Slashdot Mirror
Comments About Comments
theodp writes "This weekend's NY Times is all-about-the-comments. First, Michael Erard recounts the history of Web site comments and explains how their technical origins have shaped the actual commentary we've come to expect as usual today. On dealing with people-behaving-badly, Erard writes, 'Only a few [high-traffic sites] seem to have tried user-moderation systems like the one developed by Slashdot's creator, Rob Malda. Founded in 1997, Slashdot rapidly began to suffer from what Malda called 'signal-to-noise-ratio problems' as tens of thousands of users showed up. Rather than embracing the chaos (which was a hallmark of Usenet, another digital channel of communications) or locking things down with moderators (which e-mail lists did), Malda figured out a way for users to moderate one another. Moderation became like jury duty, something you were called to do.' Next, NY Times community manager Bassey Etim, who oversees 13 comment moderators, offers up his comments on comments, agreeing that 'the comments are where the real America is.' Finally, there's Gawker's next-generation Kinja, which aims to further blur the lines between stories, blog entries, and comments."
Personally, I like making comments on comments. I especially like self-referencing ones.
. . . comments on my comments!
Hurp durp. Seemed appropriate :-]
Earn my blessing, or my wrath!
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
It's obvious that comments are what make some websites attractive. This is one of them.
In Slashdot I usually find very interesting what other people think about the news. Sometimes, there're some jewels: Comments about people who really know what the news is about and offer their perspective. I same those comments as bookmarks. I wonder why there's not a "favorite" option to save them.
Good to see Gawker making a positive contribution to the world in which they exist.
>> Only a few [high-traffic sites] seem to have tried user-moderation systems
Haven't been to YouTube lately, have you?
First
Sorry, didn't read TFA, what are we talking about again? Ah, comments.
Hurray for comment spam!
Kinja is one thing . . . Gawker's aberration with fake video play buttons, cross-linked unrelated topics and animated gifs is another. Please don't relate the two if you care for either.
I like making comments about comments about a story about comments about comments.
The more you moderate a forum, or prevent users from posting anonymously, the less honest it will be. If you really must moderate, do like Slashdot and let the users do it.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Horribly depressing.
FIRST POST!
surely I have captured the coveted first post this time!
Yo dawg, I heard you like comments, so I made a comment on your story about comments on comments, so you can comment while you comment.
do {print "Mini-Geek Rules!\n";}
until ($TheEndOfTheWorld);
Nothing about First Posts? Natalie Portman? Hot grits? How can you leave out the ever-popular goatse redirect?
'Never look at the bottom half of the internet.'
When it got to this part they lost me completely. While I would agree with how /. allows users to moderate comments, the problem becomes some comments never get voted on and or they get modded down because someones beliefs or theories, which would be about 80-85% percent of /. users. Therein lies a problem just like juries they do not have open minds, they use poor judgement when deliberating a verdict.
AKA no one follows something if it fails to make sense in there minds , or if it is actually thoughtful. This is where we see similar behavior between politicians and the users of internet. Unless a comment or way of thinking is similar to there's you are the "oddball"!
In all fairness there is the option to read all comments but when you get to a certain number 200+ it gets a little cumbersome..
'the comments are where the real America is.'
There was this article recently on Yahoo! Finance about people giving Liberty to prevent a financial melt down.
Anyway, the article and many commentors parroted the argument that the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 caused the financial meltdown. Many commentators and pundits have "reasoned" that the law caused the meltdown because it "forced" banks to lend to poor people who couldn't afford the loans. Did they have data to back up what they said?
Fuck no! Rush, Hannity, O'Rielly and all their clones pulled it out of their ass.
Here is what some economists found out
...the available evidence seems to run counter to the contention that the CRA contributed in any substantive way to the current mortgage crisis.
tl;dr; Most of "Real America" just mindlessly parrots what they see and hear in the media.
At the very least we should be able to post via a https page here on Slashdot, and via Tor. Yet the exit nodes are blocked by default.
I wonder how many insights into the current NSA scandal we'd see if Slashdot allowed true a/c posting. Currently I'm totally aware that my comment is tracked and de-anonymized by the NSA and I censor accordingly.
How many others are doing so out of critical necessity?
I have been a member of three usenet newsgroups that devolved into pure spam, bullying, libel and overtaling any valuable posts. One was rmr.
There is a model used by MacRumors of upvoting and a view of those posts ranked by upvote that is a pretty good way to sift out the noise. They only use it on the listview. It concatenates informative and funny and insightful into a single category unlike Slashdot, but it seems to work. More of their forums should be made sortable by upvote. Also by poster, as some tend to be more interesting than opthers.
That is a web based comment forum.
JJ
(Some) of the world has semi-permanent IP addresses. I think many cable modems do. What happened to the idea of shadowbanning IP addresses?
A few downsides; one is I suppose is swinging the scythe too widely for public IP hotspots, but if it's critical that your voice must be heard, there's alternatives. Two, I don't think this would work on mobile devices.
. . . . because of the existence of chatbots, trollbots, etc., since at least the late 1990s (automated software agents programmed to seek and respond in specific patterns), and since contracts have been publicly announced in the last few years (meaning they've been effectively working on them the previous decade!!!) to program "ConsensusBots" --- automated software to "persuade" (i.e., misinform and disinform) large numbers at popular newsy sites and social networking sites --- many, if not most, comments today are highly suspect!
Comments to an article which comments about comments means our comments about the article are comments about comments about comments. And if someone replies to my post then the site may hit a stack overflow due to excessive recursion.
Coincidentally, 4chan is trying to make its moderation more transparent. They've created a page (https://www.4chan.org/bans) that samples recent moderator actions. It's informative about how users of a fairly permissive cesspool still break rules.
So we added comments to your comments, so now you can comment on your comments.
. . . especially when the needs vary with each site. I run Flayrah (a furry news/features site) and implemented a comment moderation system based on weighted ratings and user karma across comments and posts that fades and folds comments as their rating decreases. It works pretty well for us, but it took a lot of time to balance, as well as technical expertise which most site-runners don't have. Sometimes people complain about the "rule of the majority", but in practice they tend to do quite well. The alternative was more heavy-handed moderation by selected moderators, who have their own biases.
Meaning: racist, misogynist, vain, hide-bound, jingoistically ignorant; all smothered in the secret sauce of the implied threat of violence.
... Like on Slashdot. What usually happens is that, over time, certain behaviors or ideas end up getting reinforced within the community. For example, "government bad", "open source good", "patents and copyrights bad", "bitcoins good". Or just the general cynicism about absolutely everything.
Eventually the community becomes so polarized that anyone who disagrees on some minor point gets modded into oblivion. The rating system ends up as a popularity contest, where the most commonly-held opinion will always win, no matter how banal the comment is. So people are forced to either adopt the popular opinion, or give up on commenting, perpetuating the cycle, and devolving into groupthink.
I think, despite its flaws, 4chan has my favorite kind of comment system (if you're willing to wade through the shit). Put all comments on the same level; let users decide for themselves whether or not they agree with each other. You'll always have a healthy mix of perspective that way.
Since moderation is on-topic ...
The biggest weakness with Slashdot's current system is the way that early posts get a disproportionate amount of attention, and mod-points. When a new story shows up, so long as I post within 5-10 minutes it's pretty easy to get modded to +5, even as an AC.
Try it yourself - as soon as a new story hits, quickly summarize your gut reaction to the summary, hit post, and watch the mod-points accumulate. The downside, of course, is that anybody who shows up late will struggle to get heard amongst the noise.
Oh yes, and I really dislike it when 50% of an entire comments section consists of replies to one post. This seems to happen because people want their post to get noticed.
Can anybody think of a good solution to these problems? Or are there other moderation problems which need dealing with?
... became widespread and new generations grew up with the internet, 99% of internet comments are mostly garbage. I've found that Websites run by intelligent, educated people who put their real face, name, background on the net tend to be more informative than random commenters as the net has grown. Since as more of the general population and new generation of kids begin to lurk and comment on websites comment quality goes through surges of greatness and mediocrity as generations come and go.
As an adult I find partisan comments the most uninformed, history and politics for anyone with any intelligence is IMMENSELY complex. Trying to apply black and white solutions and old out-dated 19th century political ideologies to complex problems is not sign of intelligence. Most of slashdot tends to fall into the extremely distorted american political spectrum since most slashdot commenters/moderators are american.
I find as the internet became a mass phenomenon slashdot comment quality has become almost as awful as the rest of the internet. The political comments tend to be the most uninformed since it highlights the deep indoctrination of the american public. Since most comments tend to be from the most populous country (america), 300 million vs say 30 million in canada.
So you get a massive boatload of nonsense when anyone mentions politics, anything deep and requiring serious thought and analysis can only usually be found through those who are honest and open and put a face to their opinions.
Those of us who see the world through technical eyes know many of our current values, ideals and institutions are not in line with what is actually true about the universe. We're doing all sorts of irrational bone headed shit in all areas. I find america and americans bizarre in their adherence to simple minded political and values based sloganeering. It's not the sign of an erudite mind.
In order to find solutions you have to study how institutions change over time and they must be informed by how the universe and nature actually operate, all of our institutions are totally out of line with this kind of thinking.
This is likely to get modded down to "-1 Disagree", but I guess that's the point. If someone says something positive about religion, protecting their children's innocence, etc... it gets modded down. Don't think like the loud members of the group? Here's a mod down for you. Think that the teleology of the universe points to a cosmic designer? Here's a "-1 Disagree" for you and a bunch of hate to go with it. You must think like the hive mind or go unheard.
Comment moderation like that on Reddit and Slashdot censors dissension and encourages hate.
Was it just too subversive?
It would be awesome if someone wrote a browser plugin that allowed toggling between user-moderated and unmoderated comments about newspaper/magazine web articles. This would be outside the control of the website operator. That way readers could actually discover whether they are the only one who realizes that single-payer healthcare would be better or that the threat of terrorism is being exaggerated. A lot of propaganda depends on no one being able to say "the emperor has no clothes" and be heard.
Don't worry, it was loud & smelly.
Captcha: boobs
You did that on purpose, and you're wrong.
I was promised a flying car. Where is my flying car?
"Remember, mondays are fine. It's your life that sucks."
https://twitter.com/rickygervais/status/382064259267452929
Moderators should be identified.
If you are going to moderate, you should be willing to stand behind your moderation. Anonymous moderation leads to people down modding things they simple disagree with rather than flagging actual abuse.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
... so... the poor Jews realise that if the public has free speech, and the ability to 'publish' and reach large numbers of people for nothing, via the internet, the poor, hard done by eternal victims, the Jews, will be in trouble, because the truth about everything they've done to us will finally come out, and we can't have that...
Oy vey, feel sorry for me, I vuz gassed four, no six times!
This pretty much covers it all- but then, I don't expect you to actually READ anything that disagrees with what the Jew-media has been brainwashing you with, for your entire life...
"It is easier to fool someone, than to convince them they've been fooled." Mark Twain
"the comments are where the real America is"
Uh, nope.
Apparently you are mistaken, since as I reply, your comment has a score of 4.
It is true that some people mod down comments because they disagree. But there are often other cooler heads who bring balance to the moderation.
Usually, controversial comments get modded down because there is no actual substance to the comments. And since such posters often start with an attitude of paranoia and overestimate their own importance, they DO get modded down, and they think they are proved right.
I like to moderate week-old comments, when I get mod points.
Imagine the poster's surprise: "Hey! I got modded up for a comment I wrote last week!"
Gives me a warm feeling: two parts happiness, one part mischief.
-kgj
I suspect that it's just a reaction to things that happen in the outside world; the mods are being fed up with protect-the-children rhetoric or hearing how Jesus loves them, so they have a 'violent' outburst against it and moderate down when they have a chance to.
As much as everyone complains about the 'hive mind' modding them down, it's usually a post that actually has other major flaws (such as containing things that can be construed as insults -- hardly neutral rhetoric) that gets the downmodding treatment. See that other AC in this thread ("Most people are beyond stupid", "herd of sheeple") for a good example.
Obvious troll is obvious. You're baiting people to disagree with your anti-semetic attitude so that you can reply, "See!!!oneone111!!! You're a hypocrite since you want to censor me, but you don't want to censor religious people!!!"
Yes, it's sad when a person can't endorse brainwashing children without being chided by the community. "-1 Flamebait" is clearly the new "burned at the stake as a heretic".
AC that you linked to was obviously trolling to make a point. He was just promoting the caricature of religious people that sites like Slashdot tend to promote. This is exactly the kind of hate that I'm talking about. He pretends to be a conservative making anti-semitic remarks to "prove" that religious people are all ignorant hateful people. The irony is that rather than proving this lame caricature, he proves to anyone who can discern that the obvious troll was being obvious that this kind hate and bigotry exists on sites like this.
Right, because I wrote that it will get modded down. If I say that it will then it typically won't. So basically they're trying to prove me wrong by modding up instead of down. I simply don't buy the idea of the "no substance" argument and here's why. This is how Slashdot typically is IMHO (and yes, I'm exaggerating a bit):
Christians are dumb (Score:6, amazing!!!)
Flying Spaghetti Monster! Woo! Turtles all the way down!! Yeah!
Re: Christians are dumb (Score:-72, religious moron)
That's just a caricature of Christians. Many Christians such as ____ and ____ feel differently. Here's what they actually think...
Re: Christians are dumb (Score:9001, over nine-thousand)
Ur stupid. You think that's a valid proof of god
Re: Christians are dumb (Score:-pi x infinity, why does he bother)
I wasn't trying to prove God. I just was saying that this isn't what Christians actually believe.
Other than the scores, I'm actually not far off. I once was told that my proofs for God was so full of logical fallacies when in fact I wasn't trying to prove God, but rather correct a misconception. The poster went on to explain how sad it was that ignorant people like me exists. If that isn't hate, I don't know what is.
I was wondering whether it was indeed a good example -- it certainly went over the top. (I don't have any sizeable Jewish minorities near me so the caricature was somewhat lost on me.) But fragments of that sort are in fact found in many of the posts I was referring to.
Frankly, I come to Slashdot partly as a place to see some discussion without all the fantasy lala fairy-tale nonsense. To avoid the mass delusion which runs most of the world. So your argument actually seems like a feature, not a bug. Someone calling your ideas "dumb" is not the same thing as "hate" and propaganda such as that is a good example of something that should be treated with down-moderation.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
No Comment
. .
I actually think that the main problem is the other side of what you are talking about (people posting and modding-up anti-religious comments). For the most part, I view this place as a site for science and tech news (and religion shouldn't be relevant to those topics). Most comments mentioning religion on this site boil-down to: Religion X is good/bad or followers of Religion X are the best/worst/smart/stupid. Even the very few comments that mention religion are usually off-topic.My fellow atheists: Don't waste your time debating with the delusional religious people (it really isn't worth it and it won't change anything).
My fellow theists: Don't waste your time debating with the atheists (that are obviously willfully blind to the glory of the true god/s that hits them in the face everyday) or other religious people that will have just as much certainty as you do that your god/s is/are true.
I made this comment about political threads some time back -- there should be no votes/mods on political threads. It tends to be a mosh pit anyway so let it be an every-voice-is-equal one.
I come here for the love
I really dislike these comments, now what he said was said in a nice way but he's being purposely deceptive. i.e. he's being sophsitic. Sophist : The use of fallacious arguments, esp. with the intention of deceiving.
"Think that the teleology of the universe points to a cosmic designer?"
This is not the problem, the problem is that you don't state what your religion is if you have one. You don't give us any information and so you come off as 'reasonable'. Most religious comments are made by people who haven't thought long and hard about their claims.
There is a reason why people downvote, because many people are uninformed and JUST WRONG and they are blissfully unaware that they are wrong. Most people who say 'you don't respect my opinion' HAVE NEVER CHECKED whether their opinion is uninformed or not. That is, they don't put any effort into checking whether their opinion is true or not. Religion is bullshit that's why people who are religious are downvoted because a sizable chunk of slashdotters have religion in their family and are more familiar with religion and god then people who espouse such nonsense. Many of them were once religious in their youth and ended up rejecting it because - I know this is hard for you to believe THEY studied and read many religious and scientific books and came to the conclusion religion is bullshit. They put in the damn effort.
The hate comes from people who are blissfully unaware they haven't done their intellectual homework when they espouse their 'opinions'.
When's the last time you've seen an exorcist?
Matthew 8:30-34
30 Some distance from them a large herd of pigs was feeding. 31 The demons begged Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” 32 He said to them, “Go!” So they came out and went into the pigs, and the whole herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and died in the water. 33 Those tending the pigs ran off, went into the town and reported all this, including what had happened to the demon-possessed men. 34 Then the whole town went out to meet Jesus. And when they saw him, they pleaded with him to leave their region.
When people say "the universe points to a designer" they 90% of the time mean "the god of the holy text/bible in the family I was raised" they DON'T MEAN. "I've examined the scientific evidence and have come to the tentative conclusion that deism is a reasonable hypothesis".
Classic "Chewbacca defense". When all else fails, confuse them. First, you state that I'm being purposefully deceptive by not telling people what my religious beliefs are. I don't think that knowing my religious beliefs strengthens, weakens, or changes the argument. My statement that people who disagree with the majority often are censored and hated upon should stand regardless if I'm a Christian, atheist, or whatever. I provided two examples and one of them did deal with religion, so you got hung up on that. If you must know, I am a Christian, but I only reveal that to dismiss your personal attacks against me.
First you use weasel words like "most", "many", etc... You use these words to attribute your facts to me with an escape route in case I come back and say, "Well actually..." So I wouldn't suggest crying about deception while being deceptive. But since your are talking about me when you use those words, I will reject each one of them.
1.) I haven't thought long and hard about the claims Christianity, I have never checked, etc....
I would beg to differ. I'm not going to turn this into a debate about whether or not God is real so I won't present the evidence here, but I have thought and continue to think long and hard about the claims of religion. Influences that have lead me to this conclusion include Christopher Hitchens, Lawrence Krauss, Hugh Ross, C. S. Lewis, etc... Yes, I purposely left a few more controversial names off in order to not distract from my original point that dissenting opinions beget hate. I put in my homework.
2.) I believe in the 'god' of the family I was raised in.
Seriously? I was not raised in a Christian home, but rather a messed up broken home. I don't believe in the god that says it's okay to beat your spouse and abuse her. I don't believe in the god that says it's okay to engage in destructive behavior that ruins lives. I don't believe in whatever god they followed. And even if I did, this is a textbook example of the genetic fallacy.
3.) I've never seen an exorcist. The Bible mentions exorcism. Therefore the Bible is obviously wrong.
Better question - Have I ever seen manna? The Bible mentions manna. Why hasn't manna been seen since the Exodus? Obviously it never existed, right? This is exactly the same kind of nonintellectual argument that some Christians make when they say, "We can't find the missing gap therefore evolution isn't real." It doesn't work for the Christian and it doesn't work for you. I could go on this long tangent about the doctrine of angels, but again that deviates from my point.
The point is, is that you cannot make these kinds of assumptions about people and then respond with hate or ignorance. Yes I'd rather not see any religious or political talk on Slashdot, but I'm going to step in and correct ignorant comments such as, "Christians all believe X" or "Religion is the cause of all wars" since they simply aren't true. And why defend bad arguments anyway? If you want to convince someone of an idea, wouldn't you want to argue against what they actually believe rather than a distorted caricature?
HBGary & Chinese Water Army tactics go on here, just like any other site that has a system that allows for bogus downmods via multiple accounts usage!
So expecting the ability to ID who made a bogus downmod & to confront them justly for justification? Forget that happening here (seriously).
Though it's a needed improvement, it'll NEVER happen here!
* Even though that'd eliminate a LOT of the weasels around here & id their sockpuppet alternate usernames (second, or more, alternate user accounts to mod their main one up with & their opponents down with unjustly) also - it's all whimps/worms/"not men" have, as far as "effete retaliation" via bogus unjustifiable downmods...
APK
P.S.=> Don't think it doesn't happen here - I caught tomhudon/barbara, not barbie (yes, same person) doing that very thing here (& they left in May 2012 after that came out).
... apk
I suppose one issue it that the comments on slashdot are home to both insightful technical knowledge (5 level posts), and personal opinion commentary (off-topic or otherwise maybe 2 or below depending on karma).
If it were possible for posters to give an indication of their expected post ranking/relevance then it would maybe be easier for readers to filter for the type of commentary they are looking for, while allowing commentators the ability to have a more casual discourse with their peers when it suits them.
As a slashdot reader I find both types of commentary interesting at times, but I definitely don't want to be forced to wade through mountains of opinionated speculation in order to find the insightful technical commentary, which seems to be the main attraction of this site for me.