SlashNET IRC Chat Tonight w/ CmdrTaco & Hemos

At 9 pm eastern, Hemos & I are gonna be in #forum on irc.slashnet.org to answer questions about Slashdot. There's a lot of random stuff that's happened since the last time we did this, so this is a chance to ask questions about Story Selection, moderation, Slashcode, or whatever else is on your mind. If anyone wants to take our answers and send in updates and additions to the FAQ afterwards, that would make our lives easier, and our inboxes smaller ;)

Comments

Confirm or deny the rumor?

[Pinball Wizard]

>> There's a lot of random stuff that's happened since the last time we did this

Um...what about the Signal 11 vs. CmdrTaco IRC chat that's floating around. Is that true? I think you should confirm or deny that rumor here on /., because not all of us will be on IRC tonight.

My own opinion about /. is...you don't have a moderation problem, you have a spamming problem. kuro5hin deletes spam posts, and I think most of us here wouldn't mind at all if you just got rid of the garbage posts. IMO, that's the main difference. I'm not saying moderation doesn't need to be improved, but the spam posts are definitely the biggest problem.

I watch the sea.
I saw it on TV.

Re:Confirm or deny the rumor?

[Inoshiro]

Confirmed. As an @ of #kuro5hin, and knowing the regulars, I can firmly say that unless some alien brainwashing crew visited Australia, Western Europe, most of the US, and Canada, they all witnessed the same Rob Malda. :)

Too bad I was asleep at the time :-(
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Increasing Karma/Moderation Scale

[TOTKChief]

While doing something completely mindless at work (pecking a software-hardware interactions document to control spaceflight hardware for ISS), I got to thinking:

Why not change the moderation scales somewhat?

Here's the thoughts:

• Is -1 to 5 enough? I'd say no, not at this scale of comments/users/page views. 5's are obviously "good" comments, and 4's are pretty good, too. But what's the line between 4 and 5? Fuzzy, depending upon the moderator. Is it a great 4? Maybe. Does it need a 5? Probably not. Would a 4.5 be nice? Sure. I'd think /. could go to 7-10 on the top side without killing things. This would make moderation a bit easier--each point counts less. Karma levels would have to be adjusted accordingly, but...
• Allow more tags with points. Maybe there are enough. I don't know. But I'm thinking that maybe someone needs a laugh--let them select all the "Funny" comments, then select their threshhold. If I needed a laugh--most days I do--I'd seek that option out. If I was interested in something, I'd want to see "Informative" comments. If I was passionate, I'd want those "Insightful" comments culled for me. If I'm feeling deviant, I'd want those "Offtopic" comments gathered together and not necessarily modded down.

• Now, to see this post get to (Score: 8, "Insightfully Funny")

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Yet Another Late Announcement

[GeorgeH]

Geez guys, how about a little advanced notice? Parties, talks, chats, all announced the day of, sometimes after the fact! If I had been given a little advance notice I could have booked a flight to whereever this "IRC" place is, and participated.

Oh well, I guess I'll just spend tonight figuring out what this "Microsoft Chat" program is. Heheh, it looks pretty familiar!
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Re:spam deletion

[Tridus]

The problem with deleting spam is simply, who gets to delete it?

Is it CT&H? Everybody who can post articles? Moderators with 50 karma? Any moderator?

Besides, at that point instead of obvious spam, we would get questionable borderline spam, and god forbid if that gets deleted, then we'll have entire threads full of "/. is censoring us!"

Its more trouble then its worth.

what's broken about mod and meta mod

[Karmageddon]

I've meta-moderated a small bit over the past few months. It's unrewarding. It undoubtedly works to "catch" evil moderators, those who moderate up garbage or down good stuff. But it does nothing to help the real problem that Slashdot faces: creeping banality. The meta-mod question is something along the lines of, is this "Informative" rating Fair, or Unfair? And, in most of the cases I've seen, 1 informative point should have been awarded. But, I'm equally sure that 4 informative points should not have been awarded, and that question does not get asked. The moderation system is also very negative toward negative comments, but rationally negative should be treated just like positive. Earnestness by ingenuous newbies is treated very kindly, but it is often completely uninteresting to those with some knowledge of an area. However, meta-mod would surely punish those who tried to push back against these tides.

In terms of plain old moderation, I've a few suggestions for improvement. How about revealing to the moderator some historical information about the poster? For example, streetlawyer is an admitted troll, and he has some talent for posting "interesting" points of view that get him some mod points, but he uses those points for evil. Couldn't some rating be added to give a hint that he should be treated with skepticism unless it is clear that his posts are not karma whoring?

Then there's the problem of the increasing number of moderators who think Micros~1 gets treated unfairly. It is a theoretically valid point of view, OK, but I'm completely fed up with the amount of Windows and Microsoft in my life. I know more about the company than 99% of posters here, and it is no longer an open question to me; I'm simply not interested in hearing people defend Microsoft. Others may have similar/opposite feelings about other issues. How about letting each user moderate the moderators. I don't want to see the moderation that comes from certain moderators. Over time I could indicate that by simply clicking "personally overrated" on posts that I see getting too high. Yes, the straightforward implementation would be computationally prohibitive. But, perhaps there are aggregate statistics that would show large clumps of Slashdot users in various "camps" and they could better see what they are interested in.

Finally, in terms of plain old moderation, I don't much enjoy doing it either. There tends to be too much "grade inflation" as hinted previously, so I rarely see something that needs more points, just things that wish for fewer. (Sometimes I see strong evidence there is a hidden moderation system taking place: Slashdot editors with unlimited points hammering things into rough shape on the fly and letting the public system tweak the results.)

Finally (I guess these are just random thoughts), how about an "offtopic" rating that is not negative. Sometimes I want to shut off all the "noise" in a discussion, but sometimes it's funny and adds color. It would be nice if moderators could rate topicality without devaluing.

Re:Give Slashdot a Break

[AstroJetson]

You raise a lot of good issues, and I agree to a certain point. But /. has joined the big leagues and that means that a certain level of professionalism is expected. It's not just Rob's little pet project anymore. When I see bad grammar, spelling errors (how many times has CT spelled "too" T-O?), repeated or inaccurate stories and the like, frankly I'm a bit embarassed. I think that it's not unreasonable to expect more from one of the (if not *the*) flagship web sites of the open source movement. I don't think it's too much to ask to make the site look sharp and professional or to do a little research before putting up a story.

I sympathize with Rob, I really do. It must be painful to see your creation attacked by trolls and spammers from one direction, and an endless stream of complaints from the other. But some of these complaints are legit. And he has gotten secretive in his changes to the mod system, and defensive about them. A lot of the complaints would be nipped in the bud if he just told us "Hey guys, there have been some changes, here's what they are and here's why I made them." That's more in the open source spirit than secretly making changes to the Slashcode. (Yes, I know I can just go look at it, but for one thing, I'm not a perl poet and secondly, I'm not interested in diffing the code every couple of weeks to see what changes have been made.) In the irc log he talks about how he gets tired of hearing the same suggestions over and over. Then why doesn't he publish the ones that have already suggested and the reason they haven't been implemented? Somebody else said that they never read the faq. Well there's no reason to - it hasn't been updated in over a year. And it *still* says "updated 9.9", that would be 9.9.1999.

Af for the mod system itself, I don't think it's horribly broken. The biggest problem is that moderators aren't doing a good job. That's not a problem that can be fixed within the system. There are some things that might help, but if moderators are modding trolls up, that's a societal problem that is outside the scope of any moderation scheme. Some things that *could* improve the system are:

1) Make karma hidden again. Karma shouldn't be a spectator sport. I know it's a rush to see your karma increase, but it's just a number. If you're getting modded up more than down you know it's increasing - you don't need to see the number in your user page to know that. Posting a thoughtful reply or participating in a lively discussion should be reward enough. Yes there will be significant lashback, but Rob's just gonna have to put on the asbestos suit for a couple of weeks and ride it out. Maybe some people will leave too. That might not be a bad thing. Are the posters that only post to see their karma increase the type we want around here anyway? To me that's the definition of a karma whore.

2) Require a higher karma to get mod points. Maybe the vets are better at recognizing the trolls and karma whores. Maybe not, but it seems like it's worth a shot.

3) Give some feedback from M2 to the moderators. Right now if I mod a post and it gets whacked in M2, I don't know why or even which mod was the one that did it. It would be helpful to know which one of my mods was thought to be unfair and why. Hopefully better moderation would be the result. Perhaps not, maybe all we'd get is things clustered more toward the mean.

4) Force moderators to browse at -1, newest first instead of +1 highest score first. In other words, ignore the settings in comments.pl when you have mod points. Many older posts that should be modded up are simply ignored because the moderators only see the ones that have already been modded up.

Having said all that, for the most part the mod system works. Most of the truly insightful comments end up at the top of the heap and most of the crap gets buried on the bottom where it belongs. It's not perfect, but I'm not sure it can be. That shouldn't stop us (or CT) from improving it if possible, however.

Lastly, I think we're all (especially Rob) taking this thing waaaay too seriously. Let's lighten up and make this place fun again. Ok?

Re:I don't use IRC

[Tridus]

1. AFAIK, no cap for some people is just a rumor, unless its a bug. (a bug in slashcode?? never! ;-) )

2. Some people do read the faq (like me, I'm weird that way). One idea I've heard is to create a section for things like Slashdot news and changes that aren't big enough to make the front page. That way, people who are actually interested in changes can read them, and otherwise they don't fill up the main page (or not get posted at all for fear of filling up the main page).

3. I have no idea. Overrated and Underrated are pretty hard to metamod though, because you have to know the original score to know if the overrated is actually fair. Over/Underrated do seem to be a good way for trolls with modpoints to get around the system though, so maybe something could be worked out?

4. In the infamous CT/Sig11 irc log floating around, this actually came up. The problem is that they see suggestions that have already been throught up a few hundred times before, and I guess they just have a hard time replying to them over and over and over again. The suggestions actually have to fall into a pretty narrow set of limits to be even considered too, because of issues like server/database load.

Re:I don't use IRC

[TheReverand]

You can blame trolls all you want to, but that doesn't fix the moderation system. The fact that any troll can get moderated up to 5 in a matter of minutes is proof that it does not work.

All trolls (note, not spammers, not anonymous Emily Dickinson, not Penis Bird Man) have done is played devils advocate and forced people to think about what they are posting. In fact, I am considered a "troll" because I don't believe open source is the way to go. So what? I disagree, big deal. But that makes me a "troll" around here. I gladly accept the title.

Allow me to quote one of the "Troll Manifestos"

But for Trolls, it's more than just parody of the webpage. In fact, in many respects, Trolls don't care for the very web page in which they operate. For Trolls , as well as for many other readers of the page, Slashdot itself has become too self-important and too self-congratulatory. Its hosts take on extremist viewpoints merely to keep pageviews high... from posters who often just parrot whatever CmdrTaco says. Worse yet, Slashdot believes it makes a difference in the issues, when it rarely if ever does. And perhaps worst of all... if it's on the internet, people believe it as an absolute truth, despite the fact that most of what's on Slashdot is simply opinion. What Trolls do on Slashdot manage to demonstrate that rather accurately, each and every day.

This website would be nothing but a bunch of zealots shouting "Me Too" at everything taco posts, were it not for the trolls.

Sorry, but I have been reading /. for about 2 years now, and have watched the quality in comment response drop steadily. The only thing that has improved has been the quality of trolls.

Here's why...

[Millennium]

In any physical society, a person can generally get a good feel for his/her reputation simply by watching how people react to him. On huge virtual societies like Slashdot, you can't do this, because you only have one measure of reaction: the written word. There's far more to seeing your reputation than what people say to you, particularly in a community so large that very few people speak on a regular basis within its confines.

Karma can be used, among other things, as a measure of your reputation on Slashdot (a very crude and rough measure, yes, but a measure nonetheless). If you find your Karma going up, it's a pretty safe bet that you're well-liked by the community. If it's going down, then you're not doing so well (unless you're a troll, in which case you're doing quite well). If you're serious about being a good Slashdotter and you see your Karma going down, you know that you need to find out what's going on and take steps to correct it. You can't get this otherwise. Posting histories are unreliable because the score is bounded (I could be modded down 50 times on a single post and lose 50 Karma, but the score on the post would remain at -1). Looking at reactions is also unreliable, because people don't always post their reactions (remember, moderators cannot post reactions in a thread they mod at all, or their moderation is undone).

So it's still necessary to at least give people the option to know what their Karma is.
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Re:Here's why...

[IntlHarvester]

Right -- Karma was introduced as a "reputation system" to help readers seperate the good posters from the bad.

Then Karma was hidden from other users, so you couldn't see anyone's reputation even if you wanted to. If they had over 25, you could see their +1 bonus, however. You could still see your own karma to judge how your own reputation was doing.

Then pretty much anyone here longer than a couple months figured out the "formula" to get 25 karma points. Garbage at score 2 has become common, so the +1 bonus became meaningless.

Then Karma was 'kapped' at 50, so the people who have been here a long time can't use it as a relative measure anyway.

Don't get me wrong -- I'm not arguing against the Karma Kapping or Karma Hiding or Karma Bonuses -- I'm just wondering, with all of these modifications, what is the point of Karma at all these days?

Karma came in after the moderation system -- Slashdot did not always have it. My feeling was the S/N ratio was higher in the days before Karma, and people would actually post and read at the AC level. The readership has gone way up and the quality has generally gone down, but in general moderation has worked, but I don't know if anyone can honestly say that Karma has worked at all.

So since Karma been rendered largely pointless, and has been a contentious problem for some folks, why not get rid of Karma all together? If you must have a +1 bonus, do it purely on seniority (just like Mod and MetaMod privs). Just a thought.


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Give Slashdot a Break

[e_lehman]

Taco works his butt off to maintain this site, and people do nothing but ream him. I think I'm a pretty average Slashdot reader, and you know what?

• I can decrypt text with incorrect grammar and spelling all by myself. I know this, because a lot of you writing (even insightful ones) comments can't spell worth a damn.
• I read at +2 and skip my eyeballs right on past posters that bore me. The moderation system doesn't have to be perfect; I can do some filtering all by myself.
• When there's a redundant story, I skip it. When there's an erroneous story, the comments tell me, and I forget it. When there's a spurrious comment in an article, I blow it off.

Why is everything Rob's problem and responsibility? Why is it entirely his job to get everything just all tidy and perfect for pampered little you? Has someone tied you up and forced you to read Slashdot? And, if so, is she good looking?

How about this bit from the IRC log?

[21:47] [CmdrTaco] Some days I just go home so fucking angry because some dickless wonder with no information and a paranoid fantasty is convinced that I'm the antichrist.,

[21:48] [CmdrTaco] Its great when someone uses a forum that you work so hard to create & maintain to attack you

I wonder what it feels like to work your butt off 10 hours a day and still get dozens of emails a day, every day telling you what a dick you are? I wouldn't take a job like that. And, as far as I know, there's nothing preventing Rob, Jeff, Michael, and co. from saying, "screw this abuse" and dumping Slashdot tomorrow. What do you want from these guys?

Hrm...

[RudeSka]

I do not want to come off as a karma whore, but I will give sexual favors to anyone who mods this up.

it's not a justification

[streetlawyer]

I never said my actions were justifiable on any grounds other than the very best one; that they're funny.

And my comments aren't crap -- I weight them on purpose to maintain constant Karma, and the ones which bring me down (usually by defending the concept of copyright in terms only slightly more vitriolic than the Slashbots attack it) are always much, much better than the ones which bring me up.

You need me. And people like me. We keep the arguments going which bring in the page views and return visitors which keep your page views up. People will come and post "DMCA SUCKS!" to a copyright story, or "If this was Open Source, it would never have crashed", but they'll only post it once. It takes someone who tells them they're wrong to bring them back.

I've contributed a fair old amount to your site, Mike, all of it under the streetlawyer identity (unlike a few other bigtime trolls, I have no alter ego). I contributed one of your April Fool jokes this year. This morning I submitted a story warning you about how a prominent geek site could be used to bring cross-site scripting vulnerabilities to your bulletin boards. I'm happy to play along with you. But I'm not going to play along with your legion of little me-toos and catamites. I'm not going to agree with your own dangerously naive political views. And, while you provide me with this bulletin board (which is to say; forever; you have no economic alternative), I'm not going to stop saying that you, personally, and your followers, collectively, are frequently full of shit, and doing so in as amusing (to myself) a way as possible.

Oh yeh, and I don't do IRC either.

Cheney and Lieberman vs.CmdrTaco and Hemos

[yankeehack]

So I'm guessing that you aren't expecting many slashdotters to follow the Vice Presidential debates tonight at 9pm EST??? ;-)

Re:I don't use IRC

[dboyles]

Of all the mods I get, "overrated" is nearly half of them. Nobody is keeping moderators who use those options in line.

I moderate as "overrated" a pretty good bit when I have moderator access. In the last month I've been posting to /. a lot more, and as a result have attained the +1 bonus on my posts. But when I want to post something non-anonymously that I don't think would benefit others to read, I disable the +1 and post at just plain 1.

I usually read /. at a +2 threshold and decent into a discussion if I want (unless I'm moderating, when I read at 0, nested). I read at +2 and sort by highest scores first because sometimes I just want to pop in and get a few interesting opinions on a subject. I don't want to see 30 posts at +2 that are just somebody's one-liner comeback buried down in a thread. From what I've read in the /. FAQ and what I believe to be true, this is why "overrated" is in there. I'm not sure about "underrated" though, because if it's underrated then it should be marked as what it is (funny, insightful, informative...).

There are plenty of flaws with the moderation system, but it does a decent job of filtering out bad comments. I'll be interested to see this IRC chat session tonight and the effects of it, especially considering the recent Signal 11 brouhaha.

Kill Karmal Knowledge

[TOTKChief]

Since I'll be on the road to visit my family and haven't gotten the heads-up display/satellite Internet connection in my truck to work yet, let me just ask this:

Can Hemos and CmdrTaco please tell us why going private with karma won't work in the long run?

All the comments I've seen about this include "we'll get 1000's of emails" and "people want to know their karma". I posit that people knowing their karma is a bad thing. It's not like some deity lets us know how many good and bad points we've got in this world.

<><
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I don't use IRC

[OlympicSponsor]

So could someone ask these questions:

1) WTF is up with Karma? First, no cap, then a cap. Now I hear rumors of no cap, but only for some people.

2) When you change things, please, for the love of GOD, TELL US. Don't just break it (from our point of view). And forget about that FAQ--no one reads it. Just post a story like you used to.

3) Is Slashdot still depending on metamod? If so, why the heck are "overrated" and "underrated" still allowed without being metamodded? Of all the mods I get, "overrated" is nearly half of them. Nobody is keeping moderators who use those options in line.

4) Is there any point in us suggesting new features (mod-related or not) or is your mind totally closed on the topic? It used to be that you would respond to good ideas with a comment and sometimes even an implementation. Nowadays we keep suggesting but Slashdot keeps sucking.
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Re:Signal 11?

[talesout]

I hope a pray that Sig11 manages to make it there. For anyone that's interested in improving Slashdot, witness this conversation (with links to the originally discussed IRC log).

Click here.

Signal 11 didn't deserve all of the crap that Taco threw his way, but what do you expect? Egomaniacal garbage seems to be a big turn on for him. Don't believe me? Read the IRC log, he compares Slashdot to Microsoft by saying, "It's like Microsoft. They're popular so everybody dumps on them, ra, ra!" And he doesn't realize that makes him look just as fricken egotistical as Gates.