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."
I same those comments as bookmarks. I wonder why there's not a "favorite" option to save them.
Everyone should have a single "Supermod" point once per month that would work as a normal mod point except it would allow going past +5.
So after the holidays we could quickly read the articles with only the very few +6+ posts.
. . . . 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!
The simple answer is that there is no perfect moderation system; they all suck in different ways. Democratic systems like that on Reddit give the power of moderation to the users, and democracy is frequently called "tyranny of the majority" for a good reason: unpopular, minority opinions are always suppressed because the majority doesn't like them. The alternative is non-democratic moderation, where the moderation is done by a group of elites, which is what you usually see on sites like newpaper sites. The problem there, of course, is that you're subject not to the biases of the majority of the users, but the biases of the elites or the owners of the websites (so comments the newpaper owners don't like get deleted). Or, you can try to have a hybrid system somewhat like Slashdot has, where there's some elites who have super-moderation capabilities but the users also have powers, and also some of the users are given more powers (metamoderation). This sounds good in theory, but doesn't seem to work out in practice any better than the alternatives, it's just different.
Personally, I think the big problems with moderation on Slashdot are 1) users don't have many opportunities to moderate (they're only given points once in a while), unlike on Reddit where any user can mod any post at any time, and 2) users aren't allowed to moderate posts in the same discussion as one they post in, which leads to many users (like myself) not bothering to use the moderation points they're given. I don't feel like being restricted from speaking my mind just because I tried to mod up someone's post.
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?
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.