Greatest Task of Web 2.x: Meta-Validation

CexpTretical writes "This Technology Review article about Web 2.x problems fails to mention the 800 pound gorilla in the room when it comes to fulfilling the dreams of the Semantic Web — i.e., assumptions about the validity of metadata or tagging schemes. We can add all of the metadata and/or tags we want to web resources but that does not mean that the 'data about the data' honestly or accurately describe the resource or are 'about the data' at all. This is why Google does not place much importance on the metadata already contained in HTML document headers for search ranking, because it cannot be trusted. And to validate it would require more effort than to search and index that data from scratch. Ensuring or verifying the validity of metadata would be a task equal to that of initially creating it, but would have to be repeated on an ongoing basis. Hence all of the talk about 'trusted networks,' which then require trusting the gatekeepers of those networks. Talk about 'semantics.'" Slashdot's moderation and meta-moderation offer one example of getting useful metadata in a non-trusted environment.

Comments

Meta data

[Andrewkov]

Slashdot's moderation and meta-moderation offer one example of getting useful metadata in a non-trusted environment.

The tagging system might be a better example, or at least an example of mostly useless meta information.

Re:Meta data

[Jasin Natael]

People should be thinking "is this an interesting and valid thought?" rather than "do I agree with what this person is saying?" - unfortunately this doesn't happen.

Ah, the value judgement rears its head again. I'm not sure how you can easily distinguish between invalid thoughts and thoughts you disagree with. For me, and I would hope for many people who get mod points, the points are expended on those comments that add something useful to the discussion.

A tired old argument that, for me, was debunked years ago -- however 'Interesting' or 'Insightful' it may have been the first few times I heard it -- simply isn't saying anything. Knowing why an argument or point is flawed, invalid, or deliberately vicious, am I obligated to spend my mod points on it just because its falsehood might be interesting or even insightful to an uninformed reader? Do I not, on the contrary, have a duty to remove information which I know to be false or misleading by downmodding?

Moderation isn't about feeding your own opinions back to you; It's about obtaining an aggregate value judgement from the community as a whole. If you want to browse sans value judgements, or if you disagree with the community's concensus and want wrong, invalid, or uninformed (per the moderation system, as judged by the community) opinions to be given equal or greater weight than those moderated up, use the 'Prefs' panel. That's what it's for.

Re:You can't trust the moderation system either

[TheFlyingGoat]

You are definitely correct, but I wonder if this would be the same in a search environment like Google. First, you have a much broader selection of people that can mark meta-data as being accurate or not. Second, people will not see the meta-data without specifically searching for it. This means that the people searching for "swingers in Milwaukee" will most likely be people that don't frown upon such behavior. There are still obvious issues, like people searching for more general controversial terms like creationism/evolution or people that disagree with a certain behavior organizing against certain sites by "moderating" them poorly. I could easily see this happening in politics and religion.

Re:You can't trust the moderation system either

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Basically, every group and forum is going to be self-selecting to an extent. Even the stories are self selecting, I think. Stories about copyright law enforcement from the entertainment industry get the opposite vibe than stories about companies violating the copyright of GPL'd software. I really hope it's from two different groups of people.

Digg is even worse.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're completely correct. Most people don't moderate based on how a post or a story meets a certain set of criteria. They only ever get to the level where they "agree" with a story, or "disagree" with it.

When it was first becoming popular, I used Digg for a few weeks. Various people would post comments in stories I had submitted, saying how they had just "buried" the story as "OK, This is Lame" because they disagreed with it. Of course, that's now how Digg is intended to work. It's about a story's merit as a story, not about how it may conflict or agree with one's opinion.

I've seen other people suffer a similar fate. John C. Randolph, who many of us know for his past work at Apple, is often the victim of that sort of stupidity. Unlike 99.99999% of the Digg users, he has some clue as to how Apple works, and what sort of projects they're working on. Yet time and time again he's the victim of morons who outright claim his stories are "inaccurate". Unfortunately, there are so many morons that they completely outnumber those of us who know who jcr is, who know of his great work, and who know how perfectly accurate his information is.

At least here at Slashdot, there's some limit as to who gets moderating privileges. It tends to be only the most intelligent individuals. Contrast this to Digg, where any 12-year-old cocktard is given the ability to moderate stories that tower above their intellect and understanding.

Re:You can't trust the moderation system either

[QuietLagoon]

However since posts lower than zero do not get displayed automatically,

When I moderate, I view all comments, even the ones with negative scores. That's the responsibilty of moderators, yes? The moderators have to wade through the sewerage so that you don't have to.

With that in mind, I have no idea why your message is rated as insightful.....

Mod Spam?

[quanticle]

Here on Slashdot, there is a selection process and a reputation system that determines who has the ability to moderate. How does this "Web 2.0" address the fact that anyone can attach and moderate tags?

Tepid Moderation

[Doc Ruby]

Slashdot's moderation and meta-moderation offer one example of getting useful metadata in a non-trusted environment.

An example of unaccountable, gameable metadata that generates untrustworthy info that is almost as useless, through abuse, as it is useful.

Slashdot's moderation could:

• Require moderators to read the description of their mod before applying it
  
• Require a moderator to include a comment whenever downmod'ing
  
• Require metamoderators to read the comments whenever metamoderating
  
• Allow readers to specify (even anonymous) moderations as unfair, weighting those moderators' mods to zero
  

Those few improvements could introduce some accountability and feedback into the now mostly abused meta/moderation system. Until then, Slashdot has little to teach the world about the right way to accumulate useful metadata in an untrustworthy environment.