Slashdot Mirror
Keeping Web Discussions Open, Yet Civilized?
gsnedders asks: "With the rise of 'Web 2.0' and user created content, often in the form of comments, how do you keep the discussion open, yet civilized? I've found Slashdot's moderation to be very good — the good stuff gets moderated up, and the bad stuff down. On Digg, correct and valid information often gets dugg down, and offensive comments up, showing that having an open moderation system doesn't always work. However, moderation like on Slashdot, requires a large numbers of users to have enough moderators without giving everyone moderator access, therefore making it impossible to use on smaller sites. How can you keep the discussion civilized, while keeping commenting open, and not requiring large numbers of users for the moderation to work?"
It seems to me the only way for most discussions is simply to have some sort of a online-friendship type thing emerge via message boards or comments. If people don't know each other, they're going to be more likely to be "uncivilized". Slashdot's system works from the large number of users. Most forums can't really do that unless you have losers with no life sitting and moderating forums all the time.
On another note, I wouldn't say Slashdot's moderating system is THAT good (though it is better than competitors!!), I have seen good information or objective criticisms modded down and not very funny stuff modded way up, but it usually works so oh well.
the Political Inquirer
What's wrong with group think? If you had an original idea, and nobody took it seriously, you might claim that it's due to group think. But if your idea got adopted, and became part of social consciousness, that would be due to group think too. So you can't really call it a con. It's just always present in discussions. If you really wanted to avoid it, you probably wouldn't discuss at all.
I've found this to be somewhat true, but not always. If a post contains direct criticism of the DNC or praise/direct agreement for Bush, you can count on a few "flamebait" or "overrated" moderations.
For some posts, such as this one I receive all kinds of complaints about how "right wing" I must be to dare complain that the DNC still hasn't come up with anything resembling a platform. I receive angry ALL CAPS COMMENTS - DON'T YOU KNOW WHAT'S HAPPENING, IDIOT!?! responses. Still, it at least retained a respectable 4, insightful.
Then there's posts like this one which held onto its 5, insightful, but received responses like this where I'm reminded from someone about the left that I shouldn't "THINK", just do whatever the left says because what is happening is wrong, WRONG!
And all along I thought the right was supposed to be anti-intellectual...
I don't really care about the biases among editors, moderators, or whatever. I post what I think, and receive moderations accordingly.
I do, however, remember this when it comes to meta moderation time and, while acting within the rules, I act accordingly when I see posts modded inappropriately.
The moderation system, however, consists really of choir preachers - people mod up what they want to hear and mod down what they don't. That's all it comes down to.
There does seem to be a problem. They really should be modded -1 Stupid, but the mods currently have to choose between Flamebait and Troll.
Slashdot...People come to Slashdot really for the comments because I think most of the readers are articulate and can provide something interesting/insightful to a story
Totally true. People complain about the moderation but really it generally works out pretty well. Someone else posted about an anti-conservative slant here and that is true; but moderators do mod up some conservative views and so even that is not as bad as it could be, you can get both sides of things at least some of the time.
Digg.
I think Digg has a "fair" moderation system. One can see that it is fair to you if you think like most of the Digg users.
The second part is sure true. Digg is like a flock of starlings, all moving alike... Digg I think is being utterly overrun but anti-conservitive thought with the most crackpot people getting stories onto the front page with regularity. I'm sure they'll do just fine with only half the people in the US reading it but it's really too bad.
It's not just liberal/consertive either, it's large blocks of momentium on all kinds of issues like macs/PC's, Microsoft in general, so on and so forth. It makes the front page seem kind of crazy for a variety of reasons and makes all sorts of comments take giant hits even if they are somewhat insightful but generally don't agree with popular opinion. The Slashdot ceiling/floor on moderation is a great thing in this regard as no comment can every be so buried it cannot be dug up; or so elevated that later evidence cannot bury something moderated high that turns out to simply be wrong,
Imagine wanting to go back to read a story in three days - would you choose Slashdot or Digg? I feel like after three days the Slashdot commentary would be kind of polished, whereas the Digg comments would look like a funhouse - all distorted. I pretty much never read Digg stories older than a day but afer a long trip I'll scan back through a week or two of Slashdot.
Fark.
I think that Fark has a "poor" moderation system. They let any yahoo express his or hers opinion. I think that the majority of Farkers are jobless alcoholics anyway...
I suppose the real question is; would any better moderation of Fark improve the aulity of people commenting there? Not sure it would.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
While there is groupthink anywhere, having participated in both, I think something like Digg is more prone to groupthink than /. is.
/. consistently promote comments that went against standard group mentality, while at Digg comments I deem intelligent are shot down and many comments that I think are inane or at least plainly obvious get promoted to the heavens.
/. (get more international editors please, the world does not sleep when you do...)
/. has digg beat on moderation as far as I am concerned.
I have seen
There, it doesn't even seem worth it to come up with anything more than a one sentence post (the other problem being the threads).
Part of it is that Digg doesn't have comments like "+1 Funny", "+1 Insightful", or "-1 Redundant" or any of that. Just points up and points down. Also, points up to infinity and down to negative infinity (or whatever the range is) gets ridiculous and really promotes group think I would say.
Don't get me wrong, there are things I like about Digg, hence I spend some time there. Things like group participation on articles bought to the front minus recent scandals and that there is not so much slowdown at night like on
I would think a blend of the two systems would be ideal, but
Perhaps instead of showing comments in their entirety, you could show previews. The length of the preview could correspond to the mod points. For instance:
-1 = Below Threshold
0 = user name only
1 = user name + Subject Line Only
2 = user name + Subject Line and first line of comment (Or x number of characters)
3 = user name + Subject Line and first two lines of comment (Or x times 2 number of characters)
5 = Comment posted in its entirety
The usernames or subjects could be links to the entire comments for when the reader is interested.
The benefit would be an overall improvement in quality of post per inch of screen space.
I'm a member of a bulletin board that has existed since roughly 1999, but that closed its registration a few years ago. Those of us who were already members before registration closed can still post there, but new members can't easily join (we've developed a few workarounds). The upshot is that it's a very select group who know they can't misbehave if they want to remain a member, but more importantly there is a very strong sense of community. Real flame wars don't happen anymore; everyone has a stake in keeping the community relevant and interesting.
Of course this, in the most limited sense of closing registration, isn't relevant to most sites. Instead, the meta-message is "make your visitors part of a community and make sure they feel they have a stake in maintaining that community."
The ways to give your members a stake in the community are limited perhaps only by your imagination.
I can imagine a system where you select a few good moderators, make every user register before being able to post, and initially make new members "provisional." As a provisional member their comments might not be displayed as obviously as those of full members, not expanded by default (similar in this respect to Slashdot), require votes from moderators or members affirming the comments are useful, etc., before their comments are displayed with the same emphasis as full members. Full members and moderators might be able to vote for particular posts as being "constructive" or not to elevate the status of the post. The critical part is that only full members in good standing with the administrators and rest of the community to contribute to that sort of judgement.
Provisional members would have to contribute for some period of time and/or number of posts to prove they are constructive contributors who make the site a better/more relevant/interesting/etc... place, only afterwards becoming a full member. Then when they've proven they're a constructive member of the community they can be nominated by two or more full members for full membership status, and have it granted at the approval of a good moderator.
Then in an ongoing sense reward members for their positive contributions. Slashdot's own karma system is an example of this, but some creativity come up with other ways of rewarding value and wisdom -- not to mention the total number of posts.
Consider a section of the site where only fully certified members can post.
Also structure your discussion so that people can get to know, or at least recognize, eachother. On the board I participate in that's easy since there are at most a few hundred of us, but I think it's possible in a larger setting as well. Make sure there are ways for members to communicate reasonably directly, not just in the context of a discussion.
Well, those are just a few thoughts. I hope things work out for you.
I wish people didn't use this type of karma-whoring phrases. If the post is not utter flamebait or troll, it has a fair chance of being modded up by a moderator who wants to prove to himself that he can value a comment that doesn't agree with his own opinion. (I think I've done that myself one of the first times I had mod points. Now I never mod such posts, even if I think they deserve it based on the rest of the content.)
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
If a post is simultaneously receiving loads of troll and insightful mods, the community is probably split along some axis. (left/right, mac/linux, sick-sense-of-humor/think-of-the-children, etc, etc). Groupthink is enforced when, for example, a well thought out conservative post is labelled "troll" because 6 liberal moderators have outvoted 4 conservative ones.
If however you could identify the prejudices of the moderators, you could build a system which didn't enforce groupthink like this. Instead, a well thought out conservative post could be labelled (say) +5 insightful/+5 conservative. A good, balanced comment would get votes from both sides (+5 insightful/neutral), out-and-out troll still gets canned, etc.
It could let you see *good* posts by people you disagree with. Or, if you're sure your mind is closed on some matter, it could let you NOT see them.
Lots of problems, of course. eg... identifying the axes, identifying the prejudices of the moderators (does the system let them tick a "conservative" box, or does the system work out for itself where the moderators are, or even what the axes are?)
Conservatism in its purist form is the opposite of ideology, it is a type of cynicism. It is the belief that the average decision made by a human is more likely to be bad than good. Ideology is a strong belief in a cause and the desire to base ones choices around this belief.
People like Dubya get mislabeled as conservatives as a bit of a euphemism, but conservative governments are careful, slow to act and even indecisive. George Bush however is a cowboy and could never be any such things (with the exception of Hurricane Katrina I guess), he likes to start silly wars with dubious causes, he tries to make the rich richer at the expense of the poor, this isn't conservative at all, this is changing the status quo. A conservative government would have stayed out of Iraq and just bombed Afghanistan until they were sorry for helping Osama.
If you want to see conservative, you need to look at Japan, in Japan the bureaucracy has the power so nothing ever happens, laws take decades to pass (child porn was only banned in 1998 IIRC) and havn't invaded a country for 65 years. The American government knew that if Japan was to loose its bad habits its government would need to be slowed to the point of total stagnation and now they are a nice country that everyone but China likes.
And by the way, how can something be biased because it is totally open? A person can be biased for sure, but society as a whole tends to be right about most things political, because politics are dictated by society. Which leads me to my next point, society has thought some really crazy things over the years, but its always been right about it. These days ephebophilia is out but homosexuality is in, who could have seen that coming a century ago? Back in the 70s western women were fighting for equal rights at the same time Muslim women were putting their headscarves on for the first time in almost a millennium. Portugal deposed its hardline Catholic government at almost the same time as Iran had its Islamic revolution and brought about a theocracy. Being conservative is to acknowledge society's indecisiveness and leave it alone. This is cynicism to the highest degree.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem