Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Moderation Phase 1.1
As Slashdot grew to have hundreds of comments each day, I coded a fancy moderator system. One that didn't involve deleting comments, but rather just organizing them for people who wanted it. Over the following months, friends, family, pets, and even a few bots tried to do the job. At the end we had 25 people moderating a total of about 5 comments per day. It was obviously not working- any regular reader of the comments knows that the signal to noise ratio is simply terrible in those flamebait articles. The system grew to have thousands of comments each day, and the 25 moderators (of whom only a 2-5 were active on any given day) simply couldn't keep up.
I have a new system that I'm devising, but I've decided to experiment with the old system. I think I can learn from it, and make the new system better. Or else, this "Tweak" might even work and then I won't have to write the code. We'll have to see.
So what is the change? Simple, we had 20 or so moderators. Now we have 408.
What?
Yup.
The system was tracking moderation done to each user internally for just this purpose. (I had a score of 2, Anonymous Coward had a -1628 *grin*) All users with a positive score were given moderator access.
Last week wed. we had 2,800 comments posted on Slashdot. 11 of them were moderated. This week 15-30% of comments are being moderated, and its my hope that this number will increase.
Now a lot of you guys are going to scream and cry about censorship, but that just isn't the case. Anyone can disable the actions of the moderators by simply setting their default user preference to -5 or something really low. Tada! Slashdot in all its flamey off topic glory. But my goal is that users reading with a preference set to 3 will only read the absolute best comments. That type of reader doesn't want a discussion. They don't care about the 300 comments- they just want those 2 comments that are really smart, insightful, and often, better then the story that they are attached to. Try setting your Comment Limit to 10, and your Comment Order by Score. Suddenly the few comments that you see are interesting. They're useful.
The goal here is to create a better dispersal of scores. Last week, a +4 comment was virtually impossible, but we've had 40 since the new system took place. Sure, not all of them were great, but as a whole, they were good comments.
Now the danger. With 25 moderators, it was pretty easy to keep an eye on things. But with 400 its going to get simply crazy. We're going to have abusers. I've already revoked access from a few people. For you moderators, read those The Moderator Guidelines carefully. The rest of you might be interested too. The general summary, is the moderators shouldn't let their own opinions factor in. They do and thats the problem. Its my hope that since we have 400 of them, we'll have some abusers (who will hopefully surface and have their access removed) but they'll be outnumbered by honest, fair people who don't let their own ideals interfere with the task at hand. Its a difficult task, but an essential one.
A few of the more important rules for moderators:
- Impartiality. This isn't "I agree with That", this is "That is worth reading, and that isn't". This is obviously the hardest, and most subjective part of the task, and the one that will require the sharpest eye on everyone's part.
- Anonymity. Any moderator who posts that they are a moderator will probably have their access revoked. I simply don't want moderation to be an ego thing.
- Accountability. Anyone who sees clear breaking of the above 2 rules should send me info (I need a URL to the comment: cid & sid. Click the reply button and send me that URL if you need it). This isn't "3 Strikes and Your Out". If someone is abusing their trust, they'll lose it.
As an aside, if you have problems, bugs, or complaints, email them to me. I don't read all the comments. We have 2800+ of them on a good day. There's no way I'm gonna read them all. Send problems to me. Posting complaints is usually off-topic. Emailing me is much more likely to get a response, plus if you want to complain about how much I suck, don't do it in a story about CD Vending Machines or Wearable PCs- its simply off topic. Do it in this story! Its on topic here. Or email me so I'm sure to read it and cry.
Where is this heading? Think of a news site like Slashdot without a guy like me, or a group of guys at the center. One where the best comments become the articles on the homepage. If we could make that work... wow. At some point I'll have a page of the top 10 comments from the last 24 hours. I think that will be really interesting- I'll probably have a general discussion at some point specifically for this purpose.
Its a delicate thing trying to make all 75,000 of you happy- Your tastes are diverse, and there's just no pleasing all of you 100%. So I'll keep trying new things, and make as many things customizable as possible, so most of us can have it the way they want it.
We're getting closer. But until then, hang in there. Constructive criticism is appreciated (although I simply can't reply to everyone) I even read the flames, although if you make me cry I don't reply.
Update: 03/23 01:53 by CT : Responses to some of the comments:
- No, simply creating new accounts won't work. You had to have had a comment moderated up by the original 25 moderators.
- No, moderators can't moderate their own comments.
- I yanked someone already for revealing that they had access. Someone didn't read very carefully.
- An absolute minimum for comments? Set it to -10000 or something. I doubt we'll ever see a comment that bad *grin*
- I'll probably figure out a clean way to reassign moderator access occasionally. I haven't thought that far ahead yet.
Anonymity. Any moderator who posts that they are a moderator will probably have their access revoked. I simply don't want moderation to be an ego thing.
Does this mean I can't talk how I moderate? That's OK, I just want to clarify this. I guess I'll never say anything about what guides my decisions in moderation; OTOH, people won't think I'm some prick with a big ego.
BTW, I'm glad I can post this anonymously. =)
Are you crying yet?
/. is "by the people" let the stinkin' people moderate it too!
But seriously, this is a great idea. Since
What an elegant solution...
On the first problem, I don't think the "anyone with a positive score" is an ongoing thing. I think that Rob took a snapshot of people's scores, and applied it. So someone couldn't reregister now and automatically became a moderator.
OTOH, if someone _did_ reregister and posted lots of good articles to get a good score, I think they deserve to be a moderator despite past transgressions. (If they screw up, Rob will notice.)
On the second problem, moderators get 1 moderation point per 50 articles posted to slashdot. (Not per the moderators posts, but every post, btw.) So, a moderator would have to blow all their points to reduce a single post to obscene levels.
In practice, I've never seen anything near a -10, so I'd count that a safe low threshold.
(An anonymous moderator.)
"Ha-ha!"
Actually, what would be neat is if someone took the postings and echoed them to a newsgroup (with the main posting the high-level article, and all the replies as threaded follow-ons) and if someone took replies posted to the newsgroup and pumped them back into Slashdot.
You know, kinda like a SlashdotNNTP gateway. Now, that would be ultra-cool.
l login as anonymous. i post anonymously.
im not going to change that. i'd
like to see *all* the comments without doing
anything fancy . will i be able to ?
Yes, this really was a good idea.
For the first time you managed to create enough interest in me to the working of Slashdot that I'll actually create an user account.
Finally I can get rid of the worst comments. Nice.
Thanks!
Hey Rob, didn't you just say you were a moderator? Doesn't that mean you should revoke your own moderator status? :-)
It's not that these people that are bitching aren't going to see all of the posts, it's that now *I* can avoid their drivel.
/. had started to resemble a gory car wreck. At least now there are sheets over the bodies.
Thanks Rob,
I might have to get my account working again (CmdrTaco's dog ate the last one).
John Waalkes
jwaalkes@edge.net
You say moderators should not let their opinion enter in and yet it's not uncommon for the main articles themselves be entirely opinionated flamebait.
The problem being faced is the same as USENet. The solution is the same... DejaNews. A better interface that lets the user filter articles on their preferences [i.e. search string] could solve all the problems, and elminate moderator headaches [but increase CPU requirements...]
Flowers can flourish in the . Creativity is often helped by oddest things. What may be flamebait to some hose head nazi censor can lead to insight in others.
There's nothing offensive here.
The language is a little broken, but I suspect that the poster's first language is not English.
He's got a valid point too.
This is abuse of the system.
> [About moderation] This is wrong. It's Evil.
You have misunderstood me.
"moderation" is not evil, per sae, but the act of reducing the threshold because the moderator does not agree with the *viewpoint* expressed in the post most definately is.
There needs to be a checks and balances system in place to moderate the moderators - as there is in government.
An anonymous, non-accountable "elite" is not something I want running anything.
There has already been one abuse of the system on this page (not this sub-thread) A minor one, but there is a post (not mine) that has been reduced to -1 for no good reason that I can see.
I'm afraid these minor abuses are going to be more common than not.
DG
That's part of the guidelines. If a comment has been
kicked down for no good reason, the moderators are
supposed to put them back up.
Moderators should be surfing the comments at -1 or less,
in order to to their jobs correctly.
I like the idea in general, but I would suggest that you make moderators read all the articles.
If moderator A has threshold set to 1, but moderator B has voted an article down to 0, then moderator A will never see that article, and so will not get the chance to raise it back to a 1.
The first moderator to see an article essentially has veto power.
What you've implemented here sounds like it's on the border of collaborative filtering (which is a totally cool concept). For an example of this, take a look at the GroupLens recommendation system.
Essentially the idea is that if you let everyone rate, abusers become statistically insignificant. Also (with a little extra computational muscle), you can customize your view of ratings by how other people who tend to rate the same way you do rate things.
This idea is nice and all, but I've got a better idea: Slashdot should simply have a feature that allows us to electrocute annoying people. You know, we're all annoyed sometimes. It's hard to keep one's cool, isn't it? It sure is! And then, even if you do keep your cool, you may have to deal with the same jerk tomorrow! The only solution is to electrocute him. That way, tomorrow will be a peaceful day.
But hey, it's a free speech/expression issue, isn't it? CmdrTaco, secular humanist atheist multiculturalist that he is, will inevitably censor and violate my right to electrocute people I don't like. I'm not even going to bother going to court to fight it, because the bleeding-heart ACLU will get involved, and try to claim that I never had a right to electrocute people to begin with!
And they call this a free country . . . Listen, guys: They're taking away our freedoms one by one. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance!
Seriously.
Useful comments are boring. I'd much prefer to see maniacs thumping their chests and howling. It's more fun. That's why my threshold is -10000
I assume that most moderators will typically operate with their threshhold turned down I do, anyhow. I cruise at -100. If I see posts that I think shouldn't be down below null, I bump 'em back up. I suspect that most of the other moderators work in a similar manner. The nice thing is that a lot of the st00pid stuff is trickling out, as people realize that they won't get the attention they used to, so they don't bother. Oh, and for other moderators, especially the dumb ones who didn't post anonymously, keep a KDE browser open alongside netscape, and you're set.
The new moderation system should be a great step in the right direction! A non-moderated system simply can't scale. Something has to limit the noise/signal ratio.
Fortunately, Rob noticed that 5 - 20 people still can't scale up to the size that Slashdot it growing. Picking 408 people who post good comments appears very reasonable. Except for one problem.
Most people at slashdot don't post. We read. That is why we go here; to keep up with the latest 'news for nerds' and see what our pears have to say about it. Most of the time, it has nothing to do with what our core knowledge is about; no one person can know everything. So, most of us read and learn from those who know about the subject. When something comes up that we know about, it's our turn to pipe up and say something intelligent. Still, most of the time, we read.
The current system works for now, but it won't continue. People come and go. But a few will stick around and help pick who gets to be a moderator. Eventually, you'll have the good 'ol boys running slashdot. If you think like them, you're fine.
Take the control away from those who post. It's like giving the worf orders to watch over the sheep. There is inhernently a conflict of interest involved.
Scoring should be done by the largest population at slashdot; the people who read articles. Overall, their interest is inherently to get good articles to read, and skip the noise.
The hard part is ensuring that everyone who reads, must also score articles. Otherwise, you get a minority group of voters who run things. No-one else feels they can do anything about it. The UI needs to require people who read to also vote. Make it a part of how people request articles to read (ie, to read a thread).
(*) Agree ( ) Disagree ( ) Trash [ Get Thread ]
Let all registered readers (who care) vote on the absolute value of a comment (range from less than worthless to highly valuable). The comment's ranking would be a weighted average of all the votes the comment has received. The weight of a vote would depend on the reader's reputation. A reader's reputation (and thus the weight of his/her vote) would increase whenever s/he votes similarly to other voters with high reps and decreases when s/he votes in opposition. AC's don't get to vote.
This kind of ranking system needs some anchor points - readers with reps that don't change much (i.e. Rob's 400+) to prevent drift and transitivity issues, but works quite well in practice.
These are good suggestions. This comment deserves a higher score than the +1 it currently has.
Another suggestion: It should be possible to set a threshold of -infinity. Many people clearly
want to see everything and there is no reason for them to have to guess how low is low.
Something is wrong with slashdot. It refuses to set my userlogin cookie anymore. Has anyone else observed this? It will hit Lynx users especially.
Make people log in to view moderated discussions. Slashdot moves so quickly that it is BEGGING to be abused by unscrupulous moderators. The more you have, the harder it will be to detect it (since with more moderators comes more BAD moderators).
By making people actually DO something to see the effects of moderation it will take a lot of the shine off of power tripping. What have you got to lose? Assuming moderation is as great as you make it out to be, it will encourage people to create accounts.
What I wasn't chosen as a mod? :)
Actually, I think half of the fun, and the reason I became a slashdotter is because of the fun comments.
If the score is at 1 and you choose to score down, the posted request should be "set the value to 0", not "decrement it".
That way, even if 5 moderators who are all looking at the original article score it down, it'll still just end up at 0.
I think the anonymous moderator was saying was that if that's ALL a message says, it's kind of a low priority for most readers.
On the other hand, if someone has a message like "RH version X.XX sucks on my XXXXX machine because...." the comment wouldn't get moderated down. Maybe even moved up (we would hope?)
So have people create accounts to post comments. That would get around the IP issue nicely.
Rob suggested that we focus more on pushing the more worthwhile commentary "up" than on zapping comments down. Let me offer an example: What if 100 posts say essentially the same thing, but one person writes a post on the subject really explains the same thing better than the other 99. Doesn't it deserve to rise to the top of the list? My understanding of this new moderation system as Rob designed it is to allow the cream of the crop to be scored higher than the repetitions
So I have an implicit responsibility to the Slashdot community to be an effective, fair, and impartial judge, without my own "grammar and idealism" messing around with the mix.
That's exactly what I meant, and yes I would consider upping a comment about a specific software's flaws, even if it used shall we say "colorful" language in the process.
Hey, no problem. :)
DG
the assumption is that a select small group
of people can control what is considered 'good' and 'bad'
and not ever let themselves be biased...
sure you only WANT to kill 'first post' 'moopy' etc but there are
going to be articles that are on the borderline.
those are the most important articles and the ones where a
system of few controlling many will fail.
sure you can 'set your prefs' down to -90, and then every casual visitor to slashdot views only what the
few ruling slashdot deem appropriate. ok for 'first post' but what about the borderline cases? i dont think a small group can pick and choose sucessfully.
...way to completely kill slashdot. I'd simply go read another Linux new site then and slashdot could go to hell for all I care. If you look at posts from a year ago when slashdot didn't require you to login and you could use whatever name you wish, there were a LOT less Anonymous Cowards and much much more substance. Why is that? Ever wonder?
...way to completely kill slashdot. I'd simply go read another Linux news site then and slashdot could go to hell for all I care. If you look at posts from a year ago when slashdot didn't require you to login and you could use whatever name you wish, there were a LOT less Anonymous Cowards and much much more substance. Why is that? Ever wonder?
there will always be a few people who try to control everyone else.
the point of democracy is to keep no one faction from totally dominating (and thus destroying)
any other faction.
the US govt is gridlocked, but the US is a pretty damned productive country.
if its not due to democracy, what is it due to? why are most countries trying
to become democratic?
TRUST me, there are moderators out there that have spent more points on bumping up posts than knocking them down.
besides, 'you can always set your threshold to -100000'
then you can read the valuable articles that
the unwashed masses have voted down.
also, the 'what if someone votes 15000 times' thing is easy to fix
technically. hell you could even limit voting to 15 votes a day per person or something.
this changes the moderators job from being one of 'judging what is "me first" "moopt" etc' to one of
'who is comitting vote fraud'?
which would you rather do?
Who are we? We are people with opinions, who prefer a high signal to noise ratio on slashdot.
Don't like it? Set your threshold to -5.
You have the choice. That's what matters. Default options are irrelevant.
i've spent > 1/2 of my points on bump-ups.
irc used to be pretty free, you could say alot of stuff that you wanted too.
now irc is controlled by a small group of ops
who continually kick ban just because they dont
like someones nick, or the irc client they use,
or their political viewpoint.
this is not because they are bad people, it is just the nature of power...
in every borderline case, esp if you have a bad day, you are going to want to beat some ass... and irc now gives opers exactly that opportunity.
and now slashdot may become more like irc, where all dissent is told to 'go somewhere else, we own this place, we dont want you here, you dont belong,' for reasons
not just of "keeping out trash" but also stuff like rob asking for help on #perl, or someone saying stuff on #philosophy against rousseau. you cant trust small groups with power, dont you fucking get it?
Holy shit, DaBuzz. You HAVE to be the most cynical person I've encountered on /.
Your opinions WILL NOT be reduced to -1 unless they contain silly personal attacks, off-topic content or FALSE statements of some kind (i.e. "Bill Gates is gay")
This has NOTHING to do with stamping out people who disagree. I disagree with 99% of everything you post, and I guarantee you that I probably will INCREASE your point scores if it's a well written, coherent post (as most of your posts seem to be, if rather cynical & inflammatory).
What if instead of the moderators being able to arbitrarily add or subtract x points from a post up to a limit of so many points, what if they can only change the score of a particular post by 1 point (up or down). So if you think a post sucks then you can drop its score by one and if other moderators agree with you then fine (democracy in action) but there would be no possibility of abuse .
Because it was stupid.
The moderators were chosen based on the fact that they
had positive scores (meaning that they had been
moderated up at some point).
We're (mostly) adults here. Slashdot wasn't too horrible
before the moderation. Rob just didn't want to see it
ruined for the majority by a vocal (and stupid) minority.
I'd say that most of the moderators don't care about
points or advancing an agenda. I don't. I didn't moderate
this thread down, but I probably would have if I'd seen
it first. Why? Because it didn't contribute usefully to
the conversation, wasn't well thought out, and was mostly
flamebait.
There you have it.
- Anonymous Moderator
This is the stupidest damn thing I've ever heard of. First you build a marketing database on Slashdot readers, now you mechanize discussion. This is a disturbing, disgusting day for Slashdot readers.
Posting Anonymously
maybe i have my defintions turned ass backwards,
but having a few people 'hand picked' by a central authority
to decide what is good and what is bad seems to
not be very similary to a system in which
people vote for the few people.
Damn straight!
I put &threshold=-10000 into the urls and had a look at some of the current storys on/.
Why don't I see any any messages with a score of less than -1 ??
Where have the "first post" "moderators must die" kind of messages gone?
Whoops, you appear to have revealed your moderator status.
Yep, this is your old friend, Mr. Anonymous. I'm NOT in favour of anyone rating ANYONE'S posts as being more or less important.
Rob needs to take some sociology / psychology courses and brush up on group think and such.
Of course, I can set my pref's to -999 and get everything. That's my personal choice. I don't think Rob understands what censorship is about. Any SINGLE person can get ANY single item. There might be more work involved, but it can be done. Censorship is when something is removed or restricted. Rob is restricting access to comments. Only those who know how to change their settings and actually do it will see the posts.
Anyone want to bet on how likely a pro-MS posting will get a positive eval? How about a negative Linux posting?
Even if it were true?
moderators are the ones who became the new moderators.
Seems kind of reminiscent of Communist Russia or China. The new regime is picked from the followers of the old regime.
But there won't be any agenda enforced.
Trust an anonymous coward? Why?
And the statement you made about moderators bumping up posts would require that other moderators were lowering scores.
On what basis do you contend that the positive ratings will always outnumber the negative?
But don't take your experience as the norm.
You need to read more history, also.
Do you want a system for reducing the number of junk comments?
1. Use a system similar to the rating system but only use it to weed out the anonymous posters (I know I'm using that account). If someone has something to say and they want everyone to see it, they can post under their name. If they need secrecy, they risk not having their comments read.
2. Allow the users to choose their own passwords and email them (as now) to an active email account (no hotmail or yahoo). That way, if they post objectionable material, Rob has an address that can be traced (somewhat). I don't use my account because I don't like the password.
Is that simple enough for you?
What's wrong with defaulting to "all". The power elite can configure their systems as they wish. The unwashed anonymous cowards can read the "score" and decice to ignore it or not; but still have easy access. Another solution might be to have an "all" mode, just like the "flat" mode.
This Censorship business is frighteningly Gatesian. I don't want contraversial opinions removed because they are unpopular.
400 moderators, and you don't expect the scoring system to becomes a popularity contest? Get real.
A marginal post that holds Linus to be the ghod of modern computing is going to be far better rated than a well thought out post that calls him a traitor to the open source communnity.
Too many untrained monkeys with the ability to vote. Who watches the watchers?
I was one of the 400 chosen, and frankly, I'm beginning to like the idea of scoring (for cynics: yes, it's partially because I have some control over it). I don't see it as censorship, more as ranking which is what Rob & co have intended it to be. For instance, I have a similar scoring system in place with 'mutt' on my mail inbox -- mail from people I need to hear from gets moved to the top, and lower-priority stuff goes to the bottom. It's not censorship; I still read the low-priority stuff, just not first. Thus far, I've tried to pursue the same policy with my Slashdot moderation. I've downed some "GNOME/KDE/MS/Linux/FreeBSD/Rob/Slashdot/RIIA/cens orship/lamerz/BeOS/Your mom sucks" comments because they don't add anything substantial to Slashdot -- it's all stuff we've heard before. On the other hand, I've promoted quite a few "GNOME/KDE/MS/Linux... sucks and here are some good reasons why" posts -- including several that already had scores of -1. I have definite opinions, but I recognize others do too, and that they may not always agree with mine. What I try to do it promote the opinions that are expressed well. To sum it up, I'm all for disagreement and debate (that's what /. is here for), but arguing, bickering and fight-picking are going to get downed. If you want to read everything, set your threshold way low. I have mine at -5, and trust me, I have yet to see anything under -3 that will really improve your life, Slashdot, or the world in general.
1- How moderators are choosen
What is the plan for adding new moderators? People come and go, and fresh ideas are always needed.
IMHO, it should be done on a quasi-senority basis. If your account has been around for 1 month (week,year,etc) you are allowed to moderate 1 comment per (article,day,hour,whatever). This allows people who have been with the community to peer review. Simply, slashdot will be moderated by people who have seen a lot on slashdot. This seems to be a fair/logical way to choose new moderators.
2- Are Moderators allowed to set their pref level?
I believe that if you take the _honor_ of being a slashdot moderator, then you should take the _burden_ of having to read ALL the posts. Even if you don't take the time to read all the AC posts, I hope that a moderator can't set his level to 2 so he only reads the good posts.
Moderators must read all. (or really just not be able to automatically purge anything)
thats all for now, until I think of more issues
WTG Rob...your site will be a new paradigm in human interaction!
Yes, that sounds good. But again, I think it misses my main point. People who post and those who don't are different populations. Both need representation.
I doubt that moderators would actively try to make a good 'ol boys network out of slashdot. Look at it from a more abstract point of view. If the people who post all the time are also the people who score how good the articles are, what do you end up with? Over time, what is the tendancy? A group of people who like to talk to each other. They may disagree on issues, but they enjoy the conversation. Other ways of thinking or pulling appart the issues won't last. Anything other than that must go against the natural trend of the environment. Since moderation is really opinion based, the 'moderator rules' will only last for a while before becoming very mudy.
Yet, with 75,000 slashdot users and only 2,800 articles posted, it is clear that most of slashdot is composed of readers. They need to be represented somehow. Otherwise, you risk loosing your audiance.
I got the idea originally from FireFly. Each user would create a profile of interests in music. The computer would then make recomendations about what else they would like by matching profiles. It has also been noted that amazon.com does something similar.
I'll have to look into GroupLens. My initial impression is that it is another attempt to match profiles for a relatively small group of people using the software.
I doubt that this would work for Slashdot. Managing that much data between all the users at slashdot would be intractable.
However, a simple scoring system may be all that is required to get good results. I see the current moderator system as a step towards doing this. Rob has enough moderators now to see general trends of use and abuse. These can be used to design a better interface before letting everyone have a chance at being a moderator.
I just hope he realizes that if he only lets people who post become moderators, that he is missing most of the slashdot population. He has a unique oportunity here to get feedback from them.
A good step down the line would be to add options like what I suggested. But just collect usage statistics. See how it works. I'm sure researchers in this field would love to see the data!
That's a slippery slope. Serving articles+ads via NNTP and letting clients do as they will would be the Right Thing, though articles in XML would be almost as good.
Because I am a moderator and already spend most of my points on bump-ups. I will spend *ALL* of my points bumping stuff up if need be.
I seriously doubt there will be a mass coordinated effort to censor posts - we don't have enough points for that.
The ratings system is based that "0-1" scored comments are "bottom barrell" comments - i.e. they don't contribute anything very effective.
Comments below that are the ridiculous ones that are of DUBIOUS BENEFIT to the "average reader".
So if a reader wants to be different and read EVERYTHING, it's their choice to override the default.
In the end, I guess we agree to disagree.
You're assuming everyone will realize negative scores are allowed here, when most contexts (games, sporting events) that use the word "score" don't. And since they'll never see one, this is far from obvious.
The default score for at least us Cowards should be INT_MIN.
Could this moderation be done by scales? The posts would default to let's say five average(a little less for ACs like me) votes, and the first five real moderations would overwrite these averages. Then moderators could moderate to their heart's content, and not be limited by points. And not get more points when more rubbish is posted.
It would also make a nice moderator view; show me posts that are over certain threshold and either all or some number of random posts with less than five moderations. It might make it easier to AC posts to get moderated and the moderators would not have to see bad posts that have been already moderated.
Attention and Hide buttons for moderators could be useful too. Attention could be used when someone posts flames/trolls, Hide when someone posts something REALLY outrageous. Attention would just ensure that every other moderator sees the post. Hide would do the same and hide the post from general public. Both effects would end after the post has had five moderations. The use of these should either be limited in number or the rest of the five first moderators should get "I disagree" "dunno" "I agree" buttons, and a moderator with a lot more disagrees than agrees would lose that privilege.
I like the idea of having a target score.
:)
But we should only be allowed to use one mod point to achieve that end.
Also, if our chosen target score has already been reached when we hit the moderate button, our mod point should not be "spent". That way we would have no concerns about wasting our mod points.
I would feel terrible if I -1'd an inflammatory, but otherwise well presented post and suddenly saw it had a score of -4. Firstly, because I did not feel it deserved *that* level of scoring (punishment?), and secondly because I would feel like it was a wasted point.
Perhaps setting floors/ceilings on comment scores is not such a bad idea.
I am also very keen on the idea of having a reason for the scoring.
Possible reasons - amusing, insightful, derogatory, off-topic, SPAM, clever, abusive, I just didn't like it (we'd need to be prepared to justify using *this* one), etc.
Although, even as it is now, it's still a great system (00000011 cheers for CT
And now the obligatory disclaimer...
I am not a programmer, so I do not know how easy this would be to implement.
I too have wanted to see what had been moderated as such. I was thinking the normal grey for those that have their original score (ACs=0, logged on users=1), a green bar for anything higher (an AC>=1, user>=2), and red for someone that had been dropped down.
:)
Hopefully CmdrTaco is reading this far down
I've long thought collaborative moderation (slowly trusting people who've proven to have similar criteria) is the Right Answer, but it just about has to be done client-side. Besides the privacy implications, /. simply doesn't have that kind of horsepower. CmdrTaco, do you suppose you could please give us the message base in XML? Hopefully with "get-new-since-last-request"? The HTML is a bit of a mess....
a system designed to handle a couple of messages per day now routinely handels next to 1 million articles per day (around 40 GB).
if that is not enough scaling, then what?
We can't require thinking, so we shouldn't require voting - compulsory lazy votes would be worse than nothing. Besides, /. is too hard to read offline as it is.
Sounds great rob, kinda like X, we supply the tools not the philosophy. Thanks for a great site.
There's also the fact that /. discussions are very short lived -- once off the front page, a day at most, they're effectively dead. It makes meaningful discussion very difficult. Despite the flameage, it is possible to carry on a real discussion for days or weeks in Usenet or mailing lists. This just isn't possible with the current /. setup, and contributes IMO to the fractured, opinionated, rash, nature of many posts here. It's not that there aren't pearls, it's just very hard to cultivate them.
This is even worse for those of us not in the USA. I read /. from work (normally while waiting for a compile to complete) and access from about 3AM to 11AM EST. So if I comment on a topic one day, it will normally have been scrolled from the front page before most people will have seen the comment and had an opportunity to respond.
Great. But seeing as the current 400+ moderators are all (probably) massive Linux people arn't they just as likely to vote down a well writen article they disagreed with.
/. 'ers with power.
Just because they've been made moderators doesn't suddanly make them impartial defenders of free speach, it just makes them regular
Personally I'd favour letting everyone vote but scaling it so that 50 votes=1point, or if that would be to hard to implement limit it to those who are signed in, at least then you would know that a highly scored response was widely regarded as good, but it would be hard for one person to influence the votes to much (would you really want to sit there for ages voting your "first" comment up to +10 ??).
This anonymous coward is called chris.
Free Speach supporters will replace "First Post!" with "No Censorship!" as the most annoying post.
I support them in this annoyance.
Some people may want to know why their post has been moderated to -1000 or whatever. Maybe there should be a "moderator" account that moderators can post under (as an option rather than a password one, else ex-mods might pop back...). They would need to be brief to prevent identifying themselves but it would be better than getting a reply from an AC and not being sure if it was a moderator replying or not.
:-)
This would also allow moderators to ask/answer questions without accidentally/on-purpose revealing themselves as a Moderator.
Firefalcon (Please don't flame
I disagree that we shouldn't allow negatives.
I see _no_ value in "First Post!!!!" and in "LINUX ROCKS ALL OTHER THINGS SUCK!!!!!" posts. I defy _anyone_ to show value in things like that.
(Sure, if there's _more_ than what I quoted,it could have value... but there are a number of posts consisting solely of stuff I have above.)
As for scoring wars, moderators don't have enough points for it. 1 point for every 50 posts on slashdot doesn't go very far.
One finds out they're a moderator by seeing little moderation buttons at the end of posts, by the "Reply to this" and "Parent" links. A sidebar to the article shows the number of points the moderator has, give some brief tips, and points off to the moderator guidelines.
No, track every single moderation event. ACs are not some sort of underclass that can be stamped on at will, they are people who prefer to remain anonymous.
Why they choose to be ACs is not an issue. They deserve to know who and why they got moderated just like everyone else.
DG
asmussen, you have a very good point that the default setting is an important thing and, even if the users who use the defaults mostly don't care, that doesn't mean that *we* shouldn't care at least a little for them.
./ reader can at least get an idea of the noise that is available for him should he want to read it.
With the defaults the way I understand they are, a single moderator can get an article out of 80% of the audience's view with a single vote. Doesn't that sound a little too easy to you?
I would advise that the default threshold be -1 instead of 0, so that the casual
AC
I'd probably just change the posting form. Right now, it's termendously easy to post. I would do the following:
- Have people go through an extra page when they hit "reply" telling them what types of posts are good and what types are not.
- Have a pull-down for type of post. For instance, for "Ask slashdot," you could have "answer," "follow-up question," "me to," and "personal story." People could filter out the latter two (and I also think having sarcastic categories might discourage people from posting those types of messages).
- Have everyone go through a "preview" stage.
By the way, when you introduced accounts, you said that people opposed to big brother tracking should continue posting as anonymous cowards. I did that, signing with "pmitros" at the bottom of each message. I think all of my posts have been reasonably intelligent. I don't want moderation, but I'm not sure if it is fair to discriminate against people who have been doing that from being moderators.
- pmitros at mit.edu
Will "Ask Slashdot" be moderated?
/. posts will have the opportunity to read and possibly answer my question?
/. since MEEPT! started making regular appearance (and got a cheering squad to encourage him) but have still found most of the articles posted worthwile. Maybe this system will get me back into reading the comments.
How will the scoring be done for an answer to someones question? Will an unconventional answer be given fewer points because the moderators don't think it is the best answer?
I think if this is the case that the perl motto "There's More Than One Way To Do It!" will be ignored and the most obvious answer to any question will be the one that stands.
Some questions will breed other questions that some moderators may feel are off topic and should be demoted. If the default value is 0 and I ask a question that one moderator feels is stupid (remember, there are no stupid questions) does that mean that only people who are willing to wade through the dregs of
I do think that this moderation is a good idea but there have to be GOOD ways to make sure that one person doesnt/cant banish a comment low enough that it is never read again. (How many points can a single moderator give/remove?)
I haven't actually read any comments here on
Keep up the good work!
This whole problem can be viewed as a fundamental genetic neural network. You are summing the output of a network of several nodes (moderators) to arrive at a single value. Each generation of nodes is dependant upon the ouput of the previous generation. Unfortunately, you have created a feedback loop, which if not controlled has the potential to create havoc.
Let me explain. You are the seed. You moderated until it became to much for you, then you chose 25 others. The choice depended upon your view of what a good comment is. When the work became too great for the 25, the network grew, but the growth was dependant upon the output of the original seed. The network was then pruned by removing jerks, but who decided they were jerks? The original seed. There is inbreeding within the network here.
I'm not saying there is an intentional conspiracy here. I'm just pointing out that there are some inherent attributes of this method of operation. I don't have time to read most of the comments anyway. If you continue to refine your network of moderators by having those who were approved of before choosing the future moderators, then the group as a whole will begin to think alike.
A simple way to avoid this would be to randomly serve pages with the moderator buttons to a small percentage of non-moderators. I would get a page with buttons maybe 1% of the time. Some comments would get higher ratings than they might otherwise, which means that the next generation would possibly have a different makeup. You would be in effect adding new blood to the gene pool.
A lot of us work for computer companies and as representatives of our corporations, we can't say anything bad about other corporations that we're sleeping with. I don't want to slam say bob.com and have it come back to me personally, knowing the company I work for, say joe.com, has a strong working relationship with bob.com.
This is exactly like a peer reviewed system. The people who write good comments become the people who acknowledge other good comments. It's like Alan Cox himself saying "thou hast written mighty cool code" when you submit a patch.
I've been an Anonymous Coward for ages, not being happy with the login system, but this moderation system gives me an incentive to get an account. It is now possible for me to make my comments more visible by getting praise and acknowledgement from the moderators.
That's good incentive not only to login so I get the credit, but also encourages me to write better comments and proofread them more rigorously.
I'm happy with this new system. I'm setting my cutoff factor high, and hopefully slashdot will be just like it was last year.
I was quite surprised when I found out that I'd been given moderator status. Even more so when I found out that it really was not for everybody. I thought: "Kind of cool, pity that I can't brag about it."
:P
;P
After reading this article I lowered my rate from +1 to -99, thinking: "Shitload of work, but I'll try it out and give up when I get tired."
I have a full time job and too many hobbiy projects already, so extra work feels heavy on my shoulders. However I view this system as a probable future soap-box news model - remember you always have the chance to view all the crappiest content by lowering your limit. So I decided to give it a try.
Hints for Rob:
1) Make it easy for moderators to refuse the honor at any given time,
2) automate finding new moderators.
3) I'd love having about 5% of the registered users as moderators at all times.
4) set a lower limit at, say, -10, so people can be sure they see all the comments if they choose to
5) no more work for mods = please do not require reasons for moderation.
5th above requires an additional anecdote. Back in the days of old USSR those sent to Siberia or otherwise mishandled seldom were accused by the real political reasons - rather, foul "reasons" were spurred up instead. We must assume mankind hasn't grown up in ten years.
Hint for moderators: I browse with Netscape logged in, and KDE-kfm anonymously, so I can write comments and view only reasonable parts at the same time as I moderate. Neato - no need to boot a second computer for that
*g* - after Submit I can get back and give all my day's points to this AC comment
I am one of the moderators. I'm not sure I want the job because it means reading Slashdot involves more work, but I take it seriously. As a moderator, I have downgraded one MEEPT and three First-Posts, but mostly I have raised a few good AC comments from obscurity/zero, and I have given thumbs up to a few other good comments.
This post is to urge all moderators to be judicious when downgrading comments. We are in danger of acting like a committee. If we remove every post that is slightly offensive to any one of us, then although we may be left with more intelligent posts, the results may also be very bland. I've seen posts at -2 that were mostly 'sez you/so's your old man', but were also humourous. Remember that a reasonable amount of the more colourful, if less thoughtful, posts tends to break up the monotony. Personally, I was even nervous that some people may find MEEPT posts entertaining, though that's hard to believe. I tend to agree with those who say that, except when the posts are really bad (e.g. First Post), we should concentrate on raising, rather than lowering scores. It is true that people can lower their threshholds, but I still urge you to be careful. Don't, as they say, throw the baby out with the bathwater.
As a moderator, it's easy to get caught up in the reading and forget to notice the scores. As a reader, it's hard to visually scan for desired scores. Both could be helped by adding some color coding. One possibility would be four colors for minus, zero, one, and higher. Another would be white (normal) for posts that are still at their default score, then one color for posts that are above their default, and another for those below.
Hopefully this will find both Rob and the other moderators.
The Moderator's Dilemma is that, as moderators, we are unable to discuss aspects of the moderation system without also violating the rules under which we are allowed to moderate. I've been thinking all evening of whether I want to post this under my own ID or as an AC, and I'm taking the Coward's way out for now, but I'm not happy about it.
The other two alternatives are for the moderators to post under their /. login (and lose their moderator status as we've seen), or for Rob to set up a private chat area for moderators to discuss issues. I really dislike the second suggestion -- it turns moderation into some sort of a star chamber. For the 75k - 407 of you who aren't moderators, realize that those of us who are don't know who the other mods are (other than Taco & Co.) either.
Of all the possible problems with the system (and I've been bumping up many of the posts pointing out issues as I find them), the most pernicious one is that a person aquires two moderator IDs and creates a cabal for themselves. A bot programmed to be reasonable and interesting might be able to pull this off. For an example of what bots can do, start here and follow the links.
It's not clear to me why Rob is insisting on moderator anonymity. This isn't a job I asked for, though it is somewhat interesting. I don't spend as much time on Slashdot as I had in the past, partly because of the AC issue, partly because there are alternate sites (LinuxToday, LWN, the revived RedHat, and SVLUG to name a few), and, well, I've got a real paying job.
There's also the fact that /. discussions are very short lived -- once off the front page, a day at most, they're effectively dead. It makes meaningful discussion very difficult. Despite the flameage, it is possible to carry on a real discussion for days or weeks in Usenet or mailing lists. This just isn't possible with the current /. setup, and contributes IMO to the fractured, opinionated, rash, nature of many posts here. It's not that there aren't pearls, it's just very hard to cultivate them.
I'm past the age where I'd score a lot of points bragging about my /. moderator status. Most of the people I know don't know what /. is. It's not going to impress my clients or my girlfriend, and Mom & Dad never understand all this computer junk anyway. If it's the threat of being mailbombed, well, my address has been posted here anyway, and if I wanted to disable its display, I could.
Why do I think moderators ought to be able to identify themselves?
With that off my chest, the system looks pretty good. I set prefs low (you can edit the threshhold value directly in the URL to some rediculous value). In this first forum, there are only 9 posts with negative values, the lowest is -2 (my threshhold is -10000). Searching for "(Score:-" will turn up all "underwater" posts. There are two possibly relevent posts which are thwacked, two gibberish posts, three '...sucks', and the rest are way off topic (taxes, skiing ??). It's working OK.
It would be nice to have a way of quickly reviewing negative posts. A 'max score' filter would do this. Several non-moderators have requested this as well. It would be a useful feature.
The highest ranked post has a score of 6. It's recommending an NNTP server. I've got my own arguments in favor of this as well. The second most favorably scored post calls into question the whole moderation concept. This is also healthy -- the system is not only tolerating criticism, it considers it important.
There's a real issue surrounding controversial posts. These would have low aggregate scores, but a large number of moderators. I would like to see a secondary moderation attribute on posts indicating the number of times a post has been moderated.
WRT losing threads under thwacked posts (I refer to positive scores as "bumps" and negatives as "thwacks" or "drops"), this tends to happen if you read in flat mode. If you are reading threaded, you'll tend to see threads beneath posts, and if you open threads in a new window (my MO), you'll get all posts at your default threshhold underneath.
I'm spending my points really quickly. Down to 2 left. All but one were bumps. I don't know if I ought to have more points to grant or if I should be more sparing in how I rate stuff, I'll have to see how this plays out and how quickly points refresh.
The concept behind moderation, and on the selecting of moderators, is good. It's a lot like Google. Though the definition is circular -- good sites are sites that good sites point to -- good posters are posters that good posters like -- it bootstraps well. I think it also avoids cliquishness. You just won't get one mindset. This is one of the better systems I've seen. It's not perfect but it's a damned good start. I think it's got everything in it it needs to be great.
The moderator guidelines are posted. (Rob: is this the same page Mods see -- I think it is but I can't check right now without logging in, which I can't do until I finish this post. Another Catch-22. Mods and Plebes should see the exact same guidelines -- the rules should be open).
Note among other things the math: there are four points granted per post (one point to each of 400 moderators per 100 posts). Your average article will see four votes cast if all points are spent. This is unlikely at best.
Signed, Anonymous Moderator :-(
I thought I would share my criteria for the comments which I have moderated (9-10 total, so far):
I marked two comments up. Good ideas, well written. With a new guideline Rob posted today, I will probably use more points to mark up rather than down.
I downed one "first post" comment for the obvious reason. Most of the time, the other moderators nailed the first post type comments before I even saw them.
Two comments were troll-bait. Just saying "M$ sucks, or RH sucks, etc. is liable to get nailed quick, unless the poster (AC or not) has a good point to make.
I marked down two (maybe three) comments that were primarily obscene or had racist remarks in them. Note that I didn't say "any" -- just those where the content was primarily the obscenity or racist statement. There have been plenty of posts I disagreed with, only one of which I downed (see my next point)
Lastly, I downed one comment (don't remember why), realized that it was sort of an "agenda" like hit, and went back and used another moderator point to restore it's rating.
This may not be exact because I'm not trying to remember every little detail, but although anonymous, I think the goals are good, and will try to do an adequate job for all of the Slashdot reader core.
Just write interesting stuff.
While I can appreciate the desire to try and form some order out of chaos, this whole moderator thing sits very ill with me.
Why? Because I've had my posts moderated before, in some cases, severely.
I'm not talking about "First Post" or "THiS SuX" or profanity-filled invective or other such stuff that I think we can all agree falls firmly into the "noise" department - I'm talking about on topic, carefully written commentary.
I've gone through some of these posts, trying to keep an open mind and objective viewpoint, looking to discover what it was that was so objectionable to require moderation - and I found nothing.
My only conclusion is that the moderator in question disagreed with the content of the post, and moderated it in an attempt to supress the viewpoint.
I don't consider myself all that radical, but yet I've been moderated. If this has happened to me, then surely it has happened to others.
This is wrong. It's Evil.
Worst of all, I was never given a chance to "face my accuser". Not ONCE have I learned WHY the particular post was moderated.
Rob, there should be some sort of "moderation history list" tagged to every comment. Each downward moderation should have a REASON tagged onto it, and the identity of the moderator should be listed - even if that identity is just a moderator number, untraceable by anyone other than you back to the meatspace person.
Like this:
[18:02-03/22/1999] Downgraded to -2 by #402: Offensive language
At least this gives us victims a way to track who is doing what and for what reasons to our posts.
DG
Oh wait. No. Read that section about anonymity again.
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Pants are Optional
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Umm... because it doesn't work that way?
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Pants are Optional
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Its almost like I planned it that way, ain't it :)
Yeah, its a lot like usenet, but not quite. I'm trying to organize things more intelligently. Put some structure into it. Usenet is chaos that you need to go out of your way to order. I'm trying to make it possible for the readers to order it themselves, and then allow all readers to benefit from that.
But only if they want it. You don't. So go set your preferences to ignore this crap and stop letting it bother you.
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Pants are Optional
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
So much for anonymity. 407 moderators now.
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Pants are Optional
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
Thats exactly how it works. Except only 400 people see those little buttons. I'm trying to keep tabs on it so that people don't push idealogies, and instead are fair and impartial. We'll see if it works.
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Pants are Optional
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
The only problem with lowering the defaults (or removing them altogether) is that since by default, the pages are sorted chronologically, you end up having the first wave of first post/this sux/rob sux comments right at the top of the article. I know this irritates me (which is why I have configured my browser otherwise), and it might also be a turn off for new readers.
I think that if we do choose to lower the default threshhold, then we might also want to set the default mode to order by score. That way, the better comments will quickly filter to the top, but the other ones will be available for the masochists. *grin*
Think this through. If you don't like the moderation as is, visit the Preferences page and knock your threshold down to -5 or something.
A killfile would be cool, but I wonder what the /. overhead would be?
slashdot broke my sig
Making people pay would create a situation where people expect to be able to post anything, without adding value, because they had paid the fee of entry.
Intelligent moderation is simply a way to disallow overgrazing (to return to the commons analogy) by sharing a portion of ownership with what appears to be a carefully selected bunch of commoners.
Perhaps the most interesting factor here is that we can very easily see if the new model is working; just look at the comments posted from here on out, and see whether they add more value than the type of comments posted under the earlier system. This promises to be facinating!
Some good points.
I've suggested a couple of different moderation schemes in the past. Most of the serious needs are addressed on the client side, not the user side -- what you are asking for is the ability to view articles which have provoked strong reactions up or down. To this end, an "absolute score" filter would be good. Posts which are merely offensive or annoying would likely not get a strong reaction, just a mild whack-a-troll.
It's also not clear how conflicting moderation gets mitigated -- if you have four moderators scoring an article down 1 point, and two scoring it up two, does it net out to zero? Moderators get limited points, so there's a disincentive to vote on something which has already been moderated in the direction the moderator would have it done.
Your floating point suggestion is good, but it's only part of the story. Ideally, I'd like to see a score given a few different ways:
A combination of net score and number of scores would be a good indication of how good and/or controversial a post was. High score, many scores -- good post. Low score, many scores -- bad post. Middlin score (~=0), many scores -- raging controversy.
I was thinking about this this morning, what I'd really like to see is MUSENET -- moderated USENET. This would be, like USENET, a distributed database, but of ratings, not articles. Backward compatible, natch. Completely independent of the client software, so if you really wanted a feature, you could add it. I'd like it to be more of an 'attributes database', where attributes could be arbitrarily created. Attribute attributes might be (key, value, reference, owner, expiry, permissions). Not sure what else would be required. Basically, what you want to assign, the weight assigned, what it refers to, who created it, when it expires (if ever), and who may modify it (if anyone). Expiry and permissions might be advisory only, but the addition of a signature might add some additional assurances to the system.
It's probably a lot of baggage to carry around, but I'd invite others to kick the idea around.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
You should realize that it's quite probable that moderators won't be seeing posts which have slipped below their own threshold settings. Once a post goes below see level, so to speak, it won't keep getting thwacked. A really beligerent post might get swatted simultaneously by several moderators (threshholds don't apply until you reload the page), but this should not be a major issue.
I would hope that moderators have better things to do with their time then finding out what the lowest scored comment in a discussion is and drilling it into the floor.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Moderation indicates both preferences and controversy. I would expect that there will be some abuse of the moderation system, in the sense that moderators will (conciously or unconciously) vote their personal preferences. But with 400 people out there, there's a lot of opinion to be divided up. It should work out.
Still, I think the current score is only part of the story. It would be really nice to have the number of moderation votes as an additional indicator. Comments with a high score and high number of votes are highly favored. Comments with a very low score and a high number of votes are pretty unambiguously bad. But a netral (~= 0) score with a large number of votes indicates a strong set of differences in the moderators' community. These articles are important, even if they aren't agreeable to all.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Anyway, just my -$0.02.
The two main problems why I haven't gone public with mine are:
1) No sensible way to implement slashdot's banner advertisements
2) Comment/story copyright
Oh, nifty. I thought comments were sorted by post time, not descending by score (and then ascending by time).
:)
Score good, time bad
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Got it. Now if moderators will actually raise levels of articles as well as lower them, I'll be set.
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
I still like my original idea about simply voting each comment's sscore up or down and ordering the comments based on score.
At the top of each comment you could put a little header like:
Score 8Vote up () Vote Down()
Freaks in the clown show
by blah blah (blah)
And at the bottom, a little button labeled "vote" which would submit all the up and down votes. Note of course the vote up/vote down are radio buttons for XOR'ness and all voting should be done on an ip-by-ip basis just like forum voting.
Maybe I'm just being unrealistic.
--
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
Perhaps if you weren't an AC your "acccuser" might have faced you, perhaps in email? You're clamoring for something which you yourself are not willing to supply.
Rob, there should be some sort of "moderation history list" tagged to every comment. Each downward moderation should have a REASON tagged onto it, and the identity of the moderator should be listed - even if that identity is just a moderator number, untraceable by anyone other than you back to the meatspace person.
Then why don't you have an account here (or at least use it if you do have it)?
While I generally approve of the AC concept (at least here on /.) I also feel that an AC waives some of their rights when it comes to demanding the accountability of others.
At least this gives us victims a way to track who is doing what and for what reasons to our posts.
Victims? Please... You know, if we could perhaps go read some of your previous posts maybe we could help, or offer advice. But we can't, because you refuse to be accountable for your writings.
Sorry "DG", but I find your requests for moderator accountability flawed, given the context of your AC status.
I want to die peacefully in my sleep as my grandfather did...
Just my two cents worth:
First, just let me say that I'm familiar with the moderator system that's just been put in place because a *friend* of mine is a moderator and I took a look at his browser just now to see what its all about.
So don't flame me for violating the "revealing I'm a moderator" rule, I'm just making comments on behalf of my anonymous moderator friend, who obviously couldn't do this himself.
We've discussed this a bit, and have the following couple of points to contribute:
1. Make the top-level comments display in random order for moderators. This may impose a load on the slashdot server, but it's an important issue.
Moderators often don't get to the very bottom of the list of top-level comments, which basically means that first-post type comments will get the better moderation. If you randomize this, then there's a higher chance of more fair moderation across the boards, rather than those that were at the top of the list getting all the moderator attention.
2. Where does a moderator (or anyone else for that matter) see how many moderation points they've got to use up for that day? My moderator buddy just spent 5 minutes moderating comments in an article, and when we reloaded the main slashdot page the "total articles moderated" figure only went up by four, instead of 15 as he had predicted.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
I set my threshold down to an arbitrarily large negative number when the big preferences thing was added the other day. I've been surprised at the amount of stuff that's been moderated down into the negatives... and by the fact that a lot of it seems to be stuff where the only fault seemed to be holding an unpopular opinion.
If I were Rob, I'd abolish the "log in or be an Anonymous Coward" bit... the number of Anonymous Cowards went up _drastically_ the day that went into effect. And I'd get rid of the moderation and install username-based filtering instead. It'd be much better to just be able to say, "I don't want to see anything from Meept," than to have to say, "I don't want to see anything by Meept, or anything else the moderators may have decided to knock down to -3 for whatever reason."
But it's not my site, so I'll just hang around with my threshold at -2000, and rely on my own judgement to skip over the stuff I don't feel like reading...
Warning off-topic a bit
/. statistics on connections and OS from my experience does not necessarily measure Linux usage.
Your posting of
I am using Windows to use the Internet, and not by choice. Moreover, I have Linux installed on this machine, but have not successfully connected to my cable ISP. That is, not yet , but still working on it.
Regarding the default, perhaps setting the lowest rating at zero has merit. For those desiring the worst they might prefer to have the option to read all those below a certain level.
There are too many nasty comments supported by no more than that particular writer's opinion. Finding those with significant, interesting views is becoming increasingly difficult. Some of the best posts I have read have been from "AC" accounts. If you have the energy, time, and speed reading ability every post is available. I just lack sufficient quantities of all three to allow myself to read every post on an article that attracts my interest.
Absolutely: I've set my preferences to -999 :) I'd had a funny feeling something was happening, and sure enough I ended up seeing a certain amount of moderation by content. Interestingly, I've since then seen some anti-moderation by content! :) j/k!
I was reading Slashdot the whole time the scores were being established, so I know the sorts of people who traditionally got high original-moderator scores, and they go across all walks of life. The big names naturally would tend to be given higher scores, but there were also good scores for everyone from fervent RMS-disciples to fervent anti-RMS guys to Mac users, even. It really is a pretty good mix- it's actually ideal laissez-faire capitalism in action in a weird way, because abuses and personal feelings can happen, but there's a good mix out there rather than everything being predominantly one viewpoint. Pretty much for every major viewpoint there's a watchdog moderator or six, to guard against the viewpoint's silencing well spoken dissenters.
Furthermore, I know from setting prefs to -999 that slashdotters don't like having articulate posts whacked to -27 or so, and they get pumped up despite their personal convictions and bring it back to 1 just on outrage at what looks like content-moderating...
The flip side is when somebody posts a 'yaaa, the moderators in black helicopters are persecuting me!' and might easily get down to -412 just as a joke among moderators
I think this is a neat idea. It'll take time to see how it develops, but it puts Slashdot's comments content squarely in the hands of the actual readers, which are such a diverse group that it's self-correcting. I especially like the way CmdrTaco just picked people and didn't have them apply for the job or anything- it's rather like the sci-fi/Hitchhiker's concept of, nobody who applies for the job should be allowed to do it! Apparently a whole bunch of people just got confronted with "Whaaaa? What the fsck is thi... Doh! Far out- guess I better be a good little moderator then. *hehehehehe!* Man, Slashdot just keeps getting _weirder_ and _weirder_..."
Actually, I suspect your article of score 1 to remain score 1. As to the "advertising" above, we'll see.
That's a good start, but how are we supposed to contact them at work with only their home phone numbers?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
1. I wouldn't worry too much about it. Re-registering does not automatically confer moderator status, so It sure is a lot of trouble to go to mess things up. There's probably a fair number idiots in Rob's initial pool of 400 moderators. Hopefully they can be weeded out. From that point on, it should be easy for him to spot the dolts.
2. Good point. There should be a floor on negative moderation. That way people can set it to that level and know that they're getting everything.
VENI! VIDI! VICI!
I think thats what makes slashdot so popular...not that it is a portal..not that its a bbs...not that its pretty...its because all of them work together, so a reader feels as if they helped on slashdot in some way
Posted by tpo:
CmdrTaco's Idea is brilliant. I suggest though to allow a moderator only to post a +1 or a -1 vote.
This would give somthing like an unweighted majority decision and there wouldn't be a problem of someone dissing a comment with -1000 or what.
--
--
=8^
Make the score of the comments to a comment visible as well. When you are just skimming a subject this would (hopefully, in a perfect world) show where the interesting bits are without having to traverse the whole threads.
/j
Oh, I see that the threads gets sorted according to your preferences too. That's very good, but would be even better if you could see the actual scores.
Just a thought.
I've begun to try it and here's some of my opinions so far:
1. If it works (meaning -- it filters out the stuff I don't want read) it'll be great.
I've noticed that I tend not to read the comments anymore, especially if they reach the hundred limit mark -- it's just too cumbersome to read through a lot of crap just to get some sensible ones...
Ooops... I pressed the submit the submit button too soon.
/. readers to post sensible comments because they would feel that their comments would not be drowned out by the noise of non-sensical ravings and rantings.
2. It might encourage other (more sensible)
I do have some questions however:
-- Who guards the guardians? -- How are the moderators evaluated? I don't know if there is a mechanism by which we can identify and evaluate how the moderators are doing their work...
I might have a suggestion though:
-- Identify the moderator who gave the rating -- not by their user name but something like the id that telephone operators give out so that we can complain to their supervisors but not know their real name...
-- Allow a search of articles/comments by moderator id so that everyone (not just CmdrTaco) can evaluate what they do and complain if they show a distinct bias or not...
Also some minor nitpicks:
1. comment count on main page should be based on comment level a user selected.
2. comment spillover should also be based on comment count that reflects the comment level a user selected.
Other than that, I like it very,very much!!!!
Just a minute. I thought the whole open software community -- hey, really the whole internet -- is "an anonymous group" of individuals "with random agendas." Rob let us loose on his site the minute he decided to allow comments.
This seems like a pretty good first cut at a system, anyway; and if you want to filter 'em yourself, go over to the preferences page and set your threshhold to, say, -32768.
By the way, the "user prefs" page is pretty nifty; this is the first time I've visited it. If you don't like stories about Apple or hamsters or the CDA, you can filter 'em out. Neat!
Craig
I assume that most moderators will typically operate with their threshhold turned down, anyway, if they take their responsibility seriously....
Craig
ip voting won't work for /. users who use a real multi user operating system that has multipul users. Most of us are the former, I know I'm not the only one in the latter catagory.
You just advertised that you are one of the 408 ... expect to lose it if Rob sticks to his word above (which I doubt he will).
If people can't read the rules of moderation, how can you expect them to make the right decisions on what's worth reading in the first place?
I expect this comment to be at -100 in no time.
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
I see _no_ value in "First Post!!!!"
... that's your opinion. There just may be some SICK SOULS out there who delight in reading the "first post" posts. Who are you, we, us to hide those posts by default and not allowing people to make their own choices on what they filter out by default?
And there is the problem
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
and we'll probably just end up seeing more noise as these people get annoyed and start flaming people.
... it's nice when it's not made for you isn't it?
... why should we??? Let 'em see it all and if the notion to utilize the tools given them every arises, they have made a well informed choice because the have seen all the information.
... if they chose to make one.
You wont see if it you up your threshold. *grin* See, at that point the decision is yours
don't want to make any decisions any more than people who can't be bothered to get up and vote
While this is most likely true, it does not validate the notion that their apathy gives others totalitarian right to decide what they see.
Like you said earlier, if they don't care what they see
A default moderation level that HIDES messages to the average user does not give them all the info to make a well informed choice
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
This isn't about censorship, its about choice, and people like you are trying to restrict MY choice and other slashdotters... hmm... isn't that a form of censorship?
How am I restricting YOUR choice? How would a lowest score being 0 and the default threshold being 0 limit your choice to change that threshold to 3, 5 , or 1000 exactly as you can do right now?? That is a very poorly thought out arguement.
Your choice has not changed ONE bit from what it is right now, the only thing that has changed is the information given to those who are not aware of the choice yet. They get to see ALL the messages, and if the need strikes them to cut the noise level, they can do that just as you can.
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
At least the current setup makes people be active if they want to see everything
So you support forcing people to jump through hoops for the sake of making them "active"?
Let's apply this to everyday life:
A city with the population of 1,000,000 publishes a phone book. 408 city workers are chosen to decide who is "worth" communicating with, the others are not published directly.
They reasoning behind it is, "If someone wants to hear what *those* people have to say, they'll have to call information."
Now what if YOU were one of the ones deemed not "worth" publishing?
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
If you don't want your posts moderated, takes
Rob's advice, use a -10000 threashold
If I wanted to hear my self talk, I'd go into the bathroom and hum, but actually I post comments to COMMUNICATE with people.
For 407 select members to decide who sees my communication is a bit more control than I'd like to see. Let the user opt-out of my comments by boosting their threshold, don't make users opt-in on comments they don't even know exisit.
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
I marked two comments up. Good ideas, well written.
... isn't that an underlying ideal of communism ... stamp out those who disagree?
Glad to know that a moderators approval of our idea will grant us worthy of public consumption.
I'm also glad to know that SPELLING AND GRAMMAR count.
This is the problem with this system, it's a message popularity contest.
In my opinion (soon to be -1000 I'm sure), moderators should only look for things that would put slashdot in legal jeopardy. Why else would you moderate other than to cancel out unpopular (to 408) ideals and statements?
Hrmmm
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
And what about those MANY people who don't realize that 200,000 people are not listed at all and don't bother to ask?
... it's already at ZERO!
Many people wont even REALIZE that you can get a negative score, so why would they bother to lower their threshold
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
I am using Windows to use the Internet, and not by choice. Moreover, I have Linux installed on this machine, but have not successfully connected to my cable ISP. That is, not yet , but still working on it.
... the only thing incorrect is what people assume I mean by posting them.
I did not say it was an opinion poll, I said it were STATICTICS. Whether you LIKE it or not, you are using Windows. That was my point. There is nothing incorrect about those statictics
(As you'll see by my new sig, I have a new battle to wage. *grin*)
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
Your "worthwhile commentary" may be my useless dribble.
... is that what's driving this? I don't think it is but without starting all at the lowest common denominator and letting the people decide from ALL the variables, it surely looks like it is truly fear driving this "moderation".
Also, redundancy in opinion does not invalidate those opinions and does not make it a contest of who's best with words when it comes to who should be read. If you invite me to comment on a story, the fact that I agree with everyone should not be grounds for penalizing me.
My point is, moderate all you want with positive scores, but let people choose if they want to agree with you by setting their threshold up from the default ROCK bottom. If you don't agree with a message, that's fine by why should someone else be denied knowing that the message even exists? By setting a message to -1, -10, or -1000 you obscure unpopular ideals from the general userbase. Why not let THEM decide to trust your judgment instead of forcing your judgment down their throat?
Most people feel that personal expression is suppressed due to fear of what one would say
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
I completely agree with keeping flames/off topic/attacks at a lower score than on topic discussion, but not below the default.
The problem (which we are seeing more of today alone) is that moderation is being used as a validation tool for ideals and values. Have an unpopular opinion, well it only takes one of the 407 moderators to dislike it enough to obscure it from much if not all of the community here.
Moderation is fine when it's not forced as the default. Everything starts a zero and those who don't want to see the stuff you mention, can simply set their threshold to 1 or more. How hard is that?
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
Because like it or not, our comments (good or bad) bring traffic, traffic brings revenue in the form of banner impressions/clicks.
... then how would they pay for the NNTP server? *grin*
If all the comments were offloaded to a NNTP server, revenue here would dry up pretty fast
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
Why doesn't anyone realize that forcing a 0 threshold default while setting negative scores is just as bad as integrating IE into Win98 while saying "well they can install Netscape". We all know good and well that 80% of people stick with the default options, so marking a message in the negatives effectivily deletes it since most people will never change their default threshold.
... where's my packet monkey when I need him?
This is a hypocritical method for moderation.
If you want to use scores, that's fine but DON'T ALLOW NEGATIVES and leave the threashold at 0. That way, the default is to see ALL COMMENTS and if someone wants your 408 moderators making decisions on what they read for them, they are free to do so.
I also find it hard to believe that 408 people will agree on what's "worth reading", I suspect there will be scoring wars a plenty in the coming days/weeks/months and this will soon become EFNet with the people with power helping their friends and holding down the people they don't like.
*** DaBuzz joins #slashdot
<DaBuzz> Can I get a +v?
*** Buzz's_Friend sets mode: +v DaBuzz
*** Moderator_with_ego sets mode: -o-v Buzz's_Friend DaBuzz
<Moderator_with_ego> HAHAHAHA you guys suck, I own you
Get the point?
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
1. Allow the user to decide how much to penalize AC's. There could be a box in the prefs screen that would be set to however many points to adjust an AC post's score. That way, if a user really hates AC's, they could set it to -4000, or if they think they should be equal, set it to 1 (adjusting all of the zero's to one's) or whatever. Maybe this idea could be generalized into a very flexable killfile.
2. Have the moderators directly select what score they think an article should be, rather then plus or minus relative to the article's current score. This would avoid the potential problem of several moderators adjusting a comment down simultainously. How it is now, a comment could end up at -400 when all 400 moderators really only thought it should be a -1. Of course, it may be complex to figure out how the moderator scores should be weighted and rounded.
"Remember, there never were pineapple-almond cookies here."
How about when a Moderator changes the score of a post the system checks the score the moderator is basing his change on? So if a post had a score of one and two moderators see the value of one and each sends a decrement of 1. Now when the system process the first request it decrements it. Then when it process the second request it notice that the second moderator is moderating based off of a 1 and the post has already been decremented to 0 so it leaves it alone.
Of course these means that moderators may need to re-check posts. And work a little harder to get rid of nasty messages.
Maybe it would be feasable to allow a Forced change also. One that would change the score whether the score has changed from what the moderator saw it as or not.
Later,
Xamot
?
An even better way to insure the scaling would be to devise a scheme on how moderator are selected. Some kind of set pattern. So that those that aren't moderators know what they need to do become moderators. So that Slashdot is Open-Moderated rather then closed club of good old boys.
As long as moderators don't know who each other are this could possibly be done with a scaling/weighting system. Anyone with a average score of +2 for a month can moderate with a very low weight. Once a month a users average is checked and his/her voting weight is adjusted up or down one level.
The minimums, weights, and time lenghts could be tinkered with. This is just an example. And I know it isn't perfect. It's just an idea.
While I don't agree that only prolific posters should be moderators, there aren't many ways to judge users other then their postings' scores.
Later,
Xamot
?
As I said in my post: While I don't agree that only prolific posters should be moderators, there aren't many ways to judge users other then their postings' scores.
So how do you propose we find these representatives of the unposting majority? And I don't think random selection is a good idea. To much work for Rob and Co weeding out the bad.
?
First obvious point: There are no ad banners on NNTP, so how would Rob pay for the hardware? (And his food?) Also, switching to NNTP would kill the popularity of the site -- most internet users nowadays never deal with netnews. I know I rarely swim in those waters.
Instead of moderating comments, which can be very tricky, maybe you can moderate the users.
Everyone would start at a level of zero, and as comments are moderated, they can go up or down. That way, leaving it at zero will allow you to see everybodies comments. And even if one user has an occasional off-topic comment, it will be over shadowed by the normal ones from that user.
Sure you can have the moderation for each message too. But what if someone would like to read a specific person's comments no matter how off-topic, but otherwise only read on topic posts.
Think of the ebay approach to buyers and sellers. I usually check them out, and read comments before buying. If each sale were looked at separately, instead of a full history, you probably would not get an accurate picture.
And, this would even give reason to user's to have insightful comments. Gives you a good score. I'd love to say "Look at me, I have a score of 500 on slashdot. My public loves me!". True peer review, don't you think?
It might even be the criteria for posting columns. A good commentor is obviously posting what others would like to read.
Finally, letting slashdot user's give the points to the users (other than themselves), which might even help more. (Possibly factoring in the appraiser's points as well, and not allowing anonymous posters to give scores.)
Just my one cent... I'm too cheap to give the other.
Have you read my journal today?
That's exactly why I said, that the appraiser's pointage can be factored in.
May be complicated, but it's sound real good.
Have you read my journal today?
Wow, are there realy 75k bone fide /.-ers? Anyway, way to go Rob, keeping the site dynamic. The moderation thing is needed. As was pointed out, the option to set the threshhold is always there. Thanks for making /. a fun, readable place.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
While I never paid too much attention to the scores on stories previously, I did with the comments - threshold set to 0 - here. This is the first time I've ever seen a 2 or a 3. I really couldn't determine what quality made these comments better than the 1's. I found this interesting.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
-- Too lazy to get a lower UID.
This is a good idea IMHO, but there are some Slashdot functionnalities that are difficult to implement using NNTP.
I guess it might be difficult to implement the infamous Anonymous Coward poster. OK, I know there are many anonymous trollers lurking in Usenet, but I still think there is a difference. And the Anonymous Coward is useful when you want to spread a useful piece of info that does not stand well with eg your employer or cow-orkers.
Also, there are people behind firewalls that may not be able to access the NNTP server (and/or administrate the firewall to let them thru).
I think it would be difficult to keep posters into a specific thread (or subject tag) to link to the headline they respond to, lest we decide that each headline creates its own group.
And it would not be easy (impossible?) to implement the "search into older articles database" feature.
I totally agree, however, that reading comments with a newsreader would be much more comfortable than browsing. And let's not forget that Slashdot could be replicated among multiple NNTP servers, thus reducing the network and http daemon load.
Why is this scored -1? What's offensive or off-topic about this. The people at this site seem a bit paranoid, but maybe not if you're gonna moderate a post like that.
The current difference between anonymous and signed postings (1) is arbitrary, and different individuals may have different notions of an appropriate differential. Some people may prefer no differential at all, while others may prefer anonymous postings to have to meet a higher standard.
/. is almost unreadable when it's flooded by anonymous abuse, and unfortunately all too many anonymous postings are abusive or otherwise uninteresting to me. Nonetheless, some people have a valid reason for posting anonymously. The problem with the one point difference is that if someone moderates a signed article down by one point I'll miss it if I set my score to 1, but if I set it to 0 I get all of the anonymous posts.
IMHO (and _only_ my opinion),
What I think I'd rather do is set a differential of perhaps 3-5, and a threshold of perhaps -1. This will enable me to see the vast majority of signed postings while skipping all but the most highly rated anonymous ones. But I want to emphasize that that is *my* preference, and that people should be free to set whatever they want.
This is clearly moving in the direction of a kill file, which would probably be a real hassle to set up on the server side (simply because of the amount of processing that would have to take place on each article). I don't know the structure of the internal slashdot code, but this would seem like a stable intermediate point.
This looks like a very interesting system of moderation, and it will be most interesting to see how it plays out.
If a response to an article gets a good +score we get to see it, but do we see all the responses to it, or just those that also get a good + score.
I'd rather like to see trolls/flamebait/me-firsts off the root, but not lose down-checked responses on the threads.
Maybe if I could have a threshold of 2 for the root and 0 for the threads (or something?)
Just some random thoughts instead of going to get lunch...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
However, is it too much to hope for a spell checker?
Great idea, but only if it does UK English as well as US...
Just because I live in NY, it doesn't mean I don't have a colourful lifestyle...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
I am not a moderator. I generally don't have much to say that hasn't been said before. But, if I were given the task/priviledge of being a moderator, my employer might believe I am spending too much time reading slashdot and not enough at what I'm being paid for. Besides, I have no desire to be a censor.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
It sounds like a good idea if only the people whom we don't wish to hear would keep the same user ID. I feel however that would not be the case.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
I'm sure there's irony there.
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
I can't remember if the current code available for download is the same as the code which slashdot is running. (Probably not, how about an anonymous CVS of it Rob?), but the best way to get that kind of functionality in is surely to write it yourself and send Rob the patches.
It's certainly something I'd consider doing if I have sufficient appropriately shaped tuits.
Ummm... this is getting confusing - I remember the good ol' days where there were a handful of comments for each story and you could read them all in flat mode and... $oldmanramble
:)
Anyway, is someone going to write a Slashdot HOWTO now?
And Rob would intantly need a terabyte RAID to keep the list of IPs associated with each of the 2000 comments a day and a UE10k to do the database accesses.
Sure. If you ever get made a moderator, post that fact to some threads. Rob will remove your moderator status as soon as he reads it. ;-)
-5 used to suffice, but to be sure, set it to -50, or -1000. There is no minimum score, except the bounds of the numeric data type used to score it (at least that's what I figure).
Hopefully the people that can't (won't) read the rules and moderate based upon less-than-ideal reasons will be outvoted by the number of people doing "real" moderating.
If Joe Abuser says, "This comment sucks. -1 it is!" Joe Cool will notice it next and say, "Hey, this doesn't deserve to be -1.. +2 it is!"
Not to play down the problem any, but I really doubt that moderators will be attacking articles in "waves" like you suggest, with the first wave deciding the comment belongs demoted and the second wave deciding it should be promoted.
Chances are, it'll be bounced around "neutral" by the various independent moderators, getting knocked down, knocked back up, etc.
If it ends up being a very visible problem, we'll just have to deal with it when it happens. I haven't noticed any examples.
The moderation system sounds really great. I'm sure that a lot of coding went into making it work...
:)
The question I have is whether or not moderator actions are being tracked...
I don't think we're worried about abuse and all that. I think the moderation concept could possibly be a very interesting study in group filtering and collaboration.
Some interesting things to look at:
1) The kinds of posts that were marked down.
2) The kinds of posts that were marked up.
3) Do moderator use most of their points to market posts down?
4) Do they use most of them to market posts up?
If there are any sociologists or pschologists out there, here is the basis for a paper.
I'm afraid I disagree with both of your ideas.
Let's start with the use of real names. There are several reasons why this is a bad idea, and only one actually decent one: accountability. Admittedly, some folks would be less likely to post offensive or just plain stupid things if their own real name was attached to it for all to see, and that is a plus. They might also be less likely to post unpopular or controversial views, and that is the biggest weakness. Other people really value their privacy a great deal, and wouldn't use their real name to post *anything* much less something juicy or passionate, and they would be a great loss, too. And some people just don't use their real names much on the net, so using it doesn't make a lot of sense anyway. I knew a guy in college who always went by his nick, doubt. I happened to know that this was derived from his real name, and even knew what it was, but nobody used it. If there was some post with his actual parent-given monniker, I'd have no idea who that guy was. But if it said 'doubt' I think, hmm, oh yeah, I know him. I use reemul on the net. I'm not trying to hide behind some pseudonym, I just like the name. Anyone who wants to track down all my real-life info is welcome to mosey on over to internic and lookup the contact info on my domain, listed above. I think it even has my phone number.
Next is cost. Your (I feel) arbitrary $29 figure might have some utility in filtering the participants in Slashdot, in the sense that it may limit users to only those who feel that Slashdot is important enough to pay the money. This would certainly have the effect of drastically diminishing the numbers of casual users, folks who only wander by from time-to-time and post rarely if at all. But is that a good thing? Perhaps a person attracted to the site by word-of-mouth or a link in some other article has something valuable to say, or is at least amusing. Why cut them off? And certainly I doubt that this would cut down on trolls and flames. If I pony up the cash, I get to say whatever I want. Killing my access means that Rob would have to give me a refund, with all the touch costs and handling fees and problems with the credit card billing company. Ugh. So we may get less folks, but perhaps less inhibited folks. And what about people for whom $29 is a hardship? The students, the struggling freelancers, the international readers on the down side of the exchange rate? I wouldn't want to lose them, either. On the other side are folks for whom $29 isn't really that much at all, who could pay it and still not really care about the site. I blow that much on my lunch break buying a book and a nice meal most every weekday, $29 doesn't indicate commitment on my part.
(And just for you conspiracy theorists, do you think that the all those Microsoft employees you suspect are posting will be deterred by a measly little $29 fee?)
So, while I understand your concerns, I don't think that your ideas are the way to go.
-reemul
You're just jealous 'cuz the voices talk to *me*
Watch the scores. It appears that the vast majority of moderators up scores, rather than kill them.
SPF support for most open source mail servers can be found at libspf2.
Putting total and visible message counters a/o percentages would also give readers some idea of the S/N ratio in a given forum, which might also be interesting (entertaining?) information.
What I really would like to see is an option to distinctively mark all messages in a given forum based on my custom score threshold limit rather than physically removing them from my sight. Say coloring the subjects of good messages green, bad ones red, and neutral ones black, or perhaps using some sort of text indicator for lynx users.
That would allow me to see which messages are the "most worthwhile" and avoid things which are "bad", but it would still allow me to easily read a bad message if I have to in order to maintain the context in a given thread.
Just a thought from the peanut gallery...
--
-Rich (OS/2, Linux, Mac, NT, Solaris, FreeBSD, BeOS, and OS2200 user in Bloomington MN)
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
and didn't find any of your previous posts with any score other than 1. Which one was it or what did you say?
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
your post rate a 2 and the one immediately before which says almost the same thing, even using the same words, and phasing only rates a 1?
I understand that a we'll have a bit of wildness as the mods play around with their newfound influence, but really, someone decided to mote your post up one notch and not the other for no apparent reason except personal favoritism.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
...you blew it. sounds like you'd make a good mod.
/. to be a quality web site. From that simple statement one cannot directly deduce that moderators must be anon or else cease to be mods.
Sometimes, the survival of the "fittest" as determined by certain artificially established rules is not what you really want. Ask Rob, he'll tell you. What he wants is for
Oh well, this is Rob's baby and there are bound to be growing pains.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
The MEEPt used to be sharp, witty and entertaining but recently it's as if it has gotten sick or something. It's posts are often unitelligible, disjointed collections of words. The contrast between the 'old' MEEPt and the 'new' is such that I often wonder if there hasn't been an ID theft.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I can't tell what he gets by default since I can't tell if the post is raw or if it has been bumped up a notch or down three notches by the mods.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
I recall that slogan about bringing all the divided factions into one divided faction.
The others are blank. Unfortunately, the original has been silent, or silently deleted.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Rob, as much as anything, geeks love numbers. Everyone is asking about this score level, or that, moderator this or that. How about this idea:
Give each moderator a public/permanent number and publish their stats. Show how many articles read or downloaded, how many voted up(with a list), how many down.
That way I can identify with a moderator or a few. I can look and see modXXX has voted these up, and I agree his opinion, so I bookmark his(her) up-list. After a couple of weeks of scouting out the mods, I won't even have to vist slashdot.org anymore, just the pre-read bookmarks. Or allow us to use the prefs to select from a list, include the threshold and say "show all articles voted up by mods x, y, and z and anything else that is above 3", or something like that.
Even if someone chose to go by the raw score, they could still look at the mod stats and see what each has been doing.
Next, let the readers rate a story. Perhaps it will have to be confined to logged-in users, but anyway, giving the story a simple +/- and the sum would be much more efficient than posting another "Jo* *atz is a gasbag" reply.
Finally, along with the current summary header that includes the number of articles, add how many up/downs there have been or perhaps an average score. 217/0.76 or something like that.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
Allow logged-on users to post as AC? Put a checkbox next to the submit button that says "Post Anon". That way, the posts can be anon, and untraceable by the rest of us and the user can still have "user" privledges like preferences.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
--
Note that Rob has recommended that moderators adjust their threshold to -1 or so so that the situation you describe doesn't occur, and posts can be "redeemed".
Ok, so I'm not a moderator; is there any way to find out how far I missed the cutoff by? No doubt you don't have records of the old totals, Rob, but is there any way I can know what my lifetime comment sum is? Also, in the list which shows the comments posted in the past few weeks by a given user, could we see the score each comment currently has?
I'm actually a bit confused, as I think I've posted only one comment that was rated anything other than a 1, (if you don't say anything exciting, you also end up saying very little that's objectionable) and I'm frankly a bit confused at the rating on that comment too. Of course, I don't have time lately to read much slashdot so even had I made the cutoff I might out myself so that I'd lose moderator power and not have to deal with it.
About Rob constantly dealing with our sh*t, as you put it, I think that no matter who you are and no matter what you're doing if you doing something on the millions-of-persons scale in a public forum, you're going to have to deal with some sh*t. Rob shouldn't be surprised that a few idiots have found their way from AOL's chat rooms to slashdot.org and, in true warez puppy fashion, decided to flame the hell out of everyone. For each person who hates Rob for anything he's done with slashdot, there's dozens of others who really appreciate the work he's put in to creating a "portal" (Yeah I hate the term too) that people can use without dealing with commercial bullshit or some software company (MS for one) trying to propagate themselves. I'm certainly one of them.
I think that when a story is posted on the home page, the person who submitted the story should go up in rank. This would reflect the values of a moderator that I think slashdot is trying to pursue. People who have the initiative to go out and find stories and contribute to slashdot probably correlate highly to people who read and review comments posted on articles.
Any ideas about this?
Also, I'm still routing for slashdot to OPEN it's article submission process. Articles that don't make the cut should be available for perusal by those who are interested. Maybe a similar ranking system could be used to sift through the fluff. The front page would still be controlled by the core group so that articles make it in timely without having to undergo hundreds of pokes by semi-anonymous slashdotters. But older articles that never made it could float to the top and eventually appear on the main page.
Maybe that's something to look into?
comments?
Joseph Elwell.
And a large percentage of eligible people never vote in national elections, either. Whose fault is that?
The 80% (Or whatever the real figure is) that do not set their moderation levels, mostly do so because they don't care, and if they don't care what they see, why should I? If we set low default thresholds, effectively turning off moderation by default, we're just going to end up with all of these casual users all of a sudden seeing all of the FIRST POST!/THIS WAS POSTED LAST WEEK!/YOU SUCK!/LINUX SUX, MS RULEZ! posts, and we'll probably just end up seeing more noise as these people get annoyed and start flaming people. In theory, a low default threshold is nice, everybody sees everything, and only if they want it moderated do they set their preferences that way, but in practice, people that don't bother to change their thresholds (Not people who deliberately leave their tresholds alone because that's the way they want it.) don't want to make any decisions any more than people who can't be bothered to get up and vote, and if they won't do for themselves, then fine. Changing these people's default threshold to see everything would just screw up the s/n ratio more, because it would just invite more noise.
Shawn Asmussen
This wouldn't work too well.
Most articles are posted by CmdrTaco or some other slashdot demigod, and they already have special powers over the stories.
Also, if the person that submitted the story was given extra moderation rights, they could easily abuse the system by marking down the comments they didn't agree with.
I suppose moderators could also abuse slashdot's moderation system as well, but since they are not the person that submitted the story, they are not as likely to be biased.
My first question about the new system is regarding the scores the moderators give the posts... Is it the posts that get the scores (say +3) for instance, or does the user who posts get that new score and every posts s/he makes get that +3 score? I could see how moderators might start noticing intelligent, thoughtful posters and it would be nice if these posters were trusted with having a constant +3 score (or anything for that instance). But then again, a poster might have a great comment about a Palm Pilot one moment and then a useless flame towards SuSE the next.
/. term is :) )
/. to see this new moderation techinque. I look forward to only 16 comments on a page, all of which have been pre-approved for my viewing pleasure. I don't post much, or even read others comments that often but I think that might change. Enought with the fluff, give me the meat!!
It's also hard being a poster when your default threshold is say +2 but all your comments are logged as +1 initially. It requires that you adjust the threshold on each page that you post to so you can see your own comments and the potential majority of replies. I guess it is just a little complicated but not impossible. I've also noticed that when I change the threshold on a page the new page I am sent to won't print in index mode... only in the expanded threaded form. (I can't remember what it's
Anyway, I was totally invigorated this afternoon to come home and use
with regards to the recent slashdot moderation issues, i feel the following actions should take place:
/. account. maybe its already done this way, i dont know.
:)
a system just like Rob is talking about, with moderators moderating comments making it easier for people who want good comments, to read them.
making it so that moderators don't read AC posts, as 99% of them are garbage and should be disregarded. besides, if the writer really wants to post some meaningful comments, then they should go grab a
the improvements Rob is talking about sounds like they would work.. without many problems. there will always be AC garbage posts, but there will also always be good thoughtful posts which benefits the reader who's reading them.
kick ass rob! and take no prisoners!
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scott miga
Nice idea, but when you think about it, there's always a negative side. negative in being that if everyone becomes a moderator, that means flamers and people who only create conflict would become one. now that they are one, they can go around shooting down comments and what-not. you have a good idea, but there's always that one aspect that you didn't think about.
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scott miga
-On the front page, do not list total comments; rather, only list the number of comments that match the user's filterlevel;
i agree with this alot.. i often compare the filtered version againest the non-filtered number of comments.
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scott miga
ok, heres a crazy AC idea, but.. how about if AC's only get like 1 comment they are allowed, by using cookies or whatever, and that would pressure them to get accounts. i mean come on, how many times do you read intelligent AC comments? not very often.. limiting the number of comments they are allowed to post would a) lessen the number of total comments for each story b) lessen the number of ignorant AC comments per story c) lessen the number of broken keyboards due to the anger of people replying to AC flames. :)
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scott miga
Obvious problems with relative ratings (moderators add or subtract points from a score) have been mentioned by others. Absolute ratings (moderators vote for a rating in some scale) have advantages which haven't been mentioned, though. If each moderator rates articles on a scale from -3 to +3 (say), then it is possible to
:~)
1) Filter/sort articles based not only on some average score, but on the actual distribution of scores. High sigma (lots of -3 and lots of +3) may indicate an interesting but controversial post, while a cluster at zero indicates that nobody cared much about the post at all. Lots of geeks here; Many of us might enjoy dinking our personal "interest formula"
2) Maintain a vector of weights for how well my tastes line up with each moderator, by allowing me to rate posts myself and adjusting the weighting of each moderator by the difference between my choice and theirs.
It's been a very long time since I last read Slashdot. Frankly, it was getting on my nerves. Too many flames, and too much sensitivity of my part. Now some words about moderation. I agree with some of the posters that:
- People should see all messages by default. It's the only way to insure that moderation doesn't become a form of censorship. Those who don't want to see low-scoring posts (and this is their right) should specify it explicitly in their preferences. I feel this is an important point.
- Justification: lowering a message's score is a serious matter. Moderators should give a reason whenever they lower a message's score. This information (minus the moderators' names) would be available to readers by following the "Score" link. This means that moderators would have to think a little before shooting down a message. Thinking is always a good thing. This also serves to educate the poster, which is great.
Finally, I'd like to bring up a possible flaw with the system: I suspect that people who have their thresholds set beyond a certain level will only see biased posts. Perhaps this is what they want, but, lets face it, moderators are more likely to bump up a message if they agree with it than if they don't. Perhaps this turns out to be false, but I think that people should be made aware of the possibility. I guess we'll have to wait and see.
--
Adrian, hoping that someone bumps up this message so that Rob Malda has a chance to read it. I'd really like to hear his opinion on the above.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
The purpose of the moderation system should be to enable readers to filter the messages that they see. I should be able to see all messages unless I decide I don't want to. People who want to will, without a doubt, enable filtering. On the other hand, if certain kinds of messages are hidden from people who didn't specifically choose to filter them out, the system begins to resemble censorship. It's about enabling people to filter messages, not about allowing people to look at discarded messages. Hope you're all listening.
--
Adrian, who is feeling rather squishy.
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
Well, it looks like you did get flamed for it, but I'll add my two cents anyway.
/. could offer some sort of "premium" membership with extra features for members only (no, I don't know what those features might be). But, since banner ad revenues are enough to make Yahoo a billion dollar company, I don't think slashdot will need to start charging money to make ends meet any time soon.
/. moderators log in as AC to talk about the system without acknowledging their "moderator-hood" and therefore losing it. :)
You can find several examples of sites that cost money which do have intelligent conversation. The Well is probably the best example. I just signed up for an account today, since I figured that, in the worst possible case, I'm only out $10, and in the best case, the quality of conversation will be well worth my money. Delphi and the former BIX were also good examples, although Delphi Forums are now free and BIX seems to be dead.
However, your premise that the opposite applies (charge money, and the conversation will be intelligent) most definitely doesn't hold. Simply look at AOL: most AOL users are paying $22/month and 99.9% of them I wouldn't want to talk to if they paid me!
If Rob's tweaks pan out, and I think they will (simply adding more moderators is a great start), then I'd be willing to donate a reasonable sum of money to keep the system going, if it was necessary. Perhaps
As for anonymous access, we've already gone over the reasons why it's highly valuable. For example, employees of companies posting information "off the record". Even more important are the reasons you can't think of in advance: just today, I've seen
-Jake
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Jake
Thats what user preferences are for. Set your threshold to -1000000000 or so, if there isn't a button to ignore thresholds.
I have just set my comments threshold to 4. The silence is golden! I have to wonder if I'll see even my own comments, but the s/n is *much* better. :)
/. posse.
:D )
I also agree strongly with the AC that called for a moderation history list. That seems prudent for both the censored poster and moderator. It is often useful to have some kind of paper trail.
Keep on truck, Cmdr Taco and the whole
(Now, when are you adding spell check to the post comment page...
I really don't like this moderation idea as it stands... Expecting true impartiality from people is unrealistic. Grouping people by "score" smacks of Family Feud ("survey says!!! 42. good answer, good answer"). I say let the user make the choice ( no i don't want to set my threshold to -infinity to get all the comments). Just put a button next the comment's header that says something like "blackball" , which , for logged in users, will allow a user to add that individual to their user filter. That way if a comment is drivel to you, you can kill it (and any further posts by that author) but if you love someones comments that everyone but you hates, you can see them (and not have to see other lowly comments if you don't want to).
One recommendation: Wait until you get your thoughts together and make one top-level post (instead of the five you've made already). You would really be more effective at making your point that way (and there is a good point hidden in there somewhere).
And no shouting, please. Decibels just don't make it 'round here.
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"...the good ones are good in their own unique ways." 8-)
There's some merit to having a machine do your weeding for you, but I'm partial to the idea of fallible human beings doing the weeding myself (where practicable). Maybe it will even work.
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To all moderators:
Unless a posting is out-and-out abuse, let the comment sit for an arbitrary length of time (30 minutes, for example). If the comment attracts good-quality responses, it's probably worth keeping. (Unless, of course, the whole thread is abuse heaped upon abuse.)
To all others:
If a posting is not worth a rebuttal, don't post one. This will help the moderators sort the gold from the dreck.
-----
what happens if you say you are *not* a moderator? ;)
If part of my job at work was to moderate or censor the information of the internet feed, I'd quit in a heartbeat. Making a judgement for placing value on content has got to be hell. Having it placed as a job requirement, such as public librarians has got to be humiliating.
The only way I would consider judgement on a post is for damage control: your typical carpet bombing spam, the 10,000th first post, and maybe a dedicated lunatic who's undisputable sole purpose in life is to harrass and destroy intelligent conversation.
The signal to noise ratio is important, but I just do not know if value based moderation has much of an impact. I have set my preferences to -9 and the demoted junk is not that great, but I still like to know that I'm not missing anything. Freedom of speech means too much to me. I feel true noise, like sensless spam is not censorship, but regarded as a bandwidth damage problem. That's when the cluesticks should be turned on at full volume.
I love free speech and Slashdot is what happens when a large group gets together to talk. Its amazing and it works and best of all does not cost me a penny to participate.
A paid membership goes against everything slashdot stands for. /. is about freedom of information, freedom to share ideas, and express... it is OSS taken to journalism. You make us pay, you lose that. No if ands or buts. This isn't saying "everything in the world should be free!" or "commercial stuff sucks!". I'm not saying any of that, but you turn /. into what your suggesting, then Slashdot becomes nothing more than NY Times online or whatever... /. is much more than that. Today, it's the Linux (or gnu/linux or whatever) of Journalism. Lets keep it that way, sit back, and enjoy the ride. Lets see what happens - Rob will figure it out.
The downside to this would be the possibility that a brilliant respone to a stupid post would be lost.
Just an idea.
The same people who make sure that everything in life is perfectly fair: nobody.
There will be mistakes made in moderation. That's the price of a managable system. Welcome to Real Life(tm).
Gee, Thomas Jefferson, sometimes it's an appeal to practicality based on experience.
Of course, experience also tells us that the Earth is flat and that heavier-than-air craft can't fly and you will never, ever, have a date. But these supposed limitations have been overcome be people who dared to dream! Well, two of them.
On behalf of the small-minded oppressors of progress, I invite you to share your marvelous plan for reducing the noise on slashdot comments in a manner that it totally fair and doesn't require the computing power of the NSA.
Can't think of one? Oh well, Welcome to the Real World.
Non-anonymous people post stupid things, too. Consider me a case in point, if you want.
Is that simple enough for you?
Too simple. I don't see how it will have any effect whatsoever. You seem to be of the opinion that AC's are the heart of the problem. Not entirely.
Yup.
It's because of your personal experiences right? They must outweigh mine because you have the gonads to stand up and attack me personally.You're catching on.
That is much better than an intelligent comment, because only wimpy geeks ever have anything intelligent to say, right?.First of all, there was an intelligent comment in there. You just can't get past one humorous dig. Intelligent comments require intelligent readers.
And no, intelligent wimpy geeks are not the only people with intelligent things to say. I post them, after all.
I like the idea of having a scale.
I might also suggest that the average is computed with some dummy neutral score added in. That way, if a single person gives a +10 score, it won't go to the top of the list. If lots of people give scores, then you get a true average.
Mathematically, the system I'm proposing is somewhere between the current +1/-1 system and the idea of a simple average.
I really look forward to seeing if Rob can solve the moderation problem. Lots of attempts have failed before, but on the other hand Slashdot has a lot of things going for it that previous systems lacked.
LILO boot: linux init=/usr/bin/emacs
First idea: Score responses collaboratively, NoCeM-style. Let all users assign their own scores to responses. Then let all users determine which users' scores they trust the most. Thus, we wouldn't all have to go by Rob and Co.'s opinion on who's a good moderator. (This is not meant to imply any kind of opinion on how Rob and Co. are doing.) :-)
Second idea: Instead of dropping responses below a certain score, how about showing all responses, but putting some kind of flag or bullet next to those with a high score? Then you can have articles likely to be your favorites jump right out at you, while still being open to the serendipity of finding a pearl of wisdom among the "crap."
Could this score info be included in the "user account" (and perhaps the "user info") pages please?
A few years ago, I decided I wanted to learn socket programming so I wrote a chat server program. It worked with simple telnet and initially you could just log in as whoever you wanted. Eventually it became clear that many people have a propensity for impersonating others and making disparaging remarks while pretending to be them so a username/password feature was added. As it turned out, about 25% of the program ended up being features to deal with idiots and one of the most useful features was the "ignore" feature where you could specify a list of nicknames and the program would filter out anything said by anyone in that list. There weren't any complaints since it wasn't censorship "from above" (by me, the author of the program) it was censorship by a particular person. As an example, I might list meept and anonymous coward in my "ignore" list (actually I wouldn't, I like to see what everyone has to say) but this might be an interesting feature to consider adding to /. Anyway, word to the wise when writing *any* software that lets large numbers of people communicate, be prepared to write significant code to deal with the fact that a surprising number of people just don't seem to have any sense.
there are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide people into two groups and those who don't
Haha, yep - that was always the complaint of those who had been ignored on my chat program. I do agree with your sentiment (and admire your optimism that a person once seen as bozotic might ultimately make the transition to sensible). I do have a high degree of confidence that whatever system /. uses will certainly evolve to a state of reasonablness, usability and equilibrium. Certainly with my aforementioned chat program that was what happened - the right balance between letting people have their say and letting people choose not to listen to morons will always be found over time.
there are two kinds of people in this world - those who divide people into two groups and those who don't
as there is summary of some of my latest posts i would appreciate to include score info into that list, include number of comments to my post and moderation history with some comment why it was moderated
all this just to learn what's bad/good in my posts
hany
i agree with averages
hany
The only danger is that of positive feedback. An opinion which is valuable (i.e. arguably true, insigntful, etc) isn't necessarily popular. It would be a bad thing if opinions which were not well received (i.e. Foobar has these flaws which need fixing) were moderated into invisibility just because everybody voted them down. For this reason, I'm quite happy with the ideas on moderation.
But then, I don't have the time to read all 200 comments on some of thre threads. I try to guess which ones are interesting by looking at the subjects, but you miss many cases where the reply is more interesting than the question, that way. Maybe I should experiment with my preference level.
No, I think you misunderstand. People who are already modifiers get 1 'point', as I understand it, per 100 articles posted to slashdot by *anyone*. So effectively this limits how much damage a single moderator can do pretty strongly, which sounds like a good idea.
I'm a nature photographer.
when you feel like you're on the wrong rung of the evolutionary ladder? There's got to be some reason I'm the 10th moderator to forget to hit the "Log Out" link but the first to get hosed for it.
Ah, well, at least I get to set threshold=5 again now.
He didn't yank moderator status because I made some commentary on the moderation system, but because I was an idiot and forgot to log out and keep anonymity before doing it. If he wants to keep moderators anonymous for whatever reason, there's no way to say "It's OK, just don't do it again."
Think of it as evolution in action.
I'm not philosophical, I'm pissed that some idiot yanked my moderator status. Until I can find an idiot other than myself to blame, though, I'm just going to take it with quiet good humor, hope my friends aren't reading the user comments on this article, and muse on the fact that my public shame is being recorded in Rob's MySQL database for perpetuity...
I do find it ironic that I got yanked as a moderator for mentioning it immoderately... that's almost philosophical.
One thing that should be pointed out - not all the unfair negative scores are intentional. I just noticed a comment, Score=1, that while not deserving to be stricken from the page didn't deserve to be filtered up, either. So, I hit the checkbox to knock it's score back down a point.
Apparantly somebody else agreed with me, and tried to fix the problem at the same time, because when I came back, the comment was gone completely, Score=-1.
Rob, a request: Could you set all Moderator thresholds to -100, and just let those who really want to change them back? One of the most important ways to spend a moderator point is fixing an unfairly negative-scored post, but I suspect 98% of the moderators still have their thresholds set not to see negative-scored posts at all.
I like the new system. From what I have seen, you can signifcantly cut down the SNR by setting your ordering preference to High Score First, and either ignoring anything past where things start to degrade, or increasing your threshold to something above 1.
:)
I like it as it is.
1. To gain Moderator status, one only needs to re-register as a new account, reguardless of past transgressions. (I haven't actually tested this, so I could be fullofit)
2. Moderators could nullify comments by giving them a ridiculously low threshold. How low can it go? It seems to me you only need a few levels in either direction. I'd like to know that at "x" level (-3?) I'm guaranteed to see anything and everything.
That's it! Exciting changes. Should evoke lot's of "exciting" responses!
**>>BELCH
As I well know, sitting here quietly meditating on the many childish, uninformative and inflammatory postings I have penned in the past, leaving me devoid of honor in this time of great change...
Ah well. Fsck it. Now I'm trooly committed!
(or should be, anyways...)
Ronin Forever!
>:^)
**>>BELCH
Every castle needs its Court Jester. Like it or not, "MEEPT" is our Jester.
He/she/it should be given an unchangeable status of +99999, provided the priviledge only be abused in ways that would be fairly and democratically irksome and/or distressing to ALL SlashDot readers accross the board. This would provide much needed comic relief in times of strife and quite possibly bring about an end to World Hunger and Y2K paranoia.
Humbly,
Skip Kent
**>>BELCH
I wish the chosen souls well, they have a hell of a task keeping an eye on the conversations of /. I don't envy them or Rob for that matter. I've moderated before and it's hard to know where the line is when it comes to other people's sensibilities.
Good luck, one and all!
Now, where did I put that sledgehammer...Folks, you'll either take this as flamebait or agree, but there's a big fight over censorship here. Basically I call it like this:
* If the defaults show *all* comments, that's not censorship.
* If First Post/MEEPT!/* sucks is removed/demoted, that's censorship, *only* if the defaults do not allow it to be viewed.
What has been provided here is a peer review system to sort the signal from the noise. You are given the tools to decide if you want to see good comments, or junk. How you use those tools is up to you. Yes, having others decide what is signal and what is noise is not necessarily good or bad, but the probability is high that what about 400 people pick as signal and noise is going to come close to what you pick.
Now, if you view *everything* by default, and you use the filters to block out Anonymous Cowards and stuff the moderators mark as noise, *you* are the censor, not CmdrTaco, not the moderators. YOU.
I find it similar to the 4-star movie ratings. There are 4-star films that I can't stand to watch, and there are no-star films that are great, and there are others that should get a half or whole star more or less, but I'm not the person making the ratings. So please everyone, kindly spend some time on the toilet or your favorite thinking place, ponder what I said, and come back here in due time. Consider this a guideline at to what you might enjoy reading. If you like First Posts! or MEEPT!, go set your preferences likewise, if you like well-written commentary, set your preferences likewise, if you don't read comments, well, what can I say?
Also, reference my previous comment titled "Several Questions, Comments, and Ideas" above.
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James Turinsky, blah blah blah. Comments welcome.
Problem: People who choose not to view Anonymous Coward comments will not see comments from moderators. Comments from moderators might be insightful.
Solution: Create an Anonymous Moderator thing, so moderator comments are shown, and have an option to block them if people don't want to see moderator comments.
#end_lurk_mode
;-)
Lurk mode off.
99% of previous comments unread due to extremely slow link (I apologize if I cover something previously posted)
Comment: This is probably one of the best moderation systems I've seen so far.
Question 1: Is there a heirarchy of moderation, i.e. are there "Super" moderators who can change/revoke moderation that another moderator has done, remove moderator status from lower moderators, etc?
Question 2: Is there some sort of trial period (please don't mention a duration or specifics) for new/added moderators?
Question 3: Is there/will there be a system for moderators to provide feedback to comment posters as to why their comment was moderated (i.e. "flamebait", "MEEPT!", etc.)? This would be good to help those of us who think we're writing good comments, yet we're either stating the obvious or are off-topic but don't know it.
Question 4: Now that my brainstorm is getting underway, with all the recent customization, how about an area for "trusted" "part-time" story posters? Like those of us who have a story on Linux that's more than the "Linux on CNN" stuff, but almost never gets posted, e.g. the BeroLinux-Linux Mandrake distro merger? Something where people can turn off part-time story posters if they choose, and maybe combine the moderation feature into that so part-time posters are rated on the importance/quality of stories they post. To me at least, this seems like something that could provide more news (especially on those slow days) and still leave the "original" Slashdot for those who want it.
Question 5: How about a way to alert/flag stuff for moderators to moderate? Like a MEEPT! post (sorry to pick on MEEPT, but that's the only example I can think of right now) could get flagged for moderator attention, or something that goes waaaaaaay off-topic. Sounds useful.
Question 6: Is there some sort of "real" democratic system for the suggestion of new features and other feedback? I mean, is there like a congress of moderators or people who vote aye or nay on stuff after reviewing it, and their vote counts so many points, and higher-ups can veto it, etc.?
Question 7 (rhetorical): Will this actually be read and responded to, and acheive a high score?
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I'll gladly take full responsibility for this comment if you'll gladly mail general@lilithfair.org telling me why you like/dislike it.
James R. Turinsky, LilithFair.Org/SomeSites.Com owner/administrator/Linux user and advocate.
My old flame filter was "avoid the 'Read More...' link". It kept the flames down, but didn't do much for the discussion at large. For us old fogies, i suspect this will work very well at keeping a large amount of the adolescent pissing contests out of a potentially useful discussion.
Great work, Rob. Keep it up.
How's my programming? Call 1-800-DEV-NULL
Wanted to express my support for the new system. While I will be keeping my threshold at -1000, I like many ideas in the new system and am very curious to see how it works out.
Keep up the amazing work Rob and thanks.
As a penalty for the inexcusable flattery of this comment, I request my score be lowered as far as is possible.
What if you like reading anonymously and you want to see all of the posts? Up to this point, I was reading anonymously because the defaults were fine with me and I figured it cut down on stressing the Slashdot machines. Now I have to stay logged in all the time because I want my threshhold at -1000.
Since I have to stay logged in, Rob could easily keep track of the my activities on Slashdot. While I trust that Rob doesn't really care and isn't really keeping track beyond my non-anonymous posts, I prefer systems which rely on trust as little as possible.
A technical solution might be the ability to add the threshold option to the URL so you can specify it without having an account.
As an aside, I think Rob should pick a Magic Number which just means no moderation at all instead of saying things like -1000. As soon as Rob hits 1000 moderators or changes the amount a moderator can change the score, -1000 may not work anymore.
You can essentially disable the filters if you want to, now that the /. preferences are enabled. Just go a bit of the way down the page & set your default threshold so low that you should see everything, even the moderated posts (unless some overzealous moderator(s) decided to knock them down a couple hundred points). My current threshold's at -10, so I can see everything & not have to worry about what the moderators think is/isn't right for me. That's not to say I have anything against moderation; it seems like a good idea for those who want it. But those of us who don't want it do have a method of essentially disabling it.
-mike kania
I think it would be good to have access to scoring logs and comments. This would discourage vengeful behavior and quests to devalue peoples opinions with no regard for objectivity.
For the immature and unadult, the only thing worse than people hanging on to their enemies(whether those enimies are personal or in philosophy of ideas) every word, is to be caught being unfair and unbalanced and to be removed from power for it.
The result would be that moderators who want to act unfairly, would likely not act at all.
I knew there was somthing funny going on. I posted this Monday.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
Can we get the names and contact information for the new moderators?
;)
Someone posted this on another thread already, but moderator points aren't related to the number of posts the moderator writes, but to the number posted by _everyone_ on slashdot.
However, I think, the system might still be improved by taking up some of the ideas of the well-tested peer review process used in science. So, here some suggestions (some of them already appeared in in other comments):
- Moderators should attach a reason, at least when lowering scores. This has the benefit of giving the poster some feedback and forces the moderator to think about his/her action; thus, making moderation more objective.
- A fixed range of possible scores (maybe -20 to 20), as open scores don't help much and can be abused.
- Instead of allowing moderators to add and subtract points, a weighted absolute score combined with a upper limit on the number of moderators per article might be better.
*Chilli bows gracefully*-=- Just a random lambda hacker
>NewsTrolls does not censor.
Blatant advertising, eh? Hell of a scheme you have.
Anyhow, neither does Slashdot. I am unable to figure out how someone can possibly consider this 'censorship' when with 3 clicks of a mouse (or so) you can completely open up the floodgates for every stupid, insipid comment out there.
Assuming you'd want to, of course. It's your decision. Empowerment to the masses. What's wrong with that? Why should I be forced to wade through someone else's banal crap to find anything of interest?
Does your web browser 'censor' you by not simultaneously downloading every terebyte of web content at once when you start it up? How dare they only load a single URL!? What about all the other URLs out there that are being passed by? Heck, forget this fascist 'on topic' crap! Let's force Yahoo to simply list all of their links on a single page, lest we filter out some poor fool's site that has nothing to do with a given topic. In fact, we should randomize their links each time the site is loaded lest we bias based on alphabetical position.
Good lord, just turn the damn moderation off if it bugs you so much. It's in your power to do so...
- Darchmare
- Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
- Jeff
As far as displaying articles goes, in displaying the articles and comments, when it either lists comments (in the case of popular articles) or when it just displays threaded comments, I think it would be a good idea to throw in the score along with the posters name, time, etc. Possibly aide in the reading of articles, without sorting the whole thing by score..... Sometimes its funny to read something entirely pathetic. I tend to have quite a few laughs as a result of some extraneously off topic posts. (Self esteem boosters- i.e. someone is more of a moron then me)
just my 2 tenths of a cent
Food: It's whats for dinner
If people go back negative in comment scores do they get made no longer moderators?
And, is the converse true, people whose scores go positive get added to a list of moderators-to-be for vetting and them promotion?
But Rob, Rob...
:-/
I'm not entirely sure you've thought this thing through.
You see, you've selected a method, implemented it, and people seem to be saying, by and large, "Well, it's fine, but I won't be using it.", or else, "Well, it's not fine, and I won't be using it.".
Perhaps these are only the people who are vocal enough to express an opinion - we all know that people who agree with the status quo are pretty much silent.
Now, suggestions and comments of my own:
- First, why not, in future, propose these things to everyone, and let them make comments about how it could be improved. That way, Slashdot surely benefits from the experience and suggestions of its readers, which is certainly a large part of its success. (Not saying you've done nowt, Rob, but the readers haven't done nowt either.)
- Second, I don't want to read through reams of crap. I have no intention of doing so, either. However, if there's a good post to be read, then I enjoy reading any old reply to it - it's one thing to read a dull reply to the article, but often another thinng entirely to read a dull reply to someone else's post. Can there be an option to only have the moderation affect the top level?
- Third, I have to say that as I write this post, I'm very conscious of the moderation, of getting a good score. I try to write constructively anyway - anyone can go look at what I've written before, I don't post much. But I write constructively because I like to read constructive posts. Now I find myself thinking, "I'm criticising Rob - I'll be scored down." I hope I won't be, at least, I hope I won't be scored down purely for that, but where does it end? Does it matter that my grammer isn't perfect? Does it matter that I spell colour with a 'u'? Should I use shorter paragraphs? Should I write more or less? It's just plain disconcerting.
- And lastly, I'd like a user pref to be able to drop printing the scores. I took no notice of them before, and I'm quite happy for them to exist, just I don't feel any need to read them. Except on my own posts.
Right. Time to post this and check out that score...
[This is a repost of something I posted to an earlier story. It is more appropriate here. Yes, I agree with crow.]
What we really need (though I don't expect it will arrive any time soon) is collaborative moderation.
When reading comments, you can say 'I like this comment' or 'I don't like this comment'. Then Slashdot will match your likes / dislikes against other people with similar tastes, and will guess on your behalf which comments to show, based on
what others with the same tastes as you have chosen. That way, there is no central moderator for people to be pissed off with. Occasionally, Slashdot would show a comment even if it thought you might not like it; if it turns out you do like it, that signals that your preferences have changed from what Slashdot thought.
Kind of like Amazon.com's recommendations: 'other people who liked this comment also liked these comments'.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
How are threads moderated?
That is, if I decide to view by thread, do I have to give up any benefits of "order by score"?
If I decide to order by score, do I have to give up threading?
Is the score of a thread a weighted average of the messages (first messages count more than the nth level deep ones)?
-Richard Campbell (ulmont@bellsouth.net)
-Richard
If we don't see something that makes it obvious we're a moderator, then we aren't one? :( Poop! I could swear I got marked up once or twice...
In the Real World (tm), pure democracies lead only to gridlock. Think about it. Governments usually try to do things that are not in individuals' interest, but are in the interests of the society as a whole. Do most Americans want to (personally) pay for highway maintenance & construction in Montana? No! Most will never drive through Montana. Yet I would bet that a large percentage of Canadian lumber (a large percentage of lumber in the US comes from Canada) comes through Montana. Pollution control? The return on investment is too long. Public education? Again, the return on investment is too long. Yet all these things are picked up by the government. The society as a whole benefits, even though it is not necessarily in any single individual's best interests.
The same is true with comments. If this were a True Democracy (c), people would not strike down just those posts that are inflammetory and off topic. People would strike down opinions that they personally do not like. The only things left would be the mediocre posts--the ones that don't challenge anyone's personal viewpoints. This is exactly the opposite of what Slashdot has been in the past, and it's not where I want to head now.
A good balance, and one that has stood the test of several millenia, is a representative democracy. Now, it is true that our current representatives are not elected, unlike with governmental representatvie democracies. However, I am a believer in Plato's concept of the Philosopher-King. That is, the most capable and best rulers are the ones that do not want to rule. If I understand things properly, the current moderators did not "run" for the position of moderator; rather, they were selected by Rob & his cronies. This closely follows the model of a Philosopher-King. In the end, we have a representative democracy, Plato-style!
I personally think the current moderation system works rather well. I'm actually rather curious what Rob has up his sleeve for the next generation. The number of inflammatory & off-topic comments has dropped significantly in the past few months. With the current additions and modifications, I think it will only get better...
--Be human.
The US is not a pure democracy. It is a representative democracy. Exactly like slashdot, except that the representatives are voted into power instead of being hand-picked by CmdrTaco.
If you think the US govt is gridlocked, you need to study the politics of Italy or Israel. They put the US govt to shame in the area of gridlocked govt's.
--Be human.
What if instead of the moderators being able to arbitrarily add or subtract x points from a post up to a limit of so many points, what if they can only change the score of a particular post by 1 point (up or down). So if you think a post sucks then you can drop its score by one and if other moderators agree with you then fine (democracy in action) but there would be no possibility of abuse.
i think that's essentially how it works, and i think in theory it should work pretty well. the problem is, again, if moderators drift from being impartial. other moderators should be able to catch this though, provided they:
1. happen to read that particular post
2. think the post was unfairly moderated (this obviously loops back to the impartiality issue)
3. think balancing out the moderation of the post is worth spending points on
4. have moderation points left to spend
enough moderators with respect for the responsibilty and power given to them should, hopefully, make the system work. and if you don't like the idea, lower your threshold. constructive criticism is better than whining about how it's unfair/censorship/whatver.
"onward!" cried the copper man, little knowing brass corrupts...
...how do you know if you are a moderator? Does it show up in your user prefs, or something?
since posts have been moderated, i think it's safe to assume you know if you are, and should be able to figure out if you're not... (and if you can't, you probably shouldn't be one anyway)
"onward!" cried the copper man, little knowing brass corrupts...
Also, redundancy in opinion does not invalidate those opinions and does not make it a contest of who's best with words when it comes to who should be read. If you invite me to comment on a story, the fact that I agree with everyone should not be grounds for penalizing me.
I don't think the original poster is invalidating the 100 "me too"s. The idea is to pick the best one for those who set their score to see the 10 best articles. I don't see how you are being penalized. Your score is not going down, a better[*] post is moved up. You both are still in the default scorelevel. Are you upset that you won't have the best[*] post? Its called being in a meritocracy.
Most people feel that personal expression is suppressed due to fear of what one would say ... is that what's driving this? I don't think it is but without starting all at the lowest common denominator and letting the people decide from ALL the variables, it surely looks like it is truly fear driving this "moderation".
No, it is not fear. I think this has been driven by crap. If there was no crap, there would be no need for filtering.
Rob has already stated that abuse of moderator status will result in dismisal. What do you have to fear? I'm relatively certain if a moderator picks on you without reason, Rob or someone will remove them.
Brian
[*] Better is subjectively determined by peer review. (so is crap)
I had always wondered what the criteria were for a downgrade... Rob has explained those a little bit.
Now, a set of radio buttons for the moderators, presenting them with a selection of reasons for the downgrade would be a great thing. It would serve as a reminder of why there is moderation in the first place, and it would help keep the moderators honest.
Heck, there could even be an "other" radio button for things that just couldn't be categorized... but moderators with too many "other" clicks would be closesly scrutinized.
i love the fact that this motivates people to consider the quality of their contributions, and the limited purse is a very smart move.
/.'s path remains hyperbolic, you can start printing banknotes in about 5 years time.
but it's all a bit feudal, isn't it? rob the conqueror handing out baronies to a few of his trusted confidants, then having them eliminated by shuffling men with squints if they start to undermine his authority.
sounds like fun, mind.
so how about turning moderators' points into a currency?
it seems to me that the point is to broaden the distribution of authority while trying to concentrate it in areas where it will be exercised wisely.
so let's say that when a moderator hits '+', she transfers a point from her account to the account of the author. when she hits '-', a point is transferred from both the mod and the author to the central bank; if the author has none, she goes into debt. if the mod has none, she can't act (as now).
(It's obviously important that promoting and demoting cost the same)
all posts from an author enter the system with a score based on their current balance. just to firm up the incentive.
people who demonstrate quality and diligence can be rewarded with a stipend of twenty or thirty points a week (or more), to spend as they see fit (which is pretty much what happens now).
and not even rob should be allowed to raid the bank: the system would have to be carefully balanced so that the flows into and out of the bank were about the same and the overall number of points remained in proportion to the level of activity, or it would all go boom-and-bust and the railroad tycoons would move in.
then you only have to solve the problems of vindictiveness, conformity, cliquery and http-lag (not in that order).
and if
will
This is a problem with any collaborative document if there's a lag (see any irc transcript for incomprehensible proof). the system is slow to respond - too many loops, too much lag - which means that tendencies can be exaggerated or suppressed in unrealistic ways and we get chaos where we wanted homeostasis.
you can give the system authority over the mod, as someone suggested, and disallow their action if the situation has changed since they acted, but what if they would still want their action to take effect? the whole point of moderation is that the system can't judge.
but the alternative is an administrative equivalent of all those posts that say 'first!' from about halfway down the list.
btw, can any comment containing the word 'first' be demoted by 100? apart from this one.
i can see two options, both pretty superficial.
you could indicate each comment's direction of travel (2 and rising, 2 and falling, -143 and plummetting, you know), so that people see that others are acting.
or you can do the state comparison, but include a verification step:
mod issues instruction to drop from 2 to 1. message is meanwhile already at 1. system notices, informs mod, offers 'do it anyway' button. mod can either vent spleen or save token for later.
which is probably easier.
good work, tho.
will
hmm... but it already is primarily a linux-only forum. just make a statement like Photoshop beats the living snot outta Gimp, and see what kind of reaction you get. the readers/posters are primarily pro-linux/anti-mickeysoft, which is kind of interesting in light of the fact that a good number of the readers/posters are probably gainfully employed as a result of mickeysoft's influence in the marketplace (how many of you fix NT server problems for a living and if the damned thing worked _all_ the time, would you have a job?)
Just my two bits coming from a person who is gainfully employed working with both mickeysoft and UNIX.
the amazing bc
just another guy doing IT
webnaut, music junkie, holes-in-head
To keep moderaton fair and unbiased, I would suggest:
1. Disable all moderation functions if any threshold above say -100 is used
2. Don't display the current scores of the articles in moderator-mode (I disagree with you on this one - It is you job to judge the article and not the work of the other moderators)
3. Don't allow moderators to vote even on followups to their own articles
>We all know good and well that 80% of people stick with the default
/. are not stupid. They will see, as you have seen, that leaving the default at zero will hide all posts with a negative score from their view. If that's not what they want, they'll change it.
/.ing experience.
>options, so marking a message in the negatives effectivily deletes it
>since most people will never change their default threshold.
I assume that the majority of people who visit
>If you want to use scores, that's fine but DON'T ALLOW NEGATIVES and leave
>the threashold at 0. That way, the default is to see ALL COMMENTS and if
>someone wants your 408 moderators making decisions on what they read
>for them, they are free to do so.
The system as it stands now has no absoulte lowest threashold, making it virtually impossible to guarantee that all comments will be seen. However, if the threashold were set to somewhere around -10,000, as Rob suggested, it's pretty unlikely that any would not be shown.
I agree that there is a potential problem with "scoring wars," but I'm sure something will be implemented to curtail that sort of thing. Overall, I don't see why you're so upset about this. If you don't want your posts moderated, takes Rob's advice, use a -10000 threashold. Personally, I think its a great system. I set my threashold to 3, read every post, and they all had content worth reading. A very welcomed change to the
Cain't resist...
MEEPT
Your example makes sense for a government, but it doesn't really apply to /. moderation. The moderators here are supposed to be anonymous (to each other, as well, not just to the non-moderator readers). There are no factions among the moderators, because there can't be.
Besides, it's all just an experiment. If it's not working, then I'm sure that Rob'll change things so that they do work. I do wish that some of you people would just sit back and breathe every once in awhile.
Stress kills. Relax.
A host is a host from coast to coast...
Unless it's down, or slow, or fails to POST!
I posted the above reply and filled in the 'login' box above the reply. In Preview it confirmed the poster as me - Firefalcon. Yet it has posted it as an AC. What happened?
...you're probably not the only one who feels that way. I suspect that there are probably a good number of moderators who will look after him appropriately.
Coincidentally enough, setting your moderation threshold to about 3 or 4 will have the same effect. Why don't you just do that, and we can all keep our $29, okay?
I agree with what some other people have said here... charging a fee is a good way to lose most of the comments, including the interesting ones.
Part of the value of slashdot is the diversity of opinion. If you don't like your ideas challenged (even by drooling 12 year old h4x0rZ) then please go sit quietly in the corner and leave us alone. We like Slashdot how it is.
Thanks, ./ creators and maintainers. IMHO, you've created a functional, non-censoring, intelligent system by which people see exactly what they want to see. You've created a good model, one which I hope to borrow in discussion forms that I creat in the future. Thanks for your hard work.
Well put. Fairly interested in this, myself, as a non-moderator as you can see from me using my real nym :) I also agree that the moderaters should act 'out in the open' so we can see who they are and know what they are doing. I can't think of a single system that works well and is well liked that is administered behind a cloak of anonymity. Although, knowing exactly which accounts are owned by moderaters, might induce some stupid people to try to crack passwords. But in all seriousness, I don't see that that would be a problem. A simple script should be able to tell if someone has attempted to login 9999 times.
I'm still completely flabbergasted.
- post-as-well-as-I" mentality will lead you...How about no posts from competitors? No posts from women? No posts from Jews? It's the SAME THING.
/. out and leaving an empty useless shell where everyone's comments are nice and somewhat intelligent AND SAY NOTHING...
It is SO WRONG.
I want a default where I only see the posts from -10s and worse...those are your core readers, rob. Those are "the truth". Flamers, 1st Posters, Me toos...all of them...
I don't want to read what the rest of you hipster marketing wanks who went to one Comdex event and think you're cool have to say...you know nothing. You're only regurgitating whatever feeble minded crap your feeble minded 3rd rate business schools spooned into your heads. I want to read from the angry, the illiterate, the strange and the vicious. They have clarity.
Fuck this.
I'm writing an article on this one it makes me so nuts.
You have no idea where this kind of "your-voice-is-not-as-important-because-you-don't
Rob, Hemos...you know I know what I'm talking about here. DON'T DO THIS TO SLASHDOT.
You're ripping the soul of
I had no idea this would affect me so deeply...shit I've posted 5 times now in this Thread...
Please reconsider.
--diva
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
I think unfortunately you're already seeing it...moderators have more "staus" with the management than non-moderators so there begins to be that smug I'm-better-than-you attitude...it's a shame. Even geeks are status hungry.
I feel for the issue you have, Rob. So far in NewsTrolls we only had one flagrant abuser of anonymous (we call it anymouse) and even he was only joking around...so hopefully we won't have to put in the restraints like you have.
Good luck on trying this out!
--diva
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
You said:
"Just saying "M$ sucks, or RH sucks, etc. is liable to get nailed quick, unless the poster (AC or not) has a good point to make."
WHOA! You mean you're moderating CONTENT, not just swear words or personal attacks?
Editing or deleting or low ranking "Microsoft sucks"???
This is going to get interesting...
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
I put my threashold at 10 for the intelligent comments and got nothing...
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
So I reset to 2 and looked around...
2 /0950223&pid=0#420
http://www.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/03/2
(If that works) it shows you the 3 comments that were "deemed" appropriate for the Wired on Kipling article... one of them just asked where he could buy the bag???
There doesn't seem to be a rhyme or reason as to what is deemed more than one (although I apparently am not deemed more than one.)
This is censorship.
What next "Slashdot Lite" with comments 3 and above only that you can market to ZDNet or so advertisers will overlook your "controversial-ness" so you can sell Fucking Pampers????
No this is wrong.
NewsTrolls will never do this. Ever.
I guess this will make me a negative number now...
VIVA THE MINUSES!!!
Bullshit bullshit bullshit.
Bad penguin...no fish!
--diva
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
I like you because you have a Tom Waits quote...but you said:
"They have no idea what they think, generally because they cannot and do not think"
That, Louse, is dangerous thinking...commonly known as FASCISM.
Don't fall for it.
VIVA THE MINUSES!
--diva
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
I GUESS I SHOULDN'T USE BOLD OR UNDERLINE OR USE LOTS OF EXCLAMATION POINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! EITHER.
Freedom released the energies of the masses not by exhilarating but by unbalancing, irritating, and goading.
- Eric Hoffer
Every man...should periodically be compelled to listen to opinions which are infuriating to him. To hear nothing but what is pleasing to one is to make a pillow of the mind.
- St. John Ervine
If all mankind were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, then he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.
- John Stuart Mill
Difference of opinion leads to enquiry, and enquiry to truth
- Thomas Jefferson
The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.
- Leonardo da Vinci
As always, thank you to the invaluable people of FreedomsNest for providing the quotes database.
I slept on this issue and this morning I'm more convinced than ever of it's wrongness. So I will write an article about it. Rob, hemos, I am still hoping you will reconsider this decision.
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
I did it in the Kipling Hacked and me and Thomas Jefferson promptly got a -4.
Fuck it.
I am an invisible malcontent, proud to be a minus, a nothing, a no one in the suburbs of slashdot.
I'm the kid you don't want to let your sister go out with.
I'm the old man in the weird house down the street who coughs too much and doesn't bathe enough.
I'm the Stepford wife propped up on Jesus and Mother's Little Helper.
I'm the overgrown weeds.
I'm the geek.
VIVA THE MINUSES!
-diva
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
If any of you are interested, we're discussing /. decision here.
And say what you want.
NewsTrolls does not censor.
VIVA THE MINUSES! VIVA THE NEGATIVES!
--diva
diva Pasty Drone NewsTrolls, Inc.
slrn and strn have both scoring and killfiles. This *is* a Linux crowd. :)
I think maybe I've been misunderstood... It seems like some folks think I'm suggesting everyone be able to score everybody else's stuff. That's not what I was proposing (and, considering how many times that's come up in this topic, I'm surprised no one has mentioned everything.slashdot.org, which seems to work just like that).
The more I think about this, the more strongly I don't like this idea of other people doing my filtering for me. Provide us with tools that we can apply to our own accounts, like the "Exclude this stuff, or these people" section in Preferences, and add a section where we can give people/topics higher priority, and forget about the moderation. Rating and filtering is something people should be doing by themselves, for themselves.
Of course there would still be ad banners. They'd be on the *web* portion of /. The part where all the Slashboxes and other stuff would be.
/. is just too big to remain a strictly web-based enterprise, and it seems like Rob is trying to reinvent the wheel. Scoring and filtering large amounts of mostly textual information is what NNTP (and trn/strn/slrn/Xemacs/xrn/etc) are designed to do best.
Make the headlines another slashbox, perhaps...
Opera, Symantec, Intel, Novell, Microsoft... all of those have newsgroups. Almost all ISPs have their own newsgroups.
As for killing the popularity of the site, it seems to me that more people would be put off by the sheer volume of information presented on the home page than by a switch to NNTP.
I only log in every 2 to 4 days, for instance, and by the time I get around to any interesting article, there are usually hundreds of followups. Even Rob admits there are too many posts to follow most of the stuff here. I generally run with images off, as well. It's bad enough that I have to use Netscape to get here, and get around here; I certainly don't want the overhead of lots of little pictures bloating NS even faster than it usually bloats.
The Opera web site allows its readers to access an NNTP server, so I don't see why Rob couldn't do something similar. Or, if NNTP is absolutely out-of-the-picture for whatever reason, there's always something along the lines of Newsguy's web-based usenet interface (they call it EDRN).
I know there's probably some really obvious point I'm missing, but I don't understand why /. doesn't just switch to an NNTP interface. *Particularly* with 75,000 users, and with most articles getting 200+ comments within the first couple of days.
Using NNTP, people could use whatever newsreader suits them best, and do their own filtering and/or scoring the usual way.
There could be a slashdot.headlines group, for instance, where all articles are (cross-?)posted, with followups set to their relevant sub-topic groups: slashdot.debian, s.redhat, s.microsoft, s.tech, and so on. Moderate the s.headlines group to ensure that it contains *only* the headlines, and not followup discussions, and that's pretty much all that would be needed, it seems.
Sorry for the caps in the subject, I promise this isn't a flame.
:) Otherwise, I think the "last comments posted" display in one's user page should show what scored those posts have gotten.
:)
/.. In this country I can read all the governments documents (that are not specifically secret) and I find that a very good thing.
1. A "simple" way to find how my comments are moderated.
Elaborate "how". As in, who did it? What they scored it as? That breaks the anonymity, which is essential to the moderation, or all moderators would get mailbombed each time they did anything.
2. A "simple" way to find which comments are moderated for a specific article.
Agreed with this... One should be able to see the score of each article, as well as a count of how many messages are moderated in an article. I've been told the moderators can already see this, so why not enable that for all?
3. Tell us what the lowest possible score is, I abhore censorship and would like to see all comments..
That's simple math. 408 moderators? The lowest possible score is -408 then. Got mine set to -9999 so I think my threshold will scale for awhile.
Why? So I can trust
I think everyone is MAJORLY overreacting to this. No messages are being deleted. No messages are prevented from being viewed. Setting a sufficiently low threshold will reveal all. The only gripe is that the default for users' thresholds are positive, but that's up to the user to change.
THE ENTIRE MODERATION SYSTEM CAN BE EFFECTIVELY COUNTERED FOR YOU IN ABOUT 10 SECONDS.
I think the current limit on moderators, one point change in a post's score per 50 messages posted on Slashdot is a decent enough limitation to prevent obscene abuses like that.
I mean, say 1000 posts happen in a Slashdot day, that's 20 points. Not a *whole* lot of damage can be done with that. Maybe force a message down to -20, but that's a pretty blatant abuse and will probably have the person smoted pretty shortly.
But a point here and a point there is a lil hard to cause damage with.
To correct myself on what might have sounded pretty bad ("simple math"):
-408 is not the lowest score, tho it's a pretty low threshold. Figure 408 moderators, if they were all pissed and got 20 points each a day, and all decided to nuke one message for a month, it'd be around -244800...
So if you're expecting that, go ahead and set that as your threshold.
A city with the population of 1,000,000 publishes a phone book. 408 city workers are chosen to decide who is "worth" communicating with, the others are not published directly.
All the messages are "published". All our "city workers" do is push the messages back in the pages. And once they get so far back, magic origami makes them hidden. But they're still there.
They reasoning behind it is, "If someone wants to hear what *those* people have to say, they'll have to call information."
Bad analogy. You don't have to "call information" every time you want to read the hidden pages. All you have to do is, flip to the back of the book, pull the tab that says "Undo Magic Origami", and the book expands as all the messages appear.
Yeah yeah, magic origami. Stupid way to phrase it. But that's basically what's happening. It only takes a few clicks to get all those posts back. If you don't like it, disable it. Where is there any revocation of choice here?
Just watched this message leap up through two pages of scroll inbetween replying to messages, so something tells me the fat lady hadn't sung yet when you replied. I think it must have a positive score by now.
ANd as I end every message in this thread... you people are so over-reacting.
You can choose by what criteria to sort your comments display. I have mine sorting by score right now, with my thresh set to -999. I see all, but can choose to move along to another story if it starts going silly.
ChrisMul said: ...any limiting of comments is a form of censorship, though not necessarily in a bad way... -- but this isn't strictly true.
While on the one hand I tend to abhor, for example, corporate/private restrictions on speech, and think it's a dangerous area that eneds watching, it's justn ot true that any and all forms of moderation or editorial input can be dumped into some wide-sweeping definition of "censorship".
It's important to retain the rhetorical impact of labelling something or someone a censor. It shouldn't be used lightly, and it's not like we can't discuss the pros and cons of moderation or editorialism without resorting to calling everyone a censor. In fact, it's kind of argumentatively lazy to just throw that word around.
Oddly, it seems to be in the air. The owner of one mailing list I'm on recently and temporarily gagged two posters, and ppl wigged out, as if jackbooted government thugs had just barged into their homes and stolen their secret printing presses in the basement.
At the same time, a new policy of account-suspension was just launched on a chat server I hang out on, and ppl wigged out over there too. Interestingly, that particular case echoed some of Jon Katz's sentiments about how constant bullying of new people in effect silences those new people becos it's just not worth it.
All in all, it's rather astonishing how well Slashdot manages to perform this experiment in using software combined with people to try to speak both to individual freedom and choice as well as to some sense of common good or social contract. Few other places online seem to strive so hardcore towards trying to fulfill both needs at once.
Many of the most worthwhile usenet groups are moderated. The rest tend to look like this:
alt.talk.alt.newsgroups
Headers:
1. 4001 best nude teen pics
2. Make Money Fast!
3. New Site best porn on the net!
4. Ware Can I getz sum WaReZ?
5. Best infant porn site!
6. I like alt newsgroups
7. Sell your product on the Web!
8. Bestiality quicktime videos right here!
9. Dis group sux
10. Be your own boss!
Sad as it is.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Moderation is great, and I'm thrilled Slashdot is taking a nice step in that direction. But designing a moderation system is also very tricky: it has to be user friendly, but safe and reliable. This balance will greatly depend on the integrity and quality of the moderators.
In other words, moderators have to be moderated. For now, this work (of moderating the moderators, let's call that 'metamoderation') is handled by Rob, and so it is up to him to tune the balance mentioned above to help him in his task.
I will try here to consider the challenges of metamoderation, and propose some more technical tools to assist Rob in that task.
The goal of moderation is to assign a rank to all comments, and rank them well. The available ressources for that work are the moderators. Of course, all moderators are not perfect.
Ok, what do we mean by "a perfect moderator"? Well, we have two possibilities: it can either be Rob (this is the case if you read slashdot passively, and have a total trust in Rob's jugement to guide you through your slashdot experience), or it can be you, the reader (obviously, you know better!). The second solution is obviously better, but is more difficult to implement. Now, we can define the true rank of a page to be the rank decided objectively by the perfect moderator.
If the perfect moderator were able to rank all by himself, it would be just great. Oviously, that is not possible. Thus we need to use non-perfect moderators, and thus, have some kind of control over the error introduced. The way it is done right now is totally static: In the first phase, Rob used his human jugement to hand-pick 20 moderators. In the second phase, he used the assumption that a person who posts good comments is a "good" moderator. One could design a more complicated system, but let me delay this discussion until later.
Ok, so now, we have a bunch of good moderators, so we need a voting system. The moderation guidelines talks about the requirements of this system for the rank results, but doesn't talk about the requirements for the voting system. This causes some problems. Here is a scenario using the current voting system:
Some article talks about night people vs. day people. If it is posted during the night, night people will push down messages bad for them until they becomes -1, and will be upped later to +4 by day people when they wake up. If the message had been posted during the day, the contrary would have happened.
Altough this scenario is very improbable, it reveals a few flaws in the current voting system. So here are a few requirements for a voting system that may solve some of the flaws
Enough with the criticisms already. Here is a suggestion for the voting mechanism:
every moderator gives a score between -3 and 5 (or something) to any message they read. All other messages have the status "not read" for that moderator.
Ok, I admit the memory necessary to keep track of all that info can be a problem (but you could for example close the votes after 24hours, and delete that info), but there are clear advantages:
Ok, I touched many things here, and I have many more ideas, but I can't keep on writing forever....
P.S. are you going to release the code for the new and improved slash?
-- Slef
Moderation is great, and I'm thrilled Slashdot is taking a nice step in that direction. But designing a moderation system is also very tricky: it has to be user friendly, but safe and reliable. This balance will greatly depend on the integrity and quality of the moderators.
In other words, moderators have to be moderated. For now, this work (of moderating the moderators, let's call that 'metamoderation') is handled by Rob, and so it is up to him to tune the balance mentioned above to help him in his task.
I will try here to consider the challenges of metamoderation, and propose some more technical tools to assist Rob in that task.
The goal of moderation is to assign a rank to all comments, and rank them well. The available ressources for that work are the moderators. Of course, all moderators are not perfect.
Ok, what do we mean by "a perfect moderator"? Well, we have two possibilities: it can either be Rob (this is the case if you read slashdot passively, and have a total trust in Rob's jugement to guide you through your slashdot experience), or it can be you, the reader (obviously, you know better!). The second solution is obviously better, but is more difficult to implement. Now, we can define the true rank of a page to be the rank decided objectively by the perfect moderator.
If the perfect moderator were able to rank all by himself, it would be just great. Oviously, that is not possible. Thus we need to use non-perfect moderators, and thus, have some kind of control over the error introduced. The way it is done right now is totally static: In the first phase, Rob used his human jugement to hand-pick 20 moderators. In the second phase, he used the assumption that a person who posts good comments is a "good" moderator. One could design a more complicated system, but let me delay this discussion until later.
Ok, so now, we have a bunch of good moderators, so we need a voting system. The moderation guidelines talks about the requirements of this system for the rank results, but doesn't talk about the requirements for the voting system. This causes some problems. Here is a scenario using the current voting system:
Some article talks about night people vs. day people. If it is posted during the night, night people will push down messages bad for them until they becomes -1, and will be upped later to +4 by day people when they wake up. If the message had been posted during the day, the contrary would have happened.
Altough this scenario is very improbable, it reveals a few flaws in the current voting system. So here are a few requirements for a voting system that may solve some of the flaws
Enough with the criticisms already. Here is a suggestion for the voting mechanism:
every moderator gives a score between -3 and 5 (or something) to any message they read. All other messages have the status "not read" for that moderator.
Ok, I admit the memory necessary to keep track of all that info can be a problem (but you could for example close the votes after 24hours, and delete that info), but there are clear advantages:
Ok, I touched many things here, and I have many more ideas, but I can't keep on writing forever....
Slef.
-- Slef
Also look at CompuServe. When all access was charged per minute and when the only internet access was for email, the S/N ratio in forums was very good. IMHO the quality of the forums started declining when flat rate and internet access were introduced. Maybe it was just co-incidence.
well, i have a feeling that rob has unlimited amount of moderation points? well, think about it, he wants people to see his stuff if they have their scores set to 2 etc... i think most of the moderators are smart enough to know that they don't have to up his stuff as he can probably do it himself :P
-- adraken
Good point.
Quite often I've seen intelligent debate started by a stupid comment, (and quite often I've seen the same stupid remark repeated an nausem).
Well, not bugs per se, but suggestions for smoother operation of Slashdot under the New Regime:
These minor improvements could really make Slashdot's moderation system exceedingly neat.
I sincerely hope this isn't lost in the scorching flames sure to have followed. I feel that the range of moderation should be narrow, perhaps between -20 and +20. Moderation should also be tracked for large deviation: Here's why:
If more than 20 moderators (that's simply 5%, feel free to adjust it maybe to 10% or so) believe that an article is not worth reading, then assuming their opinions are reasoned, further weighing in on the article is really quite redundant. There should be no need for moderators to get into the "dogpile" effect, where they wish to further cram down a particularly objectionable post and basically stoke a sense of righteousness that shouldn't be allowed to be raised to that level. Furthermore, trolls might actually shoot for the lowest score they can get. They'd disappear off most peoples' screens quickly enough, but a side game might well appear for "lowballing". This would also tend to defuse tendencies for a trend in moderation of an article to become "runaway" -- more on that later.
I don't know if a moderator can only increase or decrease by 1. If not, it would certainly be a wise idea or one rogue moderator would be a disaster.
As for a low ceiling, let's not make a hugely high moderation score become a mark of celebrity, or worse, fandom. If 50 moderators will mark upward everything Bruce Perens says, then at least it would stop at 20. You'd also have a problem with the moderators in that respect. You could also run into ridiculous value distinctions between a +100 article and one that was "merely" +50. Dogpile effect there too, let's not inflate someone's ego by getting posters clamoring "let's put him over the 200 mark, c'mon moderators".
Finally, I would urge you to keep track of the total number of moderation marks on a post and not *just* alter the score. If 100 mark it upward and 100 mark it downward, you have a serious split in opinion which is obviously marked by widely different values in "what's worth reading", and while it may be appropriate (perhaps something highly inflammatory but thought-provoking, like the "anti-arab virus" article), there's another very likely possibility: that the moderators need more training on objectivity.
I hope you give this serious consideration.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
We probably will see scoring wars, but the IRC example is a bit misleading. Slashdot moderators can make you harder to hear, but they can't silence you altogether. Peer review is a great idea, but if you give the power to too many people (like 400, for example), there's bound to be problems. I give the new moderation system about 2 weeks... Bets anyone?
Now I'll just put on my asbestos overalls, set my threshold to -64768 and watch the moderator/AC flame-duels erupt...
0 1 - just my two bits
The only way to really get moderation here (and I'm going to get flamed for this) - is to make it a paid-for community, with no anonymous access.
/. from going the way of the alt.* hierarchy.
Charge $29 a year. Make users use their REAL NAME in posts. If you can't afford $29 a year, I have no pity for you - use usenet until you can save enough coke bottles to foot the bill.
Trust me, paid membership without anonymous access is the ONLY way to keep
A user fee means only truly interested parties are using the service with write access. Of course anyone could read it. If you lose a few good commenters, so what. More will come along.
/. back to saneness, you have to reduce the number of posters by about 60%.
To get
f you don't like your ideas challenged
how droll.
Yesterday I was out of base and posted a comment as AC. It got moderated up to 4 and ended up as the second or third thread in the article (the GNU stuff).
As far as I can see the system is starting to work pretty well after some initial glitches. There are some mistakes, but can anyone come up with something better and feasible?
Webdiva, Queen of Discussion? Nice to see you around. :)
I am yet to see a comment go past 9. Leave it at 2 and you will get the better stuff anyway. Also, adjust the prefs to get the threads ordered by score, so the comments with greater scores go to the beggining of the page.
I use -15 myself. Some good stuff is being lost bellow zero (and MEEPT!, naturally).
If offered, the moderator status MUST be accepted. Failure to accept it will cause you to be banished from Slashdot and all other sites ever quoted on it (in article or comment).
Also, your IP activity log will be sent to your employer, your family and Microsoft(to be accidentaly entered in a database).
3. By Article above: 408 moderators
By Guidelines: 10 points/day per moderator
Lowest score: 408 * 10 * -1 = -4080
I like the idea of tagged moderation. But I think the point of this is not that there will b a lot more moderators that "may have their own agenda" I think the point is that a /. user can choose to see a less crap filled view of the world. If you still want to see all the "first posts" and posts that contain nothing useful, just set your threshold lower. Personally I didn't read all the comments before because there were too many stupid off topic ones, and it was hard to weed through them. I think this system will work out well. As far as switching to NNTP goes, I like this style better. You read the article, then you can read the comments easily.
The other bonus I think will be more accountability. I think you will see less AC posts. More people will start using the the user accounts, if for nothing else then to change the threshhold from it's default of 0.
---
---
"To know recursion, you must first know recursion."
All hail the Commander Taco, and the advancement in forum technology.
Not knowing much about the new Usenet which will replace the old one, is there something that can be applied from the Slashdot forums? Could we actually build a spam proof version of the Usenet? I miss the days when the Usenet was a useful place, and if we can build a new, better one, that would be worthwhile.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Granted that negative side, there is something to be said for the concept. Perhaps, instead of giving everyone full moderation access, there should be some kind of "post voting system". Perhaps 4 links by each comment which register whether the comment was very good, good, bad or very bad. (For indifferent, don't vote. *grin* ) That way, everyone gets their say, a general picture builds up, moderation can be automated completely (I'm sure even 400 people are going to have their work cut out) and we won't get into pointless petulance over the one moderator whom you just know has it in for you...
--
They call me Dr. Mooset
I think it would be really useful to display the scores beside the list of your own articles in your "user" page, so we can see which of our comments have been moderated.
I would find it interesting too, if each logged-in account had an average score generated from all their past posts -that was visible each time they posted. Perhaps more people would be inclined to write thoughtful posts on a consist basis.
A better solution might be to have lists of several moderators, each with a particular focus. No single score is really going to make many people happy. MEEPT might always be low but there are certainly people who might like a good "Why the QT people are JUST LIKE HITLER" rant, but don't care for the blatant spam flavored website plugs, or spellin flames. This will also move the handling of Moderator abuse from the single-point-of-Rob to the distributed "if you don't like it, don't subscribe or fork"
I figure the best way to implement this would be by having each list simply contain the article/comment id. Each list would be the work of a single moderator, working with a single theme. You would also have lists that are in turn aggregates of other lists. Each user could then apply a weight to each list of interest and sum to from a score. You could also have public symbolic scores that might get some optimization.
Each group of moderators would have a page with their charter/goals, a public bitch-fest area and a private backstabbing area. To save time it will be taken as a given that Bruce Perens will have already joined each group, and then left in bitter flurry of accusations.
An Object at rest CANNOT BE STOPPED! -The Evil Midnight Bomber What Bombs at Midnight
If I post something stupid, I expect a moderator to go and bump it down to -whaveter. Registered folks are just as stupid sometimes.
Wasn't Meept registered?
Hehehehehehe.
This sig is false.
I like it.
It would help to know why a moderator lowers my post. Now on promotions, it isn't such a big deal.
Give them a few options in a drop down that are standard, (bad language, first post, XXX 5UX, repeated post, etc) then give them a write in option.
This sig is false.
is, if you don't like it. Go away. Or send Rob constructive criticism and deal.
Or hell, take the source and start your own copydot.org. Make it everything you want it to be.
Rob has done a damn fine job. Not enough people take the time to say so.
This sig is false.
How about giving some extra moderation rights over comments under some story for the person who submitted the story?
great in theory, but i don't think it would ever work in practice. the potential for abuse is too high.
>Translation: "I don't trust people. I do trust machines."
And your point is?
You can trust a computer to do what it's told.
You can't trust people as far as you can throw
them (and I've got a typical geek physique so
that's not very far).
K.
-
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
>Think of a news site like Slashdot without a
>guy like me, or a group of guys at the center.
>One where the best comments become the articles
>on the homepage. If we could make that work...
>wow.
It has been made work. It's called Usenet
(+ killfiles).
I thought filters were a good idea. They let you
choose what you wanted to read. But I don't think
much of other people deciding that for me. The
ability to filter out keywords in the subjects of
comments would have helped to eliminate a lot
of flames from view. It would certainly be better
then letting an anonymous group with random
agendas loose on your site.
K.
-
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
This is a very fair point in my view.
Doesn't seem like it would be reasonable to remove Roy's moderator access for posting something reasonable under his own name. It would be fine if he was saying "Hey, I'm a moderator, how cool", but I think reasonable commentary on the moderating system should be allowed even under a moderator's name.
I'd definitely think less of Rob if he obeyed his own rule and diminished Roy's status. Just for the record.
D
----
I'll be posting a story that contains their names, addresses, home phone numbers, social security card numbers, sexual orientation, IQ, high school GPA and mother's maiden name next week.
Uh... Rob? I was joking when I put the thing about the hamsters in the "sexual orientation" part. Can you edit that for me?
Rob?
Jay (=
I like the idea, but I think some comments that are well thought etc can get flamed to the bottom if they are against GPL or something else... I saw many valid and inteligent arguments flamed in the "New Copyleft" article.
Hey Rob, didn't you just say you were a moderator? Doesn't that mean you should revoke your own moderator status? :-)
Well, he did say he'd de-moderarorized one person in the update... maybe it was himself?
Neah....
----
----
"Oh, bother," said Pooh, as he hid Piglet's mangled corpse.
If the comment you were dropping was one with an ID attached (ie, non-AC), then I would suggest leaving it as is. As Rob described the point system, 0 and 1 are _both_ neutral territory; leaving Score: 1 comments as they are enables a person to filter most anonymous comments by setting the threshold to 1.
NB: IANAM (I Am Not A Moderator).
Save Maine's economy: write stuff down. All comments are exclusively my own, not my employer.
Nice idea but probably too easy to abuse though. Just set up a script and zap any comment you don't want heard to oblivian. Or vice versa. pump up your "first post, dude" comment to +1000 forcing Rob to keep reading and deleting.
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
So my questions are how do you keep borderline good/bad comments from seesawing their way into oblivian? Do you have a way of tracking the vote history so you can check to see if this is actually happenning and needs a solution?
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
Hopefully you are correct and this won't be an issue and even if it is I'm sure there is a reasonable fix for it.
BTW, did you know that hitting the back button clears the forms now? I used to go back if didn't like the preview......oops.
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
If it's limited to logged in users only then it's a non-issue I guess.
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
score = max(score-1,target) ! or whatever the perl equivalet is.
No need to recheck posts then.
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
I was skimming along the increasingly drab posts like this one and just noticed the "we put the borg in .org" comment above. Any chance that the moderators will single this out as something worth reading? I doubt it but I thought it stood out as good tounge in cheek humor. What are the chances of catagorizing the votes so that moderators can dub somthing as silly but readable if your in that sort of mood?
Davo -- Free speech, free software, AND free beer.
There are lots of Usenet groups, IRC channels, chat rooms, discussion oriented web sites (including Slashdot wanna-bes), mailing lists and many other ways to communicate, both on-line and off. Slashdot is a fashionable soapbox, but by no means the only one. The sentiment that Rob is stepping on peoples' free-speech rights is silly. The First Amendment does not force the owner of a website or a printing press to turn it over to anybody who wants to talk, nor does it guarantee an attentive audience.
As has been observed countless times, anybody can see all the comments by turning down the threshold. This is not censorship, it is merely that comments are subject to a consensus rating system. The moderators can't identify one another, so the paranoid theories that "the moderators are conspiring against me" are silly. The only communication channel between moderators is to watch ratings go up and down.
There are all kinds of speculations that "anti-establishment" comments will be downgraded to ridiculous levels, and that "agreeable" comments will be upgraded equally ridiculously. I haven't seen any ratings lower than -1, nor have I seen ratings higher than 5. The hallucination that some kind of class warfare is happening here is infantile. To an intelligent person, it really clarifies the need for some kind of rating system.
WWJD for a Klondike Bar?
Plus, many firewalls kill NNTP.
I personally like the "flat mode" better than any newsreader I've seen, I just wish there was a small amount of indenting so I didn't have to switch back to the threaded mode to see the staircase.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
Anonymity. Any moderator who posts that they are a moderator will probably have their access revoked.
:P
Will this article get a -10 score?
I think we should just stop people posting as AC, and offer people the option of a 'kill-list'. Privacy ? Well, just get a hotmail account - if you've got web access to see slashdot you can get a hotmail account. The key point really is that people will not be able to know that other people are 'killing' them, so there will be little motivation to keep switching accounts.
Besides, if people know that they're being identified, even if its just a psuedonym, then they tend to take more care in there opinions. I subscribe to a number of Email lists, and despite them having many users registered, the conversation is intelligent and mostly on-topic. Quite simply, there is always the danger of being bounced from the list, and people usually will rather tame there tongue than keep creating hotmail accounts. Give us Accountability!!
*--BigMan--- Time flies like an arrow.. but personally I prefer a nice glass of wine!
I like the new system.
Rather than just the "up one" and "down one" threshold links, I would like links to instantly go to -10 to easily see everything, 0 so that I can see all anonymous posts, and 1 so I can see all not so special posts, that way I could set my default to 2, only read the good stuff most of the time, but jump down easily.
Why can't every logged in user moderate? With the point system no one could do that much damage. And you could always facilitate banning/removing moderator status for abusers.
Why not automatically boost the points for an article that gets a lot of replies. I think any article must be good if it evokes enough emotion to make others respond. Do I have to much faith in the SD communities ability to identify a troll?
"if you don't read comments, well, what can I say?"
:-)
You do realize you just addressed people who don't read comments...in a comment
--- meta comment starts here---
This post brings me to a question. I would like to be seen as a valuable poster to the Slashdot forums. But for people who want less noise, I would not place a lot of value on the above. Yet it is from comments just like mine above that I usually get a little chuckle..which is why I like Slashdot. As alluded to by a number of others, different comments appeal to different people. I assume if I make valuable posts, it increases my "value" to the SD community, and some day, I may be rewarded for this by being made a moderator, but the fact is, with this new system, I thought twice about posting the above...I guess evaluating the value of ones writing is a good thing...I just don't thing this system should keep people from saying what they want...I think my comment above is valuable to some people, so I made it, but I don't think many moderators would hold the same view. I guess mainly what I want to know...do funny little comments (I think it was kinda funny anyhow) have value, and if only to some people, will they drag my "value" down?
In this country I can read all the governments documents (that are not specifically secret) and I find that a very good thing.
Do you really believe this? Try finding out anything about the City of San Francisco's contract with the TCI cable company. You can't.
This is groovy because many of us will now try very hard to make reasonable, thoughtful contributions -- in the hope of becoming moderators so we can zap those damn (KDE|GNOME|RedHat|Caldera|Liberal|Libertarian|you- name-it) bastards!
:)
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
I've been wishing for that for a long time.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Seriously.
It gets a bit tiring to see people crank out half a page of text about how somebody's views aren't worth hearing merely because of the name attached to the post. With equal justice, I could say that your remarks are invalid because you call yourself "caferace".
Maybe Rob could code a "logical fallacy detector" of some kind. Or else just flag certain phrases: "While I generally approve of the AC concept", "Some of my best friends are AC's", "why don't you have an account", "you refuse to be accountable for your writings", etc.
I'd also like to see plural/singular disagreement be stigmatized, but I'm probably whistling in the dark on that one.
I find your requests for moderator accountability flawed, given the context of your AC status.
Um, well, I find your remarks flawed due to the fact that your post is just one long non sequitur. Okay, you don't like AC's. That's cool, it's a free country. But why not just say, "I hate AC's", and leave it at that?
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
I put my threashold at 10 for the intelligent comments and got nothing...
Hmmm . . . I wonder what that means?
(This, my friends, is how one prevents oneself from becoming a moderator!)
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
slashdot . . . refuses to set my userlogin cookie anymore.
Identify yourself! Since you refuse to stand behind your comments, there's no reason why anybody should listen to them. This goes double for complaints, which your post clearly is. Any complaint from an Anonymous Coward is prima facie (or ipso facto or ex post facto, or quid pro quo or, uh, whatever) null and void.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Ha ha. Think about it, though. How much dissent do you see on network TV? It's not nearly as bad as the Soviets were, but it's not as different as most people would like to think.
isn't that an underlying ideal of communism
The significant "underlying ideal[s] of communism" are mainly stuff like redistribution of wealth, workers' control of the means of production, full employment, u.s.w.
It's depressing that people often use communism as an excuse for imposing dictatorships, but it's also depressing that anarchies generally harden into feudal warlordism, completely unregulated free markets coagulate into monopolies, etc.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Charge $29 a year
Half the comments would be "Rob, dammit, I paid good money for this, so do it my way!" I don't think that Rob would find that crap to be worth $29 per knucklehead per year.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Conscientious moderators encourage better, and more posting. My goal is clear: Get ratings of 3-4 on all my posts!
It also hands out a treat (moderator status) to people who post well, which is a better and more concrete motivator than just "being well thought of".
Anyhow, your post gave me a nifty thought:
It might be cool to have multiple, separate-but-equal moderation "subcultures".
Invent some number of arbitrary descriptive names, and let everybody choose which one they want to belong to. Each one would be the whole deal you've got now. If I decide that I want to belong to the (hypothetical) "Beavis and Butthead Subculture", then I'd see scores determined by the "Beavis and Butthead Subculture" moderators. They would be chosen by the same system as now -- but only the scores given them by *other* B&BS moderators would affect that. And only B&BS "members" would ever be subjected to their scores. If I posted, my posts would end up with n different scores -- one for each set of moderators. Only the one given by the B&BS moderators would count towards (or against) my becoming a moderator myself.
This would be groovy. Just by starting out with arbitrary names, people would choose a "subculture" with a name they liked -- and then it would gradually mutate to fit that name. The moderators now in place would get to choose their "subculture", and there they'd be. There would be many different Slashdots, all parallel.
I suppose that if you changed "subcultures", your moderator status would be determined by the scores you've gotten from the moderators over there.
You could also have a Preferences thing to block out members of a particular "subculture".
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
I want to read from the angry, the illiterate, the strange and the vicious. They have clarity.
No they don't. They have no idea what they think, generally because they cannot and do not think. They have "feelings", but their feelings are generally disgusting. They're morons. It is a very rare thing when somebody who is angry, illiterate, and vicious is worth listening to. What you're calling "illiteracy" (obviously, all Slashdotters are at least minimally capable of coping with written English) is in fact ignorance and incoherence. Thoughtful speakers of english as a second language come off as more "literate" than native speakers with muddled, vague "ideas". The ones who whine about how "grammar doesn't count" are missing the point -- if they knew what they thought, or why, they'd be able to express it competently. It might be full of shit and dead wrong, but it would at least make sense.
I read their posts because they're amusing. It's like going to the zoo and watching animals fuck.
Don't get me wrong: We should still let those people vote, because they're no more irresponsible in their use of power than anybody else. The ability to use power wisely is a separate issue. Furthermore, it's only fair to let all interested parties have an equal hand in destroying whatever small traces of value there may be in this miserable culture. It's the only game in town. Everybody should get to play. Unfortunately, money equals power, so the chandala will never get to do their fair share of damage until they start a revolution. That's a serious flaw in any human political system, but since the end result is always the same (what did Orwell say, "a boot stepping on a human face, forever"?) it really doesn't make a damn bit of difference in practical terms.
i want a default where I only see the posts from -10s and worse...
So do I. Just not for the same reasons.
-j
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
I FIGURED OUT HOW TO BOOST MY SCORE REAL HIGH!!!
Just write interesting stuff.
Um, yeah.
Define "interesting".
My own definition bears not the slightest resemblance to that of the moderators. I'm not complaining, actually. But that's the way it goes.
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
This is the stupidest damn thing I've ever heard of.
You obviously never read anything by E. M. Forster.
:)
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
Rob is restricting access to comments.
What he said. I might not express it in such strong terms -- the term "censorship" is a lightning rod for idiotic hair-splitting -- but he's on the right track.
It seems like no great loss if dumb bullshit gets moderated out of existence -- but don't forget: "Dumb bullshit", in human speech, generally translates as "unpopular and/or unfamiliar".
-j
"Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law." --
He said pure democracies. The U.S. is not a pure democracy. It is a representative democracy, a.k.a. a republic. Besides that, the U.S. is not so hot. Democracy is good. Capitalism is bad. This is my opinion, and you can disagree, but the first paragraph is fact.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
CmdrTaco, I have some questions.
First off, let me say that I'm all in favor of the new moderator system. Having a reliable core of people who devote their time to making slashdot better without making it a popularity contest is the Right Way to do it. Unfortunately, those same folks just socked me one in the nose on a recent posting, so I want to know what do do when they are abusive.
I recently had a posting (on an apple topic) that had more replies than any other on the Topic, had replies rated up to 4. (Even had a reply scored at 1 calling me a twat) And yet, for quite a while, the post itself was scored at -1. Yes, Negative One. For an on topic, unoffensive post by a logged in user that happened to disagree with the premise of the topic.
So, What information exactly would you like me to collect for you before I use up your time emailing a complaint? Do you want an emailed complaint for a case such as mine? What are your criteria for taking action against a moderator?
I don't want to waste your time with a bunch of complaints (you're doing so much great work as it is, that I'd rather you spent your time on it). But I would like to have some course of action to make the moderation better so that moderators with heavy biases and no sense of impartiality don't stick people over and over again. (BTW, I really like the suggestion that there be trackable histories for anonymous, numbered moderators....that way I can do my homework before I appeal to you)
So let me know how to help slashdot.
Thanks,
Josh
Though the response comments have been mostly positive, this might be a good time for a voting question. Maybe just one attached to this article.
BTW I am very in favor of this new system. It's freakyfunkyjazzycool.
Thank you for not thinking.
After all, one can download the source quite easily, so the only obstacle to copying the site would be acquiring a good server, and a good internet connection.
:-)
Of course, andy copycat site could start with nothing less than a stable server and high bandwidth. If the site started out small, I'm sure somebody'd mention it on slashdot, and the slashdot effect would kill it. Then, everyone would realize that the server hadn't the capability to be a large news site, and nobody'd bother to go back.
Perhaps this is a self-defense mechanism, keeping slashdot from being copied.
1. A "simple" way to find how my comments are moderated.
/.. In this country I can read all the governments documents (that are not specifically secret) and I find that a very good thing.
2. A "simple" way to find which comments are moderated for a specific article.
3. Tell us what the lowest possible score is, I abhore censorship and would like to see all comments..
Why? So I can trust
Erik
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
Just tested, that was the lowest I could make it (i.e. -99999999999999999999 was changed to -2147483648 after saving "myself").
Erik
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
1. In my "personal" page (where you get after pressing "bwz") where my twenty latest comments are listed. I'd like to see their score too. Actually, it would be nice if I could see the score of all comments in the link to them.
3. That assumes the number of moderators stays at that level, I've already posted the theoretical min though.
I'm sorry you got me wrong. I dont say "this is FSCKed" I say "I dont want this for ME because I value the thoughts of all humans". I'm also saying "Could you please provide some ways by which we can judge the 'fairness'[*] of the moderation". I regrett that my post was interpreted the way it was...
Erik
[*] fair is not absolute..
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
In this country, The Kingdom of Sweden, there is a law that says I can read the prime ministers mail. Actually I can read all (poor translation) "proper documents" that are not explicitly made secret (either because they're military secrets or because of "relation to foreign powers" or because of protection of privacy). I don't live in US of A and I don't know if I'd like to...
Erik
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
Has it ever occurred to you that God might be a committee?
--- Jubal Harshaw
I keep seeing the number -10. If anybody posted a comment that went lower than -10 (5 people giving it -- or 10 -'s), I seriously wouldn't worry about it. And if there is a lower limit to the nagative scores, I doubt Rob programmed it in yet :)
(I promise to stop posting in this article soon, but it's a doozy)
Personally, I think if the user is a REGISTERED user, a score of 1 should not be knocked down to 0. 0 is reserved for AC's and for comments that deserve that type of moderation. If a comment from a registered user is okay, just leave it at 1....
Correct me if you think I'm an idiot. But that's the way it's been working, no need to change.
If people paid $29 to become a moderator, that doesn't prove anything except that you aren't afraid to throw around money. I'd personally rather go through controlled peer review than get moderated by someone who just paid to get in......
You need to add a bit to that "IRC log":
I OWN THE SLASHDOT CHANNEL! Bwahahaha!
*** Buzz's Friend sets threshold: -10
*** Everyone else who dislikes sets threshold: -10
*** MwE's friends set threshold: +20
Upshot: everyone continues to use the channel. But the "snobs" don't see what they don't want to. And people who are pissed off at the moderator(s) can always set their threshold lower.
I think a lot of people still want slashdot to be a democracy, but it's not. I'm gonna set my threshold at maybe 2 and leave it there for a while.
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
The first is a "want". I want to pull up my user info page and see the scores for my articles. Is there a way to do that already that I've missed? Is there a reason it can't be done? It would be terrific feedback.
The second is a "should". I believe that I should be able to SEE all my articles automatically. Right now, you can't, unless you scoot your threshold down temporarily. As a corollary, it would be *really* nice if you could see the replies to your own articles, either a) regardless of threshold, or b) with a score increase that only you see. This way, you have a way to at least see IF people are replying to you, and how it's received. Obviously, the ideal would make this user configurable.
Third, which is a "doh!" that I hope Rob has simply overlooked, if you drop threshold to read comments and THEN hit a button to see replies, you get an empty page. That is, the threshold drop should be "sticky" within a thread. I think it's nuts to change your threshold, see an interesting comment, and have to navigate the thread by dropping the threshold EVERY time you get a new page. There must be a way to grab it from the page draw and add it to the URL, right?
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
My apologies, but I was kinda going with the dictionary definition:
censorship n: 2: deleting parts of publications or correspondence or theatrical performances
okay...granted, this isn't a theatrical performance, and also granted, the information isn't technically being deleted but it's being hidden, which boils down to the same thing....it is censorship in the most litteral form...but as I said, that's not always a bad thing...esp when it's self-censorship, so to speak, from a community as a whole...
Okay people...lets look at some reality here:
;o)
Fact is, the moderation system that Rob's coming up with is prob the best that could really be asked for.
It's basically peer-review, which in a world with people making comments varying from "first post" to the recipe of coca-cola, is probably the best possible form of censorship available (sorry Rob, but any limiting of comments is a form of censorship, though not necessarily in a bad way)
If you want the mindless blabber, then set your preferences low, if you want meat and potatoes, have some higher standards...very simple. Granted, the anonymous coward postings are lower...WONDERFUL! We don't need fingerpointing, but some credability is a great idea, IMHO. And even though there is a lot of good stuff that comes from AC posts, they'll get adjusted as moderators read them and up their status...and *POOF* they appear on my comment list too! amazing, isn't it?
This way of doing things lets the people that actually might contribute something useful help decide what the comparatively useful comments might be. THIS IS A GOOD THING!
Rob: not to kiss ass or anything, but fact is, you've done a great job handling the sh*t we feed slashdot sometimes, and I'm glad you're doing your best to look at your 'baby' as the community that it has become...great job...and on the same note, letting or helping us rule ourselves, well...welcome to democracy...:o)
Good job rob...(and David...and anyone else that fails to be mentioned)...:o)
BTW...When do we get to write the new constitution?
Trust me, paid membership without anonymous access is the ONLY way to keep /. from going the way of the alt.* hierarchy.
Actually, that's not quite the case here, because alt.* is controlled by none (other than several thousand newsadmins). /. is controlled by our dear Rob Malda (fear the taco), and he can do whatever he wants to prevent the disintegration into alt.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
Secondly, I think that out of 70,000 /daughters, some of them have a low threshold (I mean, mine is -99, so I see EVERYTHING), and if you see a comment with a moderation of -10 that isn't abusive or extremely offtopic, then you should tell Rob about it, and he can look into it.
I like this system. I'm setting up my own user discussion system, and it's interesting to see how my thoughts on how to do things are similar to this.
--jon. Postel is dead. May we all mourn his, and our, loss.
And, of course, we all think that much more of Roy for being philosophical about it... *grin*
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, they are quick to anger and have no need for subtlety.
Well, well, well; three holes in the ground...
Having the option for people to choose there level of noise is fantastic.
What about letting those people who disagree order there messages back to front so the low scrore messages get to the top
---
---
I agree with DaBuzz that negatives are a bad idea. The default should be all comments, people are then free to choose if they want to change that.
On the subject of scoring wars, how about only allowing moderators to increase the score of a comment. That way, moderators would (hopefully) think twice before doing so (Do you really want this to be seen by thousands of people?) and there wouldn't be any scoring wars since a comment with a score of 3 could never be down-voted to 1.
What do you think?
There is a subtle problem with moderation is that it leads to a very narrow community of interest.
... don't want you here). There are plenty of examples in history when this sort of thing has happened ... every time there is an 'in' group.
.Any automatic system for selecting moderators is doomed to the problem that I described above.
This is because the current system of moderators creates an unstable system, with the fixed point having only one opinion expressed on any issue.
Say for example that there is an article posted that suggests that some feature of another operating system compares favourably against the comparable feature in Linux.
Say, for simplicity, that all of the comments either support or disagree with the article, and that there are about 200 comments. I'd guess that at least 75% of people here are broadly pro-linux, so say that there are 50 supporting comments and 150 disagreements.
Now if there is no moderation, that is the proportion that everyone will see. Now assume that there are similar proportions of opinions amoungst the 400 moderators (This is actually unlikely- see below). Assume that 90% of them are well behaved and only moderate on such things as language, flames, giving interesting points of view etc. (this would be a _very_ good ratio), and the other 10% (bad) moderation is based on people agreeing with them. Now the number of biased (bad) moderators that may upgrade or downgrade articies is:
Pro-Linux: 150, upgrade: 30, downgrade 10
Pro-Other: 50, upgrade: 10, donwgrade 30
For upgrades, this isn't a problem, since it is still proportional. For downgrades however, there is potentially quite a problem, as the Pro-Other articles may have a significant bias against them, so it is possible that the proportions at a threshold of 0 or 1 is more like 90:10, or even 95:5 instead of 75:25. This gets worse with a larger number of moderators.
This in itself is not such a problem, these are only comments after all, and you can set the threshold to -(something large). However, those who keep getting comments downgraded and read an overwhelmingly single opinion are likely over repeated cases of this to get discouraged and go somewhere else, in this for instance pushing this (unintentionally) towards being a Linux only forum.
Where it gets really bad is that even with a small bias, at some point Rob has to update the list of moderators. If he does it the same way, then those who hold opinions away from the majority are even less likely to be selected, since they have been moderated down a time or two, making this into a vicious cycle, admitting only those who hold the 'right' opinions, with the 'right' opinions getting narrower and narrower. (Don't use RedHat on x86? Tsk tsk tsk
One of the things that I enjoy in comments is when someone can reason well supporting a position that I don't agree with, as this helps me to expand my own ideas. I don't want to lose this.
I wish that I could offer a better system, but one observation is that one of the reasons that democracy works as well as it does is that (nearly) everyone technically gets the same amount of vote. Perhaps if everyone could do one upgrade, (not downgrade) in a 24 hour period?
Roy Ward.
Although direct democracy moderation might sound like a good idea in theory, it would probably not work well in practice - imagine a KDE vs. GNOME flamewar in an article's comments if everyone were able to moderate. The scores would have as bad a signal-to-noise ratio as the comments. So a specific group of moderators provides a useful buffer.
But moderators must have accountability too, and if there are a lot of them, Rob will have a hard time managing this himself.
So how about this suggestion:
* Make article scores floating point.
* Give each moderator a weight, which is the amount by which he can change an article's score
when moderating. Initialize all moderators to 1.0 and make 1.0 the maximum (or pick other suitable parameters).
* Let everyone vote on whether or not they like the way an article was scored. This would feed back to the weight of the moderators who moderated it towards it's current score.
Thus, ultimately moderators who consistently score articles up or down for bad reasons will have their weight lowered until their moderation does not really affect anything.
This sort of applies the principles of representative democracy to moderation: moderation will be insulated from the momentary whims of the masses, but ultimately in a long-term sense, moderation is under the control of the entire community.
And it bites for several reasons:
1) It discriminates unfairly against anonymous posters for no more reason than they prefer not to be identified (an automatic one-point penalty).
2) Whether or not a post survives to be read is primarily a popularity contest among moderators. I've seen several reports, which I believe, of posts being scored downwards for no obvious reason.
3) Negatively-scored posts are hard to find. Yes, you can set your default threshold to be very low so that you should be able to, theoretically, see everything. That is, IF you log in. Otherwise, you are stuck with adjusting it through the link on each article. And the interface only allows for going up or down one point at a time (yeah, you can rewrite the URL, but that's besides the point).
With some very small changes, this could be a fair system:
1) All comments start with a score of zero, regardless of identification.
2) Scores are non-negative.
3) Moderators can only increase a comment's score. I.e., as one poster suggested, treat the points as currency. Generally you are free to give away currency but not take it away...
Thus, default settings will show all posts. Flame/noise posts are not a big problem unless there are a lot of comments on an article. When there are too many to consider, knock the threshold up by one until it's more reasonable.
I won't/can't take credit for all these ideas. However, this is a workable combination which seems fair to everyone and doesn't allow censorship by moderators. It can also be implemented very, very easily. If anything, doing it this way is less CPU-intensive than the current way (no need to test if the user is anonymous or not for initial score; no button for negative scoring).
-- Blame any errors on your own stupidity. All wrongs reserved.
I agree that it's a good idea to use newsreaders as newsreaders rather than to hack web interfaces that are almost as good as a newsreader.
Take a look at the way that LinuxWorld handles this. In Netscape, when you click on a link to their discussion forums, it kicks you into the Netscape newsreader, with all of the features (or lack thereof) that this implies.
What I would like, or course, is for this to be configurable so that clicking on a "news:" link could put me into nn (the greatest newsreader ever written) or perhaps into gnus, if nn is a problem. I think this is beyond the capabilities of Netscape's Communicator at present, but perhaps the new Mozilla will be a little more open about providing hooks to do this.
In any case, there are obviously some big wins from doing things this way: you want user configurable filtering? Fine, get a better news reader. And there's no additional load on the webserver that way, so it scales a lot better. If you've got a really good newsreader, you can do positive filtering like "show me stuff by this person", "show me things on this topic". This is much more useful than killfiles.
> Well, in at least the new versions of IE you
> can configure your news reader, and I think
> you can do the same with Netscape 4.x as well,
> of course the default is the newsreader
> bundled with the browser, but you can switch.
I've heard that the Solaris version of Internet
Explorer works this way, but I'm using Linux.
And I rather not use MS stuff if I can avoid it.
Netscape Communicator 4.x does not have this feature to my knowledge.
Edit/Preferences/Navigator/Applications doesn't
have an entry to change what a "news:" link
does. The stripped down Netscape Navigator
product might very well have something like this,
however, but at this point I'm just going to
wait for the new Mozilla.
> However, at least for those of us behind
> corporate firewalls, web-based tools are
> much nicer than using a newsreader.
I have a bit of sympathy for this kind of
argument (personally I get annoyed by web
designs that won't work on slow modems or
with lynx, etc). I would think the solution
would be to have a slashdot preference that
let's you choose the old web-based method if
you like.
There is some major neatness happening here.
I've been trying to think about problems
like this for a while: how do you organize,
open, collaborative intellectual efforts in
general, (not just for software)? I think
that slashdot is engaged in some impressive
experiments in this direction. We may be
on the verge of coming up with something
that may rival the historical importance
of the invention of the GPL.
The trouble with negative filtering
systems in a world of multiple virtual
identies is obvious: anyone who is
filtered out has the option of
immediately returning under another name.
So, in the absence of verifiable
meatspace identies, you need to use some
positive filtering, you select for the
people who seem to be making an effort to
do a good job. (Preventing forgery is
still a problem, but it's eaisier to
solve than pinning virtual identities to
physical ones.)
Letting everyone contribute to the
ranking process can't really work,
because of the problem of bozo's jamming
the system using multiple identities.
The slashdot system where anyone can
contribute to the discussion and possibly
earn moderator status from the existing
moderators... this strikes me as
brilliant.
And in retrospect, bootstrapping the
system with a closed group of moderators
was a really interesting approach. A
state designed to whither away?
Can we game it out to see if there still
problems?
(1) Forgery, mentioned above. Eating a
cookie doesn't imply any kind of PGP
identity verification, (or maybe it does,
and I don't understand cookies).
(2) The anonymity of moderators sounds a
bit problematic to me. There is the
problem of not being able to "confront
your accusers", and it also strikes me
that it places a lot of burden on the
moderators to conceal their status. And
personally, I'd be reluctant to do a lot
of volunteer work that I'm not allowed to
take credit for. Open societies use
anonymity only sparingly...
So maybe this isn't a good idea, despite
the bad taste you might have in your
mouth from petty dictators on IRC (like
Tom Christiansen?).
(3) Can slashdot scale up further into
the million reader's range?
(a) If it got that big, the one central
Moderator of Moderators would undoubtably
be overwhelmed by the job of policing
1000s of moderators. So at the very
least, all of the moderators would
probably have to start moderating each
other's activities... or maybe there
should be a hierarchy of promotion, where
moderators earn meta-moderator status?
(b) A Slashdot with a million readers
would become a force to be reckoned with
in the commercial arena: the buzz on
slashdot could make or break a company.
There would be a lot of incentive to try
and corrupt the system, for example a
large software company (possibly located
in the Northwest) might send in a troupe
of moles whose job is to post
intelligently to earn moderator status.
Anyway, I'm really interested to see where
all of this ends up: I have fantasies of
letting loose a group of volunteers on a
problem like pinning down the truth about
a big subject, like say global warming
(investigating the magnitude of the problem,
the weight of the evidence, the various
prejudices pushing people in different
directions, and possible methods of
preventing or ameliorating the problems).
Can we set up a dynamic intelectual web on
the net where order has a chance to rise up
above the noise?
I find it very strange that so many people here finds that the only typical morone on slash is the somewhat atypical MEEPT and his psycodelic poems.
This is counter-intuitive!
I'd vote for that we keep him (safely away from the kernel-list
send + more == money?
Each downward moderation should have a REASON tagged onto it.. ...just wanted to add my vote for this feature.
That's an interesting idea, but I wonder if it could serve to silence a minority opinion? I mean, I'd like to think that if I didn't agree with an opinion, but it was well crafted that I'd upgrade it, but I wonder if, in reality I'd really do that? Multiply that by a few thousand.
As a case in point, say somebody writes a well thought out response that shows, point by point, why Windows NT is a superior OS when compared to Linux. No rhetoric, no flamethrowing, just a carefully reasoned comment. I certainly wouldn't agree with it. And I'll bet that not only would most of the readers not agree with it, but many would be vitriolic in their disagreement. Suddenly, this comment is relegated to the moderation basement, all because it's an unpopular position.
This is a long winded way of saying that a cadre of impartial, careful moderators can do a lot of good at weeding out the chaff, while protecting the voices of the minority. The new system seems like the right way to go.
I hope this works. I started reading /. back when I could read ALL the comments on Most of the stories. Now I rarely read all the stories much less the comments. Maybe this will make it worth looking at comments again. :-)
Anyway, the only thing I could add is "Would it work to let everyone vote on comments and rank them automatically by positive and negative votes?" Of course this assumes that they are more "normal" users than flame mongers.
Good Luck Rob.
After all the new moderators will have their fun and "power",
they will run out of points.
desperate to get ones,
they will post bad comments,
and will be moderated.
when moderated, yet another moderator will run out of points,
being forced to post bad comments.
This way,
moderators will run out of points very quickly.
and alot of bad posts could not get moderated.
(plus the posts the moderators post to get points)
This is very bad,
and i think moderation points should be earned in other ways.
(maybe per month/week basis)
the only good rule about the system is the anti-ego one.
this kills the IRC channels aristocracy and suck-ups to ops.
---
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
Mostly the first threads are answered first.
The first threads root comment is usualy a quick score1 type,
since the good comments usualy are longer and require the time to type.
Thats whay it is common to see good posts as a reply to a lame thread or a question.
---
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
Amazingly enough you have recieved a score of 2.
Do you remove moderation of suck-ups?
Will my score be lowered by this moderator for calling him a suck-up?
only time will tell....
---
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
as was stated above, how low do you have to set your threshold to see everything? -1000? -1000000? -maxInt?
how about seting the minimum to like -10. and the max to 10. with 1 default rating of 1 for logged in users, and 0 for ACs.
-10 would be for really bad, just flamebait stuff.
At the very least I think there should be a defined range of values.
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
I suspect this may have been commented upon earlier, but too many people don't Subject: their comments particularly well. I have two requests, the first stronger than the second.
1. I'd like each page to list the # of viewable articles (pass the threshold) and the # of articles that didn't pass the threshold. Does this already happen?
2. I'd like to see the distribution of scores for a given page or just Slashdot in general (a Slashbox?) in a happy bar chart.
The Cunctator
cunctator@kband.com
--
Make mine methylphenidate.
I, and no doubt many others, read /. on several different platforms at several different locations. A web browser is the only software guaranteed to be on all of these systems, and DejaNews isn't my idea of a quality newsreader.
-tak
If I set my threshold to, say, 4, then I'm only
going to see the "best" postings. But I want some
context with those postings. How about
automatically raising the score of articles whose
replies get raised to a higher level? That way
I don't see really insightful comments that are
such non-sequiters that I can't understand them.
--joe
"It sure was strange to see something on Usenet about me that didn't involve Klingon gang rape." -- Wil Wheaton
I think you misunderstood. While I don't mean to speak for someone else, I'm pretty sure he meant exactly what you said; not that moderation as a concept is evil, but rather that the flagrant misuse thereof for personal reasons was an unjust occurrance.
And these are all swell ideas so far; while I've been mostly quiet enough to slip under the radar, I've had similar things mysteriously happen to me elsewhere. It's frustrating as hell -- like being periodically, unpredictably smacked by a mute ghost. All for it. Yup, yup.
-- Aderack. Usually.
If you notice, he gets a 2 by default, just because he's him. Seems fair, as it's his site.
-- Aderack. Usually.
> I can't tell what he gets by default since I
> can't tell if the post is raw or if it has been
> bumped up a notch or down three notches by the
> mods.
True. But he said back in the midst his text, somewhere, that he received 2 points. That's all.
-- Aderack. Usually.
Well, thank you for making it easy for us to identify at least one moderator.
Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha
As a former SysOp on a MAXIMUS BBS (way long ago on FIDO), I can certainly understand why Rob wants to have some moderation here on Slashdot. And the method he's chosen is, I feel, a good one. However, a point that James makes (above) is also good: what happens to the "part-time" stories? The very one he mentioned, BeroLinux-Mandrake, was one I posted, but never saw. What was wrong with it? Was it not detailed enough? Were the links bad? Unfortunately, without a feedback system, there's no way for me to know. Another poster, however, wanted to have the downgrade-data connected to the post somehow. That could run into enormous overhead problems, if each post could potentially have over 400 such changes appended to it!
Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha
First, why do you need my "REAL NAME"? Are you going to sue me? Why do you even care? Why can't I have multiple identities?
It is virtually impossible to make sure you have "real names", even for a subscription service. It is too easy to falsify an identity, particularly online.
Second, charge me $29 and I'll go away. I'll bet most everybody will go away. Has been tried, doesn't work.
Pay services on that level are a hard sell unless they have really compelling content that is exclusive. A hard thing to come by. There is just too much content available on the web for free for sites to get away with charging that kind of subscription fee. Some people even whined when Slashdot added banner ads.
Third, DejaNews makes Usenet quite usable.
Well, I used to be an avid USENET reader/poster. Over the past few years I don't read it like I used to. Partially it is because I don't have enough network bandwidth to make it pleasant, but it is also because the signal to noise ratio on USENET definitely went downhill. DejaNews is a really great service that makes finding the good content on USENET a lot easier, albiet it isn't the most convenient way just to browse news groups.
I am impressed by the /. plan. You have my best wishes. The moderators might try to remember that tolerance is not just a way of life, its a sport. Play to win.
I drink to make other people more interesting
the price of freedom is indeed eternal vigilance....hence the need for moderators, otherwise known as the guys who pay the price for keeping Anonymous Cowards anonymous.
I drink to make other people more interesting
I like the pure democracy idea of everyone being able to vote on articles. In turn, people could decide that they don't care about particular users' opinions, so they could tell the system to ignore votes by those users when displaying articles.
:)
The only trick is anonimity. How do you stop people from voting twice, but insure that they can vote once? Perhaps only allowed loged-in users to vote. Then if you see an article with a strange rating, you could see who voted to cause that rating, check to see what else the voted on, and then set to ignore the weirdos whose votes you don't like.
Of course, a lot of people like to post as anonymous cowards, even if they don't mind loging in in principle. For such people, you could add a check box to the posting page for "anonymous post." (It could also be a default in the user profile.)
Still, if you let people see who cast the votes, that means voting is never anonymous. Personally, I don't think that's a bad thing. If only some votes were anonymous, I would set my preferences to ignore anonymous votes.
I think that would work.
Then we would all want to vote on what we thought of each person's voting history, so as to generate a normalized vote weighting system.
Here's my hint: just read day-old articles and set your preferences to order by score. It works wonderfully! For one thing, none of the day-old articles get slashdotted. And for another thing, after 24 hours, lots of comments have been provided and some have been bumped up. I read those. It is a shame if some content (and not style) contradicted the values of a moderator to the poin that I'm not going to read the message, but I'm willing to take that risk. Besides, with 400+ moderators, surely there will be at least a few RMS-is-God, RMS-is-Satan, GNOME-rulez, and KDE-rockz people to balance everything out. And if it doesn't work, you're under no obligation to even use the system (set threshold low, order by date). I love it!!!! And I haven't seen a first-post post in several days!
they are suits & a few others, therefore the whole site would be less interesting
;-)
I would be interested to know how many students are writers here...
moreover, if you cannot comment a message, there is less interest in reading (a whole lot of fun is in replying, isn't it ?
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
your reply to a flaming thread can be a good one & interesting one
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
good idea, I would just add, do not use reduce by 1 each step because many replies do not lose interest that fast
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
I haven't understood the end of the comment :-(
/. to make some of their stupid comment too high in charts
;-) ;-)
however, from what I understood, That's interesting :
let everyone registered vote, but they have one voice. that way you are sure :
1) they will vote for very interesting stuff
2) they will not tweak
then you say ACow cannot vote (obvious) and cannot reach a score higher than a given threshold. that way you ensure that no flaming thread will high rank.
of course when I write "1 voice" this is for ease of comprehension
In fact I propose 1 voice per account and per stroy (or a few more if you want) or give a pool of voices for the whole day (but some people can be penalyzed because of the clock not being the same worldwide (Aah ? my time is not yours ? it's 20:25 here
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
It would be interesting to give your own message (when you write it) a base score lower that the standard own.
For instance, you reply some funny thing, but you know it will not be very appreciated by the more serious people, or you do not want to be over flamed, then you can say your message is not that interesting...
that's the unix "nice" command
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
give power to people
/. and when you participate, for free, you are given some trust. Then you must show some trust in return, and register.
however, I would suggest that only moderated messages from registered accounts would be traceabled. Why not every moderation act ? because I think that when you read every day
since there is no fee, since there is no criteria of selection upon registration, it is only *your* choice to register or not, therefore, it is fair that if you want anonymity, then you get less rights than others
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
that way there is not elite, there is no rush after points
;-)
;-)
everyone is equal to others & the massive number of people can over balance misuse a few can do
eventually you will not have more threads with high scores (that should not) with that system than in the elitist-moderators system
and the difference is you are sure there is no ego (and no one fired because he talled he is moderator), and you are sure high scores are really appreciated by plenty of people
that's democracy
maby we'll have some place in the virtual world were we can have democracy... since it does not exist in real world (driven by elites)
and if you suppress registered accounts to only have ACow, you have the first communist virtual community
(only kidding about communism, not about democracy by mass voting...)
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
in my country we say you cannot have "the butter & the money of the butter", which means you cannot have all privileges
I consider if you want to be AC, that means you are not ready to totally defend your opinion in front of others, so yes, it is some kind of an under valued idea. I do not say it is less interesting that other ideas, but I do not see why you could have the priviledge to hide your opinion into the mass *and* have to priviledge to trace moderation.
By the way, I consider 400 moderators is wrong, and I would prefer that everybody could vote (no moderation at all).
about anonymousity : when you are AC you only are anonymous towards other readers, on the net, noone (but crackers & other out laws) is really anonymous & untraceable.
in fact you
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
when you are AC you only are anonymous towards other readers, on the net, noone (but crackers & other out laws) is really anonymous & untraceable.
/. you can find who I really am, but only a few can really do that, and these can also trace you back, even mitnicks has been traced back... so forget the AC protection, it really does not exists
in fact you think that signing AC means noone can bother you. Can you bother me ? ok, if you break into
The world belongs to those who get up early. - I'm far from being the king of Earth then
From having viewed the guidelines, it would appear that there is no automatic granting of Moderator access. Does that mean that you will periodically rescan the "ratings" list to find new moderators?
Taral
WARN_(accel)("msg null; should hang here to be win compatible\n");
-- WINE source code
Rob, what happens if you say you are *not* a moderator? ;)
Comment Display Mode is "thread", "thread", "flat", "nocomment", "nested". How do the first two differ? What's the difference between "thread" and "nested"?
Comment Posting Mode is "plaintext", "html", "plaintext", "exttrans". What's the difference between the two "plaintext" options? What exactly is "exttrans"? ("html tags to text", apparently; but what's it *mean*? Many HTML tags work even in plain text mode?)
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
Aahhhmmmmmmmmmmmm.
[The drug acts, and seeps through every ancillary network within meept's body. Where once meept's head pounded with noise, now everything was quiet. ]
Meept's poem to asprin
Asprin, you are snow like,
and indeed people go skiing in you,
and houses in you cost millions
[cut to inside a moderator's head]
Uh that's ASPEN. Better delete , uh.. huh huh.. I mean moderate that (how yo say in zis country) comment.
Suddenly and without warning, the moderator ejaculates.
MEEPT!!
I disagree [but not by much], for a small technical reason and another philosophical one. The technical reason is that with both positives and negative scales, a new comment with a rating of 0 or 1 doesn't require moderation to stand out from the flame wars, etc. which got downed. The philosophical reason is that I think we would all agree that the more value a NEW reader sees in Slashdot, the likelier they are to stick around.
The important thing is that Rob and crew let us have it our own way once we've been here long enough to decide to log in and set our own preferences.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Perhaps you could place a total number of comments, as well as the total number of shown comments at the base of the article. That way users can tell what number of comments they don't see. I would like this, because if my normal access reveals 10 out of 200, maybe i might decide to change the level. Also some stories have quite amuzing low level debates. This could clue me into that if there is an unusual number of unshown comments.
--- If you don't want to know the answer, don't ask the question.
You're probably right, but the 408 moderators were picked from people who had been given a positive score by the original 25 moderators. This would percolate potential biases of the original moderators down through the other 380+. It's probably diluted enough that it no longer matters, but you can't be sure.
I think the "down one" link gives them enough power over what they see. Setting the default leel to -1000 or making it so no post can be lower that 0 *is* making a decision for everyone. At least the current setup makes people be active if they want to see everything. The world needs more people who are active instead of passive, in its own small way, slashdot encourages this.
Didn't CmdrTaco say this article was meant for constructive criticism? This is the appropriate forum to tell Rob what they do/n't like, and what they would like done.
Ok, Ok, good job Rob. And I do mean it.
That's what articles such as this are for! Almost evrey program has features that you have to search for, read the FAQ for, read the online help file for. Most people are aware of this.
Translation: "I don't trust people. I do trust machines."
I would rather use the opinions of good old fallible human beings. I can sort articles by their score (highest at the top) and set my threshold to -1000. Then I can see everything if I want to, with a predictably degrading SNR.
But say a KDE/GNOME flamewar starts. Those are the kind of comments that are bound to have ALOT of replies, which it obviously wouldn't deserve alot of points for.
If you read the moderator guidelines I think they say that moderators are limited to a certain number of moderator points, which looks like 10 at the most. So I suppose if a moderate wanted to moderate my comment here down to -10 they could, provided they didn't do any other moderating. To get a rediculously low score (-20 or something) a bunch of moderators would probably have to gang up and use up all there points (which take about 1000 comments to accumulate) which might mean the post was pretty terrible in the first place.
:) It's only a couple of extra keystrokes.
Proabably not too big a worry, I'd say if you set your limit to -1000 you will be fine for sure. Why not make it -10000 actually, then you'll be fine for sure sure...
great moderators to score up my post to
where it belongs....
But seriously:
Is there some king of (slow) diffusion between
moderators and non-moderators?
I mean, some moderators will loose interest
or change their job/get their first job/get a life
There could be some kind of algorithm to
decide when a moderator should not be a moderator any more (no moderation has happenend for one month...)
to select new moderators from posters if the number of moderators has fallen below a given number (i.e. 400) or instantly after a moderator has been "degraded".
> You have misunderstood me.
:-)
> "moderation" is not evil, per sae, but the act of reducing the threshold because the moderator does not agree with the *viewpoint* expressed in the post most definately is.
Ah. Sorry about that; english is not my first language, which is probably why I missed the true meaning of the post.
Anyway, now that I have a better understanding of your viewpoint, I have to agree with it. My apologies for the confusion.
Errare humanum est
De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum
> [About moderation] This is wrong. It's Evil.
I happen to disagree with you. You seem to dislike moderation because moderators might abuse their power; should we therefore also condemn democracy, because politicians could do the same? The problem is not with moderation, but with the possibility of there being dishonest people trying to push their own agendas.
While I know that they exist , I believe that they are a minority (on Slashdot, that is) so their impact shouldn't be too great.
> Each downward moderation should have a REASON tagged onto it, and the identity of the moderator should be listed
I do agree with this idea, though. People would know why their post is considered in a bad light by moderators; who knows, the poster might even learn a few things too.
De gustibus et coloribus non est disputandum
Well, in at least the new versions of IE you can configure your news reader, and I think you can do the same with Netscape 4.x as well, of course the default is the newsreader bundled with the browser, but you can switch.
However, at least for those of us behind corporate firewalls, web-based tools are much nicer than using a newsreader.
-- Join us in Chicago May 1-4th for MeshForum -- writer, historian, tech geek, entrepreneur, internet junky since '91 --
Actually, this is a really good idea. Why doesn't Slashdot have message boards about certain topics. Instead of just comments on articles, there could be useful discussion groups like Usenet, but with moderation and through the web page.
I'm under the impression that it doesn't take all of the moderators to "negatize" (couldn't think of a better word) a comment, just one. Sure other moderators could "positize" (I kinda like the sound of those two "words") the comment, but who would bother. I am also under the impression that the moderators only had a set amount of votes, so they wouldn't want to waste them one fixing someone else's mistakes, just making their own judgement. I'm not saying that they are all evil and would purposely force an agenda. I think that it has more to do with subconscious tendencies. It's kind of like a knee-jerk reaction of a Linux fan immediately hating someone who says Microsoft is good in the subject even if they haven't read the comment yet. That person will probably have an initial "This can't be good because it goes against what I believe in" reaction, whether they intended to or not.
I just can't see how having more moderators is going to make it better.
Yea, but it still isn't very fail safe. Moderators are supposed to, but who enforces that they will? Not to be down on the good moderators out there, but with all of the content on slashdot, who will take the time to make sure every article is rated fairly?
1)I don't trust people until they earn my trust, but that is a different story.
/.ers have become complacient with the new system. It is at that time when the moderator's biases will creep up into their subconciouses, and you will see a definite swing of the comments towards a certian viewpoint if you have your threshold set high.
2)Even if you are correct in asserting that the moderators are bumping up more than bumping down, the fact of the matter is that this is new and "all eyes are on them". Simply put, the moderators aren't going to abuse their authority when they are actively thinking about it. I am sure that most of them want to do the right thing, and for a while, they will. The problem will occur in the future when all of us
I'm not saying that the moderators are evil and have nefarious agendas. What I am saying is when a small group of people have this kind of power over a large group of people, the tendancy is that the small powerful group will try and sway the opinions of the large group to fit their own opinions, whether or not they are the quote "better opinions". This won't happen in plain sight, but rather subconciously.
I have heard the terms "Welcome to the Real World", or "This is Real Life", and it seems to me that those are said to "control the masses", so to speak. If there are mistakes in something, anything, we, as free-thinking individuals have the right to point them out and hopefully lead to some change. I hate to think of a world where if something is wrong, we just lie down and take it, spewing out catch-phrases like "that's the way it goes" or "Welcome to the Real World", instead of trying to change things for the good.
We, as a people, should strive for constant vigilance instead of complacency.
Ouch, you hurt my feelings Mr. Badman. I'm going to go to the corner and cry.
/. I couldn't tell you how to keep people from acting immature. I don't know how to stop people from wanting to post "First Posts" or how to stop people from people from starting "M$ Rulez, Linux sux" flamebait. I do not exert that kind of power over people, nor would I ever want to. The fact of the matter is that people are going to act that way because they can. I guess I was hoping for something better. Some kind of system that didn't involve giving a small group of people power over a larger group to decide which posts are good and which ones aren't.
Maybe I do need moderation. Moderation from personal attacks by people who don't even know me. You shouldn't have any Idea who I am or what I am like, yet you have the ability to attack me personally. I'm astonished. Is this what flame truly is?
I'll be the first to admit that I do not have all the answers to the problems of the universe. Hell, anybody who thinks so probably doesn't have any answers at all. Honestly I can't tell you how to fix the problems with the Signal to Noise Ratio in
But I guess we should lie down and take it, because it is for the common good, and it won't ever be abused, will it?
My comments will probably do no good, but I feel not saying anything at all is worse.
But of course, I should welcome myself to the real world, because you said so right? It's because of your personal experiences right? They must outweigh mine because you have the gonads to stand up and attack me personally. That is much better than an intelligent comment, because only wimpy geeks ever have anything intelligent to say, right?.
And, apparantly, I'm Thomas Jefferson, even though my birth certificate says otherwise.
You had something intelligent to say? When did this happen? Must not have been recently.
I'm not sure I really like the idea of this kind of moderation. I know it is all well and good to try and get rid of the AC "First Post" Fluff, but where does it end?
/. Somebody might have a great comment about something that's included with Windows is better than Linux. They may have a great argument and have a well-written comment, but I would bet dollars to doughnuts that comments like that could potentially be set to a negative number, because of the biases of the random "moderators". That doesn't seem open, or free to myself. It seems the system that is in place is very judgmental towards outsiders and newbies.
And I have heard the thing about changing the threshold to -100 or something like that, so you don't miss anything. But it still doesn't sit right with me because random people are the moderators.
No matter what anyone would like to think about their fellow human, people still have their weaknesses. Biases and Agendas will still probably creep up in the back of the backs of even the trustworthiest people's minds.
Now, even though most of the comments aren't really deleted. I don't like the thought of a random person putting a "rating" on my or anybody else's comments. Basically I don't like them saying that any one comment is better, or more important than any other comment. I think it is up to me to decide whether or not a comment is of quality or not.
The minute that there is a negative 1 or 2 or whatever placed on a comment, it automatically puts the thought in peoples minds that this comment is of lower quality or importance, that's if they even see it, because some people might not have their thresholds set down low enough.
There are definite biases here on
If there was some way to have a system of moderation that was really impartial without a shadow of a doubt, then maybe I would be all for it, but until then, I am not going to like this system of moderation, no matter what anyone says.
...how much people like to whine.
/. and the other is his clearly stated belief in not censoring anything that anyone has to say.
/.ers).
/. is about in the first place! /.ers come here to read what has been culled off the net. They could crawl through the net and skim the cream of the technical stories themselves... or trust Rob to do it. But who really wants to sift articles about SAP's Q2 projections and new spew about Office 2K just find the good stuff? Not I! That's why I come to /.: I trust Rob to choose wisely when it comes to posting interesting articles.
/. are the comments. They have always been scored, the only new change is who gets to score them. It never was and still isn't censorship. It's a review.
Rob has two issues that he has to weigh: one is the signal/noise ratio on
Let's look at the two extremes:
In one extreme, he could delete every message that he didn't like. (Or now with scaling issues, the larger moderator pool of
In the other extreme, he could just let post show up in the order that they were posted and not touch a thing.
The system (both the old and the new) that he has implemented has inherent beauty and balance. Since day one, he has never deleted a post. He scores it. This gives you a choice... it's an optional rating system, not censorship! If you don't like, DON'T USE IT!.
Think about it this way: it's a recursion of what
The other dimension of
You know, some people won't go to a movie that doesn't get a good review? They find a film critic they like in print or on the net, and if he/she says the film sucks, they don't go. This is the same thing! Lower your threshold and the scores are meaningless, raise it, or keep it at zero, and it's just like consulting a movie review.
Everybody gets a choice... I don't have to sift through stupid-ass flamewars to find the content that I love.
You know what... I think I'll raise my threshold to 1.
--
"In Cyberspace, no one can hear you be sarcastic"
Oh, if I were a moderator (not saying whether I am or not!), I know I would raise some. I know there have been many times when I have seen a post, thought it really good, and wished I could either raise its score, or ask someone else to.
I'm sure that there are other people out there with similar feelings who would do the same.
Actually, just in the last couple of days, I've seen some posts with scores of 3 and 4 -- so obviously someone is raising them...
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
Yes... I really like that idea...
I've thought about it myself, not so much in the context of Slashdot, but as a general principle.
Working out algorithms to maximize efficiency and utility, and so on...
The main drawback, I think, would be the hardware requirements, in terms of processing, storage space for the DB, server load, and so on. My experience is that those sorts of interrelated sets and the associated processing are a HUGE drain on the processor, require lots of memory, and also require enormous databases (at least, to do properly).
Even with Slashdot's spiffy new server, I don't think it meets the requirements. Yet.
But maybe someday... we can always hope...
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
LOL!
But howabout the other way around?
I mean... how do you know if you are a moderator? Does it show up in your user prefs, or something?
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
- Humor
- Flame
- Pinhead Post
Then you could also have highlights for each day such as "Funniest Posts", or "Toasters", or even "10 Stupidest things said today!" I just hope I don't ever make the last list....e to the i pi equals negative one
It would be nice to have a way to make individual moderators liable if they get out of control.
ie. number them so we can say "Moderator number 12 is single handidly destroying my life, he must be stopped!!"
---
:)
the US govt is gridlocked, but the US is a pretty damned productive country.
if its not due to democracy, what is it due to?
---
Capitalism!
-Snoot
How about posting the score on the link to the comment. This could allow a little more versatility for people who don't want to have the moderators decide what they get to see, but still wish to use the moderators opinions to determine what they view.
Weren't you supposed to hide your moderating powers from us mere mortals? I'm afraid you just said jehova. ;)
No go ahead and censor me
Very good work Rob! I especially like the little toggle that made my Lynx much more happy with /.!
Well, like many of you, I tried to post to the poll comment page, and it seems to be broken. I'm gonna put my comment here instead, even though it might get moderated out due to off-topic content. :) Those of you with low thresholds can still hopefully enjoy. It's probably a tribute to you most of all!
- :) Or is my personal slashdot broken? I wonder why there are no posts on my page.
-----------------------------------------------
Perhaps people are afraid to post because of the new moderation system?
Well, in any case, I think it's nice to see how many people think they'll still code even if they never get paid. In fact, I think it's safe to say most of those people are writing code right now that they aren't getting paid for, right? I know I am!
It's an addiction. Especially with so many resources online. It's so easy to play with Perl/CGI, java applets, GTK+/Gnome, TCL/TK, etc., etc., etc. With so much out there to learn, anyone with the minimum amount of intellectual curiousity to regularly visit slashdot will not be able to ignore the call to code. It's like the gift of gab (I would know, can't you tell?) Once you see your code compile and run, you can never turn the faucet off.
Keep it flowing everyone! Great things will come of this phenomenon. We all know it.
Or are you using Perl's Math::BigInt? :)
"...Is this world not a call I can screen out" --
Many of these people have interesting opinions and post good messages (myself possibly included but maybe not :) that we would lose under a pay system.
How is having $29 to throw away a measure of the validity of your opinions or the quality of your writing?
"...Is this world not a call I can screen out" --
Also it would be cool if there was something in your user space to signify whether somebody has posted a reply to your comment, though I realize this may be fairly complicated and highly unlikely.
kmj
kmj
The only reason I keep my ms-dos partition is so I can mount it like the b*tch it is.
>>At some point I'll have a page of the top 10 comments from the last 24 hours. I think that will be really interesting- I'll probably have a general discussion at some point specifically for this purpose.
I think this is a really good idea. With ego's being what they are, I think people will actually TRY to post intelligent comments just to be on the top 10. It works for other sites that have a daily letter section. So I imagine this can't be a bad thing.
Interesting -
A bug will be evident to one in a million eyes.
A bad post will be evident to one in 400 eyes.
Hurm. OpenSource moderation????
As for making it entirely public, think of the idea of letting everyone recode the linux kernel and having it effect everyone. If everyone was a moderator then the "First Poster" could moderate his up till it was a high enough moderated comment to be read.
-cpd
Could this score info be included in the "user account" (and perhaps the "user info") pages please?
/. article with "130 comments", all of which have at least a 2. I'd spend the extra thirty minutes reading that.
Aw man... we'd have people in a contest to have the lowest score. ^-^
But it would be sweet to see your own score, and know you've been given a 5 or a -3 or whatever, with comments to tell you why. I think that would tend to encourage most people to improve their writing and their analysis.
Imagine a
I think you would know if you were a moderator. . .
"My husband invented the internet, and I censored all the naughty stuff on it. .
kick ass! well done Rob!!! this site dymanic and moderation in needed at any level... Dumb ass comments have no room in a prestigious place like this.. ROCK ON LINUX!!!
I think this new system of doing things is a great idea. Now I know that if I post an insightful comment, it won't get flamed to oblivion by AC's, and someone will actually get to read it.
I think the idea of everyone being moderators would be a better idea. It would make it a lot more democratic. I don't think anything like it has been done on the net before.
Good work Rob.
I had stopped reading most of the comments, because of all the useless banter in them. There are some very insightful comments on /. but wading through all the garbage was not worth the effort... Let's hope that this system helps organise the responses.
:)
I suggest that you are very strict at applying the above rules, or you will see this system abused very quickly.
Later
-- I'm all for freedom of speech.....unless it comes from some moron that doesn't have a point
Time for Luke Slashdot to get jiggy with his sister.
ip voting won't work for /. users who use a real multi user operating system that has multipul users Or the thousands who get assigned dynamic IP's. I've found that virtually any IP based logging is useless unless your doing something like trying to narrow down the location of a particular spammer.
Once more unto the breach dear friends...
I like the way it's working out. I've been reading over the comments and I like it. And sort by score is helping a lot too. ^.^
I'm trusting Rob with the moderator picking. I don't trust a lot of people, you go Rob.
~mina~
I'm out of my mind, leave a message.
Do you get an e-mail, or there is something in your user prefs?
And, what abour people who would generate a new nick/password pair, post one comment, get a +1 rating by default, get moderator priviledges and then abuse the hell out of them? Can even be done by a bot...
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
First, why do you need my "REAL NAME"? Are you going to sue me? Why do you even care? Why can't I have multiple identities?
Second, charge me $29 and I'll go away. I'll bet most everybody will go away. Has been tried, doesn't work.
Third, DejaNews makes Usenet quite usable.
Kaa
Kaa's Law: In any sufficiently large group of people most are idiots.
Noone is deciding whut you can and cant read ...
set your threshold to -5 or so as suggested,
and you can read any and everything your heart desires.
Filters and killfiles are a good idea regardless,
if they can be implemented without adding significantly
to the load.
What about some statistics on score distribution at the top of the page?
either as numbers or a bargraph
The whole thing is currently about 400 moderators, which is cool, but what about taking it to the next level? How about everyone being a moderator. I think there are about 20000 acounts on Slashdot, so that would make the scores range anywhere from +/-20000. It would let the community itself decide what it finds acceptable. It is an interesting idea, I don't know if it would work though. You would also need a variable limit though...
I set my user preferences to see only comments>=score 2. It works well if I see an article from the main page, however, if I see an article in "ask slashdot" it doen't seem to work.
I still see all the comments >= score 0.
Is that what is intended?
-Nak
Unix is simple. It just takes a genius to understand its simplicity. -Dennis Ritchie
This, of course, brings up another issue: Is there a minimum integer that /. uses? At what point does my incredibly low threshold level become an incredibly high threshold level? Or is some limitless integer type, or is there some threshold that translates to NaN?
:)
I wish I could stop obsessing about these things. Too bad it's my job.
"Whatever happened to fair use?"
-- Duff-Man
They were right, of course - USENET is proof. If articles can be weighted and scored by a number of moderators, the S/N ratio will improve. However, is it too much to hope for a spell checker?
Dave
Reminds me of the "TV-MA", etc... TV ratings... Dumbest thing I've ever seen, because these things are purely subjective. Only CT took it a step further and is actually filtering stuff out based on it!
Regardless of that, I don't need or want someone to chew stuff for me... I can handle it myself, thank you very much. And I don't buy the treshold argument (make it so that you see everything - THAT should be the default).
I think CT is getting bored? So he keeps playing with his software. I know that problem very well, sometimes I do it at work. Bad habit. I learned, and I would have thought that CT did as well when he had major system problems a few weeks back (I got really annoyed about that, because it fueled so many arguments against Linux, when in fact Linux had nothing to do with it).
Ok, enough rambling.
the proof that the moderation system is clearly not working.
The previous post, obtained a score of 3! (at least when I read - might be upped or lowered by then).
Seem to me that there is absolutely nothing constructive in this post whatsoever. The gist of it is "If you don't like it, go away". Clearly the moderators gave that post points because they agreed with it. fine, i agree with it too. But that's precisely what the moderator should not be doing: moderate based on opinion.
I stick by my previous post: this system is a bad, bad idea...
Yep. It's a problem. I WOULD trust a rating if EVERYONE logged in had the same rights (that would be a democracy). Not a handful of people that have special priviledges.
This way of doing things didn't work for government, what makes anyone think it will for slashdot?
I second this request, but I would also like to see my overall score (or possibly total score / number of posts). This would give a good overview of what people think of my posts - and the chances of me ever making moderator :)
I was until now under the impression that the term flame referred to thoughtless namecalling and the like in response to a post; however, you used in this case to refer to simply a lot of posts. None of these posts said things like "you're dumb." or "you suck." They were all rational discussions of the topic. Is this really flaming? I'm just curious to know which of these definitions best describes the common use of the term "flame."
The system was tracking moderation done to each user internally for just this purpose. (I had a score of 2, Anonymous Coward had a -1628 *grin*) All users with a positive score were given moderator access.
So how do we find out our score?
For those with hopes to someday be able to moderate, it would be nice to be able to know our score.
If moderation works, then why in the MS/PII/LINUX article is the entire comment section filled with comments about moderation and censorship. The first positive comment was someone complaining about the moderation effort, and everyother comment ended up dealing with that same subject. What bothers me is not that these comments were allowed to stay, but why did this off topic comment that started it all get a score of 3?????
is it just me or does that seem a bit out of line?
Who cares that 80% go with the defaults? Why make life easier for the stupid and / or lazy?
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
How about a slashbox with comments above a certain threshhold?
Also, do my own comments show up when they are below the threshhold I have set?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Studies of newsgroup activity show that often users can be classified into two groups: those who post stuff, and those who do not. The number of those who do not post are much larger than those who do. This is what the PHOAKS research concluded. For example, a typical distribution on Usenet is around 95% readers only. Slashdot is probably around the same.
You are dead on saying that just using the set of people who post things to rate the articles is not giving a good reflection of the overall readership. But readers don't want to submit anything, since they're readers... The solution is passive rating.
Systems like GroupLens, PHOAKS, and SiteSeer all are set up to extract ratings information without the reader having to be bothered to submit it themselves. For example, by the simple act of reading the post, they have implicitly stated that they thought it would be better than other posts. GroupLens found that the time that is spent reading a post correlates very well with the rating that would've been eventually given anyway.
The problem with any ratings system that allows people to choose the posts that they rate, is that it is in danger of influencing itself - any errors in rating are compounded. In the present slashdot system, if most moderators only read articles that were of a particular score, then they would not be providing useful scores. Topics that are more newsworthy will naturally get better ratings, regardless of the value of the content.
A solution is to normalise the scores so that topics that only have a few ratings score better until more people come along to rate them. This way a good post in a non-newsworthy area will rise to prominance, with a high initial score, until perhaps more people read it and the score goes down.
Passive ratings and normalisation will mean that no explicit moderation is needed, and the scores will be more useful than the current moderation system.
An interesting way to make moderation work so everybody likes it might be moderator clustering.
There are a lot of moderators moderating SlashDot, maybe even more than the 400 there are now. As moderators tend to be human, they tend to show group behaviour. One moderator cluster(1) may rate a certain style of writing up (Universe A: Linus is God), and another one down (B: Everything that MS does is rotten and should be forgotten).
Cluster 2 is different: They don't care much about MS or Linus, they just like to read the social interactions between technology and humans (rate++), but dont particularly like heated, but significant arguments between MS and Linus.
And there is a third cluster, etc.
I think it would be briliant to set my prefences so that I can get the down regulation of Cluster 1 (but not their up), and the upregulation of cluster 2 (but not their down).
This would involve giving a patial identity of the moderator to the world, which is not in it self a bad thing. I strongly agree with moderator anomity as a person.
This system might solve one of the worst problems, IMHO, of moderation: Moderator bias.
The only downside is that, as other people stated, up to 95% of all user have their preferences set to the defaults. (This is where a piece of Novell technology might come in handy: personal profiles that are standardised and get transmitted (if you want to) to web sites.)
Moderator bias is what makes some Scientific Journals a nightmare to get an article submitted to.
On the practical side, clusters could be defined by using a questionaire that moderators have to fill out, so they can be clustered. A harder way could be using statistical analysis of the moderators.
As was said before, it's a ranking, not a censoring...
I like the new setup, but I'd prefer to have the default threshold (for 1st time viewers, and people who are not logged in) set to -1000 (or whatever the lowest number is).
Thanks CmdrTaco & Hemos, I appreciate all of your hard work.
Don't throw your computer out the window, throw the Windows out of your computer!
There are 4 now, god damn bastards stole the rea one's ID (I'm guessing it's the first from the user info "MEEPT would like to bring all the many divided factions of Linux into one big divided faction").
Or it's the newest one.
Microsoft tried to speak for me, so i quit (Toldya i would)
I personally like the "flat mode" better than any newsreader I've seen, I just wish there was a small amount of indenting so I didn't have to switch back to the threaded mode to see the staircase.
"Nested" mode on the prefs page. Like flat mode on steroids.
As far as download time, spam quotients, hundreds of followups: what I'm discovering is that if I sort by highest score first and set a limit on the number of comments to display, I get only the good comments and none of the "first post" AC bandwith black holes.
I know some people want unmoderated comments, but you can't have that and low bandwidth consumption, even with NNTP... You'd still have to download all the spam/AC headers, anyways!
Well, if you don't like moderation, don't use it. No one is forcing you to. You can choose to use other people's decisions on what's good and what's not, or you can choose not to.
If you read a newspaper, or read books, or even watch TV, you're taking other people's word at what's good and what's not (they're called editors).
Pretend there is some witty statement here.
These are just a few random ideas.
:)
1. Moderation is not the word for what is going on here, but rather a ranking. In no way shape or form can the "moderators" delete a sugestion. They can just mainly rate it, thus changing the number of people that probably read it.
2. I understand that the system is meant to remove off topic and useless posts but do the "moderators" necessilary need to lower a score? Why can't it just be set that all posts start at 0 or 1 and the "moderators" can raise the score if the post is worth reading. This will prevent the dreaded "Abussive Moderator", tons of e-mail to Rob complainig "Why did I get downgraded?", and users can still screen out the first posts or such by setting there score level to 2. If not then why not just set a publically known lower limit between -10 and 0 to prevent massive complaining.
3. Many people have requested a moderator ID to be created, but why do we need that? So we can flame individual moderators? I agree with requiring the reason for downgrading, but this should be stated in a threaded post by the moderstor.(possible new rule?)
4. Someone mentioned a moderation of postings. good idea, but I have an expansion. As a reward for the moderators help why not create an area that the moderators can rate stories before they are sent to Rob? This would make sure that the post is on topic with the slashdot community, and at the same time, decrease Robs workload. Where is the reward? Moderators get first crack at the stories. They can hit the sites before the slashdot effect. There should be a time limit though as to how long a story can be left in the moderator "area". This way the rest of the slashdot community will still be able to see it. And possibly a place for rejected stories and reasons for rejections.
5. I'm all for the top posts in a slashbox as stated in an earlier post. Could hof also be in a slashbox? (see link on the left for newbies)
Just a few ideas to releve the owned Rob. (yes he is owned, by slashdot)
One last thing. Don't Forget to say Thanks to the person that makes you favorite site what it is. It's a great ego booster.
Later
ClarkBar
Sometimes, the same story gets repeated after a small interval of time, say 2 weeks. Whoever are in charge of decdiging what gets posted might not have the time to see all the articles on /., but I do.
So can the moderators also moderate the story posted. For a story, the only moderation would be: "it was already posted" or something to that effect.
With enough people watching everyone else's back, well... you get to see a lot of backs.
Nothing is impossible to the man who doesn't have to do it himself.
But then you miss the fun of listing the top 10 lowest scores! Those go right along with the top 10 highest scores or whatever...
/."
Hey new ego trip. Put a button on your web site - "I have a top 10 lowest rated comment at
(or maybe that should bottom 10?)
I would love to see some sort of user based rating system incorporated into the comment scoring. This would provide a great incentive for people to write consistently good comments. It would also satisfy the need for rapid comment scoring (before the moderators get a chance to read through all the fresh comments on a hot topic).
:) but the general idea is to make it increasingly difficult to get to higher default scores.
/.ers):
Possible implementation:
You're already keeping track of the net moderation value (NMV) of each user. Simply have the initial score of a particular user's comments based on something like the following formula (which only works for NMV > 0):
initial score = log(NMV)/log(5)
I'm sure there are plenty of better formulas, (and I'm having a hard time remembering algabraic rules for logarithms
I imagine this has been discussed to death in the past, but I think it's worth suggesting that users be allowed to create anonymous user accounts instead of having to be ACs. I think this would be especially important in the event that any sort of user based scoring is performed. This also allows anonymous users to have their own preferences (which is rapidly becoming more desirable).
To Rob (and other influential
I hope you'll come back to this article in a couple days and read through every comment. I know there will be a ton of them, but there are already a huge number of great suggestions and comments. I especially like some of the ideas about scored threading and absolute minimum values for comment scores (and user scores, if implemented).
mossmann
First, Rob, I'd like to say that I think you are doing a GREAT job. This new moderation scheme is definitely a very good thing for slashdot.
There are a few things you should add, however. I agree with the comment regarding a score history. It would be very beneficial to the posters if they knew why they got negative points (along with the moderator ID--keeping them anonymous).
If you have enough of a moderator base you should cycle moderators. I believe this will avoid the "I don't care anymore" syndrome, to an extent. ie. eliminating useless moderators over time. I believe you are thinking of this in a way but instead of revoking a moderator just for being bad, revoke them for being a moderator too long regardless of their history (unless it's someone you know personally, obviously).
It's a democracy one way but what about the other ? The moderators get to vote on the posters so why can't the posters vote on the moderators? This can be done by requiring moderators to give reasons for how they moderated on some number N comments. It would be too time consuming to comment on every single one. Then the moderator would have a specific id associated with them. This way the users of slashdot can see what our moderators are like and vote accordingly. You (or some committee you pick) then make the final decision. So, to sum it up, you would cycle to a moderator, they would have a trial period to comment on N comments. The users of slashdot would then vote on their opinion of the moderator - in essence, grading them.
You could take this a step further and allow the users of slashdot to select what moderators influence the score (but it would be completely local to that user). ie, Mod1 votes -2, and Mod2 votes 3. The current user has Mod1 selected as one of their preferred moderators, and Mod2 deselected (you can implement this a zillion different ways i suppose), so Mod2's vote doesn't matter.
Stefan Preble
sfp2322@rit.edu
Yadda yadda yadda. Let me submit to the jury that slashdot isn't a castle. (It's probably closest to a cathedral, if anything.)
Sometimes people post some really funny here. That guy who was talking about how he used his bathtub as a CPU cooling method comes to mind.
MEEPT!! is just an uninspired dork, though.
You're a suburbanite.
I've just played with the threshold level for a bit and I *really* like it. I had sort of given up on reading slashdot comments (esp. subjects like microsoft and unix desktop warzones), but this system might make things readable again.
:-)
Having said that, I also agree with the above poster that the default should be that all articles are shown (threshold 0), with the logical result that no article will have a negative threshold.
It's a much friendlier system (and not necessarily less useful) if it's mainly about promoting articles, not degrading.
I also disagree with the standard that signed posts start off with one point more than AC's. All should begin at zero.
Obviously, this scheme has the result that both mediocre and useless/obscene/loonie/whatever posts end up in the same basement... but is that such a bad idea?
Personally, I might even prefer a healthy dose of mindless profanity over yet another "linux is better than NT because it doesn't crash" comment.
I realize that this is probably a mediocre post too, and deserves to be in the Hell of Unread Comments (threshold 0) which it endorses. But I figured if I didn't vent my views now, I'd have no rights complaining about the evil moderators later
Regards,
Harm
The way I ( and most people I know ) use the word it can mean two related things :
1) A post/mail using thoughtless namecalling as you described.
2) A post/mail that is nothing but a derogatory response to another post/mail and doesn't bring in any new information into a discussion.
The posts were flames in the sense of 2).
But maybe that's just a weird swiss understanding of the word flame ( on the other hand the best ways to blast people don't include resorting to namecalling : )
-- wherever you go, there you are
This is exactly why he decided on using more than a handful of moderators. It will be next to impossible for all 408 moderators to get together to force an agenda. Heck, people have a problem trying to agree what they should have for lunch. The moderators most likely don't know who the others are. (With the exception of CmdrTaco :) ) The only way to find out for sure who all the moderators are is to reveal themselves & that gets the status taken away. And they are probably under orders to reveal any unappropriate activity by any other moderators. Colusion is harder to get among that many people.
I'll never be as good as I want to be. I can only be as good as I am.
A way to make the whole thing more democratic would be to only let moderators lower one half or less at a time... But I guess we need at least the double amount of moderators to make that work.
De lyckliga slavarna är frihetens bittraste fiender, legalisera!!!
Yes,
It could be done by showning the score in each comments link.
I would prefer it that way...
De lyckliga slavarna är frihetens bittraste fiender, legalisera!!!
First, The kudos to Rob, et al: Way to go. There are very few collabarative discussion groups of this size _anywhere_ which do not suffer from the problems people have are complaining about: excessive noise, moderators "playing favorites", and overworked moderators. You are pushing toward a brave new world. : ).
/.'ers time and intelligence.
Even places like Photo.net with similar daily hits to slashdot do not have this sort of borad-based moderation in place... Phil Greenspun, database-backed web design guru, might be interested, in fact.
A few thoughts:
1) Although nothing makes up for the versatility that humans have for moderation, perhaps an adaptive scoring system could be added on: functions like "set score += 1 if post contains 'linux'" or "set score = -10 if post contains 'luzer'" implemented on a per-user basis would be more expensive, but even more valuable than the current system. In this way, the moderators scores could be taken as a base. Those who are happy with the moderators, and only want to make sure they see their own posts at the top have an easy road ahead of them. Likewise, those who feel the moderators are fascist pigs.
2) The scoring system has one strong benefit people do not seem to be mentioning: Conscientious moderators encourage better, and more posting. My goal is clear: Get ratings of 3-4 on all my posts! Additionally, I am more motivated to post knowing that if my post is good, it will reach a wider group of people.
The broad-based scoring implements a small free market economy of ideas: the posters of dreck can continue in their ways, (reaching fewer and fewer people) while those who want a voice will be forced to value their fellow
Thoughts?
So GL uses all GL users as reviewers.
The mods were chosen from those who thought the old /. was worth joining or who wanted their names on their articles.
Successful submitters are people who have found something which has been judged to be interesting to /. and have phrased it in a way which the publisher liked. Let the submitters assist with their topic if they wish, or trust them to use their points in a similarly relevant way.
And here I was just an AC until a week ago because without the /. customization features I didn't want another account/pw for my meager comments...can I reclaim my past comments? :-)
As a way to improve the signal to noise ratio, how about a slashbox for the top N posters, ordered by average score?
The subject says it all...is there any way that someone who missed the cutoff could become a moderator? (Not an instantaneous thing, I would think it would take some time and intelligent posting). Please notice that this is not a request to become a moderator (I know many will take it as such), but more of a curiosity thing than any. Oh, by the way, I think /. is the most kickass site on the net (futile attempt at sucking up :)
_______
Scott Jones
Newscast Director / WKPT-TV 19
Game Show Fan / C64 Coder
FC Closer
First,
/. effect is alive and well ;). Prehapes a simple daemon to get the http header every x minutes while the story is "live"
/.ers
Great idea for reducing the number of comments! Who can read 100+ comments per article?
Second,
How about adding a 1-10 rating thingybob to the comment display so that those who don't want to comment can still say "I agree / That sucks" to a comment. Then, maybe a top-ten comment can move to the top of the pile.
Third,
Is there an Australian mirror somewhere? If not, are there plans to intro a Freshmeat style mirror farm?
Slightly offtopic,
What about a "100% SlashProof" / "Slashed!" icon for the url to a story to indicate if you can see the url or not. Nothing worse than looking at a link to see that the
Cheers
Speaking from a useability point of view, an user-initiated IGNORE command to throw on annoying posters isn't a bad idea. ( Not sure how hard that is to code for /. )
/. system that essentially equals peer review alleviates the potential difficulty I outlined with the IGNORE command above -- if a user posts useless comments, nobody will see them... if they suddenly post great insights, their presence will be known.
/. moderation system for a while and see how it turns out... like any software, the bugs come out once the release goes public. :-)
However, a disadvantage of an IGNORE command is that if a user comes around, receives a bolt of inspiration and starts posting some interesting, useful comments, anybody who had IGNOREed that poster in the past wouldn't receive the benefit of the poster's new-found wisdom and insight.
The new
IMHO, I'd say lets try the new
Cheers,
I am assuming that if ten moderators lower the score for a post, then it will drop by ten points. If this is correct, then a slightly bad post could really get hammered.
The solution could be a defined scale... 1-10.
1=crap,
10=insightful, cogent, on topic, etc.
5=Average, where every post starts
4=AC, if you want to penalize them
If your a moderator, you have ten radio buttons and you can vote on any post. All the moderators' numerical votes are averaged and the post gets that ranking.
As a user, you can set your threshold to any number from 1-10.
I'll try this again.
How about a simple scale like 1-10? Each post starts out a 5 and each moderator has 10 radio button for each post then can select a _defined_ level for a post. 1=First Post, LINUX r00lz; 10=well informed, thought out and presented argument. Then if a moderator submits a new level, it a _averaged_ with all other moderations to give the story a new level. This way if I want everything I set my level to 1. If I want only the best posts, 9 or 10. This also alleviates the problem of an okay post being lowered by numerous moderators to a level way lower than it should. The same goes for increasing the level.
Yo!
I like that, how about another thing sorta piggy-backed on that?
Why not also allow users to select individuals who they find ususally have comments they want to read, and allow a quick sort by nicknames? That way there would be another level for people to not get lost, besides somebody might be writing a paper on flamebaiters or some such.
Ruler of creeper, mortal and scallop.
The way that /. is "moderated" is very clever. Heck, anybody who wants to read everything will be able to. There's no censorship there, not even in the sense that the term is loosely applied these days. It leaves the choice to the user.
/. system lets the raving nuts rave, and gives the rest of us the tools to read them or avoid them. Perfect.
Maybe "moderation" isn't the term to use, though, since it will inevitably inflame the people who see censorship in every editorial decision. Maybe call it "flame rating" system or something like that.
Anyway, I think it's a very good system. I've been stuck with the job of "moderating" traditional message boards, and it sucks. You end up getting sucked into flame wars with raving nuts who didn't have anything to say in the first place. The
I have my threshold set to 0, sorting set to highest scores first, and display set to threaded. On the main comments page, everything at first glance looks OK, with the highest scores at the top of the page.
For example, right now the "Not Happy" thread has a score of 3, so it is at the top. And the threading info shows that there are two follow-ups to that post.
However, when I click on one of those follow-ups, I can see that there are actually nine follow-ups, not two. The two follow-ups that were listed on the main comments page are shown with a score of 2, and the other 7 are shown with a score of 1.
What's going on there? Is this a bug? Like I said, my threshold is set to 0, so the follow-ups with a score of 1 should still be showing up on the main comments page, right?
Well, I seem to have answered my question through the tried-and-true method of fiddling.
I had my preferences set to display only 25 messages. And it seems that since I had posts sorted by score, only the top-25 scored articles would show up on the main comments page. Then when I clicked through to the follow-ups, the top 25 scored articles -for that page only- are displayed.
Setting the number of comments to display higher solved the problem.
Rob, this stuff is great. I sure hope it works out.
Ads: charge for NNTP access. Somewhere between $20 and $200 per year should be right. Then the NNTP users just won't be bothered by them.
:-) (Time is the second of two reasons given in the FAQ.) It doesn't *sound* that bad for someone who knows his stuff. I'd love to try except I already don't have enough time in the day for what I already do. Pay me $1,000 ....
... ugh.
Time: can't help there.
Structure: slashdot.{features,askslashdot,...} as moderated groups getting articles. Followups to slashdot.*.d. Probably xpost the articles in slashdot.*.d too.
Put the moderators' score in a header for the news article so it can be one (of potentially many) criteria for scoring in decent news readers. If you think CPUs grow on trees then you could hack up INN to only display certain articles based on user prefs
one more rule that could be used: if a moderator 'lifts' a low-score
user's post who later on becomes a moderator, then this
moderator should be rewarded. (because he predicted
correctly that a low-score user made a useful post)
The priority should not only be to filter 'good stuff' from
'noise', but also to reward people who are good
filters and dont mind to sift through filth to
find the gold.
--Coke
one danger might be that very active moderators make
a few 'silly' mistakes just due to their activity.
(high activity brings more posts, and bad days
just happen, the moderator might flame someone)
So maybe every 'strike' should have a 'timeout',
ie. if that moderator submits useful posts afterwards,
the 'mistake' gets corrected automatically.
--Coke
every moderator has weak spots. Eg. a technical
guru might flame people who oppose abortion. If
moderators are rated 'per-topic' (News, Microsoft, Linux, etc.), this could
further increase the accuracy of the 'Slashdot
Filter Machine', because after some time it
'learns' about the strengths/weaknesses of a
moderator. This also might prevent good (technical) moderators
from aquiring too much power to subjectively strike
certain subjects.
--Coke
are users rewarded for submitting stories? If not
then this could further 'differentiate' users from
flamers, a user with a good story-index will think
twice before posting noise.
--Coke
NNTP has severe limitations which makes it hard to limit noise. It simply does not scale and is quite insecure. We all hope (at least i do :) that Slashdot's 'filter protocol' will become the next NNTP ... If this Slashdot experiment succeeds then we'll see a _much_ more improved Internet. To me Slashdot is already several orders more efficient than NNTP.
--Coke
sorry, i ment 'scale' in terms of 'capability
to handle _largescale information_ in a useful way'.
sure you can shuffle 1 million messages a day
technically, but the goal is to shuffle 1 million
messages and preserve/select/highligh useful
information, and filter noise.
--Coke
another way to fight flames is to make it possible
for a user to correct flames. A corrected flame
is a reply that retracts statements made in the
flame. This has to be approved by a moderator.
This is a bit more than self-regulation, because
it also gives mechanics to correct bad (human)
behavior.
--Coke
if a person has two moderator logins (this is quite possible), then a bot could quickly generate lots of articles which are 'cross-rated' between the two moderators. Similarly, any circular dependency will do it. Unless there are no safeguards against similar abuse, a moderator could 'skyrocket' his own rating artificially. some sort of time limit (ie. only X moderated posts per day limit for a rookie moderator) could prevent at least certain types of 'old boys network' abuse. What do you think?
--Coke
This IS a place frequented by people who are
technically competent and in favor of free (GPLed) software, isn't it ?
So, Rob, why don't you "make it so" that there is
a process for beginning an opensource project to
let people have many of the features that are
being suggested in posts. A "Slashdot Site Browser" that had many configurable options could
be constructed.
Earnest in Peoria,
--- (no witty book-larned fscking quotes here)
I have been thinking about how to do "collaborative moderation" for a few years now. To summarize my ideas in the context of Slashdot:
i _cscw.html
1. What you call "moderator", I call "participant". Any human person can be a participant. A participant must be registered (though possibly psueodonymous), and possibly authenticated to prevent cheating.
2. Participants rate each message based on its "value" (not agreement).
3. Participants accrue "weight" based on some algorithm which is a function of the value of the messages that they have posted in the past. (weight might change for other reasons, too)
4. Messages have values based on some algorithm which is a function of rating and the weight of the rater.
5. Users can sort/filter messages based on their values.
Obviously, what this creates is a "consensus value" of a message. This would be the first thing for slashdot to do. (If I understand what you are doing now, you assign a weight of 1 to the 408 moderators, and a weight of 0 to all others).
It's also very interesting to have a second message rating, namely "agreement".
1. This helps the person doing the rating to explicitly seperate message value from agreement.
2. Its allows to compute distance between two participants based on how much they agree.
3. It allows messages to have other kinds of values besides consensus values, for example the "agreement value" of a message uses the agreement distance between participants to weight the value ratings. So you can say "sort the messages based on how much people agree with me".
4. Strong clusterings of participants might emerge that indicate different "viewpoints". A viewpoint might be thought of as a synthetic participant. Users can examine values from different viewpoints (ie weighted by viewpoint agreement), and thus escape from the "tyranny of the majority" (if they wish).
These ideas are embedded in a bigger system for "wide area collaboration", focused on "a better Usenet". I wrote a paper on it at:
http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/staff/caron/collab/ch
I would be very interested in comments, critisism, and collaborators. I would be interested in helping slashdot implement any such system (Im a programmer: Java and C).
John Caron
Besides kill files, I dont know of any standard filtering. There's no scoring at all. Isn't that true?
John Caron
Giving the moderator a weight is a good idea. But instead of it being based on votes of agreement with their scoring, let it be based on some more implicit criterion of the moderator's contributions to the community.
John Caron
Based on the reactions to this posting, I would say that people generally confuse filtering (no one can see my comment! that's censorship!) and rating (your comment sucks, put it at the bottom).
A second confusion is whether a rating says how valuable a posting is, vs. one that agrees or disagrees. Saying whether something is valuable and deserves our attention has to be done, or else we are at the mercy of the spammers.
Thanks for your introspection on how you think during moderation.
John Caron
A lot of work has been done in small scale academic systems. A far as I know there are none in wide use. The W3C Collaboration group is completely dormant as far as I can tell (nothing posted since 1996 or so).
It is important to know what has gone on before. And there are a lot of interesting research results. But a community the size of slashdot hasnt done "collaborative moderation/filtering" before.
John Caron
I think your ideas are mostly good. But I would say that variance indicates differences of opinion. "Truth" is not the average opinion.
John Caron
I like it. I just posted a message with similar ideas.
John Caron
I think that your new system has a fair chance of success. The posted comments will be much better than randomly selected, and after elimination of the rouge moderators, the quality will increase dramatically.
However, sometimes, good responses seem to invite flames. For these repsonses, a well placed anonymous moderator comment (anonymous brave soul?) could do a great deal to keep the discussion on track.
Good luck
Jhiv