CmdrTaco's Journal: Moderators Leaving Notes For Meta Moderators

Jamie has been pushing hard on this point, and I'm leaning towards agreeing with him now. Essentially, what he wants to do is make it possible for a moderator to leave a note with their moderation, explaining *why* the comment was moderated. This note is made available only to meta moderators, to help aid them in deciding if the moderation was fair or not. Essentially I'd be looking for very short explanations like 'calling someone a nazi is not nice' to justify a flamebait mod or something.

The down side is that this slightly increases the potential burden on moderators... but our moderators are only modding a few points every few days or weeks, so we're talking about a burden on the order of typing a couple dozen words once a week. I do more than that just telling people to 'read the FAQ' in my inbox with my morning cup of coffee.

The chance for abuse is relatively light. We desire the system to remain anonymous, and a moderator could conceivably leave a note saying "I'm user ID XXX, so moderate me fair" however if meta moderators are warned that anonymity is part of the system, that might work against them (assuming meta moderators read directions).

Another related issue that I'd love to address someday is 'Funny' meta moderation. Nobody has the balls to call something 'NOT FUNNY' and that frusterates me. I think we should be VERY hard on usage of 'Funny' in moderation. An ATTEMPT at funny that is NOT funny should NOT be given a score bonus. And a moderator who says something that is moderately amusing when it is not should probably be given fewer moderator points. The problem is that meta moderators don't like saying funny is unfair. They think "Yeah, this is ok. It's kinda funny. Or they tried. So I'll mark it as fair". I think this is a great example of where some slight changes could help the system out. Stand up! Be proud! If something is NOT funny, call the moderation unfair!

This is something that Jamie & I have discussed extensively for the mod rewrite. By splitting the scoring system up into multiple modes, we have a lot of new options. One cool idea is to split funny up into several sub groups: "Hilarious" "Amusing" and "Not Funny". We could play a lot with those in meta moderation... like if something is 'Hilarious' then it should alsu be amusing, and definitely not NOT funny. So we could do some fancy schmancy number crunching to get better results out of this.

But mostly, I just would like to encourage meta moderators to be more liberal with the funny unfair tag. Countless recurring memes in the forums draw occasional, random 'Funny' mods. This wastes mod points, meta moderator time, and only serves to dilute the discussions. So many jokes that get a funny point here or there simply AREN'T funny. Meta moderators, have the balls to call something UNfunny!

Agreed

[BWJones]

Essentially, what he wants to do is make it possible for a moderator to leave a note with their moderation, explaining *why* the comment was moderated.

I would like to add my vote in support of this. Another benefit is that it could reduce the abuse that is currently in the system or at the very least, clear up misunderstandings.

Nobody has the balls to call something 'NOT FUNNY' and that frusterates me.

I am sorry, but this is patently not true. There is so much out there that is modded as funny, that

I am one...

[singularity]

I am a meta-moderator who rarely MM's a "Funny" mod as "Unfunny". Usually if I am not sure I just leave the moderation in the default "neither fair nor unfair" radio button.

I mainly do it because I know my sense of humor is different than a lot of people. The best way to sum it up is to say that I am not a "There's Something About Mary" sort of person. I find almost nothing moderated "Funny" to be actually funny.

Of course, I have a -2 modifier to any post marked as "Funny". I come to Slashdot for an infor

Re:I am one...

[jamie]

I am a meta-moderator who rarely MM's a "Funny" mod as "Unfunny". Usually if I am not sure I just leave the moderation in the default "neither fair nor unfair" radio button.

I mainly do it because I know my sense of humor is different than a lot of people. The best way to sum it up is to say that I am not a "There's Something About Mary" sort of person. I find almost nothing moderated "Funny" to be actually funny.

But that's fine, that's your opinion. Metamoderation is all about opinion. Obviously there'