Journal sllort's Journal: Slashdot Moderation : Exercising Agreement 42
Update (5/28/03): The information in this journal is outdated and no longer reflects the state of Slashcode; this journal is a historical record but is no longer accurate.
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Slashdot Moderation : Exercising Agreement
A journey into the statistical methods employed to create Comments That Agree .
As I discussed in my previous journal entry, nearly 500 moderators were manually and permanently removed from the pool of potential moderators for giving positive moderation to this comment. While the manual banning of potential moderators by the Editorial staff is not documented, the source code used to accomplish this is readily available and the practice appears to be quite commonplace. The reasonable questions that arise from this practice are: how many moderators are being banned, what is the objective, and what are the actual results? The Slashdot Editorial staff has repeatedly stated that they don't have time to answer these questions (they're certainly not addressed in the FAQ), so it's up to us, the readers, to ponder them.
How many moderators are being permanently banned from the moderation pool? No one knows for certain except perhaps the Editors. Let's look at what we do know. Five hundred moderators were banned for moderating this comment. If we assume that one such comment is posted on a daily basis, that is approximately 185,000 potential moderators banned per year. That post was probably an exception, so we must revise our number. Jamie McCarthy made a post to a User-Created discussion which is deleted every two weeks, so I must reproduce his comment by cut & paste:
"Well, again, we have the logs, so we know what we're talking about. We log both how many times we give mod points, and how many times we would have given mod points but didn't. In the former category: 99.73%; in the latter, 0.27%." - Jamie McCarthy, Slashdot Editor
Additionally, Rob Malda made a related comment in a User-Created discussion:
There are a quarter of a million daily readers, but (and I just checked) only 1.2% of them post. So understand that those of you posting in the forums are already a minority of the community. - Rob Malda, Slashdot Founder & Editor
Now we have some numbers to run with. Of the 250,000 people who read Slashdot, 3,000 of them have an "Interest Level" high enough to post comments here. This "Interest Level" stands at 1.2%, or
What is the objective of the Editorial staff in manually removing User Moderators? That's a really tricky question to answer. Keep in mind that the Editors have gone to extensive lengths not to answer that question, so we must assume that it is an emotionally loaded subject. However, we can interpret some of their actions to arrive at an answer. The post mentioned in the beginning of this article was repeatedly moderated as Offtopic by many Editors. Rob Malda described it this way:
however only a smaller percentage of those moderators actually use their points... hundreds of users moderated it up [and I subsequently banned them all] I modded it [the comment] down a few times too. - Rob Malda, Slashdot Founder & Editor
Note that text in brackets was added by myself to reflect what we've learned. Reading that statement makes it pretty obvious that the purpose of removing Moderators from the pool is to ensure that the results of the Moderation system are consistent with what Rob Malda believes that the results of the moderation system should be. Moderators are chosen from a pool of Slashdot users who have not moderated contrary to the wishes of the Editors in the past. As the Slashdot FAQ states, "The Slashdot Editors have unlimited mod points
When surveying the impact of the Moderation system, there is one overridingly important statistic. That statistic is that over 99% of Slashdot readers do not post comments. Keep in mind that the default view of Slashdot has a threshold of one. This means that if you're moderated to zero or less, 99% of the people who would have read your comment... won't. Books could be written about whether or not blocking communication to 99% of the possible audience constitutes "Censorship", whatever that means today, but for the purposes of this essay, the point is moot. Suffice it to say that Moderation determines 99% of visibility, statistically. Now, consider that the Slashdot system, as a whole, is a constantly evolving system in which Moderators can transition from unbanned to banned, but not vice versa. Moderators who moderate differently than the "guide" Moderations of the Editors (which constitute 10% of the Moderation) are removed from the pool of influence. Therefore, Slashdot as a system moves in only one direction: towards promoting comments that are Moderated in agreement with the Editors. What is the role of Metamoderation? Let's look at the FAQ:
according to Meta Moderation, the fairness of these [editor Moderations] is statistically indistinguishable from the moderation of non admin users (92-93% of moderations are ruled 'Fair').
Keep in mind that the 5 to 18 percent of Slashdot Moderators who are banned from participating in Moderation are also banned from participating in MetaModeration. The purpose of MetaModeration, therefore, is that of reinforcing agreement. Those who have agreed with the Editors in the past are allowed to vote on whether the Editors moderate fairly. Not surprisingly, this subset of potential MetaModerators often agrees with the Editors. If they didn't, they'd probably have been removed already! MetaModeration, therefore, serves to reinforce agreement with the Editors among the selected Moderator pool, and Moderation serves to enact agreement with the Editors among the comments visible to 99% of Slashdot's readership. We only need one more quote from the FAQ to understand what this means:
Goals [of Moderation]: 1.Promote quality, discourage crap.
Since the Moderation system is a self-reinforcing system that promotes comments that agree with the Editors, we must assume that this comment means two things:
- What the editors believe is quality.
- What people who disagree with the Editors believe is crap.
That may be a strongly worded value judgement, but it stands as a conclusion easily & objectively reached. But aside from this value judgement, Slashdot stands as an example of a best-of-breed solution for those who wish to create a community that promotes agreement. Slash appears to have been specifically designed for this purpose, and it can be employed to create a community that agrees about.. just about anything! For instance, ask a Slashdot reader if Linux is a great Operating System. The answer will almost certainly be an emphatic yes! Rob Malda has created an excellent system for managing a userbase into agreement, and for the most part, the users agree with the system. Which was probably the whole point.
Slashdot: News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters. Comments that Agree.
two comments (Score:2)
I have a feeling that at some point in time, metamod will not be automatic, and only those who frequently agree with the 70% will be allowed to metamod. They may even do this already. How am I supposed to know if when I click 'submit' on metamod.pl it does anything other than dump the input to
We have only the word of CT and a few others that
Second is the difference of opinions. I rarely, if ever, agree with the M$ zealots. Or the FreeBSD zealots. I am largely a linux convert (he says from the safe viewpoint of IE6.0). But at least it is something different. Without them,
Flamebait is not necessarily bad. Saying stuff a little over the line that is pro-[M$,Linux,BSD,etc] in order to spark discussion is a good thing. Saying that Bill Gates (or Linus, etc) is actually Hitler is bad flamage. Unfortunately, moderators don't understand it, and the eds (if they understand it) don't say anything about this discrepancy.
Moreso than the rampant abuse of power, the homogenization of
Re:two comments (Score:1)
I don't have complete proof that Slashdot runs on this code, but I believe it does for two reasons. First, I've had patches accepted to enable features that were available on Slashdot the very next day. Second, I worked with Krow (specifically) and the Slashteam last year to produce the Slash book, and I trust them when they say it's running the same code.
Rob and I disagree on some things, but I don't think he's heading some vast conspiracy. You can quote the Slash book at him though: Keep the site FAQ updated, keep your users informed about the site, and have a site-specific discussion every now and then. He's read chapter 8.
Re:two comments (Score:2)
Neither do I. I think he's just (understandably) posessive. My worst rant [slashdot.org] was motivated by what I felt was a really bad decision to ban users with high karma for a handful of negative moderations. Do I go too far? Sometimes, yes. But this journal entry... I believe provides valuable information to the small community of regular posters. And I didn't label it "discouraging dissent", I labelled it "encouraging agreement". At least I phrased it positively.
I don't have complete proof that Slashdot runs on this code, but I believe it does for two reasons.
I cvs update quite often, and I've seen multiple features appear live hours after they appeared in Slash. I'm 99.9% certain that you're right, and I firmly believe that SlashTeam limits itself to lies of omission only. If they say something, it's usually true; the exception being Michael's strange accusations against Seth F.
You can quote the Slash book at him though: Keep the site FAQ updated, keep your users informed about the site, and have a site-specific discussion every now and then. He's read chapter 8.
Now that would be downright obnoxious.
Maybe someday I'll get angry enough (-;
Hopefully someday the META discussion will become a real forum for Slash contributors.
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Re:two comments (Score:1)
Once, only.
This is getting out of hand (Score:1)
Re:This is getting out of hand (Score:2)
Re:"Let's keep to the facts and look at the number (Score:1)
I don't think anyone did archive it.
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You're Reading Managed Agreement [slashdot.org]
Comments that agree (Score:2)
Re:Comments that agree (Score:2)
Comments expressing these are either modded "flamebait" or "overrated", sometimes even "troll" or "redundant." I don't think it is editors doing that, it is probably users that don't agree with me.
Don't be so sure. One thing I noticed in the META thread was that they continually quoted the fact that "over 3/4ths of Moderation on Slashdot is positive" but they shied away from the question of what percentage of Editor Moderation is positive. I suspect that over 90% of Editor Moderation is negative (as Jamie called it, "grunt work"). Keep in mind this entire weblog was built on Free Software. If you posted a "At least Oracle is better than MySql" comment into the Oracle story, it would be on topic, but it wouldn't survive for more than 60 seconds before it reached -1. Take your own guesses as to why.
Peace.
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You're Reading Managed Agreement [slashdot.org]
Re:Comments that agree (Score:2)
Just for demonstration, I have never thought Dr.Strangelove as one of "America's exports" until now. I always though about it as "one of Kubrick's best, and the best of Sellers."
You're probably better equipped then to understand the perversity of a system whereby a chosen subset of voters get to vote on whether votes are fair or not.
Sure, it makes things worse, but not much worse. The "community" idea, which all of us perceive as a Good Thing (tm) is also the root of herd mentality, which most of us percieve as Evil(tm). User moderations suppress alternative ideas. Selecting users that do a good job as suppressing makes it worse, but that is not the cause, that is just the icing on the cake.
One thing I noticed in the META thread was that they continually quoted the fact that "over 3/4ths of Moderation on Slashdot is positive" but they shied away from the question of what percentage of Editor Moderation is positive. I suspect that over 90% of Editor Moderation is negative (as Jamie called it, "grunt work").
I would think so. They have repeatedly said that unlimited mod points of editors are for cleaning around, not moderating good comments. Yet...
Keep in mind this entire weblog was built on Free Software. If you posted a "At least Oracle is better than MySql" comment into the Oracle story, it would be on topic, but it wouldn't survive for more than 60 seconds before it reached -1.
I posted 4 times to troll investigation thread attached to oracle story. Two were AC's and two were this account. Two posts were ontopic, only one of those were moderated as offtopic. Infact, I have one of three surviving posts in the thread above threshold 2. And that post did refer to parent thread, as you can guess I have no interest in the oracle story, it was just to attract attention (and it shows too.) If editors were that afraid of the possible spread of word, they would have moderated it as offtopic too.
My conclusion is editors are not doing an excessively bad job with their ability to select those eligable to metamoderation, moderation or moderation without limits. One of the cornerstones of democracy is the minorities' ability to voice their opinions, that just doesn't exist in the mindset of many people. So the moderation system doesn't work, if democracy and free speech are indeed goals of moderation; and it would't work without the editors either. If the moderation's actual goal is just increasing S/N, it does a respectable job at that and editors abilities indeed help.
Dr. Strangelove (Score:2)
And I only got to play one role:(
Re:Comments that agree (Score:1)
are like me
I dislike Linux after two years of dual boot,
too. (Only OS I never had it.)
Now my Duron-900 isn't currently working
(defective power supply) and all I have are
my Pentium-75/32M/720M notebook (OpenBSD)
and my Pentium-90/24M/6G firewall/router/server,
also running OpenBSD.
And I neither miss the power of the Duron (pine
doesn't get faster on usenet though) nor the
few times I actually use W'ndoze 2000 or my
sound card.
Meta-Mod Perhaps Brings Justice? (Score:2)
Let's bring the truth out!
Re:Meta-Mod Perhaps Brings Justice? (Score:2)
But I appreciate the support. I just want you to realize that moderating me up or supporting me through Moderation in general will probably lead to "a bad consequence for your account", as Michael would put it.
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You're Reading Managed Agreement [slashdot.org]
Re:Meta-Mod Perhaps Brings Justice? (Score:1)
I browse with Funny at -1, Flamebait and Troll at +1. It's good stuff.
Re:Meta-Mod Perhaps Brings Justice? (Score:1)
I personally don't agree with the Will of Taco, but you have to understand that in his eyes, you're being a Bad Metamoderator. "Replying to an Offtopic post does not make you Ontopic". (-;
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You're Reading Managed Agreement [slashdot.org]
Re:Meta-Mod Perhaps Brings Justice? (Score:2)
all topics on these subjects will be considered ontopic anywhere they occur. At least by me. In M2. (and if I ever get M1 again).
I'll take the bait. (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway. CT and Hemos have absolutely not moderated people down (in this case at least) for disagreeing with them. They moderated them down for discussing something that they feel is outside the scope of the forum. VA Linux has put CT and Hemos in charge of
That's why I come to slashdot. I'm interested in what CT and Hemos think is interesting. It's exactly not Kuro5hin in that regard.
Re:I'll take the bait. (Score:2)
I think I'm wrong about this too. You may have noticed that I said "conservatively" when making the estimation that 6 times as many people are willing to moderate as opposed to post. Look at the equation - the less people are willing to moderate, the higher the percentage is of people who are banned. If you have the same number of people willing to moderate as post, you get 18% banned. If you have half as many people willing to moderate as post, you get 36% banned. I didn't want to make that assumption because down that road lies the conclusion that over half of Slashdot's moderators are permanently banned. In short, I was trying to make the situation look as good as it possibly could, but leave the reader to find the conclusion that it might be far, far worse. You have taken the first step in that direction...
Anyway. CT and Hemos have absolutely not moderated people down (in this case at least) for disagreeing with them. They moderated them down for discussing something that they feel is outside the scope of the forum.
I disagree. I feel that in any given day, 100's of Offtopic posts are moderated up to 5. I feel that the reason this particular Offtopic post was manually and repeatedly dropped to -1 by the Editors was that it was both Offtopic and Something They Didn't Want People To Read. If you would like me to dig up some examples of Offtopic posts moderated to 5 because Taco agrees with them, let me know. Though it shouldn't be hard, just read a few stories.
As far as "taking the bait" goes, don't worry, you're not being trolled. I actually wrote this as a serious attempt to understand the system. Constructive criticism is welcome.
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You're Reading Managed Agreement [slashdot.org]
Taco isn't lying--just a bad communicator (Score:1)
I think a better way of looking at it would be that the posts were something that, "They Didn't Want Busy-People-Who-Read-At-+x-To-Save-Time To Have To Bother With It." As you (or somebody) noted elsewhere, Slashdot is no longer about discussion--it's about making money. They make money with eyeballs (that's the majority who just read and don't post) and aren't anywhere near as interested in satisfying your need to speak as they are in satisfying people's need to read in a way that satisfies them. As an aside, it seems to me that Taco has a lot of communication problems. Moderation, for example, would probably be much better termed, "filtering-enabler" or something (man, English is a sucky language).
If I read you correctly, you seem to be of the opinion that Taco and Co. are intentionally deceiving us about their *real* goals. But I don't think so. I think that there are a couple of possible reasons why it seems this way:
While I'm on that topic, another example of his trouble with communicating is the tagline, "News for Nerds." There are a *lot* of people complaining when a story isn't checked for truth before posting. They get irate that Taco gets paid to not do his basic job as a journalist. They make the assumption--false but entirely reasonable--that he is even trying to *be* a journalist. This is all derived from what I've always considered to be a throwaway tagline that isn't at all intended to be taken literally. But many people don't seem to be able to read between the lines.
Re:Taco isn't lying--just a bad communicator (Score:2)
Intentionally deceptive is a little strong. I believe that when Taco finds himself doing something that doesn't fit his ideals (or the ideals of his users) he just fails to mention it. After failing to mention it, he won't talk about it even when asked pointedly, and he gets belligerent if people find a way of proving that he's up to something. You're exactly right: he's a poor communicator. He can't interact with his audience. I almost never see him post comments in stories, even in the Anime & Tivo stories! It's not that he doesn't have a lot to say... he just doesn't like to. The only times he posts comments is when he's defending himself. The annoying part is he shifts into defense mode even when he's not being attacked. The worst part is that instead of fighting back, he just checks passive-aggressive anti-troll measures into the system. The idea seems to be "eventually I will have a robotic system that will keep people from disagreeing with me, and I will never have to talk to anyone".
Three defensiveness examples: subnet banning people who receive negative moderation, banning moderators who disagree with him, and refusing to mark Editor moderation as such [sourceforge.net]. When he got busted [slashdot.org] for banning people who were negatively moderated, he replied with a long, angry rant in a Slashcode comment. In the source! I won't even go into the irony of the fact that Jamie McCarthy ended up having to write the (pitifully ineffective) Censorware component that is now part of Slash. I think there's more to it than "I don't have time". Zoo wasn't a requested feature, it wasn't something that would help Slashdot make money, it was just something incredibly complicated that he wanted to do for fun - while the two year old moderation guidelines languished, and the Moderation system kept it's long standing bugs. In short, I think he's a great innovator and a poor manager. Taco is an engineer.
It's all good. It's still the only site on the Internet that won't IP ban you and delete all your comments if you link to goatse.cx. And that's got to be worth something. Right?
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You're Reading Managed Agreement [slashdot.org]
Re:Taco isn't lying--just a bad communicator (Score:2)
Sounds like CT is the bastard love child of Bill Gates.
Re:Taco isn't lying--just a bad communicator (Score:2)
No. CT doesn't have to appease the crowd. But given the paucity of quality 'stories', it is clear that the most page views are generated by reading comments. That also describes a few other things around here.
First, the searches suck. Every time you pull up a poorly searched page, there's another ad view. Journals are here, which increases ad views. The foolishness with 20 second, 2 minute, and 'junk filter' things for submissions. If it takes three page views instead of one for me to post this reply, for example, that is 3x page views. And remember, the only real content are the discussion forums. By alienating the content providers, CT has shot himself in the foot.
CT has no idea what a 'user' is. Sure, technically, he is a 'user', with a login id and password, but he insists on obfuscating things by arguing semantics, saying that editors are no different than 'any other' user.
Finally, CT is not paid to be a journalist. JK, maybe. But CT is being paid to be an editor, a position for which he is woefully unskilled.
"All the News that's Fit to Print" It's not just a tagline. It's a mantra. A theme. A *gack* vision statement. Without that, it's just some fratboy's homepage.
Re:Taco isn't lying--just a bad communicator (Score:1)
How sure are you that it isn't just a schtick?
Without that, it's just some fratboy's homepage.
Well....
... and some more Platoon QUOTES!!@! (Score:1)
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Sergeant Barnes: Martin, get your boots on. And the next time I catch you spraying skeeter repellent on your fuckin' feet, I'm gonna court martial your nigger ass.
Junior: Well then court-martial me motherfucker! Fuck my ass, send me to fucking Long Binh! You do your fucking work! You white folks have got your last klick out of Junior!
Sergeant Barnes: O'Neil, get me that centipede.
Sergeant O'Neill: Sarge?
Sergeant Barnes: Yeah, that long hairy red and black bastard I found in the ammo creek. I'm gonna put it in this boy's crotch, see if he can walk.
Somewhere in that sequence Ministry samples "Junior" yelling "Now hold up man!" on their Land of Rape and Honey album in a song, it's repeated over and over.
somewhat offtopic but.. (Score:1)
Re:somewhat offtopic but.. (Score:1)
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You're Reading Managed Agreement [slashdot.org]
Re:That magnificent thread (Score:2)
Unbeknownst to many, Jamie has a temper. It's very surprising, not unlike petting a small, white, fluffy dog, only to have it suddenly turn and sink it's teeth into you. You don't even have time to yelp, because you're just so damn shocked.
It's enough to make me want to learn perl...these fucking powerdrunk people who confuse their current status with their deserved status is frightening.
Want to learn perl to do what? Writing a script to auto-rape Slashdot is easy. Taking the time to patch the bugs in their system is very hard. Especially when there's a 1 in 10 chance they'll actually apply your patch. And especially considering you're basically doing their jobs for them, for free. Those are my problems with the idea, you probably have your own. As an Oracle programmer, writing something for MySql would probably be like trying to program blindfolded with two hands and your dick tied behind your back.
They have the nerve to consider themselves journalists? Cheeky!
The whole "journalist" thing gets played a lot around here, but honestly I don't think they've ever called themselves that. They're actually in the process of defining "New Media". Whatever respect eventually gets attributed to that phrase may have something to do with their actions down the road.
Scary, huh?
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You're Reading Managed Agreement [slashdot.org]
A question about % of daily posters (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A question about % of daily posters (Score:2)
I don't know what the actual "moderator participation level" is, nor do I know if 1.2% is a daily figure, nor do I know the frequency of posting breakdown. All are great questions, I suggest that you submit it as an "Ask Slashdot" once a day.
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You're Reading Managed Agreement [slashdot.org]
Now this gets interesting! (Score:1)
However, my original 50 karma account, which is older than this one, and never saw karma less than -1 (newbie factor) cannot metamod.
Oh well. I'll treasure this account, since it's the only one I own with metamod capabilities.
Alan Thicke. ALIVE (Score:1)
Another Slashdot Editor Conspiricy? (Score:2)
As I noted in my journal [slashdot.org], as I am sure countless others have, there is a forbidden post [slashdot.org], which at the time I made reference to it, had the following moderation totals: Offtopic=378, Flamebait=4, Troll=27, Redundant=5, Insightful=98, Interesting=206, Informative=49, Funny=12, Overrated=12, Underrated=63, Total=854.
Now for some reason, the moderation totals are as follows: Offtopic=74, Flamebait=1, Redundant=2, Insightful=20, Interesting=33, Informative=11, Funny=3, Overrated=1, Underrated=13, Total=158
Wow! What happened to 694 of those moderations? They apparently have ceased to exist! Now the slashdot editors have seen fit to remove the proof of the moderation conspiricy! The post is too old to moderate anymore (I have mod access today and can't touch it), so their goal complete, the slashdot editors, have changed history, Orwellian style. [k-1.com]
Sorry, No Black Helicopter (Score:1)
Re:Sorry, No Black Helicopter (Score:1)
400 at my time.
Should make a 900-1100 moderations en total,
assuming new M1's were coming when older are
starting to be removed?
Re:Another Slashdot Editor Conspiricy? (Score:2)
History erasure, sure, but it's Universal and intended to keep the Moderation system scalable.
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You're Reading Managed Agreement [slashdot.org]
chalk one more up (Score:2)
Revolution!
Mike
Re:chalk one more up (Score:1)
posting, e.g. in the RMS-vs-deIcaza threads.
And post early, then you're seen by the Mods.
Totally simple solution (Score:1)
Don't allow non-editors to mod down.
Remove the +5 limit on positive mods.
Reasoning:
If 35 people mod up because a post is an intelligent and insightful nugget - let it be +35!
For the few moderators that want to waste their points on modding up trolls or "funny" posts, let them.
Results:
Nuggets still float to the top. No censorsip.