Slashdot Notes

Several notes attached below regarding the system in general, but also regarding minor changes to moderation. If you have ever had moderator access, or ever expect to get it, please read the link below to read a few comments on minor changes to the system, plus answers to faqs that keep flooding my inbox. Never fear, I'll be rewriting the moderator guidelines just as soon as I have a few hours of peace and quiet.

1. System has been unstable lately. Its a cranky 2.2.x kernel that likes to crash every few days (a known bug relating to the ether controller). 2.2.8 was having troubles with my SCSI adapter, so I gotta try 2.2.9. The problem is that with the machine 3 time zones away, so if I make a mistake, it is a pain to get it back up. Fortunately the coloc is installing a remote power toggle for us, so hopefully we can at least get it back up. We've been having troubles at home too with our local ISP dying (and this morning the power was out for like 2 hours). This makes it a real pain-in-the-butt for Hemos or I to post stories. Sorry about all this folks, but we're sorting each of those problems out as fast as we can.
2. Moderator access is temporary. You get 5 points, and when you use them up, you're done until such time as you get more. Eligible moderators essentially take turns. On one hand, this restricts a good moderator from really doing a complete job, but it also restricts abusers from going hog wild.
3. I replaced the + and - moderator control buttons with a drop down list containing reasons for moderation. These include Flamebait, Informative, Offtopic etc. The end result of these items is still the same, I'm simply trying to make moderators explain themselves just a tiny bit more- hopefully it will also make the system more self explanatory to new moderators.
4. I have several things left on my "Shoulda been done weeks ago" list, most important of which is rewriting the moderator guidelines. They are hopelessly out of date. A few odds and ends after that and I hope to have a new Slash tarball out for those of you who keep asking and asking and forcing me to waste time replying instead of working on it (grin).
5. Its good to be home. I had a great vacation (it was great to get away from all you guys for a bit *grin*), and LinuxExpo wasn't to bad either (as far as conferences go anyway). But thank god I'm home- I hopefully can be responsive to email again, and get cracking on the ever expanding TODO list. It feels good to be back.

Update: 05/24 09:15 by CT : Some responses to some of the comments:

1. Redundant was supposed to be a -1 score but I messed up. It's fixed now.
2. I thought about a humor indicator, but I'm wondering if it might be open to more abuse since humor is much more subjective than things like "Informative" or "Offtopic" (each of which are also subjective, but less so)
3. Highly rated replies to low rated comments do get lost. I intend reparent them, I just haven't written that code yet.
4. The moderator guidelines are comically out of date. Please read them when you get access, but don't worry about the letter as much as the spirit- they are months old, and the system has changed significantly since the days of 22 moderators hand picked by me... and parts of the guidelines haven't been rewritten to reflect that!

Comments

Replies...

[ravenskana]

It works well for me when I sort by score, threaded, with a low spill. With that setup, my whatever-I-want-it-to-be threshold (I tend to be between 0 and 2 depending on time of day, etc.) will make the threaded view 'nested' to include the higher scored replies.

I see a lot of moderated replies with this setup, and sometimes the parent thread isn't to my threshold, which means I only see the informative replies without seeing the (perhaps) uninformative original post.

I do wish there was a way to 'up the thread to the parent' so that a thread with many worthy replies would get brought up higher than other posts.

Imagine two threads...

The first has this scoring:
parent: 3, child 1

The second had this scoring:
parent: 2, child 3, child 5, child 3

I'd want the second thread to be higher than the first when sorting by score.

Scores should be inherited up the comment tree

[root]

It always bothers me when I see a comment with a score of 5 within a tree of comments rooted by a comment with a score of -1. I think if any comment receives a score of 2 or higher (maybe 3), then all of its parents should be automatically bumped up to at least 0 (to regain default visibility). Nothing that generates a score 5 comment truly deserves a score of -1 does it?

Either that or replace below-the-threshold comments with blanked out stubs.

I dislike the new moderator 'words'

[Seth Cohn]

It's not clear how I would affect the post in question. Maybe a +1, -1 after the word?

like:

Redundant -1
Funny + 1
Offtopic -1
Amazing +2

etc

Possible moderation DOS attack?

[RebornData]

So, given that everyone knows now how moderator points are limited, it seems to me that a malicious baddie could post lots and lots of useless flamebait-type postings. This would soak up a lot of the moderation points by being moderated down, and potentially sabotage the promotion of worthwhile postings.

It doesn't seem very likely if the moderators do a good job, but seeing the number of downgraded postings in this thread made me think. Of course, this moderation system is an order of magnitude better than anything else out there- it's really nice to be able to cruise at +2 or +3 when I'm really busy and don't have time to read everything.

Moderator Guidelines...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about emphasizing the bit that says "focus on increasing, not
decreasing"..

I'm sick of moderators "punishing" posts/posters that they just don't
like - I've seen this already in the Wcarchive story, someone had
thier post moderated down because it's "offtopic" - when the poster
specifically mentioned FreeBSD... (gee, seems like it's on topic to
me..) at worst, this most should have been left alone..

I suggest that "temp" moderators only be given the power to decrease
scores once, and increase four times... it would certainly help to
emphasize the afforementioned rule...

And I wouldn't be surprised if this post gets moderated down soon...

what about humor?

[deborah]

We need an option for amusing posts. I've seen some that deserved +'s just for making me laugh, surely we don't have to ALWAYS be a smarty-pants to get positive points.

(Am I going to get moderator status taken away for this post? Are all the smarty-pantses going to revoke my privledges?)

"Redundant" selection on new moderator thingy

[JatTDB]

I figured "redundant" would lower a score, not increase it. Found out after I used it that it does indeed give them a +1.

I took redundant to mean "me toos" or "too stupid/lazy/whatever to read the other comments so i didn't realize my point had been made 500 times by other people". Am I wrong?

Re:Moderator status

[hawk]

In a nutshell, once you have had the account long enough, and if your usage falls within certain boundaries (read enough, but don't pound with scrips :), some days you log in and find 5 moderator points. It will give you a little doo-dad at the end of each posting, allowing you to moderate it, either upwards or downwards. Once your five are used, the different display leaves, and you're a regular user until sometime you connect again and find new points.

They expire on their own again in a few days if not used. It won't happen if the net moderation of your your own posings is negative. And if you get moderated down too often, your posts start below 1, as 0 (like an AC), or even -1. It used to be possible to start above 1, but I think that this got dropped a few weeks ago; there was just too much starting at 2 and 3. (it worked on cumalitive moderation of your posts, rather than average moderation. A couple of brilliant insights, and every post about your dog & hamster was suddenly plus a couple :)

There was talk about "micro-defaults" to replace the defaults, so that (for example) frequent positive moderation might start you at 1.1, being listed before the average poster, but after the moderated posts.

Also, you can't moderate and post in the same thread.

A "counterpoint" category would be nice as wll as the existing list--when something provocative is posted, and is popular, drawing heavy + moderation on itself & its siblings, an oterwise innocuous counterpoint, which wouldn't normally get moderated, can get promoted to stand on the same level. I suppose this is "insightful," but it ought to have its own category.

Moderator Points

[Anonymous Coward]

Although I like the moderation system, it seems to me that the moderators are too focused on the heads of the threads and not enough on the comments underneath. I would suggest that you double the number of points given to moderators and double the cause to change the value of a thread head. Perhaps then the moderators would actually rank the replies as well.

Horribly Green Moderator

Is keeping moderator status secret still necessry?

[seth]

By the current method, it sounds like keeping moderator status secret is unnecessary for the purpose it was meant to serve (which I assume is to keep people from bugging you to increase their points). If anyone might be a moderator on a given "day" (where day is some arbitrary, short period of time), why bother keeping your current status a secret?