The story basically confirms my experiences with Wikipedia. Nice idea, great intentions, and I even use it pretty often, but not worth trying to improve. Let me clarify that I'm an extremely infrequent contributor, mostly just asking questions and offering suggestion in Talk pages and most of my actual public contributions were just minor editorial corrections. Years ago I cared quite a bit more and fixed lots of grammar problems, but these days I just don't care and don't bother. (However I also think there are fewer low-level grammar problems these years.)
I'm trying to figure out the quickest explanation of how my attitude towards Wikipedia was flipped from mostly positive to mostly negative. Various minor things, but I think the recurring one might have been the spam. Not from Wikipedia, but from spammers using Wikipedia to boost the credibility of their scams, usually 419s.
In my twisted way of thinking this is a relatively minor problem (but with potential to become a more serious problem) with an obvious fix. Flag the targeted articles to defeat the spammers' intentions. I think that Wikipedia should notice spammer-related traffic or at least accept reports that an article is being used to support spam, and add a temporary alert to that article. Something like "Scam alert: If you came to this article because you are looking for evidence that Claude left you a million dollars, then you should know that it is just a 419 scam. Follow this link for more information on 419 scams and how to avoid them."
Maybe the suggestion is stupid, but I would say that "internal" consideration of the suggestion never rose to that level of incomprehension within Wikipedia. And I still think there is a significant risk of active vandalism if the spammers interpret Wikipedia's collective indifference in the wrong way.
Oh well. Too much time again. I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
There are a couple of good ideas in your email, but mostly a bunch of negative attitude, confusion, and conflation of the actual issues at hand. Or maybe you just prefer quibbling over low-level details or can't generalize to a higher level? Whatever. In conjunction with your sig, I conclude that constructive conversation is too unlikely. Therefore my response is:
Ask again later. And more politely.
Perhaps we can have a polite discussion of the sort that is so rare on today's Slashdot However I'm inclined to doubt it.
It's really rather difficult to interpret your questions and comments in any constructive way. Therefore I will only respond in a fuzzy general way.
Different people like to work in different ways. Therefore I think it is better to give them general tools that are (1) easy to use and (2) that allow them to work the way they prefer.
From the attitude of your question and your handle, you might be a fan of Google Plus or have some other involvement with it. I think the failure of that fundamentally good idea was largely due to violations of those two principles for good tool design. The google has become too fond of monolithic one-right-way thinking. (I would go even farther and say that's part of the growing evil that the google has become.)
So what is wrong with allowing people to do things their own way?
The answer from the perspective of such corporate cancers as Facebook and the google is that it is wrong because it fails to maximize profits to the highest degree possible. Whatever way is the most profitable is the only way that should be supported and investing in any other ways only increase the costs and reduce the profits. (Yes, that is actually a rather gross simplification, but I've already invested much more time than your nonconstructive response deserves.)
Still can't tell why no one implements a proper email system with an understanding of time. In such a system, this feature would be easily implemented with a default actual delivery time of 10 minutes after the Send button, but until the actual delivery you could cancel the send. If 10 minutes isn't right for you, then you could set it for any other time you want.
In my own case, I would probably prefer an hour for non-urgent email. Too many times that I've had second thoughts. Plus, I think it's actually a benefit to send less email to people. If there's an urgent email option, then the send would both mark the subject with an urgent flag and send it immediately even if my default delay was longer.
The same approach to email could apply to scheduling email that doesn't need to go out for several days. I could compose an immediate reply, and schedule it for future delivery. I would probably want a reminder a day before the actual delivery just in case I had additional thoughts. Again, that is something that often happens.
By the way, I was actually joking when I said I can't tell why. I think the why is that very few people think in terms of time over money. Everything looks different after you understand how important time is relative to everything else. And that's enough time for this topic for now, but I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
But you acted enough like one for the trolls to detect your account and report you for suspension. Just part of their tactics for destroying rational dialogue. Longer discussion in some other story, but I don't want to repeat it here. Something about bots to report humans as bots...
My settings render them mostly invisible, so I can't count them, and I sort of resent the time wasted by references to and citations of the invisible trolls, whether or not they are zombies. This whole AC thing has become an abuse of anonymity. There should be a simple option: "By default my comments are AC (or not)" and you should retain the option to override. Only a slight extension from the current situation, which pushes the "not" on people who might feel otherwise in this age of privacy intrusions.
Me? I think the only justification for anonymity is prior anonymity. For example, you wouldn't need to worry about being called out as a whistle-blower if the person and crimes you were blowing the whistle on were already known in public.
Most of the trolls are merely abusing our human tendency to be polite to strangers. There are evolutionary reasons why we are that way, but it seems our evolutionary weaknesses are on the edge of destroying our civilization. Thus endeth the Fermi Paradox.
I think the general solution [Gads, what fool thinks of discussing "solution" on today's Slashdot?] remains a stronger reputation system so that we don't have to waste so much time figuring out who is worth listening to. In other words, the time should be spent for the listening to, not for the figuring out.
I've already spent too much time on this comment. The story is about Twitter and Twitter is fundamentally FUBAR, but I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Don't think of it as censoring newbies. Think of it as asking the young children to sit quietly and listen for a bit before they demand attention.
(No, that is NOT my actual philosophy for dealing with REAL children. I think they deserve ALL the attention they want ALL the time. It's just not humanly possible to do that as well as it should be done.)
Actually, one of the important dimensions is just age of the account, and the newbies would be free to chat among themselves and give themselves some positive evaluations, too. However I think the fastest path to higher reputation should be having sponsorship from a high-reputation friend--and that high-reputation friend should actually pay a reputational price for doing things like helping trolls get into discussions.
To me the real question is whether such a system would sufficiently deter the trolls that the newbies would see a more pleasant environment as they are spending their time in low-reputation purgatory.
By the way, that lameness filter you mentioned has obviously outlived its usefulness. At least I am unable to see that it has done anything to reduce the troll problem on Slashdot in particular let alone the worldwide problems of fake identities bearing fake news and other lies.
Going completely off topic now, but here are the paired thoughts that most in my mind these days, and I feel like sharing them again:
Good election = good candidates Bad election = bad candidates (and may the lesser evil win) Worst election = bad candidate lies and "wins" by destroying the good candidate
Character assassination should not be the best campaign strategy. Our best hope for democracy right now appears to be the hope that November 6th is actually a 3-way election between:
(1) Democratic candidates who want government of the people, by the people, for the people (2) GOP candidates who want government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% and (3) Trump who merely wants government of, by, and for the Donald
Not sure why you are quoting the book at such length (though I read it many years ago and it was interesting to see it again), but the point is that Athens did divide and conquer itself and the human dynamics haven't changed that much since then, if at all. You could cite Caesar for the other side of it, how to divide and conquer from the outside.
The scale of the problems has changed, however. The oscillations have become more severe. Even though the overall trend has been for things to get better, that's only the long-term average. On the short term, which is where we live, things could go below zero on one of the swings. There might be no recovery from a sufficiently negative oscillation.
My suggestion with MEPR is essentially to make free accounts worth what you paid. In other words, I would be able to ignore them until they earned positive reputations. Actually I think the default visibility setting should be slightly positive, which would mean that trolls would have to make significant investments in creating credibility before anyone would even see them. I would actually prefer to set mine higher than the default in some dimensions, and perhaps lower in others.
The data for the MEPR should be public and accessible. This would make it possible to trace the trust networks to actual people with long-established reputations.
I think you [AmMoJo] have already been led down a wormhole by some AC troll. I see no reason to peek.
My initial reaction is that the obvious problem will be with bots that are programmed to submit bot reports on real users. To maximize the confusion, they'll obviously program the bots to look for humans that act like bots so they can more plausibly report them. Of course the same data will be useful in modifying their attack bots to act more human to make them more difficult to detect and purge.
My basic position is that Twitter is broken beyond redemption. MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation) might be applicable to Facebook or even Slashdot, but Twitter is just FUBAR.
Apparently the troll wanted to lead the discussion down some Trumpian road. I actually have a comment that is slightly germane on that topic, given that #PresidentTweety is the de facto king of Twitter:
A good election is one between good candidates. A bad election is one where voters are choosing the lesser evil. The worst election is where the evil candidate "wins" by lying and assassinating the character of a good candidate.
The saddest part? In theory, an election between a good and bad candidate should be a landslide for the good one. In practice, it too often becomes a worst case election decided by big money and corporate cancers investing in the bad candidate because he's cheap. On November 6th I think we'll find out how much democracy still exists in America.
Trump's own estimate is that he only controls about 70% of what's going on in America. Even though his buddy Putin says that he's 90% in charge compared to Putin's 80% control of Russia.
Time for another journalist joke:
Q: What's the difference between a Saudi reformer journalist and chopped liver?
A: We know where the chopped liver is!
And MBS is 100% in control of Saudi Arabia. Trump can only be envious.
Hey, here's a solution to solve ALL the problems in one swoop. Trump can build the wall out of prison cells. Several stories tall because he wants a YUGE beautiful wall! Plenty of cells for all the immigrants and asylum seekers AND their children!
"Lock kids up, LOCK KIDS UP!"
My back of the envelope calculation says millions of cells, so there will still be plenty of empty ones for all of Trump's political enemies and journalists, too. If there are still any vacancies, they can convert some of the nice locations on the top floor into condominiums and sell them to Trump's great buddies from Russia, Saudi Arabia, and maybe some really stinking rich Asians who can qualify as honorary white people.
Slashdot Mirror
The story basically confirms my experiences with Wikipedia. Nice idea, great intentions, and I even use it pretty often, but not worth trying to improve. Let me clarify that I'm an extremely infrequent contributor, mostly just asking questions and offering suggestion in Talk pages and most of my actual public contributions were just minor editorial corrections. Years ago I cared quite a bit more and fixed lots of grammar problems, but these days I just don't care and don't bother. (However I also think there are fewer low-level grammar problems these years.)
I'm trying to figure out the quickest explanation of how my attitude towards Wikipedia was flipped from mostly positive to mostly negative. Various minor things, but I think the recurring one might have been the spam. Not from Wikipedia, but from spammers using Wikipedia to boost the credibility of their scams, usually 419s.
In my twisted way of thinking this is a relatively minor problem (but with potential to become a more serious problem) with an obvious fix. Flag the targeted articles to defeat the spammers' intentions. I think that Wikipedia should notice spammer-related traffic or at least accept reports that an article is being used to support spam, and add a temporary alert to that article. Something like "Scam alert: If you came to this article because you are looking for evidence that Claude left you a million dollars, then you should know that it is just a 419 scam. Follow this link for more information on 419 scams and how to avoid them."
Maybe the suggestion is stupid, but I would say that "internal" consideration of the suggestion never rose to that level of incomprehension within Wikipedia. And I still think there is a significant risk of active vandalism if the spammers interpret Wikipedia's collective indifference in the wrong way.
Oh well. Too much time again. I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
There are a couple of good ideas in your email, but mostly a bunch of negative attitude, confusion, and conflation of the actual issues at hand. Or maybe you just prefer quibbling over low-level details or can't generalize to a higher level? Whatever. In conjunction with your sig, I conclude that constructive conversation is too unlikely. Therefore my response is:
Ask again later. And more politely.
Perhaps we can have a polite discussion of the sort that is so rare on today's Slashdot However I'm inclined to doubt it.
It's really rather difficult to interpret your questions and comments in any constructive way. Therefore I will only respond in a fuzzy general way.
Different people like to work in different ways. Therefore I think it is better to give them general tools that are (1) easy to use and (2) that allow them to work the way they prefer.
From the attitude of your question and your handle, you might be a fan of Google Plus or have some other involvement with it. I think the failure of that fundamentally good idea was largely due to violations of those two principles for good tool design. The google has become too fond of monolithic one-right-way thinking. (I would go even farther and say that's part of the growing evil that the google has become.)
So what is wrong with allowing people to do things their own way?
The answer from the perspective of such corporate cancers as Facebook and the google is that it is wrong because it fails to maximize profits to the highest degree possible. Whatever way is the most profitable is the only way that should be supported and investing in any other ways only increase the costs and reduce the profits. (Yes, that is actually a rather gross simplification, but I've already invested much more time than your nonconstructive response deserves.)
Still can't tell why no one implements a proper email system with an understanding of time. In such a system, this feature would be easily implemented with a default actual delivery time of 10 minutes after the Send button, but until the actual delivery you could cancel the send. If 10 minutes isn't right for you, then you could set it for any other time you want.
In my own case, I would probably prefer an hour for non-urgent email. Too many times that I've had second thoughts. Plus, I think it's actually a benefit to send less email to people. If there's an urgent email option, then the send would both mark the subject with an urgent flag and send it immediately even if my default delay was longer.
The same approach to email could apply to scheduling email that doesn't need to go out for several days. I could compose an immediate reply, and schedule it for future delivery. I would probably want a reminder a day before the actual delivery just in case I had additional thoughts. Again, that is something that often happens.
By the way, I was actually joking when I said I can't tell why. I think the why is that very few people think in terms of time over money. Everything looks different after you understand how important time is relative to everything else. And that's enough time for this topic for now, but I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
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But you acted enough like one for the trolls to detect your account and report you for suspension. Just part of their tactics for destroying rational dialogue. Longer discussion in some other story, but I don't want to repeat it here. Something about bots to report humans as bots...
going on this year. If you can't win, cheat. It works.
Good election = good candidates
Bad election = bad candidates (and may the lesser evil win)
Worst election = bad candidate lies and "wins" by destroying the good candidate
Character assassination should not be the best campaign strategy.
Perhaps our best hope for democracy right now would be the hope that November 6th is actually a 3-way election between:
(1) Democratic candidates who want government of the people, by the people, for the people
(2) "Traditional" GOP candidates who want government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% and
(3) Trump and his lackeys who merely want government of, by, and for the Donald
Oh! Wait! There are no category (2) candidates left on the ballots so they can't divide any elections. So much for that hope.
My settings render them mostly invisible, so I can't count them, and I sort of resent the time wasted by references to and citations of the invisible trolls, whether or not they are zombies. This whole AC thing has become an abuse of anonymity. There should be a simple option: "By default my comments are AC (or not)" and you should retain the option to override. Only a slight extension from the current situation, which pushes the "not" on people who might feel otherwise in this age of privacy intrusions.
Me? I think the only justification for anonymity is prior anonymity. For example, you wouldn't need to worry about being called out as a whistle-blower if the person and crimes you were blowing the whistle on were already known in public.
Most of the trolls are merely abusing our human tendency to be polite to strangers. There are evolutionary reasons why we are that way, but it seems our evolutionary weaknesses are on the edge of destroying our civilization. Thus endeth the Fermi Paradox.
I think the general solution [Gads, what fool thinks of discussing "solution" on today's Slashdot?] remains a stronger reputation system so that we don't have to waste so much time figuring out who is worth listening to. In other words, the time should be spent for the listening to, not for the figuring out.
I've already spent too much time on this comment. The story is about Twitter and Twitter is fundamentally FUBAR, but I bid you ADSAuPR, atAJG.
Don't think of it as censoring newbies. Think of it as asking the young children to sit quietly and listen for a bit before they demand attention.
(No, that is NOT my actual philosophy for dealing with REAL children. I think they deserve ALL the attention they want ALL the time. It's just not humanly possible to do that as well as it should be done.)
Actually, one of the important dimensions is just age of the account, and the newbies would be free to chat among themselves and give themselves some positive evaluations, too. However I think the fastest path to higher reputation should be having sponsorship from a high-reputation friend--and that high-reputation friend should actually pay a reputational price for doing things like helping trolls get into discussions.
To me the real question is whether such a system would sufficiently deter the trolls that the newbies would see a more pleasant environment as they are spending their time in low-reputation purgatory.
By the way, that lameness filter you mentioned has obviously outlived its usefulness. At least I am unable to see that it has done anything to reduce the troll problem on Slashdot in particular let alone the worldwide problems of fake identities bearing fake news and other lies.
Going completely off topic now, but here are the paired thoughts that most in my mind these days, and I feel like sharing them again:
Good election = good candidates
Bad election = bad candidates (and may the lesser evil win)
Worst election = bad candidate lies and "wins" by destroying the good candidate
Character assassination should not be the best campaign strategy. Our best hope for democracy right now appears to be the hope that November 6th is actually a 3-way election between:
(1) Democratic candidates who want government of the people, by the people, for the people
(2) GOP candidates who want government of the corporations, by the lawyers, for the richest 0.1% and
(3) Trump who merely wants government of, by, and for the Donald
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Can you explain how your comment is related to anything I wrote?
Or should I merely dismiss you as the troll you appear to be and regard your fake discussion as terminated?
Not sure why you are quoting the book at such length (though I read it many years ago and it was interesting to see it again), but the point is that Athens did divide and conquer itself and the human dynamics haven't changed that much since then, if at all. You could cite Caesar for the other side of it, how to divide and conquer from the outside.
The scale of the problems has changed, however. The oscillations have become more severe. Even though the overall trend has been for things to get better, that's only the long-term average. On the short term, which is where we live, things could go below zero on one of the swings. There might be no recovery from a sufficiently negative oscillation.
My suggestion with MEPR is essentially to make free accounts worth what you paid. In other words, I would be able to ignore them until they earned positive reputations. Actually I think the default visibility setting should be slightly positive, which would mean that trolls would have to make significant investments in creating credibility before anyone would even see them. I would actually prefer to set mine higher than the default in some dimensions, and perhaps lower in others.
The data for the MEPR should be public and accessible. This would make it possible to trace the trust networks to actual people with long-established reputations.
I think you [AmMoJo] have already been led down a wormhole by some AC troll. I see no reason to peek.
My initial reaction is that the obvious problem will be with bots that are programmed to submit bot reports on real users. To maximize the confusion, they'll obviously program the bots to look for humans that act like bots so they can more plausibly report them. Of course the same data will be useful in modifying their attack bots to act more human to make them more difficult to detect and purge.
My basic position is that Twitter is broken beyond redemption. MEPR (Multidimensional Earned Public Reputation) might be applicable to Facebook or even Slashdot, but Twitter is just FUBAR.
Apparently the troll wanted to lead the discussion down some Trumpian road. I actually have a comment that is slightly germane on that topic, given that #PresidentTweety is the de facto king of Twitter:
A good election is one between good candidates.
A bad election is one where voters are choosing the lesser evil.
The worst election is where the evil candidate "wins" by lying and assassinating the character of a good candidate.
The saddest part? In theory, an election between a good and bad candidate should be a landslide for the good one. In practice, it too often becomes a worst case election decided by big money and corporate cancers investing in the bad candidate because he's cheap. On November 6th I think we'll find out how much democracy still exists in America.
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Obviously I'm not up to filling the funny gap in today's Slashdot. Where have all the actually funny people gone?
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Trump's own estimate is that he only controls about 70% of what's going on in America. Even though his buddy Putin says that he's 90% in charge compared to Putin's 80% control of Russia.
Time for another journalist joke:
Q: What's the difference between a Saudi reformer journalist and chopped liver?
A: We know where the chopped liver is!
And MBS is 100% in control of Saudi Arabia. Trump can only be envious.
Hey, here's a solution to solve ALL the problems in one swoop. Trump can build the wall out of prison cells. Several stories tall because he wants a YUGE beautiful wall! Plenty of cells for all the immigrants and asylum seekers AND their children!
"Lock kids up, LOCK KIDS UP!"
My back of the envelope calculation says millions of cells, so there will still be plenty of empty ones for all of Trump's political enemies and journalists, too. If there are still any vacancies, they can convert some of the nice locations on the top floor into condominiums and sell them to Trump's great buddies from Russia, Saudi Arabia, and maybe some really stinking rich Asians who can qualify as honorary white people.
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