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Journal wowbagger's Journal: Severe design flaw in moderation 23

Journal by wowbagger

There are things in this world that make you wonder how they continue to operate with such design flaws. Slashdot is one of them.

First, read this bug I filed with respect to moderation and metamoderation.

Now, consider the point I made in the comment. Look upon the moderations you see done, and ask yourself if this flaw is not already being exploited.

Overrated/underrated moderations are never metamoderated. By design.

Consider what this means. If you have an agenda, if you wish to suppress a given viewpoint, and you wish to do so without fear of losing your moderator status, just use -1, Overrated for all your moderations. You will never be metamoderated, so you will never lose your moderation priveledges (barring loss of Karma by other means, of course).

I wish I had known that, as I believe that I have done something to get myself marked as unfit to moderate. Oh, I still get metamoderation every day, but I have not seen moderator points for over a year now. It could be the luck of the draw, but....

I always strove to moderate accurately - if I felt something was Flamebait and deserved moderation, I moderated it as Flamebait. As my sig used to state, I do not believe moderating a troll as "-1, Offtopic" is correct - a troll is a troll is a troll. If the moderation name has no meaning, then why not simply have -1 and +1?

Perhaps I am simply out of sync with the rest of the Slashdot readership - perhaps my moderations of lame, tired jokes as Offtopic rather than Funny was out of step with the rest of the universe.

But you know what? I don't give a rat's pink rectal tissue.

I have what I consider to be an astonishingly large number of fans - unlike some other folks I don't seek them out. When I make a post, it is because either a) it is truly something I believe in or b) I truly think my post is funny enough to share. Presumeably, that is why those of you who have marked me as Friend did so.

OK, so what? Being an engineer by training and disposition, I am inclined to try to solve any problem I see. So, what do I think might be a solution to this problem? For starters, you might go over to Sourceforge, create an account if you do not already have one, and add your voice to mine on the bug, and encourage others to do the same. While there is no guarantee that this would cause the SlashCrew to take any action whatsoever, were there to be a large number of people pointing out the logical design fallacy it might cause them to reconsider.

Secondly, the other way you might begin to bring pressure to bear is to exploit the bug. I hate suggesting this, as it smacks of the justification that s|<ip7 |<iddi3z use - "I was just showing them how their system wasn't secure". Yah, right. But it might work.

So what do I recommend you do? I recommend you use your best judgement and do what YOU think is right.

Oh well - I've done what I think I can do about this. I submitted a bug, I've tried to raise awareness about the problem. If any of you have any good suggestions, let's hear them.

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Severe design flaw in moderation More

Severe design flaw in moderation

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  • If you have time, submit it and forget it. Either it coincides with the wishes and goals of the slashdot gang, or it doesn't. FWIW, I've heard that people get more/better responses by directly emailing taco or hitting IRC. You at least get a bit of an explanation.

  • I too submitted a M2 bug on SF last year or so, and it was closed "cuz that's how it was designed".

    That is proof that Slashdot has a problem and they won't admit it: they prefer to justify their (poor) initial choices than do something about it.

    • I still get metamoderation every day, but I have not seen moderator points for over a year now. It could be the luck of the draw, but....

    I haven't had a mod point in almost a year, and certainly gave up M2 long ago. Why, should I care ? Gimme the occasional +5 mod points and I'll meta-moderate again !

    • I chalk a lot of this up to youth and inexperience. I seriously doubt that the SlashCrew has ever run a statistical analysis on the comment moderation or Karma levels - with a sample set this large, they should be pretty close to a normal distribution (via the Central Limit Thereom).

      However, I suspect that the Karma distribution would look bimodal with a peak at 50 and another at whatever the low limit is - an indication that the system is running open loop. I also suspsct you would see the same on comment moderation - I've found that if a comment of mine gets to three, it will get to five.

      Ideally, moderating a 2 to a 3 would take 1 point, a 3 to a 4 would take 2 points, and a 4 to a 5 would take 3 points - this would prevent the "everything at 5" problem we see now.

      Also, ideally the first -1 (Troll|Flamebait) would cost you 1 karma, the second (on the same comment) would cost you 2, and so on.

      Lastly, ideally no moderator should be able to moderate the same person more than once every 20 moderations - this would prevent mod-bombing, which the SlashCrew refuses to acknowledge exists.
      • Those are _awesome_ ideas ! They're not only well laid-off, but also very constructive and going in the right direction. I will consider emailing this to Taco, and give credits when credits are due, unless you want to consider doing it yourself first ? ;)
      • An additional idea I've had - treat using your Karma bonus as a moderation. Since there are those who would abuse M2 by moderating every "+1, Karma Bonus" as unfair, don't list it as such - list it as "+1, Interesting".

        But that way, if somebody with high Karma starts using their bonus to troll, that bonus will be M2'ed, and (hopefully) they will get zapped in short order.

        Also, rather than giving somebody unlimited +1, Karma points, give them floor(karma/10.0+.5) points per day. That way, at best somebody like me would be able to post 5 comments/day at 2.
  • I always m2 negative moderations as unfair. Janitors will clean up the garbage with the unlimited points.
    • That's a really good point...

      The one that really irritates me is "offtopic," when conversation moves to a tangent (but related) subject. I've taken to m2ing all offtopic mods as unfair.
      • I don't know that I'd moderate all off-topics as unfair - I've seen plenty of times somebody REALLY is off-topic and deserved it.

        Hell, I have a few posts of my own wherein I replied to somebody's reply - their reply was OT, so my reply could equally well be OT. However, usually when I do that I forgo my +1 Karma bonus.

        What frosts me is when I do forgo my Karma bonus (the /. equivalent of whispering) and get down-modded anyway.

        • The definitely agree that not having M2 for underrated/overrated mods is a design flaw. I've seen people abusing these for years. The worst is when someone tries to deliberately burn your karma my modding down some really old posts as overrated. It hasn't happened lately, but I pissed off a troll once and he nailed me.

          I often wish there were more categories for modding down. There ought to be a "-1 crapflood" moderation. And I'd like to see a "-1 karma whoring" as well. Personally, I like to read posts that are provocative, unpopular, or satirical. These often get modded down as troll/offtopic/flamebait. Most of the crapfloods are modded as either offtopic or troll. Therefore, I assigned +1 to flamebait posts to negate the penalty. I also gave +1 to anonymous posts because the real crap gets modded down to -1 anyway. I'd like to read some of the offtopic/troll stuff, but I don't want to wade through the crap.

          -a
          • Yes, I've been mod-bombed as well (another problem that the /crew won't acknowledge - I'd contacted Taco directly about a particularly egregious incident and was basic given the Sgt. Schultz routine - "I see nothing, NOTHING!").

            I hate the fact that the crapflooders are given -1, Offtopic - while a crapflood post is offtopic, it is more accurately classified as a troll.

            However, given the fact that most moderators seem unable to differentiate between Interesting, Informative, and Insightful, adding more moderation classes might be counter-productive.
            • I don't really see a problem with moderators being unable to differentiate between the 3 Is. However, they sometimes can't differentiate between the 3Is and funny/redundant.

              I don't know why a crapflood would more of a troll than offtopic. I find that troll is one of the more abused mods, because it is often used to mod someone down when they simply state a minority opinion.

              I think some of the other suggestions you had for improving the system elsewhere in this thread were pretty good. For example, self-moderation.

              -a
              • What is the definition of troll (in this context):

                Troll: a comment made solely to inflame or annoy others, with no other contributory value.

                What is a crapflood? A series of comments made to inflame or annoy others, with no other contributory value.

                As for insightful/informative/interesting:

                What is the proper moderation for the following comment:

                Well, if you want more info on this subject, click here [example.com].

                Interesting? maybe, but not really.
                Insightful? No, no real insights here.
                Informative? Ding Ding Ding!

                What about:

                Well, as my daddy said, "Sometimes you eat the bear, sometimes the bear eats you. But with Microsoft you are ALWAYS screwed!"

                (assuming pertainance to the subject).
                Interesting? Maybe.
                Informative: no, no real information there.
                Insightful? Perhaps.

                As I see it, one should pick the most specific moderation that applies. Interesting is the most general, with Informative and Insightful being more specific. Offtppic is the most general, with Flamebait and Troll being more specific.
                • Well, I don't really agree with your assessment. There's plenty of ontopic trolls and flames out there. You say you'd like to read off stuff without getting the crapfloods. Well I'd like to read ontopic "trolls", which half the time are just people censoring unpopular opinions. I don't really care if an insightful comment is mislabeled as informative, since they all get +1 from me in the end.

                  -a
                  • Moderating something as "troll" merely because you disagree is unfair. I agree - many of the so-called troll posts are not trolls, but somebody thoughtfully expressing a dissenting opinion. But those are not truely trolls - those are examples of a moderator suffering from cranio-rectal inversion.

                    For example, back when I was getting moderator points on a semi-regular basis, one time I encountered a person trying to make a pro-gun control point. For reference, I am an NRA life member.

                    I modded the guy up. Not because I agreed with what he said - quite the contrary. But I moderated him up because what he said was interesting.

                    Defending those with whom you agree is not protecting freedom of speech - defending those with whom you disagree is.

                    That is why I wish people would moderate correctly, and demand (via M2) that others do the same - so that posts that express unpopular opinions in a thoughtful manner are not given "-1, Troll" but "+1, Insightful"
            • "However, given the fact that most moderators seem unable to differentiate between Interesting, Informative, and Insightful, adding more moderation classes might be counter-productive."
              According to the moderation guide you aren't supposed to put too much emphasis on the description. It is the -1 or +1 that counts.
          • "And I'd like to see a "-1 karma whoring" as well."
            -1 Redundant?
    • Janitors will clean up the garbage with the unlimited points.

      This is interesting. How much editorial moderating gets done? Do they make it a point to "clean up"? Are editorial moderations M2'd?

      Could there possibly be a correlation between editorial moderation and the non-M2'd moderations?

      Food for thought...
  • Once I started metamoderating, I was given the chance to moderate only once or twice after.

    I always thought they just didn't want you to be able to do both... I miss moderating, honestly.

  • I wish I had known that, as I believe that I have done something to get myself marked as unfit to moderate. Oh, I still get metamoderation every day, but I have not seen moderator points for over a year now. It could be the luck of the draw, but....

    I could be wrong, but I think the reason you can't moderate may be a simple factor of your having a very old account. Checking the current version of slashcode (v2.2.6), there is this code in moderatd:

    my($st, $fi) = (
    int($eligible * $constants->{m1_pointgrant_start}),
    int($eligible * $constants->{m1_pointgrant_end})
    );

    Then, checking defaults.sql

    INSERT INTO vars (name, value, description) VALUES ('m1_pointgrant_end', '0.8888', 'Starting percentage into the pool of eligible moderators (used by moderatord');
    INSERT INTO vars (name, value, description) VALUES ('m1_pointgrant_start', '0.167', 'Ending percentage into the pool of eligible moderators (used by moderatord');

    Since you're user number 69688, if those defaults are used, it means you stopped being able to moderate as soon as user 417294. Of course, the only way to know for sure would be to ask the admins what they have that variable set to.

    • That makes no sense - why would you restrict OLD accounts from moderating?

      I guess the question would be to look at the Slashcode CVS, and see what changes happened to that file.

      I wonder if this is worth bouncing of Rob....
      • hmm, cockup rather than conspiracy as the answer - seems more reasonable to me. I'd suggest one way to find out would be to get yourself a new account, and play with that one for a while. Though it's a bit like fighting your way back from level 1 to the giddy heights you're at now.
    • I've moderated within the last month and my nbr is 19103.

      For the record, I also metamoderate a couple of times a week, at least.

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