Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Going Beyond Comment Threads?
asa writes "The Knight Foundation and Mozilla are running a series of news innovation challenges. The goal: get the world's smartest hackers thinking about how news organizations can harness the open web. The current challenge is all about comment threads. This seems like the perfect question to pose to Slashdotters: how would you foster more dynamic spaces for online news discussion? How would you preserve the context of online discussions and stamp out trolls? All ideas, technical, practical or impractical are welcome. What technologies (federation, atomic commenting, moderation, algorithms) would you employ? What are the immutable social dynamics? Knight and Mozilla will work with the best challenge entrants to deploy the solutions in newsrooms at Al Jazeera English, the BBC, boston.com, The Guardian, and Zeit Online. Submissions are open until May 22nd."
Everyone has a right to speak, even idiots. If you don't like what they have to say, then just add them to your ignore list. Trolls/idiots polluting forums is preferable to censorship like happens on some boards (Sony erasing negative posts about the hacking).
Other ideas:
- no point system or post tally. People don't deserve to get points just because they post a lot. People don't deserve to get points at all, for the mere act of expressing an opinion.
- threading is essential, so the replies are tied to the original post
- keep it simple. Plain text. Uses less bandwidth.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
the problem is that 'stamping out trolls' also ends up stamping out minority opinions as well as unpopular truth. this fosters a groupthink mentality that allows consensus to take precedence over correct information/conclusions.
Make it impossible to post a comment without having first RFA.
Many usenet readers provided an astonishing number of features that we have lost in the move to web forums. Maybe something was gained, but much was also lost.
Killfiles were useful to stamp out trolls. These days there could be a feature similar to adblock subscriptions that would block known trolls across all forums.
The reader features themselves on the better clients were MILES more advanced than what is done today in web browsers, even with AJAX. A web browser is a good tool, but it isn't the right tool for everything. It doesn't seem like the right tool for large scale discussion forums, although it can "suffice" for them - it just isn't as good as a dedicated application. Also with a dedicated app, you get your choice of which one to use. With a web forum, you get whatever the forum software gives you to. It takes choice away from the user and places it with the site.
Where slashdot fails:
a) Anonymous Cowards are seldom read, and seldom moderated up.
b) the Javascript filtering makes it impossible to search.
c) Mandatory login to get rid of the 50 comment limit.
Where Twitter and Discq.us have fared better:
1. Universal login, so I don't have to keep creating accounts on 10,000 damned sites, blogs, and everything with a comment field.
2. Disqus - "Likes" somewhat like a karma system.
3. Twitter - Followers, eg follow those that contribute, so by this nature it "whitelists" when they comment, and hides all other comments by default.
Where they've failed:
1. Any jackass can create a twitter account, this is the number one problem, verifying identity, while keeping off trolls and sockpuppet/meatpuppet/astroturfers. We don't need to verify WHO they are, just that they are only ONE UNIQUE person. The easiest way to do this is by having state/national ID database that is queried upon creation of facebook, twitter where a [x] This is my true name, box is ticked. If the box is not ticked, they are defaulted to greylisted (eg slashdot anonymous coward) and have to rely on the karma system alone. If the box is ticked, then the karma system no longer applies and instead a civility meter is kept by twitter/facebook, too many people complaining about that person's behavior will push them into greylisted and down to blacklisted if they're being obnoxious everywhere. Once they're blacklisted, the site has to explicitly allow the person immunity from the blacklist (eg put them on a whitelist) to allow them, otherwise they're effectively silenced.
2. Search Spam. Twitter's search function tends to show more spam than anything useful. This could be better effectively if they simply "end-tailed" all the links being posted and eliminate links or entire spammer "teamfollowback"'s by looking for the same link being posted by people with no posting karma. 250,000 followers and only one comment, yes that's a spammer.
There's one major flaw I've noticed in the /. system: groupthink and herd mentality. Anything that perfectly fits a certain mentality will get upmodded, most things that disagree with it get downmodded. Thus, people who disagree with that thinking (or even just don't care about it) have a disincentive to post, and the site attracts people fanatical about that viewpoint, perpetuating the problem.
/., the "mentality" is "MAFIAA evil, government evil and incompetent, big corporations bad (except google 'cuz they're good guys)", but it could just as easily be anything. If, say, a firearms news site adopted the /. system, it would probably end up with a strong "Kalashnikov gas-operated rotating-bolt system is perfect, Stoner direct-impingement system is evil" bias (or vice versa). Or an indie gaming site might end up with a "no sequels, artsy plot-heavy faux-retro side-scrollers only, and if it becomes popular YOU SOLD OUT" mentality.
For
PS: Don't deny that it happens. I've seen anti-MAFIAA comments get +5 Insightful in articles about space travel. And I've never seen anything even vaguely pro-copyright get above a 2.
the problem is that 'stamping out trolls' also ends up stamping out minority opinions as well as unpopular truth. this fosters a groupthink mentality that allows consensus to take precedence over correct information/conclusions.
Does nobody else see the irony of a comment like this being moderated to +4?
The fact that it's been validated by the system it critiques invalidates it.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
To be technical, GPL is copyleft, not copyright.
Is it possible that's because of the conservatives on Slashdot? Or maybe it's because of the overall quality of what passes for "conservative thought" circa 2011 and the cognitive dissonance such opinion requires.
And THIS attitude is precisely why expression of conservative thought seems/is difficult here.
I disagree, if the thought was well founded it would stand on its own... conservative or liberal.
the problem is that 'stamping out trolls' also ends up stamping out minority opinions as well as unpopular truth. this fosters a groupthink mentality that allows consensus to take precedence over correct information/conclusions.
Does nobody else see the irony of a comment like this being moderated to +4?
The fact that it's been validated by the system it critiques invalidates it.
Hardly. The fact that it has been validated merely suggests that the critique is popular within the group.
The fact that your fallacious conclusion was moderated +5 proves the system is flawed.
There's also a strange Slashdot phenomena where saying something along the lines of "I'm going to get modded down for this" tends to get you modded up.
Expressing a dissenting opinion is acceptable here if you're not being a combatative jerk at the same time.
For example:
Not acceptable: Obama is a liberal puppet intent on destroying America.
Acceptable: I feel Obama's decision to remove tax breaks for oil corporations will weaken the fragile economic recovery as the increase in the effective tax rate is passed down in increased gas prices to businesses and the general population.
Both of them will be disagreed with of course, but only the first one will get modded into oblivion. The difference is that the first is just throwing out perjorative language, which stifles the listener's ability to examine the substance of the post. This implies that the writer has no regard for communication and is not interested in an exchange of ideas. The second one avoids perjoratives, and provides substance so that those who reply will be invited to respond to the substance, rather responding to an insult.
I find both liberal and conservatives making the mistake of attacking the listener instead of trying to persuade the listener. Obviously Slashdot has a liberal bent, so if a conservative poster wants to dissent, they should be taking extra care with their post, not less. I always read at -1, and I have not noticed a single cogent conservative post being modded away. I have seen occasions where they have received negative moderations, but in all such cases, the positive moderation ultimately left those posts at +5.
I would welcome links to some examples of well-thought out conservative posts that were moderated away. Then we can look and see for ourselves if they were negatively moderated for their content, or for the manner in which they are presented.
the problem is that 'stamping out trolls' also ends up stamping out minority opinions as well as unpopular truth. this fosters a groupthink mentality that allows consensus to take precedence over correct information/conclusions.
Does nobody else see the irony of a comment like this being moderated to +4?
The fact that it's been validated by the system it critiques invalidates it.
You make a seemingly poignant and clever remark. However, his comment is not obscure, minority, or controversial... his comment is mainstream, rational, and well accepted, particularly among the SlashDot crowd.
What he refers to is daring, perhaps "crackpot" opinions that go against the grain of the PC ethos of the internet community. A lot of crackpots are annoying attention-starved irrational, overly emotional, etc, and they often get the down-votes they deserve. But we all know and admire the few epic heros who changed the world with their unpopular opinions because they ended up being a step ahead of the world in insight... We should make sure that the internet does not make it easier to squelch these people, but instead allows them to blossom.
He's talking about people like the guy who makes rational attempts to critique or debunk global warming science, the guy who enters a discussion forum on a San Francisco newspaper and tries to argue that it's wrong for gay couples to raise children, the Saudi who tries to argue for equal rights for women in his country, that guy who thinks Jar Jar was a worthy attempt at levity in the Star Wars mythos.
These guys, if they make their cases with reasonable doses of civility, credible knowledge, and rationality, should still be heard, even if their opinions are loathed by the majority. These people make us sharper as a society. They are out of the box thinkers. And some of them could be right.
Yet, in a pure crowd-sourced voting system, the unpopular opinions will always get squelched unless they manage to provoke a flame war before they are forgotten.
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