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The Guardian Publishes Comment Abuse Stats, Invites Debate On Moderation (theguardian.com)
AmiMoJo writes: British newspaper The Guardian has published some stats on its popular comment sections attached to each story. So far the Guardian's site has received 70 million comments, of which around 2% were removed for violation of community standards. Articles written by women tended to get the most blocked comments, especially if they were in male-writer dominated sections like sports and technology, while fashion was one of the few areas where men got more abuse. Further down the article the reader is invited to moderate some sample comments and see how their actions compared to those of the paper's staff. You can leave suggestions for improvement here.
should concentrate on their own credibility first, then worry bout their posters.
C|N>K
I have given up on commenting there because I know how they rate their 'community standards'
It was an article on the flood of millions of migrants into Europe and I was asking if it is wise to allow so many of those who have no intention of integrate into the European culture ... and my comment was nuked
There was no cussing
There was no degrading of any specific race
There was not even any mention of religion
I was only commenting on the wisdom of allowing so many of those who had shown to not interested of integration --- and for that, I somehow has violated their 'community standard'
As I said, I've given up commenting there --- them European liberals simply cannot tolerate anyone questioning what they do
Totally useless !
Captcha: despair
What they failed to do was publish articles written by one gender/race under the alias of the opposing gender/race, serving it to part of the internet and seeing if there is a difference in the number of negative responses. They also didn't track the geographic region of the originating blocked posts. No conclusions can be taken from these numbers besides, "some people on the internet are assholes" which we already knew for a certainty thanks to the youtube comment sections.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
What's with the "community"? There are no "community" standards — the removed messages were deemed offensive by a handful of moderators. Moderators prone to keeping some posts more equal than others and susceptible to manipulation by evil regimes.
Calling them "community" is redefining terms...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Or at least... a Slashcode-like commenting, moderation, and meta-moderation system.
For all we complain about it here, and for all the trolling that occurs, the Slashdot moderation system seems to have passed the test of time reasonably enough.
Perhaps it's a little like that infamous definition of Democracy: It's the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.
Hire a Linux system administrator, systems engineer,
People who hold views that are contrary to the majority are targets for abuse. Moderation promotes groupthink. Take Slashdot for example.
You don't understand Slashdot's moderation method? And no one is blocked - ever. browse at a lower mod level, and accept that not everyone will agree with you.
You might even be exhibiting a little bit of Guardianesque ideas, in that you don't seem to want anyone to disagree with you.
We've had a number of posters here lately that are pissed that someone replies, and disagrees with them. Life just doesn't work that way, and Slashdot has come up with the best way to exist with the tragedy of the commons ever.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
and even supported the bullying and defamation of a Rosetta scientist because of a shirt he wore?
The guns and lingerie tee shirt was not appropriate dress for a globally televised event. Not least because the female engineers and technicians visible in the background were appropriately dressed, which implies a double standard. There are social obligations which come with being the public face of your project.
It looks like The Guardian just got a first-hand lesson on the flaws of "diversity". When allow racism and sexism to dictate your hiring policy, you'll inevitably get people who wouldn't have been hired on their merit alone.
I wonder how much of the "abuse" was of the "you suck" variety. Maybe The Guardian needs to ask the UN to censor their critics as well.
Same experience on Scientific American. No violation of their own stated policies. Not even mentioned global warming.
Comment deleted.
I complained and their reply was that I lost my "privilege" to post.
I cancelled the renewal of my subscription and unsubscribed from any of their mailing lists.
Absolutely disgraceful.
While I have my problems with the Guardian (their coverage of the Tower Hamlets and Rotherham scandals were awful), what you're referring to seems to be on the Comment Is Free section; basically their editorial section. By and large, comment pieces are either written by editorial staff, regular columnists, or guest editors and submitters, and should not be confused with the journalism that appears in other parts of the newspaper or website. I find the likes of Jessica Valenti to be pretty odious, not so much for her behavior on the Guardian (which is pretty over the top), but her even more lunatic ramblings in other places. Go look up her Twitter explosions when the whole UVA rape culture incident exploded. She really is a pretty unhinged person, and I notice she disappeared from the Guardian for a few months; an enforced sabbatical, I imagine.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
What I've found from the news sites that have gone to Facebook is not only a much smaller set of comments, but a great increase in spam. By putting their faith in Facebook to weed out the malcontents, many sites literally destroy their comment sections.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Slashdot allows you to read at -1, so there's a way around its moderation. What you write certainly applies to sites like the Guardian, but it cannot be said to apply to Slashdot to the same degree at all.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Unlike The Guardian, Slashdot doesn't answer to political grievance groups (and has only removed one thing for Scientology).
I'm not sure that this is debate as much as it is a justification.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Since you can turn off all moderation filtering (which I do, the site is quite boring if you read at higher mod levels), it's up to you as the reader. That seems to me to be the best approach. In other words, short of a few rather abusive posters (like APK when he goes off his meds), moderation only exists if you, the reader, decides it does.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's not about the gender of the author, it's about the agenda of the author. Regardless, most flamebait/troll posts are aimed at other comments anyway - at least that's apparent in watching this play out in other papers' comment areas. Also, the straight reporting or analysis vs. op-ed will make a huge difference.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
[...] but there is a fair amount of groupthink here, [...]
It's less of a problem than many people who are part of the groupthink clusters seem to think. My observation is that with a few exceptions, any comment which falls into groupthink territory tends to have its "+1, Agree" upvotes and "-1, Disagree" downvotes balanced out. Such comments never get to either -1 or +5.
It's rare that all groupthink clusters align on Slashdot to the point where a non-troll comment gets moderated to -1. I think the only time it's ever happened to me was when I advocated Deep Space 9.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
So, for example, they cite that 8 or their 10 most "abused" contributors were women (4 white, 4 not). But since the newspaper has a great deal of coverage of "women's" issues including a lot of highly opinionated articles about feminism -- but no corresponding articles, or sections, concerning men's issues their coverage is neither balanced, nor able to show how much abuse their "men's" writers would get, since they don't have any.
They also counted all "moderated" comments (ones that do not meet their community standards) as being abusive and they assume that the abuse is directed against the author. However, they remove comments that are off-topic and ones that make personal comments about other commentators. So a comment that was removed because it insulted a commentator who was attacking the article (i.e. the insulter was supporting the author), would be counted as abuse against that author. They do not give reasons for removing comments and only have the single classification.
Finally, The Guardian admits that it does not moderate either consistently: applying different levels of rigor depending on the topic, nor does it moderate all articles to the same extent. It also does not open all it's articles up to comments.
In all, while their analysis does point to there being online abuse - they reckon they delete 2% of articles, from the 70 million submitted so far, the results are patchy, inconsistent and cherry-picked. It would never pass a peer review and seems to have been published more to push the newspaper's own agenda, rather than as an authoritative work to highlight a problem (they don't say if the level of "abuse" is rising or falling since they started in 1999).
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Those comments that they showcased in the article were in many cases perfectly legitimate debate.
The comment was:
“A 12-year-old boy, out at night, waving a BB gun? What sort of parent allows that? What happened is the product of a fucked up
society/community/culture/upbringing. I'm sorry to say, but often black people are their own worst enemies.”
You answered allow. We thought differently.
This was removed for racism (“black people are their own worst enemy”; “fucked up community/culture” etc).
Yeah, nice going Guardian. Don't allow a healthy discussion on black culture, just silence any controversial or unpopular opinions. Slashdot may have its groupthink, but comments are almost never deleted. A certain rarity on the net in this day and age of 'safe spaces'.
The only comment I would have deleted was the very last one, "“stupid ugly woman writes stupid ugly steaming pile of dog-shite”, because it was just an insult without saying anything to back it up.
Shut up, APK
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
My comment that people take screenshots of their Guardian comments and tweet them with the hashtag "#censoredbycif" was itself removed by the Guardian's moderators.
http://www.chadfield.com/2015/...
"By putting their faith in Facebook to weed out the malcontents, many sites literally destroy their comment sections."
Who's to say that isn't what was intended? I'm sure many sites would like to get rid of user comments. "Just pay for our content. We don't need no talkback, especially if it is critical."
Here in Brazil, usually when a site has a comment section based on Facebook is guaranteed that you will find the dumbest people you can imagine posting the most absurd/hatefull/shitty things. To avoid getting sick I usually block Facebook in its entirety using adblock and noscript.
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
Abuse and blocking are not the same things. Take your comment for example. You're suggesting that someone needs to browse at a lower than default moderation level. So someone needs to go out of their way to see comments that don't conform to the standard group think, and that can be an "abuse" of the moderation system to hide dissenting views.
Slashdot moderation is like democracy. The worst form of government except for all the others. It's not broken (you can see alternate views quite frequently), it's not perfect (look at any AGW or nuclear power story to only see one side of the comments by default), but I'll be dammed if I've ever seen a better system.
Slashdot moderation is like democracy. The worst form of government except for all the others. It's not broken (you can see alternate views quite frequently), it's not perfect (look at any AGW or nuclear power story to only see one side of the comments by default), but I'll be dammed if I've ever seen a better system.
Having been around the intertoobz for a long time, I've seen that slashdot has avoided the tragedy of the commons - and that is incredible in itself. The world is filled with all manner of people, some great, some who just want to watch the world burn (why oh why did one of the most insightful statements in the universe have to come from a Batman movie?)
But now we might have some 11 year old with an attitude on the same forum as a Nobel laureate. On the exact same footing. And over the years, in usenet groups and other places, I've seen that almost invariably, the 11 year old with the attitude wins. The Nobel laureate goes away.
The best example I have.
I've seen it happen in one group, a rec.radio.amateur.policy group, where a group of nuts with severe psycho-sexual problems utterly destroyed the group. One of the kooks ended up flooding the group with hundreds of "with the punce gotchya" (I have no idea) posts every day.
Well meaning people will try to correct that problem. So a moderated usenet group was formed for Amateur radio. But the moderation was so heavy handed that people just stopped posting at all. The kooks were gone, along with everyone else. Then in an effort to generate some traffic, summary links to blogs were added. Turns out to not be popular, but if you try to complain, it will get blocked, because believe it or not, complaints about the group are not allowed on the group.
By the way, they really cleaned up Dodge. Too bad it's a ghost town, with no active users.
This is what awaits people who try to make disagreement go away by blocking it. First some "I agree" posts, then nothing. Then no one reading. Congratulations folks, you won.
And that's the magic of Slashdot. It has managed to keep vibrant discussion alive without squashing trolls and flamers. Some folks will complain of course, there are people who don't like others disagreeing with them, and get really pissed if someone mods them down. And I've even done that on a few occasions, getting marked as flamebait for posting a link or somesuch. But all that means is someone with mod points disagrees with me - so be it.
It's not fashionable to say anything positive about Slashdot, but their moderation system has nailed it.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Thus proving your own ignorance and prejudice. There was nothing stupid about the comment to which you replied. It was accurate and made a salient point.
The Guardian decisions seem quite reasonable to me. The censored comments are generally offensive, frequently assume the author's pet position with no backing, and really don't add much to the discussion.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes