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

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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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?

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.

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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