CmdrTaco's Journal: Comment Reading Modes

Imagine Slashdot completely seperates comment quality from comment quantity. Imagine that new controls exist that choose how many comments you want to read. Imagine that we get rid of Score:-1 to Score:5. Imagine that 'Order by Score' was replaced with something that actually mattered. Instead of the Score:-1..5 drop down list you are familiar with, a new box takes its place... it contains these options... these options replace the vast majority of user preferences that exist currently in users.pl. They would sort the discussion based on what comments you are most likely to read. These titles are bullshit too. I'll pick better labels later on. Also remember that Score:-1 to 5 doesn't need to exist. Instead, I'm trying to think of comments in terms of the best to worst. Like the 90th percentile instead of Score:5. It's also worth noting that this really doesn't affect moderation at all. There are still mod points, given out the same way, but what we DO with those points is less about Score:3, Interesting, and more about trying to shape discussions according to reader choices. We also need to factor in Zoo/Friends/Foe into these discussions as well.

Stay on Target In this mode, comments tagged as humorous are slightly penalized. Newer comments might also be penalized. The highest rated comments would be those moderated as insightful and interesting. Poster karma would be a factor, but not as large as it is today. This would be the preferred viewing mode for those who wanted a discussion to stay on track... ontopic. Highly focused. Less emphasis on the sillier side of Slashdot. Thats not to say that a humorous comment or witty satire would never appear, but it would take more moderation to make it happen. This would be roughly comperable to a threshold of 4 or 5... but with a user preference penalty of -1 on Funny. This is probably what anonymous readers would see, in conjunction with an 'Order by Score' comment sort order.

Laugh In Under this mode, the comments that were deemed silly would be more highly tolerated than they might otherwise be. Similiar to above, but without assigning penalties to the funny moderated comments.

Gem Seeker This is more for moderators. There are certain comment types that we want to get in front of moderators quickly. For example new posts, and especially posts from new users. Research has shown that a new user who is moderated is more likely to post again then one who isn't. So lets encourage that. The most insightful and interesting comments might be less highly positioned within the discussion to encourage the moderator to find the gems that might otherwise be lost deep within the discussion.

Uncut Like Score:-1 today, this would simply throw the whole mess into the discussion and let you sort it out.

The 'Sort by' drop down remains pretty much the same, but the Scores of the comments will be affected by which viewing mode you are reading in. A really great comment in 'Laugh In' mode will be lower rated in 'Stay on Target' mode... and a piece of crap piece of flamebait might not be visible in either of those modes, but it will still (obviously) make the cut in the Uncut mode. It might have a lower score, but anybody who simply chooses uncut & raw mode, plus order by post time will get the exact same thing as Score:-1 does now.

If anyone has thoughts on other logical viewing modes, I'd love to hear them. My main goal is to keep this simple tho... but I'm trying to think of other ways of reading a discussion, and not really coming up with much.

Thoughts

[daeley]

A couple of thoughts...

"Laugh In" seems to imply that Funny posts receive a bonus rather than lack of penalty. Perhaps there could be a "No Modification" option, with "Laugh In" meaning Funny gets a bonus.

My other idea regards the -1..5 display. If we move to something like your 90th percentile example, do we still need the -1..5 boundaries? Should each post have a score that can continue to be modified, particularly since even good 5 posts disappear quite quickly in the mass? Since the actual number isn'

Re:Thoughts

[CmdrTaco]

I definitely want some sort of indicator as to how "Good" or "Bad" a comment is... the actual granularity of that information is definitely up for grabs. What I'll probably do is keep it relatively vague. New discussions might have only a 10th percentile and a 20th percentile... but a discussion to 5000 comments might have a 99.3. I do want some sort of score, but you're right... sorting things into 'Excellent' comments 'Good' comments, and 'Bad' comments would go a long way towards discouraging users ob

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:The discussion counts

[CmdrTaco]

My hope is that by providing a "Better" discussion, we will encourage more people to participate. Your reading preferences represent one extreme end of the system...we'll definitely provide a way for you to continue to read Slashdot this way.

What you are essentially getting at is the importance of context of threads. This is a critical problem, and different users have different opinions on it. Some users care little for context and simply want the best posts. Others want every parent to a comment, an

gems and feature wishes

[tf23]

When I'm reading /., I find I'm always wanting two things:

1) a slashbox populated with the urls from the scored-5 comments. almost like an overivew.

2) the ability to stay where I am at, but shift-click on something to create a new window that has a different sub-set of threshold.
If I change the threshold in the current window and hit the change button, it changes that window. If I could change the threshold/view options and have that spawn to a new window, that'd be handy.

3) the ability to bookmark where

Re:gems and feature wishes

[CmdrTaco]

An overview slashbox is very possible in this new system. To be fair tho, I hope that the 'Stay on Target' setting, coupled with some settings to reduce the number of visible comments would accomplish the exact same thing.

As for the 2nd point, thats tough but I'll see if I can make it usable. And as for the third point, your browser already has bookmark features... I'm not planning on duplicating that.

And as for the Gem Seeker thing, it would give *an* advantage but not *the* advantage. Historically