Slashdot Mirror
Several Slashdot Notes
ACs post at 0. Logged in users post at 1. When you break the following alignments (I played a lot of Tradewars 2002, can ya tell?) your default score will be as follows:
-1 at -30
0 at -10
1 (Normal)
2 at +5
3 at +10
4 at +25
I suggest that this system will encourage posting of good comments. Currently it actually is only affecting about 1% of the comment posters. But extreme comment scores (-1 or 3 or more) tend to draw much more attention from moderators, so they will likely get knocked back towards the median unless they are consistantly high quality. Assuming that moderators are doing a good job anyway.
I've been fiddling with those numbers for the past few days. I've been making them pretty high, but we'll likely need to make them higher as more moderation occurs, but I'll need a few weeks of moderation to determine what those numbers are. Sorry to the people who have been surprised by these changes.
The mass moderation system is actually running now. I'm tweaking numbers, but it'll probably be a few days before any readers actually start getting moderator points. The system is basically what I discussed last week with a few numbers tweaked. We'll have to see how it works.
By far the most controversial change to the moderation is the new restriction against posting & moderating the same discussion. Let me try to defend this decision a bit. First, I think this prevents people from getting to play the judge and the prosecution at the same time. Many people argue that this will discourage moderators from posting comments. That might be true, but since the new moderation system will have more moderators, there will be people available to pick up the slack. Plus, currently the moderators have an abundance of moderator points- the new system will make them much more scarce (they'll expire after 3 days too!) so most of the time, people won't even have an option to moderate. Plus, if someone moderates and then decides to post, they can do that. Sure the moderation is undone, but that isn't the end of the world. The workload is distributed, hopefully (!) other people will pick up the slack.
The most important factor however is that our initial batch of 400 moderators were selected from the comment posters. The new batch will still have that element, but there will be many more lurkers as well- and since these guys don't post, this point is moot for them. I think that these 2 groups will offset each other and give us a good scoring system.
Finally, I added an option to the user preferences to allow users to say "I don't wanna be a moderator". By default all users will be flagged to be moderators. Remember that unused points will simply disappear after 3 days, so if you don't want them, just don't use them. A lot of people suggest that people ought to be required to turn moderation on, but I want to give this a try for now simply because I'm trying to get as large of a body as possible. Realistically, moderation is fairly easy. And since you'll only have a few points every few weeks, it won't be a major problem.
Anyway, I'll have a bit more on the subject soon. I'm sure this is a lot of stuff to talk about for now *grin*.
Well, I can't speak for the other moderators, but I make an effort to evaluate posts by their quality, not their position. IOW, if you write a post containing one of your ugly truths and write it well, I would probably mark it up, even if I personally disagreed. If you wrote a post that I thought made a very good point, but you wrote it poorly or in an antagonistic matter, I would have a harder decision. I do a lot of considering when I moderate. I try to make sure that I'm moderating because of the comment's quality, not its position. There are comments I've had debates with myself over whether the bad things about it outweigh the good.
To take a specific example, I'll use MEEPT!. From what I've seen of him, MEEPT! often has something useful to say. Unfortunately, his style is a very antagonistic one which often tends to feel like trolling. Nevertheless, if he made a valid point, I would raise his score. Since I've been a moderator, I've seen two comments from him. I pulled one comment up from -1, because I felt that it had been unjustly lowered, and left the other one at 0, because I did not feel that that particular post contributed significantly to the discussion.
(Yes, I will moderate down well-written, off topic posts. If the off topic post is, indeed well-written, I'll generally consider 1 to be a good target score. (-1: flamebait, offensive and content-free, bad; 0-1: general discussion, nothing outstanding, nothing horribly bad; 2: worth reading (more and more posts are fitting into this category); 3+: truely exceptional, something everyone would benefit from reading, makes an excellent point and makes it well))
Reputation is of course a prejudice (and that's okay, since we can't make a well-informed judgement mechanically) about the likely usefulness of a comment. Since you can never tell what I might say next, I should keep the most neutral reputation possible. Lower scores than mine should be possible, since there are certainly people who reliably post nothing but drivel (I can't imagine why they don't do it anonymously, but they do).
Not so! Moderators are encouraged to view all posts. I travel around with a -1 threshold, and I read all comments in an article. If you write a good post and it's lower than I think it should be, I'll raise it. If you want a higher score, work on writing good, well-thought-out, worthwhile pieces.
Ideally: You'd be presented with a SELECT item when you make your post, with all the scores possible less than or equal to your current default. You select the score for your post from that list, but you're barred from rising above your current default.
.3. It means they are consistent 2 posters. That means their 2 is a good standard rank to put on their posts initially.
This is an excellent solution. It would also solve the Anonymous Coward situation as a coding issue. AC is always at "0" or lower.
However, I wonder if this will really solve anything because, really, the real way to do it would be to apply a comparison between anticipated and finalized rank. (Plus, people would still glut the list with crap if they knew they could get away with it!)
All in all, it sounds like an added complication to a system that seemed to be working out fine for me. I now read comments a day after the original post. Just a simple preranking would be good. One way to code this would be to put not just an average number up, but temper it with a Standard Deviation ranking.
If a person gets a 2 ranking on average, but has a Std. Dev. of 3, it means their averages are across the map from -1 to 5. But, if they get a 2 ranking on average with a Std. Dev. of
A physics professor of mine used to do this on all of his tests and questionaires to see if opinions/answers were clustered or not.
If everyone answered one way and got it wrong (low Std. Deviation around the wrong average), it meant there was a misteaching. If everyone answered all different ways (high std. dev.), it meant the question was too hard, wasn't covered, or written poorly.
If you've got a simple way of calculating std. dev., you're set. I'd even think that you could batch process it at 6 am and save it as a preference rather than a value that's continually recalculated. After all, in a few weeks, there will be enough history on the posters to handle this without much bias.
I want a Helm of First Post +1. Or even better, the Slash Source of FriNn.
I've brought this up before, but I'm not sure if anyone saw it:
There's a research project called "GroupLens" which automatically rates messages based on the INDIVIDUAL reader's preferences. It rates unread messages by using ratings from other readers that have similar tastes.
In my mind, this approach is much preferrable to active moderation. With active moderation, there's always the potential for abuse... and even in a perfect system, the moderator's preferences may not be my own. Maybe I think long posts are boring, or I only read for the entertainment value of mindless flames. A system like GroupLens would reflect my personal preferences without forcing them on anybody else.
You can see this system in action at the MovieLens web site. For the research, see the GroupLens web site.
Jim
What I can tell you is, why weren't they moderated back up? Well, this AM does his best to make sure that comments don't get unfairly hit. [Which means that I often read the -1's first.] Unfortunately I do have to sleep and work sometimes, so a comment might get spiked when I'm not looking...
BTW, I looked at your user history... one of the comments must have been moderated back up already, and as soon as I log back in, I'll recheck the thread, and if the comment isn't total garbage, you'll get the point back.
I use this same logic for all posts by the way. In my book anyone can have as many troll bait comments, irrelevant flames, etc. as they want, without it affecting my willingness to moderate a good comment up.
Hang in there. We anonymous moderators aren't perfect yet.
0 be me.
I don't have a problem with the new system itself, but the existing alignments may need a bit of tweaking. I for one have an alignment of -12 or something like that, much of this came from "interesting" bouts of moderation and a bit of overkill regarding scoring.
... to get a new account and start fresh. *shrug*
While I think the overall idea has merit, basing something on a past that is cluttered with unclear moderation standards and experimental moderation tactics may exclude relevant opinions simply due to a checkered past.
The other option I guess is
If you can read this message, your threshold is too low.
OK, I'll bite. What is my default score?
/.'er and look into it further...
I'm currently a little unsure if I like the new system or not (or if I even understand it). I guess I should be a good
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
My only question is where does meept rate?
"Think of it as evolution in action."
*grin*
Leilah
~ Leilah
Just trying to find out...
Edu. sig-line: Choose rhymes with lose. Chose rhymes with goes. Loose rhymes with goose.
Comparing? THEN use THAN.
read subject.
-matt
But if you downmoderate yourself, I assume you /. personality forum, where people can rest on past laurels. More, I worry that unliked people will be downmoderated out of existence. Again, though, I am confused by how the system actually would treat someone who is regularly downmoderated. And can people moderate with comment filtering on? I still feel that's a bad idea.
can downmoderate yourself out of being a moderator. That's my (weak) understanding of the current system, which is certainly getting complex enough to be bizarre. I'm not sure I'm a big fan of creating a
--
Make mine methylphenidate.
> Again, though, I am confused by how the system
/. I fucked up and accidently reposted
> actually would treat someone who is regularly
> downmoderated.
Well, I guess I know now--I've been downmoderated
to a zero, primarily because the first time I
posted on
my comments about three times, which were rightly
downmoderated out of existence. But in the last
six weeks I've been a good egg. I suspect that
flaws in the system now aren't necessarily strong
enough to merit more complexity. but perhaps
they are. I'm sure Rob is on this, but your
current default score should certainly be viewable
on your personal info page.
--
Make mine methylphenidate.
One of us is confused. I don't think that the "moderation points" that would be lost refer to the rewards for the poster; they refer to the moderators' ability to adjust posts. And if moderators lose the ability to adjust posts semi-randomly, it won't hurt anything -- assuming, as seems to be the case, that there are enough moderators around to make the loss of one statistically insignificant.
I _was_ wondering why my posts immediately popped up with a 2.
;)
I don't know if I should get a default of 2. Most of my posts are pretty pointless -- like this one.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
So far I've been in favour of all of the moderation changes/improvements, but I'm a little skeptical about these latest batch of changes.
- Alignment is a fairly good idea.
- Blocking people from posting after moderating a topic, imho, is not necessary, and a deterrant to moderation. I seriously don't believe existing lurkers will be putting in the nessecary time to moderate things as much as "frequent posters" do. Furthermore, it could be argued that many good moderaters are also "good posters", and you're losing one or the other.
- Giving "mass moderation" access will be an interesting experiment, but you are running the DEFINITE risk of biased-moderation here, as you have more people that can play "moderator wars" now over unpopular opinions. This remains to be seen, of course.
Why reinvent the wheel? I'm sure there's someway you could interface port 23 on your machine and dosemu/bbs software. That would be sweet. Telnet bre.slashdot.org... (:
One problem that I can see with the system is that it might have a tendency to favor old timers simply because they've had an oppurtunity to post more and thus gain a better default score. Considering how rapidly the net and /. are growing, I don't know that this is a good thing. There's a decent chance that /. will continue to attract new and interesting people whose comments might be overlooked simply because they do not carry the initial higher weight.
ok lets see what we got
2^5
It's been done... :)
:)
There are a large number of telnet BBSes available. Try wandering darktech.org, or check out the telnet BBS webring at http://www.spuncrystal.com/public/bbstel.htm
I'm in the process of setting up a BBS for telnet+dialup right now.
Isn't nostalgia wonderful?
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Score!!
One of these days, Rob will make an algorithm for moderating that is so complex it requires a supercomputer. Until that day, I'm sure he's having a lot of fun chewing up extra cycles on the main server ;-)
They'd have few points to begin with and spend them rather quickly, with 4,000 moderators out there to play whack-a-mole. Not a problem, IMO.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
I think Rob has some sort of hard-coded "my posts start at 2" thing, because his posts have been starting at 2 for weeks now, long before this whole alignment thing was implemented.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Either that or you could call some actual BBSs. There's some lists of ones still up you can find from directory.mozilla.org's BBS section.
/. does set one up, put up Falcon's Eye. Great game by the BRE people (similar, but with more features and more interesting gameplay).
I've heard of some problems in trying to get door games working with telnettable BBSs, as many of them have COM stuff hard-coded into the executable.
Anyway, if
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Yeah...that's true. Though moderators are supposed to keep their status confidential, they are pretty-well on the honour system.
A few moderators are bound to abuse their status. If a few did conspire to bring up their "alignment", I suspect the large number of other moderators could undo the damage. Hopefully CmdrTaco can catch those incidents if they happen.
VENI! VIDI! VICI!
--
--
=8^
I'd like to see moderator comments. These could be something you could turn on or off with preferences.
Now that is a GREAT idea! Moderators could be required to justify their reasoning for raising/lowering scores. This would get rid of any moderation-happiness (unless you feel like making up descriptions all day) and at least give the writer of the post a small sense of relief that he wasn't being picked on.
And, instead of enabling/disabling it via user accounts, it would be easier just to have a button in the header that would display it for a specific message. If on top of this, there was a "psuedo-id" for each moderator that was posted with the comment, this would probably make rob's job a lot easier in resolving who is really doing the job, and who's broke out the proverbial d!ck pump moderating.
This would definately solve a lot of problems at least with the human aspect. Frankly I think it would be most honest to have direct information of who's moderating your posts and why, no pseudo-nothing. That would press the moderators to at least THINK about what they're doing before they do it.
-Erik-
I've heard of some problems in trying to get door games working with telnettable BBSs, as many of them have COM stuff hard-coded into the executable.
I run a (telnet) BBS right now with 4 doors. As long as the BBS runs on fossil-based communication, it'll work with most of the telnetfossil wrapper programs out there (netmodem, SIO, etc).
The big dilemma (much to my dismay) is this: 90% of these games won't work properly because they were written in turbo pascal, and most of you familiar with the it will know about the PPro (including PII's) breaking the delay() call in TP, which uses the system clock, something that's used rather often in BBS doors.
The other problem, is finding half ot these doors for anything but DOS is nearly impossible, and the registration costs for TW2002 are still outrageous ($50 for version 3, another $25 for the DPMI or 20,000 sector version)... I just do not get how these BBS authors have the nuts to keep charging for these programs, or, at least that much, and expect to make any money.
-Erik-
I think something that Rob should consider more is the human aspect to moderation. I understand moderating down a flame, or something "flame-like", but people are still human.
I currently run a REAL BBS (you know, telnet, ansi, matrix logins, message areas, file transfer areas, door games, the whole 9 yards), and have been running it for
I have had "subject operators" or "moderators" before on the BBS, and if you want to maintain a high quality of free speech, it's nearly impossible. People are human, and they're going to moderate posts that differ from their views.
Myself, being "off the norm", especially in the engineering crowd's GENERAL (and I use that word with caution) point of view, fear a lack of respect for my POV may occur just because my opinion differs that from the norm.
And something else, if I were mailicious, and selected for "jury duty", and just wanted to be an ass, I could easily just moderate down every post and help total the collective alignment. This is not really my idea of free speech, which I believe rob is trying to preserve.
Of course this is all hypothetical, but the first suggestion that I would make would be to wax AC's period. No one is required to offer their real name here, and now that you can set your own password the cookie dispute should be simpler also. Granted, there would still be multiple account bimbos but that can be defeated with ip filters and such. This has all been done before on BBS's, IRC, and various other forum and chat systems in the world, why try to re-invent the wheel?
Just some suggestions, not a flame.
-Erik-
You get to roleplay one of several classes: open source political freak, 14 year old script kiddie, stuck up programer whose ideas are somehow automaticaly more valid than anyone else's, or just plain troll.
:)
.... mmm.. stout)
Ooh! Can we play multiple classes?
I want to be a FSF/Troll/Fighter/Mage
Hell heh, you could make it 80% D&D and the other 20% Paranoia, heh.
"Speaking of your mutant power is treason. Lose a clone, 1 alignment, and 100 experience points"
teehee (it's late, it's my birthday, and
-Erik-
A compilation of the results for the first week or so, plotted by movement and initial score, would be interesting... more so if there were some easy way to correlate movement up or down (baseline or average score) by user and plot that too.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
Is there any way I can find out my default post score without actually posting anything?
This sig left unintentionally blank.
It's back at 2 now.
But it would be a good idea to be able to "down-moderate" yourself when you want to post something pointless. Saves you from having to log out, post as AC, then stick your name on the bottom to disclaim anonymity.
There are a couple of possible interpretations:
- The -1 post is better than that, after all, I'm a fairly cool dude, my posts are automatically at level +4, so maybe we should bump the -1 post up to 0....
- I'm responding to a flame. Which is usually not a cool thing to do. Maybe we should bump my post down a point.
Actually, there's rather more than two possible interpretations, but these two seem the most interesting. Certainly my GNUS scorefile has a rule which automatically lowers the score of any followups to posts with particularly low scores, and this set of rules works well for me.As for the self-moderation downwards for certain posts, that definitely seems like a good idea. Encouraging moderation (in the sense of 'moderate behaviour') on the part of posters seems like a very good move to me.
Rather than having to fiddle with the numbers for your auto-scoring system, why not use a simple bell curve/standard deviation formula? For example, +1 standard deviation gets you +1 on your posting scores, and +2 standard deviations gets you +2 on your posting scores. This will make +4 very rare, as it should be, and will scale and adjust no matter how many moderation points are flowing through the system.
sigs are a waste of space
I figured Rob was just throwing in a little play on words to mess with our minds. It could be a typo, but still, if you can't play with language, what good is it?
I like the changes on the whole but I think it is a very bad idea for people who write stupid comments to start with a negative score.
The main reason is that they will just get themselves different accounts. If they are juvenile, loud and offensive they want to be heard and will certainly go to the trouble of creating a new account. This means that not only will they not start with a negative score, but readers will no longer recognise the name as someone who writes crap, so we lose the best form of filtering (individuals using their own judgement to not read something by X).
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
L.O.R.D rocks! I remember playing that game all the time back in high school, along with Usurper and Exitilus (sp?). A BBS-style door server on the Internet would be great.
(I'm guessing that our two posts have been, and ultimately will be, read by only a few people. We didn't get in early enough, and our default scores aren't high enough, to propel our comments into the "mainstream".)
The point is, the very word "moderation" implies a movement toward the mean, a limiting. And when you limit the very bad, you most often limit the very good along with it, leaving you with the Very Mediocre. I'm not certain that this new (or any other, for that matter) moderation system will drive /. toward a least-common-denominator position, but I must say the thought has crossed my mind.
Ah, well. It was good while it lasted.
In combination with the "sort by score" or "filter by score" options (and to a lesser extent, even without using either of those), it is a self-reinforcing feedback loop. People will see mostly posts which "conform" to the /. ethos, whatever that winds up being. Seeing them, other posters will tend, even unconsciously, to adopt that ethos. They will learn what characteristics cause a post to get a higher score. And so on.
It works for moderators, too. People who qualify are those who have adjusted their behavior (again, quite possibly without being conscious of it) to fit the /. norm. People who don't qualify will tend to be less interested, and thus less likely to participate in any way. They'll go read Salon or something instead.
The end result, I believe, is a smaller, less diverse community. Another, less pejorative way to characterize it is more tightly focused, more unified, and probably more peaceful and coherent. If that's what we want, this is how to get it.
Chris DiBona
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
VP, SVLUG
Co-Editor, Open Sources
Open Source Program Manager, Google, Inc.
>The 3 day rule throws away most of the inertia in >the moderation system, which will cause chaotic >instability: moderation will become much more >noisy.
Agreed. Further, I see a possible trend that could arise from this. If a moderater had x points and 3 days to spend them, he might just feel obligated to spend them on something that didn't deserve moderation to avoid wasting them.
I don't think that moderator points should time out(at least not so quickly, I can see how it would suck for someone to have 30 or 40 saved up for a rampage) simply because it comoditizes them.
I've already seen instances of moderators moderating aparently, simply because they can. Even in this set of comments, I've seen one line me too posts with a score of 2 or greater. I don't think we need to give anyone more reason to moderate simply because they have the points.
I think that perhaps the alignment concept is a bit flawed as well.
Like Bruce says, it's entirely possible that someone who writes great comments may want to write something without it having to be "golden prose" On the other hand, it's also possible that the worst troll on slashdot could come up with a profound, insightful comment that half the readers would miss because their alignment is -12. Like someone else mentioned earlier, each comment should be judged by it's indivitual merit.
Someone needs to market all these ideas.
Slashdot: the RPG
The goal is to build up as many points as possible while maintaining a positive alignment.
You get to roleplay one of several classes: open source political freak, 14 year old script kiddie, stuck up programer whose ideas are somehow automaticaly more valid than anyone else's, or just plain troll.
Watch for your copy in local comic and gaming stores,
I posted and only got a 1. Sniff. sniff.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
The main slashdot page is showing 0 of 0 comments for this story for me. I wouldn't normally post a message like this because someone else always beats me to it but I've not seen anyone else comment on this phenomenon. Is this a know problem affecting others or just me? The previous story has only 7 comments according to the front page as well.
Richard Forster
Well I confess I didn't count them, but it seems to be right.
Richard Forster
Things of quality have no fear of time.
( Read More... | 3674 bytes in body | 0 of 0 comments ) hrm, i wonder why i get this. any ideas?
--
Scott Miga
i think youare right on track rob, with the way you are handling moderating. i was very suprised and happy to see that unused points will expire after 3 days. that was something i was going to post about very soon, but you already covered it. :) well, keep it up rob! :)
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Scott Miga
on the nice comment, yes. that should be implemented, because sometimes you just want to voice your small opinion on a subject without going into any specific logic or reasoning on the comment. and there should be a AC option that allows accounted users to post as ACs, although i dont see a huge reason why any users would want to. :)
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Scott Miga
just a quick note to anyone who cares: when you type slashdot in netscape, it looks it up on the netscape find thing, then redirects to www.slashdot.org. once on www./., the latest story didnt show up and i didnt log me into my account.. is www.slashdot.org on a different system or something? just wondering.
--
Scott Miga
This is perhaps a little cheesy, but I'd like to post a thank you to Rob. Ever since I first found slashdot way back, I've been hooked. It really is a great idea, and it allows me to keep up with the industry news easily and quickly.
As if that wasn't enough, your new features and customizability is truly amazing. Nowhere on the web do I know of sites that cater to the users so much, and allow such extensive personalization. I look at this site as a model for what a great user oriented web site should aspire to be.
Lastly, I just wanted to say that I think your new moderator implementation is an excellent idea. It spreads things out enough that it should keep abuse to a minimum, and allows a much wider range and type of people to be able to help out. In a way, it allows us to give back a little and try to make Slashdot the best site we can.
Thanks for creating one of the best sites on the internet, and keep up the great work. Don't ever let anyone get you down, for every person who complains, there are a thousand of us out here who appreciate what you've done more than you can know.
Topher
If you feel you are being slighted, you should point Rob to those posts. Like he said before, this is a system in flux and there will be people who abuse the system. He needs to know so he can make it better.
/. is getting pretty f-ing cool. Pretty soon there will be a My Yahoo SlashBox 8-)
Personally I think the amount of user control of
Pat
-- Are you an EFF member yet?
this is a good idea and worth looking at. but it does not take into account of human nature (the lazyness inside us all). to many features and to much user work equates to user laziness...better to let a machine do the grunt work and only allow score choices on comments where they are obviously a 'me-too'...
self moderation is desirable but can be manipulated...minimal adjustments should be allowable for 'less enlightened' comments.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
I agree with this. Of course, you have to be careful not to improve a posters "alignment" when his posts are moderated up to the score he could have started with anyway. This would allow posters to bring all their posts down to -1 and have them moderated up.
I also think it is about time to allow the system to settle down soon. If it keeps changing as rapidly as it has been doing for the last weeks, moderators will not generally understand it and their moderation behaviour will be different. This will again mean that any analyses done by e.g. Rob trying to improve the system will be misleading.
Logi - I can do anything, but not everything.
I subscribe to a few high-traffic USENET newsgroups. After a while, I got to the point where I scan for the names of posters I know will have something good to say instead of the subject of the message itself. I think that Rob's system helps this process by quite a lot. It's not about punishing the trolls, but rather encouraging good behavior.
:)
It gets this well known coward's approval
The comments might end up looking like this:
- +1 Well Said
- -1 Repeat
- +1 Good
- -1 This guy misses the point entirely
- -1 crapola
- +1 A thoughtful counterpoint
- +1 Excellent post dude!
It kinda sucks to have what you thought was a decent post moderated down to -1, but it would be nice to know why, at least.Those old games are only good in ANSI color. Sure doing it another way would look neater and be more uptodate, but then it just wouldnt be as cool :) :)
I used to play TW2002 via TELIX at 2400BPS, and there was some other game I forget the name of that was also fun. You had to set a town and and build armys so you could send them off to war with other peoples towns. Then you had to wait 24 hours to find out who won
I have to return some videotapes...
It's a nice idea, but I am of those who doesn't like any sort of moderation. One of the mailing lists I started and went very well (and is still going very well without me) -- systalk (originally @ml.org, now @dhs.org) -- fought moderation like the plague and was one of the best mailing lists to be on.
It's the people, not the moderation, that makes a list good or bad.
(Of course nice on virtual paper, not so great in practice).
figure I already know what mine is, but I'll go ahead and post to check.
here go my two cents :-)
:-)
I used to have the overflow set very low with the threshold at 0 and the highlight threshold at 2, so basically I'd see threaded mode with anything worth 2 or higher immedeately visible, which provided me with pretty consistent quality of reading while still being able to easily check out posts with interesting headers. while reading through the comments to this story I noticed a worse signal to noise ratio... there were 2+ value posts that would have remained at value 1 in normal moderation. so actually, imho, the current system is causing a decline in the signal to noise ratio while it was invented to improve it.
after tossing around a few ideas I personally thing that this would be a good system:
a person who would now have a default posting value of x would default at 1, but could self-moderate his comments at posting time to anywhere between 0 and x inclusive. x could be between 0 and 4.
self-demotion would not count as a demotion in your alignment calculation. you can't post at -1 however, because basically nobody should post -1 value posts.
self-promotion would count as normal promotion in the alignment calculation. this could lead to abuse, but abusers will quickly be demoted back to a reasonable value. at least it would be better than the current system which basically forces everybody with a high default value to abuse...
I hope I actually managed to make myself clear
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humor,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
About the jobs page - how is searching for jobs meant to help you on your quest for UNemployment?? (that's what it said at the time of writing - perhaps they'll fix it soon). As for the varying default comment threshold I think it's a good idea. So basically people who publish meaningless comments all the time have a harder job to get noticed but people with a reputation for good comments get a higher threshold even before the moderators check it.
--
The scores should fade away over time. That would allow flamin' newbies a chance for a better score once they have matured. Just my $.02
Just curious...
I refrained from commenting here until I saw a few articles posted under the new system. I must say that somethings I've seen rated high (3 or 4) today are clearly not worth it and make good content in the 1 range much harder to find. The old moderation system seemed to work pretty well and I actually enjoyed the comments posted these days, but now it's pretty much back to the old pre-moderation days (albeit with a little less noise).
Eh, I'll reply, mainly to find out my score. I suppose in order to avoid getting moderated to oblivion, I'll say that I don't know if this is necessarily a good idea. I liked the old idea of having the moderators moderate good posts up & bad posts down. Just cause someone has managed a few insightful comments in the past doesn't mean that he/she will keep up with that level of intelligence.. I dunno, more of a "wait & see" type of thing, I guess.
-mike kania
I wonder if we might be seeing simultaneous moderation? Two moderators who both feel the post is only worth a zero and dowgrade it at the same time. I would not be surprised considering the 1000 (or 4000?) mrderators now.
CmdrTaco: is there any protection for this?
Very good point. Hmmm.
I really like the idea of being able to turn down ones own post, though. What if, by turning down your own posts, you still lose alignment, but only half or even a quarter of what you would lose if a moderator downgraded the post? That would cause people to really think about the content before hitting submit. I'd be much more inclined to bring my own post down, than have a moderator do it (if I had positive alignment,) but I'd still be knocked down somewhat. It would reduce abuse, yes?
People who do this couldn't use it to keep alignment, only for self-moderation (down.) As they lose status, they should quickly be moderated back up if other posts by them are of the same quality that got the higher alignment in the first place (in theory, anyway :) Sure would make you work to keep alignment.
People with accounts with a default score of 0 or -1 will probably end up creating a new account with a higher default score.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Actually, I'm just trying to find out what my score is ;)
I don't know if this is just me, but compared to the last few days, I think this thread is much noisier with many comments getting scores that are way too high...
Marcelo
I played a lot of Tradewars 2002, can ya tell
This brings up an interesting point: has anybody given any thought to a Slashdot telnettable Tradewars/BRE/SRE door BBS? I mean, right now, the web interface fulfills everything else that a BBS would provide - forums, appropriate files, realtime chat; except doors. When I used to frequent #slashdot, nostalga of door games was a frequent topic. Jeez, I'd even be willing to set it up, given bandwidth and a little spare time. I for one, enjoy an occasional game of TW2002. I'll bet a lot of you do too.
I spent _way_ too much of my life on Tradewars. I played MUDs for quite some time, too, but there was just something _different_ about Tradewars that really made it seem like more of a fantastic universe. It just seemed more cohesive to me, for some reason.
The only pitfall of Rob's basing this on the Tradewars alignment ideal, is that in Tradewars 2002, evil guys _always_ had the advantage. Once you were able to steal well, you were pretty much set up. Sure, the good guys could get the Flagship, but they had to be so gosh-darn good all the time.
Hmmm...I can't find the buttons on the webpage to steal from the ports, though. Damn...Guess I'll just have to post at my normal level, then.
...or the code is broken. 0 of 0 comments on the main page, but plenty here. Hmmm...
There is often an important point made within the FAQ of discussion-oriented internet resources. It is that someone who is "new in town" should shut up for a while until they can tell how things are done in that community. This is a very good rule of thumb. If someone stumbles upon slashdot and has something to say that reflects vast wisdom, the many moderators will bump its score up until it gets the rating it deserves. This moderation scheme only affects where a post starts, not its final score.
First, I don't like the way the new alignment works. What happens if a user with alignment posts 50 comments, each at +3. They would then be posting at +5. Oops.
/quality/ frequent posts. Your alignment won't stay up forever if you're just throwing crap out there for others. With regards to new users, sure, they won't make the top 10 list right off the bat, but if they're registered users they'll at least be at +1. Since moderators read everything, if they're posting good stuff they'll get moderated up frequently. Since the guys who are posting at a default of +3 or so don't, I assume, get their alignment affected by their default posting status, this means that the new users alignment is rising at a relatively faster rate, giving them a chance to catch up.
One assumes that this is taken care of. I would think that your alignment is only affected by your, if you will, delta-moderation. By this I mean, if you're automatically posting at +3, and you get moderated up by 1, your alignment is up 1, not 4. I could be wrong; if so, you're right, this is a flaw.
Second, this encourages frequent posters and discourages new users. This is the biggest problem IMHO. Why should a newbie post a good message if it will automatically be rated down?Second, this encourages frequent posters and discourages new users. This is the biggest problem IMHO. Why should a newbie post a good message if it will automatically be rated down?
I'm not sure I agree. Certainly, it encourages
--
Ian Peters
Your vote is already taken care of; go to the user preferences page, and vote up or down for the different stories. I think voting on a duplicate is a little obvious, since it probably wasn't intentional. That's why we have categories. If you think something isn't worthwhile, just don't read that category.
--
Ian Peters
Interesting idea, being able to set the score of your own posts. Perhaps, as time goes on, your ceiling could be raised? When you start out, you can post up to 1 (if you've got an account), and as time passes, you have the option of posting at higher scores, but don't have to.
I'm not sure how well the ``soapbox'' idea would work - you might have people start to play with it, just to get a comment into the upper echelons. I could be completely wrong, though.
Regarding things being complicated - I haven't seen any problems, mainly because things are only as complicated as you make them. You can pretty much just set your threshold to 0 (or +1) and read everything, and act like there's no (or very little) moderation going on.
PS I'm with you on the commandline thing.
--
Ian Peters
I agree with you in some respects, but I don't see the negative side as much as you do. In the last few weeks the trend I've observed has been a return to the slashdot or yore, where the comments were mature, well thought out, and on topic. I'm sure that the underbelly of slashdot is still teaming with AC's striving for the first comment amongst themselves (I'm not sure, though; I haven't looked at score 0 comments but twice, and both times I've regretted it).
/good comment/. I would have a problem if everyone was supposed to present the same view to the world, but I have no problem with expecting people to present a heterogeneous collection of viewpoints in a responsible manner.
I tend to have more faith in the moderation system. I guess it all depends on whether people moderate because they agree with something, or because it's a
--
Ian Peters
After the author made the COW (Cash On Wheels) unusable, BRE sucked. Tradewars, now that was a game... Anybody remember Legend of the Red Dragon?
LORD has been implemented on the web actually, and it's not half bad. Nice for the nostalgia.
http://www.czone.com
--- http://foo.ca
[...]im assuming few people look at -1 posts (i for one dont)
:-)
Actually, I think it's pretty funny to lower my threshold now and then to see what I miss... It could be fun to have the option to collect the lowest scoring posts on a separate page -- sort of like a sideshow
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Second.
F /...
Or in my best USENET voice:
ME TOoO1#$O!@#$(!)@_#$(@#($_@#$_@!#($
---
Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
Pursuit of points won't generally matter to those who produce thoughtful, insightful comments, because if you're the sort of person who has something genuinely interesting and original to say you don't act in such a childish fashion.
However if having a high default AS takes over as a form of competition from "first post!" then we'll all benefit, and some people will have been given an incentive to grow up. Hurrah for Rob!
I agree with the above stuff from Gordon and this other guy. They're probably the highest quality remarks I've seen in this whole discussion
Just look at this disscussion for instance. Never since the real moderation started has there been such a noisy discussion. This reminds me of the old and useless Slashdot
I have my threshold set to 3+ and todays top-"quality" postings are nothing but a low-quality chit-chat between the selected few. - The Slashdot Elite.
Yuk!
SmuI thought one of the finer aspects of moderation was that it was supposed to be anonynous... a default score for a poorly written article will also defeat that anonimity.
/.'ers as:
I think that being able to post with a default score wouldn't be bad if the script were to prevent that post from going any higher. This means if I were to give myself a 3 I'd be admiting that this document isn't worth anymore than a 3, and so can't be raised any higher... on the other hand, it could always be lowered.
I also think that moderated scores should be averaged:
Every AC post is scored 0
Registered posts are scored 1
Moderators can be provided a supply of "moderation points" x per week (perhaps as high as 100 for reasons explained later)
A -1 mod score costs 2 moderation point
A 0 mod score costs 1 moderation points
A 1 mod score costs 2 moderation point
A 2 mod score costs 4 moderation points
A 3 mod score costs 8 moderation points
A 4 mod score costs 16 moderation points
A 5 mod score costs 32 moderation points
If a post is moderated, the first moderation sets the bench. Subsequent moderation scores are then averaged with previous moderation scores. The score would be shown to
sign(abs(ceil(total_mod_score/total_mod_votes)))
This would provide moderators with 3 score 5 votes per week, meaning that that moderator had better vote 5 on articles that really are worth 5 points. Otherwise a single moderator that sensed ballot box stuffing could deflate that score to a 3 costing him (or her) only 2 moderation points (5+(-1)/2). This will keep everything in check. Very good posts would in theory receive higher scores, and poor articles would receive lower scores. Overall the scores whould remain on the lower side. Once again seperating the cream of the crop.
AC posts would have a chance then too, what is one moderation point to a moderator with 100? If the AC post is worth it, it could be brought to a score 1 or better with only one vote.
I have other some other ideas about moderation as well. Everyone that contributes should moderate. The score that someone receives for a post should provide them with moderation points too, on a slightly different scale:
A -1 mod score adds -1 moderation point
A 0 mod score adds 0 moderation points
A 1 mod score adds -1 moderation point
A 2 mod score adds 2 moderation points
A 3 mod score adds 4 moderation points
A 4 mod score adds 8 moderation points
A 5 mod score adds 16 moderation points
Moderation points are not supplemented as quickly as they are used, this is where the top x number of posters are suplimented extra points not to excede 100 points. This should keep the best posters the "main moderators" while leting everyone decide on quality of content.
This may have drifted slightly off thread, but it addresses some important points I think. I'm sure it would eliminate topics that have one or two high scoring posts with the rest 1's and 2's and would distribute the scores more evenly, good posts high scores, bad posts, low scores.
Time flies like an arrow;
Time flies like an arrow;
Fruit flies like a bananna
I'd like to amend my other post...
)
/ total_mod_votes)))
/. forum.
sign(abs(ceil(total_mod_score/total_mod_votes))
should read
sign(total_mod_score)*(ceil(abs(total_mod_score
The point was to lower score 0's to score -1 with one vote, and to raise score 0's to score 1+ with one vote, and to show score x.25's as x+1.
I hope that this alleviates any confusion. Please contact me by email if you'd like to discuss this further out of a
Time flies like an arrow;
Time flies like an arrow;
Fruit flies like a bananna
I really like the concepts that are being played with by adding moderators to the slashdot discussion groups. I think this might be one of the more innovative features to be added to discussion groups in a long time.
That said, I don't like the new auto-moderation features. For the last few days I've been thrilled with the quality of the comments. I ignore all comments less than 2 and only get the interesting stuff. With this discussion that ability to filter out the crap seems to have been lost. I'd rather have moderators say they like stuff than have people be auto-rated. Many times somebody has something useful to say one time and not another. This is not always true, some people just write more intelligent comments than others, and sometimes I might want to read the intelligent comments. I don't want to make this too complex but perhaps what slashdot needs it a way to rate the posters, and also the posts. That way I can either look for the posts that got the high rating which would probably be a link saying the article was a hoax, links for more information, etc... or I could read posts by people who generally have something useful to say.
The power of technology is manifest in how it is applied within the social matrix.
Me too. You know Rob, there should be an easier way to see this score. :^)
This
I agree. Lets not go too far.
I'd prefer that every post had a score based on merit, but that can't really happen with this comment format. (For example, late posts to a thread are less likely to have the score changed, or to be read.)
I tentatively suggest that the reason for having a "default" rating for a poster is so that each article enters the discussion with an approximation of the "appropriate" score. Wouldn't it be simpler to use a simpler algorithm for calculating it. For example, average the posters last 5 scores, or something like that.
While I'm here, I'd like to request a Slashbox with links to the last two or three days worth of "5" posts in it.
read:
.lt. f, add f-d to global ranking.
if d
I hope I got it right this time!
-- Slef
Would you like to see code of slashdot released often?
- Only when it's nice and clean
- Release early, release often
- No, fine, 0.2 is good enough
- Keep it secret Rob, don't let'em steel ya!
- Slef sux/first post!
-- Slef
Sorry about that, I meant:
.le. f .le. d, don't change global rating .lt. m, remove m-f from global ranking, .lt. d, add f-d to global ranking.
Let f be the final rank of the message,
Let d be the default rank of the writer
Lef m be the self moderation
(with m = d)
if m
if f
if f
.lt. means less than
.le. means less or equal
Sorry, I can't seem to be able to display those characters correctly!
-- Slef
I have my threshold set to 3+ and todays top-"quality" postings are nothing but a low-quality chit-chat between the selected few. - The Slashdot Elite.
I was contemplating a reply to the 'late posting' thread, but stumbled into this one, which echoed my sentiment about all of Bruce Perens' posts being included in almost every threshold setting, simply because he now has a default score of 4.
Wake up, Rob. Default scores are ruining all the effort you've put into making moderation work.
~~~~~~~~
Signature illegible, could be somebody else.
Not everything I write is a 4,
...
:-)
One of the most enlightened things I've ever seen you post. I only wish you had stopped right there, because this idea
and the posting form should have an option if I'd like to self-moderate it to a 1, 2, or 3, rather than wait for a moderator to come along and do it for me.
... simply nauseated me at the thought of you being able to pump up your initial score any time you feel like ripping ESR or RMS a new bunghole (no matter how polite, literate, and diplomatic you may try to be, this is what a lot of us see from you).
The way it's set up now, I feel as if I should never post unless it's golden prose
Another brainstorm, Bruce. Roll with it!
Rob,
After watching the debate over this new moderation system, I confidently commend you on making a huge step in the right direction. However, giving Bruce a default of 4 insults my intelligence when I'm trying to get the top less-than-100 posts from a lengthy (250+) thread. By setting my threshold to the lowest number that will return under 100 posts, I'm assuming I'll get the best of the best, only to discover that every one of Bruce's posts is in there, regardless of how read-worthy it may be. And I certainly don't want him to be able to go into a tirade and quit another nonprofit organization with a self-moderated score.
Is this a flame? No. Of course not. It's an expression of the sentiment of a great number of slashdot posters and readers (check a few past threads to verify it). Quality posts come from a myriad of people. I was dumbfounded to see 'I'm sick and tired of hearing about Kevin Mitnick' scored down to -1, when it was the main sentiment of about 60 percent of the posts that followed.
IMHO, things were just beginning to work to the benefit of all of slashdot's readership... right up to the point where you started doling out default scores. Now, I'm back to having to sift through unearned high-scoring posts to find the good stuff.
~~~~~~~~
Signature illegible, could be somebody else.
It seems to me that a three or four person "mutual admiration society" could rapidly skew the ratings.
- Sam Ruby
I've added a smiley explictily now in case it wasn't clear the first time...
- Sam Ruby
Okay, I'll bite too.
I'm as egotistical as anyone else here to know how I rate.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I think that moderating up is a great idea. The strong commentors should be rewarded because that's what I really come here for.
I don't think that comments should start out at less than 0. Most moderators will probably never even see these comments so it will be very difficult to bring your default score back up to where other people might see it.
At first, this seems like a perfectly sensible suggestion, and makes a lot of sense. However, there is a disadvantage to it which ought to be considered. Mind you, the benefits may outweigh the disadvantages, but the disadvantages do need to be recognized.
The big picture here is the "Alignment" attribute (anyone having D&D flashbacks yet?). It seems that Alignment is becoming an important quantity for /. users, which so far determines both (to some extent) one's moderation power, and (with the new system) one's voice and visibility in discussions. This, to my mind, is no bad thing. Alignment is a nice, democratic way of semi-formalizing what is already a foundational principle of our community- your contributions, and their value, determine your status. Hence people listen to Bruce Perens a lot more than they listen to, well, me for example. There is a problem of a possible dictatordhip of the majority, but that's a whole separate issue.
The genius of this new system is both that it gives people who contribute more constructively (i.e. have a higher alignment) a louder voice, and it regulates alignment. Under the old system, a coherent, somewhat intelligent user could easily rack up an astronomical alignment: If I post something that won't get a -1 (which really isn't that hard at all), it won't hurt my alignment, but could, if I'm moderately eloquent, help. With no correction mechanism, one could with some effort build up an impressive alignment out of a whole lot of unimpressive but inoffensive posts. If we later attach even more priveledges to alignment, this could become a serious problem.
This new system, however, corrects this. Say I build up an alignment of 35 or so. Suddenly my comments start with a score of 4. Thus moderators are not only very unlikely to moderate me up unless I really deserve it, they actually can't moderate it up more than once, because 5 is the cap. Furthermore, if my post is something more like a 2, they're going to see that and moderate it back down pretty darn fast. Thus, although my comment is deserving of a 2, it still costs me in terms of alignment, because my alignment is way out of step with the actual quality of comments I'm posting. In short, one's alignment naturally self-corrects to a level consistent with the quality of one's comments, rather than the quantity. Kudos to Rob for setting it up so nicely.
Which brings me to Perens' proposed alteration. If I'm a level 2 poster (my comments have an "actual" score of about 2, more or less), as described above, all I have to do is always self-moderate to 1. Thus, even as my alignment grows to astronomical heights, Perens' proposal allows me to escape the self-correction mechanism. Thus, even if my comments are only mediocre, I can frequently "spend" a little of that astronomical alignment in a posting which is not self-moderated, and thus gets a starting 4, a score which I have definitely not earned through the quality of my posts.
Thus, despite its advantages, I am inclined against Perens' proposed alteration to the system.
All of this, by the way, also points to the fact that users should be able to determine their own alignments on their user-info page. Think of it as the right to face one's accuser, or benefactor as the case may be.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
If you will forgive a little complexity theory, too much chaos leads to disorder and disaster, but too little leaves a system stagnant and unresponsive. The key is to maintain a balance of change and stability that makes the system complex, but not totally chaotic. I think the current scheme achieves that balance remarkably.
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" -Salvor Hardin
I did a search for "C++" and not "Visual C++" and I typed the word "Austin" into the location field.
It gave me three jobs located in Little Rock, AK.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
I don't think that by trying to limit the bad you are also limiting the good.
The basic problem is that there's a lot of crap out there. On slashdot it consists of "me too", "first post", and off topic stuff. It had gotten to the point that I didn't read any comments because they were mostly bad, and I didn't have the time and inclination to wade to it looking for the gems.
With a good moderation system in place, I am much more likely to read through the discussion for an article.
I (and apparently others) need some way of filtering out most of the bad stuff. The question now becomes how to do so.
I sorta like one idea proposed earlier in the discussion, which seperates out the poster's reputation from the score of a particular post. That way you could filter based on the poster's reputation, the post's current score, or both.
Should I moderate a post, I'm not going to jack it down just because I don't agree with it. But I am going to jack it down if it's not interesting. I think most moderators will do that.
Good points.
It does seem a little complicated / confusing, but hopefully it will work out.
So does that mean that if you have n moderator points, and dont moderate something for 3 days, they go away? Hmm.
----------
"They misunderestimated me." --George W Bush, Nov. 6, 2000
If it isn't anywhere yet, be sure to credit me for the great idea. :) (j/k)
Hmmmm, what is my score
--Ivan, weenie NT4 user, Jon Katz hater: bite me!
--weenie NT4 user: bite me!
"Computers are nothing but a perfect illusion of order" -- Iggy Pop
I like this idea a lot, at least for negative default scores. After all, like someone else pointed out, people can just make new accounts anyway.
Notice the thing about alignment. You don't go down in score for a positive rating, even if that rating is below your current default. You only lose points for posts moderated all the way to -1. So for a +4 person who posts something mediocre, being moderated to a 2 or a 1 isn't bad at all.
Well...I think it could happen this way: You post a comment. Starts at 1. (Lets say your align is 4). Someone with moderator status bumps the post up to, say 2. Well, that gives you enough points to start at default level 2. (I think it is align of 5 that starts you at default 2). You get used to this new default. But then a different moderator lowers your post back down to 1. Then I think you would go back down to default 1.
Of course, It wouldn't happen very often. And more than likely, you wouldn't even notice that you went from align 4 to 5 and back to 4. But with the amount of people that post...it could happen.
*shrug* I would like to be able to self moderate a post down, tho. And maybe have that not count against you.
This sig is false.
That would be cool.
Erik brings up a good point. Why not go to the people that have experience with message forums for suggestions?
I, for one, think that the moderation rules outlined above by Rob are a bit arcane and a trifle bewildering. I guess that I'll just wait and see to find out how effective they become.
Finally, I am also seeing the "0 of 0" replies on the front screen; such numbers usually make me avoid reading until a few people have contributed their own two cents worth...!
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
Also, this would eliminate the need to be constantly adjusting the alignment thresholds over time. An average is always an average.
I think that the system won't require constant adjustments, as it was proposed. Basically everyone's default score will continue to rise until their comments are moderated up as often as they are moderated down.
On another note, it looks like there is a possibility of score inflation, if people moderate up more often than down, which could be a bad thing...
--Artemisia
D*F*U*T
*E*A*L*
Checked enough?
Chess anyone?
Perhaps "average rating" would be more appropriate. Total rating will skyrocket on stories with lots of posts, since you get 1 point just for not being an AC. Or, perhaps the sum of (rating-1) for all the comments. Or, the sum of the moderator-delta (or whatever you call they're contribution to the score)... Or perhaps...
It seems as if the changes are taking us towards a more fair basis for judging quality of comments. Most of the feedback that I've read through (that I thought would be useful, at least ;) has been started on. Whether is all works is another issue...
Good job, though.
--- -
I agree. I don't mind accounts being moderated up as a default, but one of the guidlines was to promote not to demote. Why start someone where they are gona wanna start fresh?
checking default
I remember seeing a point saying you wanted to clean it up before you released anything past 0.2. Who cares!? Release it!
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow...
Cummooooon..TWO!
DOH!
Perhaps Slashdot should be subtitled "News for RPG Players"
To echo something I just read, I think self-moderation for those of us (ok, fine, not me, I lurk, but people who actually post) who by default get 2-5.. something like: You rate this post a: 1 2 3 4 -KuRL Newnet IRC: KuRL
Mark Prindle, the most underappreciated genius on the web.
Actually I'd have to hope that a particular comment would be moderated down if it wasn't of a worth equal to that of your alignment. The Alignment should, I think, be seen as an initial guideline to the quality of the poster; not to the quality of the posting.
If you see a high alignment on your homepage you should take it as a compliment and not as an easy ride to getting your posts read.
If I have an off day and post a (or several) duff posts I would expect to see those posts decrease in score (assuming the moderators are on the ball) and if I'm a regular poster (not that I am) it should affect my alignment little. If I don't post often then it's unlikely that the alignment is all that important to me.
Just my opinion.
Well, well, well; three holes in the ground...
Yeah, telnet is the right interface for doors .. not really web. However, there's a web version of SRE here:
/. can host some games.
http://www.fastlane.net/~gpwossum/ii.shtml
Maybe
- Amit
BiGGO, I think you've hit upon a good idea here.
/. since it was just a section of your college homepage (what was it called? Chips & Bits?) and it just keeps getting better all the time.
A nice way to handle this would be to allow users to adjust the scores of their comments down when they post, or just post with the default score. That way if a user wants to post something that just says "me too" he/she can give it a low score. At the same time, users can't save up points in a pool for a few weeks, then give themselves a high score for a "first post" or something silly like that. Of course you'd have to make sure that voluntarily lowering a score before it is posted doesn't change the default score for the user, otherwise nobody would use it.
I'm sure you'll get this thing perfected eventually, CmdrTaco. I've been lurking on
----
Bob Barker
----
Bob Barker
I'd be more apathetic, but I just don't care.
I think the function of a default score is not so much as to save moderators work, or even to try guess at the value of a particular post -- but rather to try to increase the general quality of posts, on the assumption that people, being driven by their egos, would like to be able to flaunt a high default score and hence make better posts.
But I think it's a bad idea to assign a default score to posts. It'd probably be better to have a separate 'reputation' score that appears with a message -- this will still serve the function described above, but avoids assigning artificially high or low scores to posts that may not deserve it.
Reply to this message to see your score
Self moderation is a good idea. It should be expanded to include all users. The poster should not be able to rank their own message higher than their current default though.
-matt
like others, im just posting to see what my
default is.
-Z
I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going.
A Java client wouldn't suck. It would preserve the classic beuty of the original ANSI games. Check out this java telnet client (with ANSI color):
http://www.first.gmd.de/persons/le o/java/Telnet/
I don't care what anyone else says, Java rules.
-=Julian "It's GPL, naturally" Haight=-
The problem is that it amounts to social ranking, in other words, rating the poster not the posting. If someone is disliked enough for whatever reason, a small group of moderators can hammer them down so their comments are much less likely to be seen, regardless of the merit of any given posting. Conversely, notable or popular figures can be elevated in visibility.
Thus, we turn slashdot into High School.
I think this is what's behind Bruce Perens' discomfort with this system, since he is a "notable" who's already gotten favorable treatment.
Don't do this, Rob, it's a good idea at one level but with destructive consequences.
--------
And I'm never going back to my old school!"
--Steely Dan, pre-ARPANET
Bill Gates Is My Evil Twin.
I'm wondering too
Just finding out what my default score is...
I'll refrain from commenting until the dust settles.
I became a Linux convert the day that NT crashed five times on me.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."
- Evelyn Beatrice Hall
How many points before I win?
Prisoner's Dilemma kinda explained that it is always best to attack, so do I need to criticize people to be moderated up to get more points to win the game? Hmmm...
--paul
p.s. I like the sig, too [DAMN, that's not helping my game!]
.
This comment is guaranteed*
*not guaranteed
Seems as if there are two levels of action at work.
Moderators craft a user's alignment values according to their reaction to a post.
On the other hand, users with higher alignments will be generally seen more often, just because of the general prefernce of viewers to read generally accepted highly valued comments. Unless moderators intentionally go about reading at -1 or something to pick up all the loose ends, or they intentionally ignore comments above a certain threshold(why would they though? Proven track record and all), I think the system may be some sort of positive feedback loop.
Maybe I have the mentality of a moderator wrong, and they generally do read everything, and are fairly good about not increasing someone who is already default 2 or 3.
Regardless, I like very much the idea of a default post value, defineable by alignment or something.
I'm not sure I have a better suggestion, though, for the moderator positive feedback issue, if it even is a problem.
AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Right now when I scan down all the posts in here, although there are plenty of replies all I "see" is a mass of posts from this Bruce Perens guy. :-)
Completely skews the way the comments read; self moderation would be a good thing.
--The more you know, the less you know.
There's a windows program that will let you run a telnetable tw2002 game on the internet. I haven't played with it much, but if you do a search on metacrawler for trade wars, it's bound to come up...
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
>Moderators should by default not be allowed to see who posted what. So that we don't have to trust them not to moderate up only their friends.
Moderators should not be able to use threshold, sort by points and see the points at all, so that they attention is focused on the content of a message.
What I'd rather see is an floating average--say, the average of your last 10 comments (if you've made that many). Actually, I rather preferred each comment being independent of the poster's history, but... (Ok, I'll take this time to say that what I really REALLY want is collaborative filtering, but I know it's not going to happen)
Visit me on #weirdness on the Galaxynet.
Using such a system will closer model the value of individual's posts. Default scores would be pulled toward the middle, thus reducing the number of "Golden 3/4 default" people. This does not mean that their comments would be lost, since moderators would be able to feel more comfortable in promoting the good comments without the immediate possibility of making someone "Golden 3/4 Default".
This would also reduce the number of moderation points down for that group of folks who often make well-thought posts, but occasionally care for the snap remark.
Scoring of posts should, _IMHO_ come more from what moderators think of THAT post rather than what prior posts by the author were rated as.
e to the i pi equals negative one
(laughing out loud) It won't be a problem. I've sure done my best to keep them in your face up until now, haven't I?
:)
This comment is DEFINITELY not genuine 4-rated stuff...
OK... if I understand the system correctly, your initial moderation value doesn't help you at all for future initial moderation values, even if that initial value is +3 or +4. So, let's say you had a +3. As someone posted earlier, moderators would be reluctant to moderate you up further because you already have such a high score. If that is the case, your initial value would remain constant if the quality of your posts remained constant under the current system, because you would not be gaining any extra points. If, however, an average is used, your initial moderation value would go DOWN just from making more posts that are as good as the ones you've always made. This is because you still wouldn't gain any extra points, but the number of posts it's averaged over is higher.
Your system might work if the points awarded just for posting were included in the calculation. Then the initial value would just be an average of all the other posts you've ever made (not a bad idea, IMHO).
MEEPT!! and Daryll Strauss's comments on the "Ask slashdot" about 3d under Linux definitely come to mind. If labelling people can automate the same thing human moderators would be doing anyway, it's definitely a Good Thing. For one thing, it takes effect faster than human moderators. Also, I'm sure SOME of us have things to do besides comb through all the comments to adjust their score... :)
Ah, those were the good old days. There must be some way of implementing that in html though, then that would be sweet. The only way I can think of would be a java client but that would just suck. The only way I can think to implement it is with Dynamic DOM rewriting that was just mentioned on mozillazine today. It allows you to rewrite parts of the screen instead of doing a total refresh. In that way you could have more of an ANSI session implemented in html (which brings up the point, the more we advance technology, the more we re-invent old ideas).
/., segfault, bedope and userfriendly. You'd have litterly a couple thousand people on each team. That would be unreal. I think the most people I've ever seen on one team was about 50 (HOD rules, ya!). And we won of course.
Bre would get really interesting though. Imagine a game of bre between
But one other thing, it would have to be the classic tradewars that was released about 12 years ago, not the updated one that came out about 6 years ago, that "newer" one was as good. Cloaks failed on you, way to many new ship types. The ferengi sucked, etc.
-?-
Okay
agreed.. blah blah ;)
I think this is a good idea, however it seems a little unnecessary. It seems to me that a few minor changes to the way the default scores are set (someone posted a suggestion about using averages as opposed to totals) would allow things to sort themselves out. That is to say, I dont see how this system is easily exploitable, unless you have a user who decides to continually post really good material simply to do a First Post with a score of 5, which i doubt.
For example, if a user regularly posts meaningful and enlightening information it will naturally be moderated up an his default score will be raised, while this may result in a few high-scored ("agreed") needless posts I think hes entitled to it, as he (or she) has demonstrated an interest and has added relevant material to previous discussions. If the user continues to post drivel, his default will naturally begin to decrease as his posts are moderated down.
But I did say this is a good idea. I think users *should* have the ability to moderate their own posts _down_ as they see fit, but the intricacies in allowing a user a pool of points to up his own score seems a little too confusing to implement cleanly.
uhm.. heh thats all.
Except, Rob needs to put the users default score on the user page so we can see it without having to post a stupid 'test' post.. and what is the "# of # comments" on the main page? I thought it was #of comments above threshold and #of comments total, but for this article, it says "0 of 0 comments" Anyone?
"They say that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could eventually type out the entire works of Shakespeare. But now, thanks to the internet, we know it's not true"
"I think the mistake a lot of us make is thinking the state-appointed shrink is our friend." --Jack Handey
For example, we now have two contradicting policies:
Posters cannot moderate for a story, and most definitely cannot moderate their own post
Posters with high default scores should be able to set the score of their post
/. but perhaps simple is best. In any case, good comments will get recognised without the default scoring system, it'll just take a little while for someone to moderate them up.
/., I have a passing interest only but I'd still like to hear a precis of the comments on it. So instead of trying to configure the view each time to give me that, how about links on the /. homepage for each story to the top ten and top twenty comments, where /. simply picks the highest scoring 10 or 20 of the comments?
Anyway, getting back to the point, from the reader's perspective I want to be able to see the top 10 (say) posts on a story in a short amount of time. I used to be able to do this by setting my score threshold to "2" or sometimes higher, now even setting it to "4" still gets lots of posts that havent been recognised as good by anyone, they've just been set at that by default and nobody's gotten round to changing it down yet.
Its seems to me that scores are a lot more meaningful to readers if they are earned, i.e. you know that if something scores "3" high then thats because its earned that score through support from others and not, for example, through being scored at "4" by default and being moderated down.
So, from this point of view, I think that the default scoring idea is nice but too complicated to be worth the hassle. Its tempting to keep adding bells and whistles to
Final idea: For a fair number of stories on
This involves a method of choosing in the circumstance where there are (e.g) 7 5-score comments and we need to pick 3 4-score comments to make up the 10. Perhaps its done in chronological order, maybe it would be better to pick the replies to comments already shown ahead of the others, as this gives more flow to the read. This would also encourage use of replies rather than new threads.
That's because there is a city named Austin in: AR, CO, IN, KY, MN, NC, NV, PA, and TX.
Little Rock, AR is "near" Austin, AR.
There seems to be a bug in my search code though, since there are 5 such jobs in Austin, TX... Do an "exact" search and you'll find those.
I intend to renovate the location search very shortly, and will implement a more elegant notation so you can be more precise... (I.E. clarify that you are only interested in jobs near Austin *TX*, and thus exclude jobs in Austin, *AR*)
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
We just put a new location search system online...
You can now search for
Austin, TX
And only get jobs around Austin Texas... Thus, the Little Rock jobs (near Austin Arkansas) wont come up.
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
You'll notice that we don't run ads on our site, and you may not be aware of it, but unlike MonsterBoard/OCC and others, we are not owned by anyone. (MonsterBoard is, as you said, owned by a marketing company)
:>)
The CEO here is a fed up former-customer of Dice. He was a recruiter that got tired of using services that were ineffective and largely unhelpful. Part of the reason these services haven't been helpful in getting people jobs is specifically because their search features are so poor, it's hard for recruiters/companies to fidn candidates that match their needs.
We have a pain-in-the-butt resume submittal process admittedly, but our search features are much more precise, which in the long run should save the recuiters/companies time (they get only mostly qualified candidates on search results), and save you time. (you don't get as many superfluous calls from recruiters/companies that don't understand your minimum requirements)
Since we are a startup, traffic to our site is pretty low right now but we have over 350 clients (recruiters/companies) and several thousand jobs. We're ramping up our marketing and partnership efforts in an effort to get more candidates/clients/etc...
Until we really get going, it'll be hard for us to get any kind of stats on hiring rate and such...
It's probably not a good statistical measure, but we have a feature for clients that let's them make note of a candidate for future reference... Sort of like bookmarking a page... 221 distinct candidates have been "SmartListed" -- that is, added to this list. That's actually a pretty high number given our relatively low traffic...
And there are other advantages to using our service... We're planning on open-sourcing a whole lot of the code we've been writing -- we're generalizing it into a toolset for building sophisticated web applications, and our affiliates program is a good way to make some *cash*... (http://neuro.bpower.com in case you are interested...
I know, you want hiring numbers, but right now we're not even sure of them! When we are, we'll probably make them publicly available. (Although, I can't make any guarantees since I'm not a PHB or anything... Just an engineer...)
Anyway, if you have any further questions, please feel free to e-mail me.
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
IIRC, a cookie can be set to be domain-level, so a cookie set by www.slashdot.org can be read by cachedot.slashdot.org, www.slashdot.org, fubar.slashdot.org, whatever.slashdot.org, and even foo.bar.cachedot.slashdot.org...
But I believe you have to explicitly say to do so when setting it...
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
In theory, "past performance is not an indication of future performance" is a good idea, but unfortunately I've followed one too many newsgroups where some twerp or group of twerps comes in and starts trying to ruin the group for everyone! I like the idea of mass "non-fatal" moderation (scoring instead of killing messages) and I think the "default" score makes a good complement to the idea.
The "default" score system might be bad if there were few moderators in a high traffic system -- the mods might not even read lower-scored messages to evaluate them, but with hundreds of moderators I don't think that will be a problem.
I have noticed though a disturbingly large number of "Just posting to see what my score is" posts. Perhaps this should be displayed on the user account page to prevent such posts?
MrJoy.com -- Because coding is FUN!
Well, first of all, as an "Anonymous Coward" you're not likely to be moderating anyone up at all.
Second, I understand that this is the way it is supposed to work. I am just not convinced that it will happen that way. Who are you kidding? In my opinion, my scenario is more likely. Time will tell I guess.
Lastly, if slashdot becomes an english-essay writing contest, that will leave out a lot of foreigners (non native english speakers, like myself) out of the "competition". (becomes this HAS become a competition, hasn't it?)
In anyway you look at it, I've expressed my opinion on moderation in several not-so-well-thought-out, not-so-good essays in here. Too bad most people probably didn't get a chance to read my opinion, since my rating is a mere 1.
As I've said before (quote from Animal farm): we're all equal, but some are more equal than others.
It is a shame.
Hmmm... Well, the alignment is an intruiguing (sp?) idea... Very mixed feelings.
:)
On one hand it seems like a decent idea, because it rewards good posters, and it highlights their posts as being worth reading by default. Without the need of promotion from a moderator.
On the other hand, it promotes comments simply on the poster's history. It's a little bit dangerous, because the score is no longer based on the merit of the post. In other words, everyone has ups and downs, and not everyone write a good post every time.
I also feel it is a little bit big-brother-ish. Reminds of the credit rating system in the US (wonder if Rob was thinking about that?), where decisions to grant credit is based more on history than on the actual financial situation the customer is in. I always found that type of system frustrating.
I'll explain why the credit rating is frustrating. It may seem a little bit off-topic, but it isn't, i'll explain how it relates to slashdot. Suppose that you just graduated from college (like myself), and you did a few booboos with credit cards (college mistakes). Now you're a highly paid software engineer, responsible, financially stable. You won't be able to get any credit for many years. And without getting credit, you can't reestablish your credit either.
It's a little bit like slashdot - your comment won't get read because you may have posted a few items that were not up to standards. However, that comment that will not be seen, might have been a great one. Maybe the best in the whole thread. Too bad. Similarly, this stupid comment was seen from everyone just because the posters posted a few good things. Of course, you can argue that the moderator will fix those problems... I have my doubts.
Reminds me of a quote from Animal Farm - it goes something like this: "We're all equal, but some of us are more equal than others". There was a good lesson in that book, maybe Rob should read it
here is how I see this system will work for most people, including myself.
You may have had a good post but:
1. it will not be seen because you're default score is not high enough
2. it will not be moderated up (regardless of quality) because nobody will see it
3. your default score will not go up because your posts are never moderated up.
4. you will get frustrated (I know I will) and stop posting because there is no point to it.
You may say, "Good Riddance", but slashdot users will be missing out on some potentially good post, as well as yet another opinion that adds to the diversity of slashdot (which IS what is -or was? - great about it).
1 --> 3 is a Catch 22...
Any one else not see commments on the front page?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
I like this idea but think that the basis for the pool should include an average.
/. articles, thus increasing the chance that I will post. My pool score and/or my alignment will be low. This is not really a bad thing, but for those like me the initial score of the post is going to be low because I haven't posted much until now.
For example I rarely ever post because I haven't read comments until recently unless the subject was something I had a great interest in. Now I read the comments(the fist few at least) for most of the
I think that there should be an average of say score * 10, then use -10 thru +50 to break up into -1 thru +5 for alignment. It gets very hard to get into the upper brackets the more you post, so you should have pool points as well, just reduce the amount of points moderation adds to the pool.
Or you might try it the other way around: Read all the job descriptions and post dramatic comments on /. on how awful the jobs are, how 19th century England the compensation is and how the evil corporate world is making you suffer.
beauty is only a light switch away
You might be right about the late posts withering and dying from neglect. While I haven't posted here much, I've noticed this in posts that I've read.
:) I'm in Seattle, WA, USA.
Even reading in the afternoon as I often do (I'm a night owl so I don't do much of anything in the morning except sleep), I find that a lot of morning-posted topics are pretty much played-out before I even get to them, and it seems that the latest posts don't get moderated up as much as the early ones.
Then again, I'm not keeping actual stats, so my impressions on this could be wrong. But this does seem to be a bit of a problem for posters who want to build up a good "reputation" but don't get up early by US standards.
I must say that I'm finding this whole process of working out the moderation system really interesting. Lots of good ideas here and even the ones that I'm not sure about show a great deal of creativity and thought.
Anyway, you got a reply.
//
-- A wealthy eccentric who marches to the beat of a different drum. But you may call me "Noodle Noggin."
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Additionally, this system has the benefit of providing a finite amount of future-default-score-enhancement for each instance of moderation. (Does that make any sense?) Like the averaging idea mentioned earlier, it rewards quality rather than quantity. For example, if this post gets moderated up, I would gain the ability to boost the score of a later post. If, however, I don't maintain the quality of my contributions, I would run out of bonus points quickly.
On the other hand, the steady state of this system would have excellent posters running out of bonus points even when they have good things to say (assuming that posts with self-boosted scores will not tend to be moderated up even further). I think I would prefer something like the averaging system with the addition of a low score posting option. However, I think this aspect of the score pool idea is worth considering.
I'll Stop Rambling Now,
Mike
Hmph!! Go and steal half my thunder will you?
I was going to become schizophrenic and post both sides of a debate on self-moderating or whatever you may call it. Slef has taken one of my points for the negative and provided the rebuttal as well. "Me too" on his suggestions. (or at least the basic idea - tweak if needed)
One thing I've been concerned about reading through this topic is the idea that someone with a negative alignment might have a hard time recovering. It's good to know that at -1 postings still get looked at by moderators.
At first glance, I thought alignment decay was a good idea. But on further consideration, I don't think it's needed.
Someone who only posts rarely, but who's comments are consistantly very good should probably keep their high alignment. (and vice versa).
If your comments don't live up (or down) to your alignment, it'll decay anyway.
While we're talking about slashdot improvements, I think it would be a good idea to make a flat-mode hierarchical display that would tell you who replied to what. Kind of like a threaded display, but it would show the actual comment, not just the title.
-S
Oh, hey, it already exists :) n/m :)
-S
... save up points in a pool for a few weeks, then give themselves a high score for a "first post" or something silly like that.
I don't think this would really be an issue, by doing this you would use/lose some, if not all, of your pool points. Even if you had a point left in your pool (two unused +1s on prior posts) it would only take 3 -1s -- from a 2 to a -1 -- on that post to knock you down to a negative pool, putting you in the same position as an AC. This situation would persist on all future posts until you do something worthy of some more +1s.
I'm not sure how well this would work, but I don't think it would be that bad. The only problem I can see is some cyclic effects with certain (what some might call "macho") posters.
I've found that with the new moderation system, only the longest most boring posts get scored high. The short, responsive (the comments are supposed to be responses, no?) posts, (like yours about Dilbert being created in advance) must be irrelevent. "Otherwise, why so short?" thinks a new moderator.
I found that before there were a million moderators, only posts by famous people got bumped up. Now, it's silly. I usually dislike, often don't have the patience for, and never laugh at, posts marked 3 or 4. You want a high score-- just read the article and write a loooooooong reply. Short, even intelligent short comments are doomed.
Peace.
Re: 1; in one case I repeated what another reply had more or less stated (and had score "1"), not having read that reply yet. I don't think that quite justifies a -1; maybe a 0. The other case my post was reasonably original and (I thought) made a reasonable point.
:) that was the first. I normally avoid saying "sucks". But it seemed apt in this case and I'm not in the mood for searching for euphemisms.
Re: 2; actually no
PS I made a mistake in my post, i didn't get two "-1"'s, I got a "-1" and a "0". Oops.
I don't think the issue of a poster whose alignment has been pushed negative will be a big issue. Why? Because all you have to do is wait a few days and you are back at 0 like everyone else.
----------
jeff cuscutis
I'm not an evil overlord, I just play one on my computer.
After all these changes it's becoming harder to know exactly what "the rules" are today. I think the current system should be tried a while before the (inevitable) next changes. There are so many features now that we need some kind of "Slashdot-Comment-HOWTO". Writing it all down in a single document might allow some of the angry demon bugs^H^H^H^Hfeatures to leap forth. And besides, giving Rob a break from Slashdot-coding might enable him to have a life or something.
--
Wonko the Sane
Possibly some of my blank stare is due to the fact that I never got into the math-based role-playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons and the like. Still, I have a good head for math, and this is complex.
I think the moderator idea is peachy. Giving us commonfolk a chance to more actively participate and have an opportunity to mold what is rapidly being called the Slashdot community - that's great, don't get me wrong.
But.. sheesh. There's got to be a simpler way. Could the principles of open source be used to evolve it? IE:
Keep the moderators. But instead of having the computer keep score on people, let each moderator have a go at it. Start out with a basic formula and cook up some way for each moderator to make variations on it for each discussion. Keep moderators in their discussions for extended periods of time so they can verify/disverify their theory.
Begin a discussion just for moderators. Let them talk it over with eachother, exchanging ideas and techniques. Furthermore, (and this may conflict with Rob's personal philosophy - I don't know) Rob should be posting to this (and other) discussion concerning moderation. Aren't discussions supposed to be an exchange of ideas? The whole idea is to "breed" the perfect moderation algorithm. Open source is just what we call 'evolution' acting in the digital realm - and look where evolution has taken us, albeit over millions of year! I think Rob has done an admirable job here - if he weren't so darn mortal, needing both sleep AND food, he'd be the ideal Moderator of All. So that's not likely. This system needs to be largely self-governing; requiring human intervention occassionally but perfectly able to cope if we all sleep in tomorrow morning. Rather like HAL... without the uncomfortable side effects.
Rob really doesn't post as much as the rest of us, so he gets moderated-up less. Also, it IS his site, so e can do whatever he wants.
Opinionated Law Student Strikes Again!
I think perhaps instead of accumulating a pile of points, each poster should have an average score, which would be his default score. That way if a comment of his was moderated down, his average score would be lowered, but if he usually posted lots of good stuff it wouldn't hurt his rating.
However, since a single good comment might give someone an average rating of 4 instantly, there might be a minimum number of comments before certain ratings could be reached. i.e. Must have 3 comments to receive a default rating of 2, 7 for 3, 12 for 4, and 20 for 5. Something along that line.
Hope this helps...
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
OK, I'll bite. :-)
From Wichita Falls, Texas.
Set to -10 threshold with highest posts first.
Rereading, I will go to the bottom and work my way back up.
At this point, your post was moderated to +2.
As "news and commentary", the earlier posts will get the most attention, both readers and moderators. Anyone very interested will read and reread, so later posts are far from irrelevant. Probably the major value of later posts comes a hundred years or so in the future, when historians research the evolution of whatever they call the rennasaince (sp?) of whatever it is we are going through. This is more fun to watch than a soap opera.
I really like the way Slashdot is shaping up, and I find I'm reading a lot more than I used to do. however, I'm concerned that with the different changes, I'm not sure how things are working at any given moment.
Further, a lot of this must be disconcerting for new readers, especially once you get your account set up. I realize all of this is in flux, but I think it would be a good idea to have a FAQ page on this with general information and a rough timeline of 'things to come / wishlist'.
The current FAQ page mentions we have 'a dozen or so' moderators -- time to update that, yes?
ravenskana
I think it has to do with the way cookies work - cookies sent from slashdot.org can't be read if the current page is www.slashdot.org
/etc/hosts. Of course, this won't help the cookie problem.
And if you don't want netscape turning slashdot -> www.slashdot.org, you can always add a line to your
"Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs. "
:)
BAHAHA!! That's just too funny! Congrats for making me laugh!!!
Best,
Brad
Since we've already got moderators, why is it beneficial to do auto-scoring of posts based on past behavior? It's not going to save the moderators any trouble since they still have to check posts to make sure that the auto-scoring is correct.
However, there is one thing that auto-scoring does do: it labels people as useless or intelligent. It won't take long for an upper class of people with high default scores to form.
Nah.. he'll just write up a quick "My /." web portal that we can all use :-)
I like the customizations.. keep up the efforts!
Thx,
Matt
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
I'm seeing the same over here... so it's not pilot error :-)
{} ------ When I think of a good sig, I'll put it here
I like letting good posters choose how to spend their alignment rather than simply bumping up their scores automatically. It would allow a user to "Get on the Soapbox" occasionally if they've proven that they have something to say in the past.
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Pants are Optional
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
If you don't like it, turn it off. No sweat off anyones back. Its totally at your discretion.
Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
Pants are Optional
Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.
I think a user should be able to "nice" his or her comments. Let's say I want to post a joke that is vaguely related to the subject at hand. I dont want my alignment to go down a point from someone bumping it down to 0 or -1. So, I could "nice" it to 0. Or, let's say my alignment is so high that my default score is 2. I want to post a "me too" post that doesn't have any value to the discussion. I should be able to "nice" it down to 1 or 0 because it doesn't deserve to be above the pack.
Anyways.. besides a nice option.. I think there should be an option to post as an AC without having to log out.
I've noticed that /. has the same tendency as Usenet groups to have occasional threads which got stupid at some point and all subsequent replies (i.e. everything in the subtree rooted at the stupid post) are stupid as well. I treasure the ',' command in trn, which allows me to junk the subtree of posts below the post I am currently reading. Perhaps such a thing should be available for moderators so that they can demote an entire subtree. I realize that this is a lot of power, but there should be some way of adjusting for it.
By the way, I would be delighted if the color of the subject bar of a post corresponded to its score, darkening for higher score. Or maybe the user prefs could have a color choice for each score level. Yeah, it's eye candy, but if used well it could be effective visual feedback.
Earlier today I found that I was defaulting at 2, and I thought to myself, "Hmm...that's strange, I guess I'll have to make sure all my comments are worth that two."
Let me tell you all, right before I hit the submit button I think really hard if what I'm writing needs to be said. Perhaps it has already been said, or it's flamebait, or I'm coming down a little hard on somebody. Usually about half the time I write out an entire comment, think about it for 30 seconds and hit the back button. I'm sure that if a lot of people do this (and they might, who can tell?) then the overall comment quality will rise.
Speaking of which, I want to voice my support for the alignment system. I figure it can have two effects. One: People will abuse the system and use their Alignment to boost up bad comments. These comments will get moderated down and you will lose alignment points. Two: People will tend to write comments that deserve their default rating. I know that's my reaction to the whole thing. Perhaps Bruce Perens shouldn't be posting things that aren't worth the 3 default points? Just maybe we all don't need to see his latest tidbit of humor.
Time can only tell, but in the past week, I'd say the overall quality of the posts that I see has definitely risen. I think it only aspires people to think originally and creatively so that their comments get moderated up and their voices get heard.
--Peter
I've been pondering late posting since the 'Expanded Moderation System' took effect. Some thoughts:
What happens to a late post? Like this one? Does it dry up like a rasin in the sun? I have the feeling that by now (some 10 hours after the origional story was posted) nearly all the moderators have moved on to other articles.
Back when posts were ordered oldest-first, (ahh the old days) late posters always got the bottom of the page. So there was incentive to post early. But at the same time I think that more people read further down the page because there could be some real jems down there.
Now days, readers have less reason to surf to the bottom (I'm assuming that most people view their comments by rank- I could be wrong about this). I guess I'm whining about something that can't be helped. What we really need are more moderators in Australia!
I'll check back tomorrow, but I don't think that this post will have any replys or be moderated. (Note: this is not a challenge! Please don't reply or moderate just to be contrary ;) If you do reply I would be interested in discovering where geographically you are from.
One final thought: How cool would it be to have stats on stuff like how people choose to format their page (oldest 1st, highest score, etc) or what threshold most people prefer. Or which statboxes are most popular. Are you getting all this Rob? ;)
Final thought two: Have you ever wondered if Rob has a page where he can view all the posts with his name in the body? Or even better- how cool would it be if you could easily search posts not just stories? Bah. Enough of this stream of consciousness. Im out.
2^5
Personally, I think that the auto-moderation is just going to make things a bigger mess... I believe that it's best to keep things simple, and I prefer it if one of my posts have high ratings because the moderators like that post, as opposed to, because they liked my previous posts.
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100% pure freak
All these user settings that have been added recently have been wonderful. But, could you add an Expires: line in the HTTP header? As it is currently, the page has to reload with every click of the back button, and proxies aren't caching the pages. A brief expiration time, say 10-15 minutes would be perfect. It would allow one to quickly go back and forth with less stress on the Slashbox(es?), and it'll reload fairly often so one can pick up the latest articles and comments.
So, what do yas think?
For people who do not like the idea of the pre-alignments, perhaps there could be an option under preferences to allow users to ignore the alignments when filtering comments? Dunno if that'd be hard to implement, but then again I don't know much PERL so I can't really say. Not sure whether I'd filter the alignments or not... I think that it's a good idea, but it will require a little toying with. But really, that's not a bad thing. Everything needs a little ironing out before it works right. Part of life.
It was recently discovered that research causes cancer in rats.
Sounds like a good idea to me - this would prevent one of the problems I see with the current alignment system, that users with high alignments would be discouraged from posting anything small or somewhat trivial, since those posts would be moderated down (not being deserving of a 3). This moderating down would then kick them down from their higher alignment, so the users would be discouraged from posting anything but long, likely-to-be-kept-at-3 posts in order to keep their high alignemtn. The good posters would therefore in effect be constrained because of their own merits, which isn't such a good thing.
Anyway, your proposal solves all of these problems by allowing the user to say "yes, i know this doesn't deserve a 3, but i want to say it anyway, so i'll give it a 1."
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I find I'm less likely to get a 2 if I post to a thread later. That's OK per post, but if I'm lowering my average by doing it it means I'm best off only posting if I can get my comment in early enough. I suspect this is only one of many biases in alignent calculation that (a) throw it further away from a good indication of someone's posting form, and (b) bias people towards strange behaviour directed towards maintaining a good alignment. Running more than one account could also be used towards this end.
If I've misunderstood and it's a total rather than an average, biases the other way happen: very frequent posting is encouraged, and those who post only the best are discriminated against.
I think this stuff is really difficult to get right. I'm surprised that there's no bazaar development around Slashdot so you don't have the same pressure to implement ideas before suggesting them.
--
Xenu loves you!
I might be repeating a few things out there, but here it goes:
First, I don't like the way the new alignment works. What happens if a user with alignment posts 50 comments, each at +3. They would then be posting at +5. Oops.
Second, this encourages frequent posters and discourages new users. This is the biggest problem IMHO. Why should a newbie post a good message if it will automatically be rated down?
Finally, I have found that an easy way to get moderated up is to segment your post into points, with a paragraph or two for each point. Then all you have to do is ramble and make sense, and then poof! You are moderated upwards.
-Ben
I hate to me too, but I agree with this completely.
(And if you moderate me down, please mod the parent article up.)
As I started reading the comments in this post I came to the conclusion I came to during the last discussion. I unchecked the "can be moderator" button in my prefs last time. I read the posts high to low with a threshold of -1. If something intelligent was said, I'll eventually see it. I may have to go back to flat.
Rob, this system is completely whacked. You want to encourage good writing. Thus, all posts should start out at 0. Like the stock market, past behavior in not an indication of future performance. The system you have proposed is designed for creating elites. (I'M A THREE!!!)
Don't worry about the judge and jury problem. Someone else will come along and raise that opposing viewpoint back up. Why? Because there will be another moderator who agrees with the other guy. Allow moderators to post.
How you pick the moderator is probably a better use for the delta system you just came up with. Just as long as it isn't me. I waste enough of my time here as it is.
I don't know. From what Rob has said, I think he's moving toward the goal of making moderation like jury duty and picking different people from the Slashdot readership on different days. If he's doing that, then the posting/moderation exclusion is a good balance. It prevents people from moderating others when they may have a stake in the results, it forces people to think carefully about whether posting or moderating is more important to the for that story, and it only affects the person when they've been chosen as a moderator.
--Phil (I'd just like some sort of selt-moderation option, for when I want to be off-topic.)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
Simple really. Get a good job, make a lot of money, live on the cheap so you can save a lot, put it all in mutual funds, and retire in a few years. Presto -- unemployment.
Job search sites are a poor way to find a job. Here's a recent quote from Ask The Headhunter over at the EE times:
It should be no surprise to you that the big career sites where you can post jobs and resumes are owned by advertising companies. The objective is not matching people with jobs; the objective is selling as many ads as possible. That's why none of these sites (that I know of) can or will report on hiring rates resulting from those postings.
If I'm wrong, and this site is different, then prove it. Show them stats!
it seems a bit twisted imho... you can become a moderator by posting a lot of good comments (emphasis on "good", not on "a lot"), but then you practically prevent moderators from posting. moderators are by definition the people who generally have something interesting to say, but you put them in the dilemma of posting or moderating.
on one side, the rule will prevent people from moderating posts that may oppose or advocate their vision, but I think the average moderator is intelligent enough not to do that. and the fact that there are a lot of moderators also works here, because a post that is valued too high or too low will be re-evaluated by other moderators and put back where it belongs, while still allowing moderators to post there on average good comments. or am I completely mistaken about this?
)O(
the Gods have a sense of humor,
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
How about this as a method of normalizing alignment: every week, go through all the registered users' alignments, divide by some constant (say, 2), and add another constant (say, 1/2). This gives users a chance to "rehabilitate", but also doesn't give posters who've been inactive for a while good default scores. This sort of exponential decay would encourage posters to be consistently good. The down side is that it would punish those who post irregularly, but are always good. That could be solved by decay of average moderation, rather than the total amount of moderation, plus judicious selection of the constants. A few test cases would probably work to determine those better.
You have a choice: tax and spend Democrats, or borrow and spend Republicans. Choose wisely.
The minute sombody posts a comment to try and up thier point tally, even if it is extremely intelligent.. ?
/.
If the comment IS extremely intelligent, then I would LIKE it to be posted. That's what I'm here for. If someone trys to up thier score by posting "whee... first", they will fail, and possibly lose a point or two if they had it. This would discourage bad posts and encourage good posts. Plus, it would allow those posters that we know have insightful comments (regardless of if they are right or not) to boost the score of the posts they want, instead of having ALL thier posts boosted.
If we stick with this system (which I personally don't like all that much), then a person with 2 good comments will start showing up at the top of my list with thier regular insipid ones. (If I understand correctly). I'd rather the pool.
Remember, because this forum is very open to the public, you can't stop stupid posts. I'd rather keep the system open, then try to eliminate ALL the ways a clever idiot (heh) can abuse
Heh. Now watch and see if the moderators adjust your score on that post. Wouldn't it be ironic? :)
I think that each comment should stand on its own and be judged as such. I think that I have written some really good comments and also some really bad comments. I try to post good comments, but I don't think that they all could ever qualify as "5" material (if I ever got to that point). Also, if I knew that all my posts were always going to be seen, I would probably be too scared of posting a "bad" comment because everyone would always see it. If you are going to have auto scoring, I would say that you can get to up to a 3 with auto scoring but for a *really* good comment, it takes moderation to make it a 5.
Gordon
That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.
That actually is a valid point... But it takes a lot to get a 0 or -1 score, so if you continuously post shabby posts, then its easier for the moderators. But I do think it is pointless to give -1 to users, because, im assuming few people look at -1 posts (i for one dont), but it can get some fairly good comments never read...
:-)
Whatever
Stan "Myconid" Brinkerhoff
SB.
I've used the internet since 1987 and love any trick which will increase the signal-to-noise ratio. Some people post because they can, and others post because they have something worth saying. If someone builds a reputation for wisdom and credibility, their remarks should initially carry more weight. Anyone abusing this will eventually get moderated down to where they belong.
Whenever you post in a public forum, your post is judged by all who read it, even if the judgment is fairly superficial, such as "reading this post (was|was not) worth my time." Of course, judging the relevance and worth of a post is somewhat different than judging the person that's posting.
The point-pool idea doesn't create a currency in the typical sense, since posters cannot exchange this currency directly. The closest thing to such an exchange is the fact that moderation actions on a post will affect someone's pool. I, as a poster, would not be able to exchange points for favors, etc. with other people. And with moderators turning over every few days, it'd be very hard to make a black-market in moderation points.
Given that all of the "currency" comes from and is ultimately controlled by the moderators, and given that the moderators come from a large subset of the posting population, this sounds alot more like a meritocracy with a touch of democratic socialism than the "invisible groping hand" of capitalism.
--Joe--
Program Intellivision!
Just look at this here discussion for instance. Bzztzpht! Noise!
I have my threshold set to 3+ (has worked fine until now) but today all I see (right away anyway) is some "low-quality" chit-chat between the selected few. a.k.a. the Slashdot Elite.
I don't care who's hip on the /. discussion forums, and who's not. I just want insightful and interesting comments on todays news. Personally I don't care who posted what.
I have a suggestion:
smuModerators should by default not be allowed to see who posted what. So that we don't have to trust them not to moderate up only their friends.
Make the moderators person-blind and have some sort of setup to help them review only the newest postings on a thread. The system today only moderates the first few postings, and then the rest is left unread by the moderators, nomatter how insightful or otherwise interesting they may be... this sucks
I only see one potential problem with this:
One person could self moderate their messages very low in order to gain global ranking when he is going to be moderated back up. I think that if there is self moderation (and I like the ides), the adjustment to the global ranking should be:
Let f be the final rank of the message,
Let d be the default rank of the writer
Lef m be the self moderation
(with m = d)
if m d, add f-d to global ranking.
That way, if a person over-estimates his message, he loses point, if he is being modest, but the message doesnt exceed his average, the score doesn't change, and if he is better than his default ranking, he gains points, regardless of his self-moderation. I think it's important that gaining points do not depend on the self moderation.
-- Slef
Running, ducking, and hidding.... ;-)
- Sam Ruby
Yeah I'd like to know mine as well.
Also I find myself agreeing with a number of the
comments on this page. *SOMETHING* should be done
to change the default score on the comments.
Bruce's idea of self-imposed moderation is nice,
but requires too much action on the part of the
user. I prefer the other idea of seperating
"reputation" from "commentValue", and allowing the
viewers to sort the comments according to either
(OR, better yet, allow the user to type in their
own evaluation function, like
rating = 2*commentValue + reputation
Whaddya think?
finally, re: the restriction on commenting and
moderating in the same article, I'd fear that the
moderators would stop *Moderating*, not
commenting. Is there any known abuse of the
system with friends pumping up each others
comments?
Perhaps we could even allow the user to
parameterize this, with an option like
- Ignore moderation from commentors.
That way all moderators can moderate freely, but
they know that abusing the system won't always
work. And, of course, Rob's alignment function
will automatically have this Ignore function
turned on.
-Felix Klock
arvind rulez
My guesses:
;-)
1. You're off-topic posts were repetition of the other off-topics,
and you should have been on their thread.
(moderators tend not to lower the score of big threads)
2. Have you ended all of your comments' subjects in the word "sucks"?
---
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
I believe he was suggesting that he be able to moderate it down. I'm at 2 default, and I thought it was a good idea, until Taco explained that those high-score comments will draw more attention and will get bumped down if they're not great (if they see a so-so 5, it'll become a 4). This lowers their overall rating, and they may become a lower score by default. Of course, the original author in this thread had a good point: I wouldn't want to post something stupid if it's going to be a 5, but then again, I might still want to post something stupid. I guess this doesn't work well for people who were moderated up in the old system (me included), but for new people, this will create diminishing marginal returns (i.e. my posts start at 2, and I've never had anything moderated above a 3. Under this new system, I would have gotten only 1 point for each of those 3's, as opposed to getting 2 both times; and I doubt the moderators would have thought my petty witicisms were worth 4). So it may not work too well in the short run, and I think the option of self-moderation without penalty would be a good idea, but in the long run I think this will work out.
nt
Hmm, not a bad idea. Perhaps some sort of filter based personal setting. Posts by certain people, subject lines, etc, could automatically start at what you want, then add/subtract points appropriately.
Damn! I don't know why no-one thought of this before... it's so blindingly obvious (and simple)!
This is the perfect solution... in combination with the existing system... in that people should be able to "pre-modify" the moderation points of any article based on the poster.
Therefore people who don't particularly like/want to hear about Bruce Perens (for example -- it happens to be a good one) can set his particular modification to, say, -3.
So. By default, Mr. Perens has a score of 4. Someone who doesn't particularly want to read his stuff can add -3 to that, making a default of 1. And, of course, set their threshold to 2, or something. So an "average" Perens article wouldn't show up. If Bruce has said something "really" worthwhile, it would be moderated up, and get a 5. Add -3 and you get 2, which would show up. (Note I'm not conscientiously ragging on Bruce; I just happened to read a post complaining about him recently, and it's still on my mind).
On the other hand, someone who doesn't particularly mind Bruce could just leave his modification at default (0), so an "average" Bruce post would be 4 + 0 = 4, a good one would be 5, and so on (as things are now).
In theory, someone who really likes him, could assign a + modifier, so he would always get scores of 6, 7, whatever (for that person). Pretty much guaranteeing that that person would always catch Mr. Perens' posts. This would still apply if Bruce made a quick, "off-the-cuff" remark, that got demoted to 1, but 1 + 3 (for example) would still be 4, and still be seen.
Now, this system would automagically apply to anyone. The same would happen if people did/didn't like my posts (which I believe default to 2 at the moment), or (and here's the beauty of it), our old favourites, the Anonymous Cowards!
That last point, I think is a godsend... hopefully it will put to rest once and for all the "AC's should/shouldn't be allowed to post" argument. A solution was tried with automatically demoting AC posts to 0, of course, but I still see the occasional "that's like censorship!" claim, and also the occasional "They shouldn't post at all!" one.
But, if the viewer was allowed to set their own preference, those who wanted to see AC's should leave their modifier at zero (ie: 1 + 0 = 1 = default), those who like the system as-is modify to -1 (1 + -1 = 0 = as it is now), and those who don't want to see AC posts at all (unless they're really good ones) modify to -3 or something (a 1 + -3 = -2 post will never get seen if the threshold can't be below -1).
Of course, still leave the moderations in place (note I distinguish between moderation and modification). That would indicate how good/bad a post was compared to other posts by that same person. But the modification (done on a personal, not a global, level) would determine whether a "default" post by that person would show up.
(I guess this is sort of like multi-dimansional moderation, as suggested by someone else... just thought of that now...)
And of course, as you mentioned, the same thing could be applied to subject lines, helping out with alleviating the old "First Post!" syndrome, among others.
Anyway... I'm sure this would all create a hell of a lot of work for poor Rob, but hey... you can handle it, right Rob? And of course... "there is nothing that Perl cannot do! Nothing!"... hehe.
Anyway, yes... I think this is a brilliant idea. Simple, elegant, and would do the job!
--
- Sean
It's a fine line between trolling and karma-whoring... and I think I just crossed it.
- Sean
If a whole bunch of people reading a comment in reputation + score mode find its score to be too high and moderate it down, people who come along and read the comments in score - reputation mode will see a set of scores that just isn't really that useful (they will tell you how the comments you're reading compare to other comments made by the same people -- who cares?). I think having multiple scoring "modes" in general would be a bad idea for just this reason.
Which brings us to this: At what point does the pursuit of points supercede the importance of posting insightful, relevant comments? And we know it will come to that, for some posters.
Actually, I think that's a reason why it shouldn't say your current level on your homepage. That way the only way to find out what your score is is to actually post a message, and you don't want to post a stupid message (which will probably get moderated down) just to find out your score.
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
IMHO, somebody who posts 10 things a day scored zero or +1 deserves a default score of 4 less than somebody who only posts once a week but always gets scored +3. The alignment system seems to reward meidocre quantity over true quality.
Also, this would eliminate the need to be constantly adjusting the alignment thresholds over time. An average is always an average.
Apparently Rob's alignment only gives him a +1 posting bonus...I don't know why, but I'm a little surprised that it's so low.
(I'm also posting to see what my alignment is...'cuz I'm too lazy to do the math myself.)
john.
GeneHack {--(bioinfo*linux*opinion)
-Dan
When I moderate, I only use "-1, Overrated". That way, I never get meta-moderated!
this score pool business is just like recreating a currency where the rich have more power.
/. has reproduced a capitalist system. Even if that comment is extremely intelligent..
/. scares me these days. It's like everything you do is judged.
In the real world, someone who has more $$ can defend themselves better in a court of law despite the statement that ALL ARE EQUAL..
please please please dont start reproducing this kind of thing on slashdot, even if "intelligence" (measured in slash dot points) is the currency. It wont work. Just the same as traditionally, the concept of $$ for rewarding "work" has been completely corrupted..
does everybody realise that the minute somebody posts a comment purely to try and up their point tally then
I gotta hand it to you Rob-
I have a lot of ideas about how to take over the world/end capatalism/emancipate information, but at this rate you will have the "new world order" on your hands before I write any pseudo code:)
Its a weight off my back if you can take over the world for me:)
-dont bother flaming me about brown nosing, I dont plan on even reading the responses to this one:)
Momerath
Hey Rob,
Until you get up a way to see your default score, why not set up a "See your score" area that is unmoderated so people can see their scores?
I saw that a couple of these were already moderated.
Soooo, until then, how about people replying to this post not get moderated so they can see their scores?
"Responsibility for my career? I'm just a freakin' phone monkey!"
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
They did. I refreshed and it was down to 1. Heh.
"Responsibility for my career? I'm just a freakin' phone monkey!"
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
Look at your post and you'll see it listed in the title bar (or whatever that's called
"Responsibility for my career? I'm just a freakin' phone monkey!"
It's a thankless job, but I've got a lot of Karma to burn off
It gets harder to get better. If you go in with a score of 3, you are much less likely to get moderated up than if you went in with a score of 1. Moderators will think that you have already been bumped up! I kind of like it. As long as it doesn't result in people getting bumped down for comments that go in at a high moderation level (due to alignment) that are good, but probably aren't worthy of the high level. I think everyone should be able to make postings (especially replies) that are brief but not abusive or lame. These might be worth a 1, but if your alignment is 4, somebody might bump you down just because they think the comment is rated too high! I hope that doesn't happen.
I agree with this completely. Another recent change also introduces a bad effect in my eyes.
If I were a newbie to Slashdot, someone with a low alignment, or an infrequent poster, I would feel pushed out by the big boys who post often and therefore have a hugely positive alignment. Why would I post unless my comment will be read by others?
The effect is, I think, that we will see an increase in frequent posters, and a decrease in new posters. This is not necessarily a good thing.
-Ben
The pool idea where every +1 contributes a 1/2 point to a users score pool that can be drawn on to later "get on a soap box."
BUT, my over all opinion is this is getting chaotic already. Not the potential to, but it's there. I am very impressed with Malda's mod_perl abilities now, and what he is capable of doing. But, IMHO, we have reached the level of "overkill."
This is my opinion, but I personally liked it when there was a small pool of moderators, people started at 1 (AC's at 0), and things were streight forward.
My suggestion would be gut it all, do half points, or a 1 to 10 scale (because of the larger number of moderators, and potential for several people to +1 something). And leave everyone start on the level field again.
At first I wasn't sure I liked the idea of "earning" moderation points (the ability to moderate)... Now, I think it's probably for the best. That may be the best place to focus Rob's coding efforts.
But I don't think I like the "auto start at level X" stuff. At least not when i don't have the option to 0 or -1 myself! (I guess I wouldn't mind sticking my foot in my mouth more often if I could -1 myself and go somewhat un-noticed unless someone else found my comments interesting).
I guess I still like command line better than GUI, so maybe it's just my natural inclination to not fully apreciate this "automation in moderation" thing?
What if, in the (x posts, y moderated, etc) thing on the main page, a number (perhaps "total rating") were added. This number is simply the sum of all of the ratings of all the posts under that topic. A heavy flamewar would make that total rating very negative and warn users away, while a high rating indicates good discussion.
Notice the thing about alignment. You don't go down in score for a positive rating, even if that rating is below your current default. You only lose points for posts moderated all the way to -1. So for a +4 person who posts something mediocre, being moderated to a 2 or a 1 isn't bad at all.
At least, that's how I read the changes. Am I wrong?
... where's the source?
Sorry to be a nudge but no-one seems to have answered this. I'm curious to see how this is implemented, and (with my semiconscious perl skills) possibly augment with more features, clean up cruft, document, etc...
Please make a statement about the source. Anything would be useful:
o "it's so cruddy right now we're embarrassed to release it in this state: give us time to clean it up a bit, it'll be available X"
o "we're going to turn it into a saleable product and make some m00la off it, v0.2 is all you're gettin' and if you don't like it you can lump it"
o "oops, we forgot, here's the link to the tarball"
o "you jackass, it'll be available when it's available, just like Quake, so quit yer whinin'"
o "you jackass, we've had anonymous CVS for aeons now, here's the CVSROOT"
o "you jackass, it's at (freshmeat|rob's page|foobar), you just didn't look hard enough"
Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?
Silly boy; it'd be designed to prevent that.
Ideally: You'd be presented with a SELECT item when you make your post, with all the scores possible less than or equal to your current default. You select the score for your post from that list, but you're barred from rising above your current default.
I've liked all of the mod improvements, until this. I clicked on a couple a folks with a default greater than 1 and found the majority of their recent comments (prior to this change) right at 1. And, for the most part, they were typical comments. Nothing amazing, but not off topic or rude or "first" or anything. With the newest changes, high-rated & nested comments spill out. This means someone else thought that the *comment* was really something people should look at (and I mostly agreed). But now it's the poster that will stick out, regardless of what he says now. It's a step backwards.
If you really MUST base something on reputation, make it separate and parallel from the comment ratings. I can then set my preferences for posters ranked at 5 to spill out and comments at 3 to spill. I could sort by poster, comment, date, etc.
My only other question is... what about AC? Does his reputation remain at 0, or will he eventually be knocked down to -1? Doesn't seem fair to knock AC down since it's not one person, and it seems even worse to knock identified posters have anything lower than AC.
Again, kudos to all the other great changes, but please consider this one a bit more...
-- Don't Tase me, bro!
I'd like to the Submit script to hand me back to comments when processed. Currently I have to 'back' three or four times or return to the index.
Thanks,
-matt
Firstly, I think the moderation addition and changes have all been great so far, definitely in the right direction.
I don't normally read that many comments, haven't got the time, but now I read those that spill over the 4 and this is rewarding. Previously I would scroll down searching the subject headings. So overall I am reading far more comments now than I used to.
It is also encouraging me to come into a story 'late' so that there is a decent chance of having some good comments. How about having an indicator on the front page showing where abouts the comments lie, just showing the number of comments that 'spill over' with your own settings would be enough, but there are a thousand variations along this theme that would also be useful.
Doing this would tell me when a story had 'ripe' threads.
As long as it doesn't result in people getting bumped down for comments that go in at a high moderation level (due to alignment) that are good, but probably aren't worthy of the high level.
I believe that's the point: higher scoring posters are usually of consistently higher quality (though admittedly, not always). In order for someone's alignment score (AS) to remain high, the quality of their comments must also remain high. In your example, if a poster with an AS of 4 posting a comment of only "normal" quality (AS 1) would probably have that post moderated down, with a corresponding drop in the poster's alignment factor. This could result in a high-quality poster dropping from an AS4 to AS3 as s/he posts more comments of limited value. In order to maintain the higher score, s/he would have to maintain higher quality posts.
Of course this will also result (in those to whom AS is important) in fewer posts, since it is easier to maintain a high score by not being moderated down!
Which brings us to this: At what point does the pursuit of points supercede the importance of posting insightful, relevant comments? And we know it will come to that, for some posters. Fortunately, IMO, the moderation system Rob et al. have put in place should account for that, and the "point-pursuers" will simply have the effect of raising the bar for all posters. All in all, an elegant solution to the SNR problem.
Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha
I REALLY liked the last change. I'm not so sure about this one. (I hereby define "reputation" as "the default score of a person's posts".) I like the idea of comments being judged on their own merits, and not on the reputation of the person who posted them. Yet, I sort of like the idea of posters having a reputation, since people who posted intelligently in the past ARE more likely to do so in the future. But there are no guarantees - if a person with a high reputation posts something silly, it will still be way up there (if you order by score). Granted, it will probably be down where it belongs in a few days, but I want to read it now! NOT LATER! NOW NOW NOW! (kidding :)
It would be nice if there was some way to separate a writer's reputation from a post's score (defined as solely what the moderators did to the post, disregarding the writer's reputation) and sort accordingly, either by reputation OR by score. Or by reputation + score (current moderation scheme). Or by score - reputation (previous moderation). Or score * reputation * 0 (no moderation). Or score * reputation, or reputation * 5 + score, or score * 5 + reputation. Of course, these last few mean there should be no non-positive scores. It would allow you to do some pretty cool customization of your sorting if there were multiple criteria and you could come up with your own formula to sort based on those criteria. But now I'm getting kind of silly.
Posters with a history of posting good comments can still post bad comments, and vice-versa. The whole point of moderation is to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, which this won't do. There are just too many variables that go into what is a good comment and what isn't. What if a good comment poster posts an irrational comment because the subject matter was sensitive to him? /. gets, the more this score-history system will break down.
;).
If you are a user that sets his threshold really high so that you only see the good stuff, you are still going to get these guys with pretty good reputations but the occasional bad comment. The more users that
In the beginning, we had no moderation. Then we got moderation through scoring. Now we have moderation through scoring + past history. Next it will be moderation through scoring + past history + grammar. Then scoring + past history + grammar + buzzwords, etc.
Let the moderators decide, not past history. Moderators are the most effective noise filters. The logic a moderator goes through determining what is a good comment and what is not is a lot more involved than something you could code in Perl
--- A Jesus Fish eating a Darwin Fish only proves Darwin's point.
First off, I've had two comments now that have been moderated to -1, and I have examined them over and over and neither of them can I come up with a single reason why. In each case they may have been a teeny bit off-topic, but they were the same topic as the posts I replied to, which were NOT moderated down, so off-topic can't be the problem. What the hell happened there?
Second off, this is dumb because it is possible that someone with a bad posting history could post a pretty good comment. Then nobody reads his post - by the time some moderator gets round to reading his default -1 post and moderating it upwards, the article is old and stale and noone is reading it anymore.
The only exception is when someone obviously is a troll and is out to continually post only crap. Then there should be some other type of flag that can be set on that user, like "troll" or something.
Posted by Mike@ABC:
I was wondering why my posts were defaulting so high today. I thought they were good posts, but certainly not Pulitzer material. Now I know.
This isn't necessarily a bad system, but I think this should be the last tweak for a while. An allegorical story, if you'll permit me:
I had a friend who wrote his own role-playing system, did the points up and the skills and dice rolls and all that math stuff. It ended up being way too complex to play smoothly. Just finding out who walked away alive from a single battle took all day. The system barely survived one session before all his notes were thrown in to the fire. Literally.
I cannot help but wonder if Slashdot might eventually fall to that same phenomenon, where the bells and whistles not only drown out the static, but the pure sound as well.
That's not to say that CmdrTaco and his crew haven't done a superb job thus far. They have, and I for one am thankful for the great resource they've provided. But perhaps they should let this settle a while and see how things play out before tweaking any further.
And that's all I have to say.
The problem with that is that people will abuse it. You wouldn't, but I'm willing to bet that every flamebaiter, first-poster, spammer, l33t @01 h@x0r d00d, and MEEPT! would. They'd moderate their stuff up as high as it could go, and keep moderating it up as necessary.
It's sad that it has to be that way, but there isn't much that can be done about it. People should be rewarded for posting good stuff.
I reply to a lot of posts, and most of my replies are not +4 material, although they may be important - for example one of my replies today was to a -1 post that displayed some easily-corrected confusion about the GPL. I might have wanted to put my reply at -1 so that only the readers of the original post would have seen it. But I was stuck with using a +4 nuclear warhead to swat a -1 fly.
I hope that makes my quandry more clear.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
There is a built-in encouragement to self-moderation. If you do it well, moderators will demote your comments less often and your score will be higher.
Maybe we are really figuring out how to do this sort of online discussion well, after years of people talking about it but not getting anywhere. I'm really intrigued.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
For the record, this is probably going to be the first post I ever make that drops below 1.
:) .
/.'ers don't understand sarcasm is a very profound way of debugging the ideological operating system.
...
/. and alienate the silent majority of truly moderate individuals, that make decisions based on facts and utility, not dogma and ideology. "Slashdot: Propaganda for Nerds. Stuff that Enlightens."
Hopefully it shouldn't be any new information for me to say that it's a fine line between including all points of view and succumbing to the line noise that mass voices can create.
However, I subscribe to the belief that the truth doesn't neccessarily have to be phrased in eloquent, multisyllabic aphorisms. The truth is ugly, people, and often the messengers of the truth are despised for their frank talk. We don't want to hear some things. We don't want to hear that some people are stronger, better, faster, smarter than others -- unless, of course, it applies to you
What I fear this moderation alignment will do is remove many people like MEEPT!! -- who, despite his or her incoherency at times, told the truth in ways that irritated people because it was the truth about them.
It's a sad day when I find myself defending MEEPT!!, but there's something to be said about an inherent anti-bluntness bias in slashdot...
Let's take an example. Recently I read a post w/respect to Linux in a Dilbert article. Some killjoy posted his or her frustration about how Dilbert was mocking "The cause" and how Scott Adams was "like a weapons dealer", appeasing both the management and (in his/her words) "us peons".
A couple posts were put in response to it, more or less politely telling the poster to lighten up, that he had a lot of bitterness locked up, etc. All of them were moderated down, because the posters had the audacity to draw a correlation between the tone of a post and probable experiences in the personal or work life of this poster. The truth was ugly, but it's something we can all recognize in a grade school sandbox: the bitter poster had a stunted sense of fun and felt trampled on, and was ruining someone else's fun. I don't particularly believe that everyone's posts have equal merit -- neither does Rob, if we have moderation to begin with --, but I find it grimly amusing that it's easier to bitch about the decline of Slashdot as if it were the fall of the Roman Empire, than it is to take the truth that someone's social skills cast a bias on their statements and add a pompous air to Slashdot.
On the Internet, no one knows if you're a dog, unless you talk a lot about bones.
There gradually is a PC -- Politically Correct, not Personal Computer or Program Counter -- mobocracy when it comes to approval of posts and the like. This leads to a spiraling affect, the articles which please hoi polloi tend to go up in score, and the ugly truths, the insightful posts that no one wants to hear, the laments that only become appreciated after their time are covered by the posturing of killjoys. What kind of moderation is this that only the virulently PC posts, the posts that kiss the ass of our ego, the posts that pat us all on the back because nobody makes mistakes, can get a high score, and the posts that tell people to suck it up and face the facts objectively get shot down? Moderation? Try Extremism.
Other examples include the recent slew of articles about the so-called "Future of Open Source." -- I happen to like these articles very much, but something doesn't seem right. Open Source is all about putting your code where your mouth is; you don't talk, you don't spew, you do. Why the sudden overload of articles on Open Source when there's no need to promote it? There is no need to promote it, people. The sheer fact that Open Source hinges on volunteerism means that no matter how hostile the climate, it's still going to be done. But if someone were to point out that the majority of these so-called essays on the future of open source were made because it's "cool" to be associated with open source, they would be shot down.
"Oh no! Someone dared accuse us of jumping on the bandwagon! Someone spotted us trying to steal a little credit we never had before in our lives! No matter, Open Source is my credo, (as long as it's convenient,) and I'm an individual, just like everyone else!"
The irony of the above paragraph is that a good deal of
Here I sit in the face of the mobocracy with the brazenness to call them animals, twisting real ideals into pop culture. How dare I stand up for materialism, and moderation (of behavior, not posts), and the fact that the same criticism told you when you were five still applies if you haven't changed? At least you have to respect me for trying
Allowing mass moderation is going to galvanize
-- my $0.05. Keep the change.
Three Step Plan:
1. Take over the world.
2. Get a lot of cookies.
3. Eat the cookies.
People with stupid comments, that may have had good ones before, can expolit the system.
(intentionaly or unintentionaly).
I have a good idea.
For every point someone's comment have got,
he will get half a point on the pool.
When he posts a comment,
he can boost it up according to his pool.
If someone wants to say something stupid, like "agreed, blah blah",
he can choose the score for the comment to stay 1.
but, if he had an enlightenment, and has a very good point (and he knows it), he can pull from the pool,
and get attention.
but, if the moderators thinks the comment is bad, they can lower it down, thus lowering the amount of score in his pool to spend at other times.
(and ofcourse, when he posts the comment, he lowers the pool by himself).
negative pools will FORCE users to post at bad score of 0 (no choice for the user).
the user will rely on moderator to give him thumbs-up to normal score and higher his pool.
he will get a score for the act of posting,
if a poster post "this is meant to higher my score" he will get thumbsdown,
and it won't change anything.
however, positive pools cannot be set for such a thing, and may not recieve score in such a way.
also, an extra 1/2 point should be given to a user who got 4 points.
a point for going to 5 points,
and -1 points for getting to -1.
(and the reverse on the opposite direction)
---
---
I'm going to live forever, or die in the attempt.
Consider that people will lose moderation points semi-randomly: if there's a three day weekend when they're offline, or few interesting stories, etc -- it rewards only extremely recent behavior, yet it's people's long term behavior that you want to reward.
It's also true that, the more capricious and unpredictable a reward system, the less it is perceived as a reward system, and therefore the less it tends to motivate behavior.
(I don't mean "reward" here necessarily in a moral sense, just in a behavior modulation sense.)
Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
Not everything I write is a 4, and the posting form should have an option if I'd like to self-moderate it to a 1, 2, or 3, rather than wait for a moderator to come along and do it for me.
The way it's set up now, I feel as if I should never post unless it's golden prose :-)
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.