a new shiny thoughtcrime law, you get to enjoy several years in the slammer for your "log in and then check the AC box to post anonymously" posts made this year, that will be sitting in the database indelibly linked to you, just waiting for a convenient law and a prosecutor wanting an easy conviction.
People in Russia are being railroaded in that very way right now, in the dozens. They, also, believed a few short years ago, that such a thing can never happen to them.
Be warned.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Common Joe on Saturday July 09 2022, @06:51PM (10 children)
If you feel this way, then posting as AC is equally as bad. IP Addresses can be equally as damning when the government gets their claws involved.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @07:41PM
IP addresses these days are usually dynamic, and can be further covered in a multitude of ways, from proxies to VPNs to Tor.
As the things happening in Russia demonstrate, prosecutors are people too (of the worst sort, but still) and do not bother with hunting anonymous IPs when having a lot of low-hanging logged-in users to jail with minimal work.
And even if they would bother; the more time they spend hunting each user, the less people get to suffer. Every reason to make their work harder, not a single one to make it easier.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2022, @06:21PM (8 children)
No, it's not. If you post from TOR, you're good.
You can make a tin-foil hat argument that No Such Agencies have a sufficiently large tap into the tubes to be able to identify TOR circuits, but that can only be used for parallel construction, unless the government itself wants to remind everybody of what Snowden leaked. TOR prevents the smoking gun from being written to the DB.
Sibling comment suggests that ISPs with short DHCP lease times will protect you, but ISPs also now need to create permanent logs DHCP leases for the imaginary property crowd, so that is not a defense. TOR is the way.
One comment I'm in Russia, next I'm in France, then Eastern Europe.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday July 10 2022, @06:43PM (7 children)
I agree - TOR is probably the best protection at the moment. It certainly seems to reroute reasonably frequently and with a mixture of IPv4 and IPv6 exit nodes. It does sometimes mean that you are sharing a node with others who may not be as well intentioned as yourself, and that can trigger the automatic blocks that the server issues from time to time.
Is it perfect? - nothing is. But it is the best at the moment.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2022, @09:47PM (6 children)
But somehow you forget these facts when you look at an ip hash and claim two posts were by the same peraon.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday July 11 2022, @06:16AM (5 children)
There are many ways to link comments - hashes are only useful internally as by themselves they are simply a number. But active user numbers are so low now that most ACs are effectively using unique addresses. They may have a list of VPN addresses to swap between but they are still mostly or even all unique. Nobody else has ever used those addresses to access this site. It doesn't matter how many millions of people might share the same VPN if only 1 of them accesses this site. And then we just wait for the mistakes to be made..... and even TOR users make those.
There are several other techniques which can be used, but you can only think of one of them. We can also be devious and use such subtle clues as username. Dastardly, aren't we?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11 2022, @06:55AM (4 children)
Explaining the technicals doesn't matter, all I can tell you is you've falsely accused just me no less than five times. Pretty shaky behavior for an admin, makes all your conclusions quite suspicious.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday July 11 2022, @07:17AM (3 children)
Well that is probably because you are believed to be a sock-puppet under a different username. But while you are doing very little harm to the site it is easier just to keep you here, along with a few of your friends.
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11 2022, @08:48AM (2 children)
janrinok has identified me as a sockpuppet many, many times. The man is mad, insane, he has aristarchuses hiding under his bed, and in the closet, and probably on the Board of Directors. Grand Conspiracy to undo all the good he has done, so AC posting must be banned! DO YOU HEAR ME! AC posting must be banned. Otherwise, aristarchus wins. He must not win. There is no world with aristarchus winning. We must disable AC posting, and cut off the air supply. It is the only way to be sure.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday July 11 2022, @09:04AM (1 child)
Did you mean what you just wrote, or would you have preferred to say "janrinok has INCORRECTLY identified me as a sockpuppet many, many times."? The former is more accurate but the latter would have suited your argument better.
Chuckles....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 12 2022, @06:42AM
Goes without saying. To quote Mr. Universe, "Do you even know what you are carrying?"
(Score: 5, Touché) by janrinok on Saturday July 09 2022, @07:40PM (6 children)
Wouldn't you be much safer leaving the internet altogether? Do you have a phone? What about your phone number. Does your house have an address? Quick move out to a cave. I hope you don't drive. You car probably has some form of identification plate on it. If you are an American I'll bet you have a social security number. If you are worried about SoylentNews then you have much bigger problems than anyone else around here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @08:02PM (5 children)
OK, I understand now that your mind is pre-made and all this "The BIG Discussion" is just a bit of theatrics. Thanks for prompt dispelling the illusion.
You are totally parroting Putin's propagandists of a few years ago, BTW.
I live in a free country that does not ask me for papers to buy a SIM card or several. Still, Russia had been equally as free, couple decades back.
My car is not an Internet-connected device. Is yours?
And before you ask, I am not asked for my address or my personal code, either, when I connect to the Internet.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday July 10 2022, @06:36AM (4 children)
And today you are free to use your phone - but do you think it cannot being monitored? Do you imagine that it is impossible to gather positional information from your phone? Even approximate information by auto-triangulation. I am not saying these are happening today where I live. If you can create a burner phone you can create an burner internet account. I don't personally think that this level of paranoia is justified where I live, but where you are it might be necessary. In which case you would be far more secure not using the internet at all.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2022, @11:00AM (3 children)
A free country does not have phone monitoring capacity installed for every phone user in the country. And where I live, the authorities are legally obligated to account for their use of the paltry capacity they do have. Amazing, isn't it?
Still, freedom is a fleeting thing, particularly when people do not value it.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday July 10 2022, @11:43AM
Same here - but I am not paranoid about what may (or may not) happen in years to come.
If Russia invades, if the EU collapses, or if my part of the world becomes uninhabitable because of changing weather conditions, I will not be worrying about my SN posts.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Sunday July 10 2022, @06:11PM (1 child)
I hate to break it to you, but that statement is ridiculous on its face.
The phone network needs to monitor your location in order to deliver calls/texts/data/whatever to/from your phone.
Whether a government may or may not access such information is a different question, but your phone (and anything else with an IP address) is being monitored.
If you don't want that to happen, I suggest tins connected by pieces of string. Good luck with that.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11 2022, @06:31PM
There is an oceanwide gulf of difference between routing packets to a specific tower, and LOGGING all that routing. The latter, at a minimum, needs PAYING for storage, which means billing users MORE than the competitors which do not do it.
Looking into the packets themselves, and/or copying them for later perusal, costs YET MORE in hardware and storage. MITMing the HTTPS traffic to get any use out of said perusal, costs yet more AGAIN and is also noticeable by users.
Breaking this to you won't do a thing to your prepackaged beliefs, but when you leave a cowpie on the information superhighway, someone needs to shovel it off the lane.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday July 09 2022, @10:48PM (5 children)
I understand and agree with the argument about thoughtcrime linked to comments logged to an account, but as to that, it's just plain unfortunate that a relative few are causing the problems for so many who would post as non-logged in AC. But that's what's happening--a few messing it up for many more.
If anyone has a Don Quixote complex against a small Internet community, in my opinion, that person should find a good, helpful therapist (or solitary hobby) and spend the time there, not in tilting at their particular windmill(s). For the good of the Internet communities, and for their own mental and emotional good. But, that as a solution isn't realistic (it isn't working out that way practically speaking), and is out of reach at this time.
Requiring ACs to log in, however, is in fact within reach, despite being the less ideal solution for many. Sucks, but what else to do?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @11:52PM (3 children)
A new site, obviously. This one has succumbed to the rot.
The Mighty Buzzard had an intention to be doing something like that, after being hounded out of here.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday July 10 2022, @01:00AM (2 children)
Don't hold your breath, TMB doesn't give a shit [github.com] on your need of a site, and he's right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 10 2022, @02:02AM (1 child)
I guess the "you" who was here then, is on another shift, or quit already.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 12 2022, @01:40AM
Thanks for the LOL in a rainy winter Melbourne noon.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 12 2022, @08:00AM
I always considered requerdanos a sane and reliable member of the team. Now, I am not so sure. Why parroting the janrinok conspiracy theory?
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday July 09 2022, @06:57PM (3 children)
How would this logistically work? What are the regular channels of moderators and admins that you speak of? We, the several thousand users of SN, are the moderators. The admins can't possibly look at every comment and decide if it's spam or simply someone spouting off at someone else. 1) They have no time for it. 2) They'd rather let us decide that than a select few individuals.
And finally, if we the several thousand moderators say that the person who made the AC comment needs be ban hammered, the only way to accomplish that is by linking an AC comment to a user for a certain period of time. If they do that, the AC part is lost.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Saturday July 09 2022, @10:43PM
By regular channels, I mean meaningful application of the moderation system and karma score, and the ability to take administrative action at the account level.
We, the several thousand, can moderate non-logged in ACs all we want, but the action will affect only the comment in question rather than building positive karma for good contributions or losing karma for divisive ones. Thus allowing great contributions to go unrewarded, but (significantly) also allowing negative content to go on without the same constraints that apply to logged-in users.
As I understand the system, however (take with grain of salt), moderating ACs who are logged in allows the karma to follow them appropriately, and naturally mitigating damage in cases where someone's karma is low enough to prevent posting for a time, for example.
The admins, the few, can take action against an account if warranted, also, in a way that couldn't be effective against non-logged in ACs. So far as I know, *nothing* is effective against non-logged in ACs because they are above the system, all lumped under user #1 and immune to karma.
It's unfortunate that a relative few are causing the problems for so many who would post as non-logged in AC. But that's the case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 13 2022, @01:32PM (1 child)
Most stories receive less than 20 comments. If course they read every one.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by janrinok on Wednesday July 13 2022, @03:16PM
That is as much to do with the story content than anything else. They are read many more times but perhaps they have nothing constructive to add. It is acceptable to stay silent and learn from what you have read than to make crap up and spout it out anyway.
We are trying to pick the best stories from the submission queue, particularly if they are about something more unusual or at subject less frequently discussed.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Saturday July 09 2022, @03:45PM
Personally, as a user, I scroll past trolls and apk posts by rote without thinking about it, because that's what I have done on every forum ever since the days of Usenet. So it has never bothered me.
But I want Soylent to continue. I have contributed money and time (though, less of that recently for various reasons) because there is value in having a place where smart people from many walks of life and viewpoints gather and hold discourse. If spammers and trolls are exhausting the core volunteers, the editors and back-end folks who keep the site going, then we should discontinue pure AC posting.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by j-beda on Saturday July 09 2022, @03:46PM (2 children)
I have no problem with requiring people to be logged in to post as AC. The fact that one can create a completely anonymous account with little difficulty, to me at least, is sufficient for anyone who is desires complete anonymity.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by canopic jug on Saturday July 09 2022, @04:00PM (1 child)
I'm not sure which side to speak up for in this. I do know two things about this in general. One, anonymous discourse is necessary for general democracy. Two, it can be badly abused and paid shills who work towards an end of democracy and free speech, in addition to a crazy or two, work hard to burn out key volunteers and staff. I've seen it in other projects and the methods are astoundingly close to what I gather is happening here.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Saturday July 09 2022, @07:01PM
Isn't "canopic jug" a kind of anonymity?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Saturday July 09 2022, @03:48PM (16 children)
Janrinok has mentioned several times lately how fatigued the editors are. That's a critical warning sign for burnout and collapse.
How can the rest of us in the community help? Is it time to put out another call for editors and/or coders?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by canopic jug on Saturday July 09 2022, @03:55PM
How can the rest of us in the community help? Is it time to put out another call for editors and/or coders?
Indeed. The coding is a bit challenging due to the style the perl was written in. During those years it was stylish to be complicated and the code used is not something which can easily be deployed locally as an experiment. I use perl a lot but not at the level required by the code base. Yes, I took a look at it a long while back. I suppose I should try again.
As for the volunteering, is IRC still required? If so, as much as I'd like to escalate my efforts, that's still a hard pass.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 4, Informative) by janrinok on Saturday July 09 2022, @05:50PM (1 child)
Sorry, but I had to cook and eat a meal!
Yes, editors are required but everything is critical at the moment.
Sysadmins who know what they are doing are needed - but that takes our current sysadmins away from whatever else they are doing, including trying to have a job and life away from the site. It is a problem that we will have to overcome and I do not know how they usually integrate new members to the team. I will have to ask others about that. We need to reduce our hardware and strip out the belts and braces (currently unnecessary code that is there to respond to the sort of demand that Slashdot used to see but I don't think that we have experienced for several years.) That will reduce our monthly costs to something much more reasonable. I'd better stop describing what is needed - it is not my area of expertise by a long way!
A competent Perl programmer is also urgently required but I seriously doubt that anyone is going to volunteer to help us at present. It need not be a massive job requiring loads of coding straight away but we have to be able to rebuild the program and the new programmer will have to read and grok the code. Actually, the code is not badly written - but Perl is either something you can read or it isn't. The structure seems logical. The Rehash code is available as is the slashcode that we forked from, but Rehash is the one to look for. Search GitHub for Soylent/Rehash. There is also usage of Apache Mod-Perl.
But by far the biggest challenge is to stop the reducing community numbers and then start to rebuild from wherever we find ourselves. We need a community that will discuss and comment intelligently so that we can encourage new members to give us a try and attract back those who have left us. I do not underestimate the size of that task. But I will give it my best shot!
The only advantage that we have over when we began 8 years ago is that the current system works even though it is far from optimum.
I'll stop rambling on now - it has been a long day so far (12 hours +) and I have still got a few things to do before I go off-line. :-)
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday July 09 2022, @11:39PM
I'm not sure we should underestimate the effects of "interesting times" on the lives of just about everyone in our community. It seems to me that daily life is becoming more demanding and more tiring for many, many people, due to a number of intertwined factors: the pandemic causing illness and stress, increased economic hardship, political turmoil and culture wars causing division, more stress, and uncertainty, even the climate crisis. Oh and then of course dear ol' Father Time keeps making us all older as well!
I'm not immune to some if not all of these things, and I find myself having less time and often less energy to visit this place and post. I know others have it a lot worse.
However, I applaud your efforts and will continue to try to do what very little I can to support this community because in these difficult times we need this place more than ever!
As for the topic at hand, uhhhhh, it's a tricky question because it sounds like you don't really have much of a choice at all. You've pretty much said in TFS that doing nothing, keeping the status quo, isn't really an option. So that leaves forbidding non-logged-in ACs or finding a way to change the site's behavior for non-logged-in AC content--with or without a Perl programmer.
I remain sort of on the fence because I'll still enjoy this site whichever option you choose. However, banning ACs would be a great loss and I would miss that, and as I already said I think that digital liberty aspect really is something important. I don't like the toxic comments but to be honest some of the particularly unpleasant stuff in the past has actually been written by named accounts!
Let me just point out that if you are able to find a way to implement some kind of restriction or clean-up on the non-logged in AC posts, then although controversial, that would obviously still be better than the nuclear option of outright banning all non-logged-in posts. It could be automatic, it could be done by the community. Yes it will be misused but it would still give the ACs a chance to participate if they wanted to.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Common Joe on Saturday July 09 2022, @07:04PM (12 children)
Janrinok has put out quite a few calls for coders in the past few weeks. He may not have worded it as "Hey, anyone know a Perl coder?", but it came across loud and clear when he said, "The only way to fix this is with a Perl coder who has lots of time on their hands."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 09 2022, @08:14PM (11 children)
I am such a Perl coder, but I do see this present "problem" as a mere, rather transparent, excuse.
The goal now seems to be to start data collection on unwary dissenters, for future use; I do not wish to be an useful idiot volunteering to better enable that.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kazzie on Sunday July 10 2022, @12:20PM (1 child)
Isn't that the "goal" formed due to the lack of ability to code a different solution?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11 2022, @07:10PM
The "solution" was here looking for a problem since before TMB was pushed out. When some vocal people with a (wet) dream and too (inhumanly) much time on their hands are demanding a thing, fixing their excuse-of-the-day would do nothing to appease them. As the administration is into their appeasement, behold their goal being implemented as an accomplished fact, with this empty "discussion" after the event.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday July 11 2022, @12:51AM (2 children)
If you are such a Perl coder, I would suggest that you could bring a whole slew of alternative approaches to the table.
You're under no obligation to implement whatever mass data collection you fear the admins secretly want to enact. Instead, come up with a solution that you feel is workable from a privacy perspective, gain support for it, and implement that. Several solutions have already been suggested that would collect no more information than what is being done today (for example, hiding Spam comments or marking them at -2).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11 2022, @07:37PM (1 child)
The solution I would have used, is checking every new anonymous comment for similarity with every other anonymous comment in the preceding say 24 hours. Given the smallish volume of comments here in a day, such a check would not be eating much CPU even if implemented in a plain dumb way, would not inconvenience the logged-in users any, and would limit the repeating spammy comments to a single one per day (unless the spammer spends some of his own human time to really reword the stuff).
Such a thing would be unable to catch autogenerated nonsense bullshit posted just for the sake of bullshit, sadly, but we do not observe that kind of attack here yet.
A possible way to make logged-in anonymous comment truly anonymous in the long run, without sacrificing the ability to catch a spam account, would be to assign a random temporary ID to an account making such a comment, store that ID with the comment, and delete the temp-ID-to-account mapping in say a day or two. That way, a spammer could be caught red-handed, but after a day or two has passed, no way to track who wrote what, anymore.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Monday July 11 2022, @10:08PM
Both good ideas. If you're the Perl coder, I encourage you to put the case forward!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 11 2022, @04:43AM (5 children)
Perceive differently then. If this were truly "transparent", then you would have some reason for what you claim to see rather than just saying shit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11 2022, @06:47PM (4 children)
The specific usernames demanding it, are all the reason I need. Zumi, deathmonkey, the c0lo collective. The things synonymous with harmful intent.
"Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit."
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday July 11 2022, @07:12PM (2 children)
None of those were admins. So again, perceive differently.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 11 2022, @07:48PM (1 child)
The admins decided to pander to them. Understandable, for those users are vocal and stinky far in excess of their number. Still, that pandering will only strengthen their hand, and the next steps down the slippery slope will be ever easier and quicker.
Russia has not turned fascist in a day, either. It was going there there step by step, with an excuse for each. Just like that.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 12 2022, @01:52AM
Yeeesss, dig deeper, the dark side has plenty of gooood cookies (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday July 12 2022, @01:49AM
Stop bullshitting, I never asked for AC access to be disabled.
The only suggestion I had, waaaay back when TMB was still with S/N, regarding to functional extensions to rehash was the addition of "modding stories on firehose", as a way to trim down the flood of bullshit pushed into the submission queue (was unusually high at the time) and lower the pressure on editors.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0