More Moderation Madness 316
Karma
By far the most popular topic is karma. When it was just called "Points" nobody really cared, but now that I changed the name to "Karma" everyone has input on it. Must have a few MUDers out there.
Since I intend to start using karma in a few other places, I added a field to display it on your user preferences page. I might add it to the comments display, but I'm holding on that for now since it will
just clutter things up.
Default Comment Scores
For many moons now, users with high or low karma were given either a +1 (k:25) or -1 (k:-10) on their comments. Yesterday I added an additional -1 (k:-20) that I have since removed. Many people argued reasonably against it, so its gone.
In addition, I added a much requested feature to allow posters to optionally pass on the +1 bonus when they post. Many people who have earned the bonus point occasionally wanted to say something that they didn't feel deserved the bonus. I guess thats fair.
Anonymous Posting w/o Logging Out
Due to popular demand, I've added an option to allow logged in users to post anonymously. If you use this option, you are every bit as anonymous as you would be if you had logged out, except if
you have a +1 bonus, your comment will still get it.
At some point I may eliminate the old AC posting in favor of this one, if only to eliminate a certain amount of knee-jerk posting, but I'm not convinced on this one. I really believe that people should be able to post anonymously, and this system while it still allows that, it would require a login. Its just a hoop- the comment is every bit as anonymous, but I suspect I'll take some flame for making people jump through the hoop. Then again, the flamers are probably a large part of the problem ;) Anyway, I'm not sold on the idea, so I'll probably leave it as is.
Meta Moderation
So who moderates the moderators? Every day comments are mailed to me with a note saying 'this comment was unfairly moderated'. Sometimes they're right. Sometimes they're wrong. But regardless, it seems like the community should be able to regulate this itself. So I've implemented MetaModeration.
I'm debugging it now, and it should be online within the next few days, but I want to post the concept for evaluation:
Basically, anyone who is eligible to moderate is eligible to MetaModerate [M2]. (Registered users with non-negative karma who have had accounts for "awhile" (the definition of which is likely to change but right now is probably a month or so)).
An M2 gets 10 comments, and the moderation done to them. They are then asked to decide if the moderation was fair or unfair. The opinion of the M2 affects the original moderators karma. In otherwords, if you moderate good, you get better karma, you moderate bad, you lose the ability to moderate in the future. As a side bonus, users will get some karma (on a sliding scale so it won't be much) for being an M2.
Its just a thin layer of accountability, but if everyone plays fair, it'll work. (Just please don't start asking for M3 or M4 moderation or I'll start crying).
Some other stuff
So I labored on my labor day (and Andover even has it officially listed as a holiday!) Thanks for all the feedback (good and bad!) in the last few days, please keep it up. I'm sorry we can't implement all the suggestions, but of course some of them aren't feasible, and some are just silly. But as a whole, I think we're getting better. (Or at least my TODO list is getting shorter ;)
Re:Is "logged-in anonymity" really anonymous? (Score:1)
responsible?
more points.. (Score:1)
P.S. dont remove anonymous posting! not everyone wants to login and post.
Re:Anonymous Cowards Are Necessary (Score:1)
I don't actually _care_ if it's traceable. I just don't want it to be easy
Can we see who moderates ? (Score:1)
Moderation madness is correct (Score:1)
Great Learning (Score:1)
Rob, You have always had great vision for what you wanted to do with
A question... (Score:1)
And in the future, it might be a good idea to put that in a more prominent spot in the User Prefs page, since many users will probably want to check their Karma pretty often.
Moderate! (Score:1)
Meta-Moderation Concerns (Score:1)
The social status sytem (moderation) (Score:1)
On the new karma point sytem, what is karma? Karma is an abstract idea used to control social behavior, now I understand why it suits this moderation system so well. The clique mentality with the moderation is fine, it is only natural. Although, you should understand there are people who do not want to be a part of this. If you want them to leave, then by all means continue.
Re:Is "logged-in anonymity" really anonymous? (Score:1)
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Re:Random thread sorting (Score:1)
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Re:Is "logged-in anonymity" really anonymous? (Score:1)
If your IP is good enough to identify you, and slashdot keeps a history of every post together with the originating IP, then as correctly pointed out by several comments on this thread, the same objection I raise is raisable right now.
For "anonymous" posting to be really anonymous, slashdot may noy keep a permanent record of IP addresses for each post.
Note this does not mean slashdot can't keep a temporary record of IPs. That is, I think the best solution would be for slashdot to keep the IP for each post in recent stories (maybe front page, maybe a bit beyond front page). This could be used to defend the system from abuse-- if some IP is posting too many stories too fast which all are getting downmoderated, slashdot may block the IP group from posting temporarily (say, 18 hours). But when the story goes stale, you get rid of IP info, and anonymity is guaranteed (you still may keep a list of troublemaking IPs).
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Re:Competing with karma (Score:1)
Besides, I think its bad form to let personal opinion get in the way whilst moderating and I think (or at least hope) that the majority of
Nick
Psychological impact (Score:1)
One nasty side-effect this will have for me, and doubtlessly many others, is the irrational need to get super high, (might I say Perens-ian [slashdot.org]) karma, by posting useful, informative and/or intelligent posts. That is definitely not a bad thing.
Of course, it can go the other way, for those who will pride themselves on having -188 karma points. This is not a good thing.
This is going to be a wild and crazy ride!
Re:Can we see who moderates ? (Score:1)
Re:The power of karma (Score:1)
Re:Moderator Moderation is Excellent, in Moderatio (Score:1)
This seems to be a rapidly increasing problem. I've only noticed it over the past month or so, but many comments are now being moderated down because the moderator disagrees with the ideas expressed in the post. See this post from today. Not mine; just a post I happened to see. Was it off topic? Certainly no more than its parent post, which was not moderated. [slashdot.org]
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Re:Eliminating Trolls & Helping ACs (Score:1)
- I think giving moderators unlimited (-1) ability is a Bad Ideatm. It would invite abuse very quickly by removing the incentive for positive marking versus negative marking. This should be obvious without much thought.
- My understanding was that it would start with Score:0, but that it would still get the Score:+1 if you have good Karma. Personally, I think this is a good idea. If you have the ability to log on, then posting anonymously holds less credibility and less accountability than posting regularly. As Rob Malda would prefer us to post under our normal accounts as often as possible, I should expect him to discourage anonymous coward posting as often as possible, very much as he does now.
I just want to add that Slashdot has so far been organized wonderfully. Its popularity reflects this to the extreme.Now if only the Malda would implement the Slashdot Mirroring Service like was suggested for the Rusty-Case article.
Re:Further suggestions (Score:1)
Re:Just something I noticed... (Score:1)
Only on two occassions have I knocked down users. I figure they'll sit at the bottom anyway.
Re:On karma (Score:1)
As far as getting hit for being redundant, well, I think that is A Good Thing. You should read most of the stuff before you post. If what you want to say (or close to it) has already been said, then you keep quiet. This isn't talk.bizarre where "upping the volume" is considered k3wl.
Re:My Thoughts on Moderation (Score:1)
1. Make moderation points last longer, or maybe not even expire.
I'd like to see them last a few days longer, but I see the wisdom in the current system. If your points never expire, you might not use them for "unimportant" threads, instead waiting for a thread you really care about. If you know you only have a few days to use them, you may end up doing (desired) moderation sooner rather than later.
I see things that deserve to be moderated up or down and I can't.
I imagine we all do. It'd be nice to have a way to show support for a post we really like, but I think we can rely on later moderators to apply points appropriately.
#2. Someone else mentioned... divide the score of a post into each category... it seems like a good idea to me.
Agreed. This is a *really* good idea.
#4. Dynamically generate the moderators. I'm not sure how it's done now, but as slashdot grows the number of moderators it will need grows too.
Essentially, Slash creates a number of moderators semi-proportional to the number of comments posted. It's explained more further here [slashdot.org].
One other comment regarding IP Banning... Instead of a simple ban, I think it would be more in keeping with the way Slash is going with all other filtering stuff and make it toggleable. That is, the user can choose to filter out all posts from any IP that has posted more than X items to a given thread that day. I suspect this would be pretty heavy on the server, but maybe there's a clever and efficient way to implement it.
Re:Super Troll status AKA reveal their IP address (Score:1)
1. What about people connecting through IPMasq/Proxies, or using dynamic IPs? I connect to the net through my uni (forced proxy, and a dynamic IP to the outside world anyway), and this means that one idiot could cause everyone's posts for a period of time (maybe just the time the article stays on the front page, but that's a lot of time for a dialup dynamic IP address).
What about displaying the ip address in the form 1.2.3.xxx? Maybe (although this would probably load the server), when a moderator tries to "SuperTroll", this would be disallowed if the reverse DNS lookup contains "cache","proxy", or something similar. This could possibly be abused though.
2. People may decide to do stupid DoS attacks against the displayed IP, which may affect lots of other people.
Maybe there should be an option "Ignore -1 posts from this IP", which would still have the problems in 1, but stop people doing DoS attacks.
2. There's still the potential for abuse. If something like this was done, then setting "SuperTroll" should require _all 5_ of the moderator points to be used, and require two moderators. The person who uses this option won't know if they're the first or second moderator to set this, and so would have to be really sure that they want this.
Just some thoughts.
Moderation Inadequate for Slashdot; see GroupLens (Score:1)
What you need is something more like GroupLens. This works as follows: Each person indicates, for each message read, whether or not he liked that message. These markings have no direct impact on the general public.
However, if you decide to use the feature, your markings are compared with others. The markings of people that have made selections similar to you in the past are given the most weight. Therefore, the articles that are given the most points are tailored to your specific preferences.
This is a far better solution. No more of this points madness; if people are not truthfully marking articles, it hurts nobody but themselves.
Why is slashdot not using this type of system?
Flagging my own comments for deletion (Score:1)
Any solution to this problem?
I am not sure if it is too much, if I could delete it myself but how about allowing me to flag it for deletion by some moderator - so two folks are involved?
Re:moderation of extremely nested comments (Score:1)
1: Should we allow AC to raise that flag? (I think not.)
2: Now we have another set of points to keep track of, and we might want to figure out how well each persons suggestions are recieved. 3: Do we give/take karma based on the response to the suggestion that a post be moderated? (give fractional karma for each flag you raise which is acted upon, take fractional karma if the post still hasn't been moderated a week later.)
Re:Just something I noticed... (Score:1)
I didn't agree initially, but now I do. I try to read everything at least down to 2, and I think this means you get all the intelligent comments, not just the ones lucky enough to make it up to 5.
Of course, there are still a few rare ones that make it up to 5, and some of them don't really deserve it. IMHO moderators should focus on looking for diamonds in the rough rather than further moderating up 3's and 4's.
Perhaps moderating up an article should get harder (requires more points) the higher it starts, so it would cost a moderator a lot of points (or alternatively take several moderators) to bring a 4 up to a 5, but only one to take a 1 to a 2.
How to M2 multiple moderations (Score:1)
The way *I'd* implement it, the M2 would be presented with *both* moderation activities and be able to score *both*. Same goes for the second example. Remember, it will most likely be on a sliding scale (say, from -5 to strongly agree) so each of the moderators will get the appropriate response. They'll be accountable only for their actions, not for another's.
Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...
Thanks, Rob! (Score:1)
Thank you so much for tweaking the auto-points for good karma. I like to initially read /. stories with a threshold of '2', and it was getting sort of tedious dealing with the generally safe postings of the anointed on the occasions when they weren't really contributing anything new. Initially it turned me off to the good karma bump altogether, but this seems like a good compromise: it'll reward /.'s best contributors and hopefully make reading with a '2' threshold a little more interesting.
I hope you move ahead with making anonymous posting a privilege of registered membership. If it deters even a few people from just spouting off because they happened by and have no more ties to Slashdot than that it's displayed on their browser at the moment, it's a good thing. There is clearly still room for abuse by registered users hiding behind momentary anonymity, but if an extra hoop has to be jumped through to gain that privilege in the first place, maybe it will help curb the "drive-by flamings."
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Michael Hall
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
Random thread sorting (Score:2)
Especially in the longer threads, virtually nothing past the first couple hundred posts seem to get moderated.
Maybe if moderators are required to look at articles with the top-level threads in random order, this could be solved...
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Re:Karma Bonus Optional (Score:2)
What happens when Rob can't post?
Re:Soft and hard anonymity (Score:2)
Of course, the overseas redirectors are safe from ADM, be that as it may, so don't get too paranoid. Of course, U.S. and Canadian redirectors aren't. A court order can grab their log files. Bletch.
-E
Story Moderation? (Score:2)
Still waiting to moderate (Score:2)
Really? That's strange. I have been reading/posting to Slashdot since late 1997/early 1998, have a high Karma, read what I think would be an average amount, but have never moderated. Once, I had moderator status, but then Slashdot crashed, and when it came back up, my points were gone.
Hmmm....I wonder if my account is broken somehow.
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Redundancy (Score:2)
Also, I know that I'm usually only skimming after the first few screenfuls; I may miss something interesting, but I only have so much time . . .
hawk
Revenge moderation (Score:2)
Or the opposite. "He moderated my post up. Obviviously a person of good taste, lets see if I can find a good message from him so I can return the favour.".
Re:Is "logged-in anonymity" really anonymous? (Score:2)
This is, of course, assuming that slashdot logs IPs for anonymous posts, but from previous talk about temporarily banning posting from abusive IPs, it seems that it does.
Re:My two cents... (Score:2)
2. I agree with this, actually, though I find that I'm adding the +1 bonus to about half of the comments I post. *shrug*
3. I disagree with the concept of a waiting period *entirely*. I think rather quickly, and can easily make 2 or 3 posts inside of a half an hour that, IMO, are as well-thought-out as I can make them. A waiting period would not be likely to change my posting habits except to discourage me from posting. I'd post one comment, and in that half hour, I would probably get bored and go browse another web site entirely.
Danger! (Score:2)
An AC posts something *legitimately* anonymously (so as to not be held accountable) that says some incriminating things about company X.
Company X has a few employees and friends that happen to have moderator abilities on Slashdot. Those moderators "pretend" the comment is a trollish comment, knock it down, and expose the AC's IP address. The AC's hostname turns out to be, say, pc152.sales.companyx.com.
Ruh roh.
If we could eliminate this possibility, though (perhaps by involving SEVERAL moderators in the decision), it just might work, though if people started realizing their IP address was being recorded in this fashion, and it *was* possible for it to be exposed, true anonymity would be lost and we'd lose some potentially valuable postings and posters.
Re:Slashdot needs journalistic standards (Score:2)
Perhaps a scale that included items like "validated first-hand", "validated by web presence", "unsubstantiated rumor", etc.
If nothing else, a "rumor" flag would be pretty nifty.
I agree.. (Score:2)
Meta-moderation just seems like an extra level of needless complexity. Perhaps we simply need more moderators to help keep things in check. Perhaps we just need to stress the fact that moderators are supposed to be watching out for badly moderated comments in addition to new comments that are over/underrated. (This includes the necessity that a moderator be reading *all* comments, not just those scored at 0 or 1 or better.)
Re:Fixing Slashdot Moderation (Score:2)
2) Eliminate Anonymous Cowardice... This sounds extreme..
Agreed. Since AC is used for a few different purposes, might it make sense to somehow provide a few additional tagnames people could choose from? There are *tons* of AC posts, it'd be nice to at least attempt to differentiate a bit...
3) Combat moderator overload by making more moderators
The problem here is that average posts may get marked higher than they should.
I think we're a tad on the lean side for moderators. Allowing a few more may help. One of the point of points I think is to put some gradiation into the posts, so that the reader is able to match the number of posts to how much time he has. So even if some average posts get marked a tad higher than others, this may be okay. This way maybe instead of having 200 +1 comments, 10 +2 comments, and 1 +3 comment, we'd have 150 +1, 50 +2, and 11 +3.
1) Make the score system secondary to classification system.
I *love* this idea! Definitely gets my vote! Extending your idea... Posters could choose to give an initial label their post themselves if they wish - "off topic", "joke", etc. Moderators might change it later, but it'd help key the filters a bit (and might help posters avoid getting moderated down for something that was intentially off topic or a joke.)
2) Personalize the scoring system for each reader.
Some have said this would be too complicated, but as long as there are reasonable defaults in the user settings, I think this could be good. Although I'm not sure I would bother with setting points for particular authors, and the point subtraction for AC's is built in (or do you mean to provide an override?) But being able to add/subtract from certain types of posts is very good.
Hmm... Some people might actually want to see the flame bait and trolls preferentially over the "normal" posts... I guess this could turn Slashdot into one of those old two-sided books that had one story when read one way, but turned upside down there's another story in it. That'd be... odd. Interesting and cool, but odd... -1 Interesting, -1 Insightful, +1 troll, +1 off topic... Probably it'd just encourage bad behavior.
Careful with "Pass on +1" (Score:2)
In addition, I added a much requested feature to allow posters to optionally pass on the +1 bonus when they post.
Be aware of a potential loophole here. If one wishes to up their karma, they could write a reply that they know will be good, and artifically de-flate it by passing on the +1 - thus being more assured of getting moderated up.
Now, I'm not sure if this is abusive, or if it is a "payment mechanism" to lure would-be abusers into writing good comments. ;-) I *think* that it is only abusive if there is a scarcity of moderator points... I think that simply increasing the pool of available moderator points would compensate for this behavior.
Yes, I'm probably stuck in game designer mode, and this may not even matter since all you get out of more points is this +1 anyway, but hey, points is points. (Btw, I think this new system could *really* make things a lot better. Good work!)
Percentage instead of Point rating (Score:2)
People are individuals. Each individual has a different definition of humor, trolling, insight, etc. What is a good comment for one is a bad one for somebody else. All comments are rated by a minority of moderators for all of the audience. We're all here, so why would we need representatives to preselect what is good or bad, why not have us choose on our own? Sure, moderation is optional (just change threshold), but recent events have shown that it's not as reliable as it should be!
How about an alternative: Every post offers a way to classify it. Every registered reader is allowed to select one of the categories. It's possible to change a selection once it was submitted, so changing votes is okay, but per account you can only vote once per posting. People will read the articles and comments, classify some of the posts, then click submit before leaving and go on. The page displays the total votes and percentages next to the posts so readers always see its classification. Since every reader can vote, even quiet lurkers are helping here (probably the majority - those who read most should be able to affect it as well as those who write there), things should be fair and balanced (if the majority is immature jerks, Slashdot is lost anyway, our whole community would be damned). Abuse wouldn't be such a problem since the reasonable classifications would outweigh the bogus ones.
There's one drawback: It's not as easy to set a threshold - it can get very complex. To solve this problem, people's preferences should let them set up point values for each category. For example: humor +1, insight +2, flamebait -3, and so on. Then some mathematical formula calculates the final score for each comment which is compared to your threshold. People who don't log in will get a default template or something. That way every registered user can customize Slashdot to their liking, valueing each category the way they want, for themselves.
The only problem is how to calculate such a per-user-rating and apply it to the pages. That's a lot of processing that should be done client-side which would only be possible by using a Java frontend or something similar. Perhaps it's not possible or usable for Slashdot at our current technology level? But it sure would be the best way! Maybe there's a way if enough people think about it...
The side effect would be to make moderators obsolete since there won't be any objective scores but only subjective presentation customized to each reader. Putting all registered users back on the same level, no elite, and Coward-ship is a self-selected status. No ego surfing (or posting / moderating) anymore.
Competing with karma (Score:2)
For example, moderating posts the way that they think that the meta-moderators would like, rather than the way they themselves feel.
This could lead to opinions that differ from the norm being stifled.
Some comments on slshdot annoy me, but that's the price to pay for free speech.
Re:The social status sytem (moderation) (Score:2)
Not that I would stick up for the Borg assimilating the human population's communication infrastructure, but there are times that a opposing view is needed. It can bring about good discussion and sometimes flames. If an argument is presented in good fashion, I have often seen moderators bump it all the way up in score.
Its not wrong to debate. It cures braindead clique mentality.
Re:more points.. (Score:2)
When you tightened down later, it really seems like the quality level dropped. There wasn't enough reinforcement of good ideas or negative reinforcement of the stupid stuff.
I think it would be an interesting experiment to try liberalizing the amount of moderator points given away each day for awhile.
Remember,
It probably should be a function of the average number of posts per day or something. If there are 2X as many posts, then there will need to be 2X as many moderators or 2X as many points per moderator to maintain the same degree of collaborative filtering.
Whatever the formula ends up being, I think we would be better off if there were more points available than we have now.
Karma coma - extending the metaphor (Score:2)
There could be a sliding scale for such transmigrations, with high-karma posters getting cool priviliges or better html tags and first-posting trolls getting reborn as MEEPT or Bill_Gates.
Just a thought.
:-)
Moderators should have the chance to justify (Score:2)
I suspect meta-moderators will be every bit as susceptible to abuse of power as regular moderators are. Who watches the watchers who are watching the watchmen?
Re: (Score:2)
Slashdot needs journalistic standards (Score:2)
... (Score:2)
don't you think it's time for something new?
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Tag Anonymous Cowards on a Story basis (Score:2)
Also it would make having coversations with ACs easier. Assign each AC a unique ID the first time the post to a story and kept that ID for the remainder of the story (use the ip address). It would allow people to be anonymous but identifiable.
Re:Testing Anonymous: Failed (Score:2)
Sounds like "working as designed" to me. Whether anonymous or not, you could steer the discussion toward your own points by moderating up anything in the same vein (or if you're a real prima donna, down). Personally, I think you should be able to post to an article, say, 24 hours after you moderated on it without retracting the moderations. And with the M2's now, maybe even less of an interval would be necessary.
S/N Ratio (Score:2)
Personally, I like real information... to be able to get to the heart of a topic quickly enough; humor is fun, and animates the discussion... but sometimes takes too much away from the real content. Other such things (ie flamebait) should also be identified, and filtered at will...
It is fairly easy to filter stories, but comments cannot be filtered in the same manner. The problem is that the preferences become too complex, and that you have to check your options frequently to discover new features.
Personally, I think that the system works, as long as at a threshold of 1, you get a "full" discussion, at 2, you get only the "good" comments, and at 3 you get an executive summary. But the current moderation system breaks down when valuable information is nested... too much of the "good stuff" can be three levels down or so-too hard to scan, and too easily missed with a high threshold. But, if it is that deep, it is somehow "off topic..."
Rob-If you really want to improve the system, you might look at less linear ways of presenting the data. The ideas of having different scoring mechanisms is a start (type of comment, type of information, quality...). I don't have any fantastic thoughts on how to do it right now, but whenever there are 400 comments on a subject, filtering alone isn't going to do enough to control the data... no matter how much moderation is done.
Ultimately, if
Re:just thanks (Score:2)
I agree; I think there should be many more moderators with many more points. And a five point scale is hardly enough to get a good "community vote" on what is a good post or not. That's what we really need, a concensus opinion from the most informed, most interested participants of the
If I were to moderate and see a good, but not great post with a 3, I wouldn't "plus one" it, but let someone else if they felt it was worth it. But if I saw a post scored 15 of 25, I might feel it needs a little adjustment up or down. And with a larger scale to vote on it, I wouldn't feel bad about moderating a moderately good post downward, as long as I wasn't penalizing someone.
There are a lot of posts that are redundant as well, but aren't bad in a way that deserves moderating downward if they result in the poster having karma taken away because they aren't unique enough to please whoever has moderation duties at the time. That's nearly as bad a trouble as flamers when it comes to trying to read
I'd take a whole forum of comments deemed worthy by a large group of informed participants over the choices of a few "chosen elites" any time.
All things considered, I think that things are going pretty well, so far.
One Thing... (Score:2)
Re:Tag Anonymous Cowards on a Story basis (Score:2)
During a couple of the Instant Messanging stories, it appeared that someone was going through and flaming everyone who mentioned Jabber (www.jabber.org) by saying jabber was insecure and we should all use this other client with strong encryption. (i can't remember the name of it-- i think it started with a C. anyone know what this is?)
But the thing was, you couldn't really tell if it was just one person or many people. I mean, the writing styles were somewhat similar and such, but since it was all Anonymous Coward you couldn't tell for sure.
While there really isn't anything wrong with this person promoting a secure IMing client, it would have been nice to know whether this was really a massive groundswell of support or just one guy going through and checking for jabber references.
Just situations like that and stuff..
Some random thoughts... (Score:2)
In addition to this idea, that is just a feature-idea *featurist*, I have a wuestion; What is the reason for the totally random grant of moderator access? Either, you could let everyone have access (Give us one point for each, let's say, 10 of written comments). That
To answer the problem; why not give people "restricted moderator access"; i.e. let them moderate down in a thread, but not higher up? That would allow good postings deep down in the tree to pop up to the top. Another solution, that is not that fair, is to double moderator points given to a posting deep down in the tree (Have a factor that increases the moderator points given deeper down, say points_recieved = points_given + 0.5 * thread_depth).
This might be a bit off-topic, but anyway, I've thought a lot of it, so I'l put it here... It would be nice to have a type of articles that are posted by average users, and not reviewed by Rob or anyone else. Of course they should be filterable! That would allow general comments on
Law of Unintended Consequences (Score:2)
Some personal observations
Fact - you get moderation points the more you post
Positive feedback loop - more people naturally post
Negative Feedback - threads get rather lengthy
Fact - more messages mean less time spent scanning through low-scores
Negative feedback loop - interesting messages can get ignored in the noise
Positive feedback - people set higher quality barriers
Fact - moderation is applied equally to all posts
Negative feedback loop - early posts are more likely to be well read/received and later ones ignored (think Fibonnacci series and integrate the total number of moderated posts)
I think we should congratulate Rob on trying to satisfy the largest common subset of
- self moderation - give people the chance to nominate their posts as funny/troll/comment etc. This will (hopefully) reduce the load on the moderators
- give other readers more control over their filter, have the initial coarse numbering scheme, then finer control like (ignore trolls 2, add +1 to person X, add it 50% people consider it funny)
- 15 minute of fame - one random (or semi-random) post per thread to be given score of 5. This is like random breath testing, if you know that your post could be eyeballed by a sizeable fragment of
- karma seekers - the problem with mass communications is that mediocracy tends to dominate, e.g. newsgroups find inital experts are driven out by the noise. It would be nice if I could permanently donate my karma to the rare gurus that do wander past so that they could be encouraged to post more enlightening information rather than fighting through the history ranks
As noted in a thread, long long ago, SlashDot is more like a cocktail party than newspaper so if Rob can find good mechanisms for finding and amplifying interesting thoughts, we should all applaud him.
Regards,
LL
Further suggestions (Score:2)
2) To this end, could the "no score +1 bonus" allow one to decrease one's score to 0 or even -1? Sometimes posts are offtopic but still valid, and so should be posted but pre-moderated down.
3) (This is a little offtopic, but at least regards improving slashdot.) Remember how Alan Cox said that (paraphrased) "the problem with slashdot is that everyone tries to get 'First Post' instead of 'First Patch'"? Well, why not post bug tracking info on slashdot? Registered users could filter it out. All Rob would have to do would be to give story-posting privs to list maintainers. Then we'd start getting the slashdot effect on bugs.
Re:Competing with karma (Score:2)
Most of the time what I would contribute to a story has already been said ny the time I read it. So I see no need to add another "me too" post to Slashdot, and I don't. However, there were times that I have posted what I thought were fairly insightful, non-repetitive comments that haven't been asked yet. It's not that often, but I do comment.
After reading this article I went check my Karma and found I have a -1! I figured maybe I had a zero because I rarely post, but a negative score would indicate someone didn't like what I wrote. But I don't remember when the last time I posted was, and what it was I said.
And herein lies my problem: I don't know what I did to deserve a negative score, and I have no way to find out why.
I understand cross linking each and every comment would be a ridiculously large task, but couldn't we at least have a statement like: One negative point scored:Flamebait in article "SoAndSo" in our preferences page?
I don't care who gave me the score. At least then I can dig up the story(ies) that have done me harm and hopefully make sense of all this.
Re:Karma coma - extending the metaphor (Score:2)
My $.02 (Score:2)
Another philosophical point is that you are striving to create a system that maintains dynamic equilibrium. The system you are programming isn't silicon but grey matter. You are balancing all our (the readers) conflicting e-motional responses in order to balance the system just right. I find it fascinating how simple decisions (like if you were to remove Anonymous Coward) have unpredictable effects that unbalance the system.
In any case, here are my suggestions:
Re:Can we see who moderates ? (Score:2)
Re:Fixing Slashdot Moderation (Score:2)
match the number of posts to how much time he has. So even if some average posts get marked a tad higher than others, this may be okay. This way maybe instead of having 200 +1
comments, 10 +2 comments, and 1 +3 comment, we'd have 150 +1, 50 +2, and 11 +3.
I like this one the best. Under each story have five links (as opposed to the two now) with the number of comments. The first is the full monty, flame wars and everything and each one over corresponds with a certain higher score i.e...
(246 comments, 235, 200, 50)
Allowing for quickly getting the cream and ignoring the crap (until you want to swim in it
Different way to use points? (Score:2)
Unless the moderation system has changed since the last time I used it, you can bump the score up or down. How about being able to instead choose what you think the score should be? That way, a post doesn't accidentally get moderated from 1 up to 5 by four people who really just thought it was a 2. As a bonus, only one of the four moderators' points would be spent on the article.
I'm not sure how often this happens, but I know I've seen posts in the past that had a score of 5 that I thought were a 2 or 3 at best. I also know I've moderated something up from a 1 only to see it show up as a 4 when I reload after moderating.
Anyway, just my thoughts...
Re:Anonymous Cowards Are Necessary (Score:2)
Here's what I would do:
Implement an "Anonymous Citizen" creation screen that allows you to associate a new pseudonym with a password (without giving any details about who you are). Since only you know the password, only you can post with that pseudonym. This differs from the current /. login in that even /. doesn't know the email address of an Anonymous Citizen.
Next, try to limit the ability of people to create too many pseudonyms. One way might be to log a count of pseudonyms created per IP and not allow this to grow too large. A better idea (IMO) would be to only allow a pseudonym to be created by a registered user, and limit the number of pseudonyms created per user to something like 1 per month (note that /. would not be keeping track of what pseudonym(s) were created, just a count).
Finally, eliminate normal ACs and flag pseudoym users as the new Anonymous Citizens. ACs would still be treated differently than registered users, but a good AC could have enough karma to start their posting scored as a 1 or a 2, for instance.
I think that the benefits of this system would be many. What do you think?
"Funny" comments (Score:2)
While I have a sense of humour, I read comments to see feedback on the article, not the top 10 things about whatever. (As good as a few of the lists have been)
I think that the issue is that users with the +1 only need to be moderated up once to break into what I call the "stellar" comment levels. (Higher than 2). Only a minority of the comments which hit 4 for "funny" are (subjective) deserving of it. Maybe my issue is that people should start their humour posts without the +1.
Also, a question. Does anyone know if moderation on anonymous posts (from logged on users) counts on their karma?
It shouldn't, IMO.
------
Re:just thanks (Score:2)
isn't the quick & easy solution to this to give people karma when they moderate? that way, if you moderate 5 comments correctly you get, say 5 karma points. if a meta-moderator doesn't agree with your moderation he/she moderates it, and 2 points are subtracted, giving you a 3 point total gain. that way, if you do things right you'll only gain karma from the moderation, while if you don't there'll be less karma for you.
as far as I could read there's only one big karma bowl, not two.
the difference between the meta-moderation and the regular one is that this one has a specific amount of point set off to mark those comments that were moderated incorrectly. it would also be possible to increase the regular amount of moderation points, but that would be a pseudo-meta-moderation in my opinion, since you're no longer specifically going for the incorrectly moderated comments.
On karma (Score:2)
It's not as any of them will really restrict someone who really wants to troll or flame or whatever, but I'm at -6 and I've never posted a comment that was meant to be flamebait, nor trolling, and i'm not quite sure if any were redundant or not...
But that's another thing.. I don't know how you think its fair for people to be marked down for redundancy. Lord knows that a person can't read most posts in /., and usually I don't read more than about 10-15. If there are lotsa things further down in the comments that says the same thing(which is likely when you hit about 200-300 comments) and I don't see it, I get my post moderated down and more bad karma...
And its only very rarely that any posts ever get moderated up, really...
Maybe you should implement something to lessen bad karma over time. Ya know, if the people aren't screwing up, they're evidently doing something right and deserve to get their karma up.
The Daemon
Meta-moderation and ACs (Score:2)
Side effects of this are that if you post to a moderated down thread, you automatically incur a karma penalty...so those off the wall, or trollish threads will die sooner. Also, if AC is now considered just one person, AC's Karma will fluctuate according to the behavior of ACs...if ACs see their posts being automatically skewed downwards because other ACs are spamming, etc., they will be more inclined to get a real account, or post better posts. There must be a lower limit though (as I suspect there is), because any AC would then be able to screw over all other ACs by spamming, flaming, etc. Those are the risks of being an AC I guess...
I'm for "Auto-moderation"
Moderation? Overrated (Score:2)
Personally, I don't think meta-moderation is necessary. Of course, in some specific cases something will be moderated negatively that shouldn't have been, but in general, I have seen these comments go up again within a few hours. Moderators here do a great job, and although the moderation is not perfect, it makes reading Slashdot all the more enjoyable.
What is the importance of karma? Why go bonkers about it and worry about being negatively moderated, etc? Karma is only an indicator of your moderation history. By having high karma, you are known to post intelligent comments on Slashdot, and it is safe to assume your comments will not be flames or trolls. That's all there is to karma, and I hope it doesn't become a mark of status on Slashdot. As a matter of fact, I would suggest no one but you can see your karma score.
Other than that, I will always read comments with scores of 0, because you never know when an AC will have something insightful to say. Also, comments at -1 are worth a glance, because it's possible that the poster posted a controversial opinion but still has something to bring to the debate. However, in general, such comments are rarely rated down, a sign that Slashdot moderators are, on the whole, insightful and helpful. -1 comments turn out generally to be posts to the effect of '1st p0st d00d!!' or '1inux sux m1rc0s0ft rulz!!!!'
So keep moderation as it is; to me, it's way ahead of anything else done on other forums, and there's no need to feel it is imperfect. Kudos to Rob and the gang.
"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."
Metas do Multiply (Score:2)
This could get interesting.
It's tortoises all the way down, CmdrTaco. Want some recursive moderation code?
Zax
just thanks (Score:2)
Maybe someone could describe this MetaModeration to me a bit better? I don't think I quite understand it.
And I really do like the 'Post Anonymously' checkbox - maybe I'll implement something like that for my own site
Put it on User Info Page (Score:2)
You could make it part of each user's and put it on their User Info page. In addition to SoAndSo has posted X comments, you could add SoAndSo has doled out X amount of Karma on X comments and show the comments the moderator has moderated.
Re:Competing with karma (Score:2)
A lot of the discussion so far about moderation has been based on the assumption that the reading pleasure of slashdot frequenters is of utmost importance. But perhaps it would be a good idea to reconsider this view. What's the point of devising new rules and methods of discussion just to make it more pleasant? There are plenty of unplaisant things that can be said, that still contribute to the value and the reality of a forum.
I would not call the moderation system censorship. But I wouldn't call slashdot a free speech forum either. Whether this sounds pleasing to Rob's ears or not, any system where there is the possibility of automated filtering based on criteria set by third parties,(other than the writer and the reader) any discussion environment where voices can be volumed up or volumed down at the discretion of some judges.. any such system is NOT free.
And lack of freedom is never a good sign. Perhaps Rob ought to look towards this direction for some answers as to why the quality of the discussions on slashdot is declining.
Ironic isn't it..? The majority of people here support free software, yet they cannot handle the more basic concept of free speech.
Collaborative filtering? (Score:2)
For instance, everyone who had a handle could pick which articles they liked or disliked (or maybe by authors
Dunno what the precise algorithm is. It might be too much additional load on
I thought it might be a slightly different approach than the pure moderation system.
Re: Competing with karma (Score:3)
You post here to voice your opinion, clearly. Moderators are explicitly asked to moderate down only posts that are off topic or flamebait.
A lot of the discussion so far about moderation has been based on the assumption that the reading pleasure of slashdot frequenters is of utmost importance. But perhaps it would be a good idea to reconsider this view. What's the point of devising new rules and methods of discussion just to make it more pleasant? There are plenty of unplaisant things that can be said, that still contribute to the value and the reality of a forum.
IMHO, the moderation system is not intended for the viewing pleasure of the readers but to weed out bad posts and to help stand out the really good ones. If you want the raw and uncut stuff, read at -1. I, for myself, read at +2, just because I don't have the time to dig through hundreds of posts, just to find a few gems.
Moderators are also asked to moderate up comments that they don't agree with, but make a valid point in the discussion (but not posts that say something or other is better or worse and give no reason!).
I would not call the moderation system censorship. But I wouldn't call slashdot a free speech forum either. Whether this sounds pleasing to Rob's ears or not, any system where there is the possibility of automated filtering based on criteria set by third parties,(other than the writer and the reader) any discussion environment where voices can be volumed up or volumed down at the discretion of some judges.. any such system is NOT free.
That is correct. This system is not completely free, and IMHO it is good that way. I would just stop reading /. if had not choice but to read all comments. I prefer to read those few that other people (changing people!) deem worth reading. This approch I'd call a democratic approach, because moderators vote, rather than delete postings. IMHO, this is a improvement from usenet, where the approach is anarchistic and I have to keep my own scorefile or read all the posts and the valid points get drowned out in noise.
Regarding free speech: would you go to town hall and shout "The mayor is a turnip!" and complain about being removed? (Probably he is, but that's another story ;-)) Or would you complain when you are asked the leave the church, because you were talking loudly with your neighbor about the preferences of your ex-lover? IMHO you have every right to say whatever you want, but don't expect everyone to listen, and don't even try to force everyone to listen!
And lack of freedom is never a good sign. Perhaps Rob ought to look towards this direction for some answers as to why the quality of the discussions on slashdot is declining.
No, IMHO that's probably because it starts to become more and more crowded. IMHO, the quality didn't decrease too much, but I browse at +2, so... ;-)
Ironic isn't it..? The majority of people here support free software, yet they cannot handle the more basic concept of free speech.
Yes, they can. They just have chosen not to listen to everyone that happens to say something. Try joining a few large IRC channels and read everything. Or read news, but not just a few groups, and without kill- or scorefile! /. has grown to dimensions where it needs mechanisms to help people sort out the crap. (It doesn't force them to do that!) Usenet was completely free speech, and with the advent of AOL and the likes, it grew into a failure. So, what do you propose as a solution?
Meta-Moderation explained (Score:3)
Maybe I understood his explanation because I've been coding ceaselessly all Labour day, but here goes my attempt at translation:
"A [MetaModerator] gets 10 comments..."
An M2 logs in and is presented with a page which contains 10 moderated comments (and hopefully the article which they're commenting on) as well as further descriptors explaining what type of action was performed on them. The M2 then decides whether each decision was a good one, a neutral one, a silly, or even bad/spiteful/baseless/you-name-it one, and so indicates through some form provided for that purpose which is most likely right after the comment.
The program then attaches these decisions to a description of the moderators' behaviours. If you get a lot of good decision marks, your Moderation Karma increases. If you get a bunch of bad decision marks, it decreases, and you will eventually lose the ability to moderate if I understand correctly.
Hope that explained it, and Rob, I hope that's pretty much on the mark :)
Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...
Why moderation is a valid topic for /. (Score:3)
Well, Slashdot isn't just a news and facts site. First off, not everything posted in the articles is correct, and often, they raise more questions. The comment forum does exactly what its name implies: adds a community to /.. And often, the questions which are raised by these articles in the comments are also answered (albeit sometimes conflictingly) in that same forum. The comments forum, thus, is also a valuable place for learning more "news and facts".
Of course, adding this societal impact to /. does mean that we get all that comes along with a society. That means nonsense, back-biting, trolling, name-calling, as well as the brilliant contributions mentioned earlier, not to mention interjections of much needed (and appreciated) humour. And that means, unless we want this society to fall into anarchical chaos (which I'm sure some wouldn't mind or would even enjoy), we need to create some form of moderation.
We all who read /. regularly are members of this community, be it occasional or hard-core. Anything affecting this community (in this case, moderation) affects us. Thus, /. moderation is a valid topic for /. news.
Droit devant soi on ne peut pas aller bien loin...
Might I suggest... (Score:3)
luge
(who is busy picturing Rob rubbing his meta-lamp to summon the GOR, Gor Over Rob...)
Super Troll status AKA reveal their IP address (Score:3)
Normally, I leave the filtering on to NOT show the moderated posts under 0, but for that article, I went back and changed it to see what all the hoopla was about.
Needless to say, I was reminded of the time I spent a few minutes in an AOL chat room where I was instantly assaulted by a legion of 14 year old kids who just learned the same words as the AC in the Stevens article.
I started thinking of what can be done about these faceless, unaccountable children and came up with a rather extreme idea. What if these AC's could be revealed by IP?
Here's the idea.
1- Rob could add the ability to log IP addresses per comment. This normally would just sit in an unused database field.
2- Inform users in the "post comments" section that extreme stupidity and trollish comments could result in a moderator choosing to reveal their IP address.
3- When someone is in Moderation Mode, they would have the ability to choose something like "Super Troll" which would reveal the IP address of the person who posted the nasty comments.
4- Using "Super Troll" would use up 2 or all 3 moderation points. This would prevent people from just revealing IP addresses all over the place.
5- Perhaps, in the case of the Stevens article, if more then one moderator tags the AC as a Super Troll in more then one comment, then all the AC's comments in the article get the IP revealed. Which would then be referred to as Mega Troll.
Super Troll and Mega Troll would make AC's accountable and trackable. Perhaps the AC in the Stevens article would have not been such an ass if he knew he could become not so anonymous?
Many web based chat rooms have turned to posting IP addresses after the chat rooms became filled with stupidity. The process seems to work ok.
Just an idea.
Re:just thanks (Score:3)
1 - You come to Slashdot as usual.
2 - You're notified that you have "MetaModerator" status.
3 - You then wander around stories as usual.
4 - You see a comment that's been moderated down unfairly (or perhaps given too high a score - some people lately seem to be using two accounts, one for making comments and another with good karma for moderating up their own comments).
5 - You hit a button that indicates whether the comment was fairly or unfairly moderated.
6 - The original moderator's karma goes up or down, and yours goes up a little.
However, Rob's comment could also be taken to indicate that you're given a link to click on which then shows you a list of ten comments that have been moderated (say, within the last day), which you are then asked to score. This seems awfully inflexible and inefficient to me, but then, I'm not the one coding it in Perl...
(Feel free to jump in here, Rob, and tell me if I'm wrong.)
My Thoughts on Moderation (Score:3)
#1. Make moderation points last longer, or maybe not even expire. In the couple times I've had moderation points I only saw a couple things that I thought were worthy of them, and all the rest of the points ended up in
#2. Someone else mentioned that maybe instead of an averaged score it would be a good idea to divide the score of a post into each category and comments could have something like 50% flamebait, 30% troll, 20% funny. I never thought of this before, but it seems like a good idea to me. It would be more accurate, but on the other hand make filtering the bad posts more difficult.
#3. The idea of allowing users to log in and then post anonymously also sounds great to me and requiring people to do this to post anonymously sounds even better. I oppose completely eliminating anonymous posting because there ARE quality anonymous posts and it's a necessary evil. But still, if you make the anonymous users jump through hoopes to do it it'll stop the knee-jerk ACs while those who actually have something worthwhile to say but need to be anonymous for fear of their job or the like will still be able too.
#4. Dynamically generate the moderators. I'm not sure how it's done now, but as slashdot grows the number of moderators it will need grows too. If the number of moderator points given out is based on the number of comments posted in the last (insert time period here) instead of static, it would make keeping the code up to date a hell of a lot easier.
All in all, I don't mind the moderating system as it is but think the above would help improve it, in particular #1.
--
Reject
Re:more points.. (Score:3)
Anubis
"facts" are not always the facts. (Score:3)
I'd say "just ignore the comments", but I recently got into a discussion here with people who insisted that you should just "ignore" the bad comments by setting your threshold high and I insisted that we should complain and get rid of non-registered anonymous posting. But I think the "just ignore it" idea more aptly applies here, since you can very easily ignore all of the comments if you want. Separating the good comments from the bad is a bit more difficult.
The power of karma (Score:3)
That said, I would also like to suggest an experiment giving moderators either unlimited points or unlimited points to some threshold of karma. The meta moderation will allow the jerks to hang themselves big time and the heros to stand out.
The eye of the beholder (Score:3)
The attributes "Insightful", "Funny", "Interesting" and even "Flamebait" are rather subjective terms are they not. Surely what we are looking for most as readers of
So how about this for an idea - personally generated scores. Let everyone be a moderator (so long as they are logged in) for as many articles as they like (or don't like). Instead of giving absolute points to articles, give relative points generated on a per-user basis - basically, if I haven't read (or therefore moderated) an article, it will show up with a score that reflects the opinions of other people who have moderated similarly to me in the past.
That way, if somebody likes reading inflammatory drivel, articles that fit their tastes will show up with a high score for them because other people who like it will have marked those articles "up". Conversely, if somebody prefers reasonable, well balanced discussion, they are likely to find it marked as such by people with similar moderating habits to them. There are flaws with this type of system I'm sure, but it sounds plausible to me.
Collaborative filtering could be elegant...? (Score:3)
I'm also surprised that this has only been brought up twice. Because I don't think it's been getting enough press, and because I like explaining things, I'll go through it in more detail.
Any registered user would be able to assign a rating, on some arbitrary scale, to any comment, on the criterion "I would like to see more like this." The system would track correlations between users across comments and use these to generate a prediction of the rating of each comment by each user. The ratings are, of course, used to sort and filter messages for display.
This addresses several design concerns:
Several posters have voiced the concern that (say) some people will like "Funny" posts where others will dislike them. They have suggested several solutions, for example that there be an option [slashdot.org] in Preferences to set any given qualifier to be treated as a bonus or a penalty, or that ratings be explicitly multidimensional [slashdot.org]. The proposed system would handle such things implicitly. Also, it would give a basis for specialized rating that's fundamentally connected (if in a way that's a bit inflexible) to empirical evidence, rather than one that relies on a fixed set of somewhat arbitrarily-chosen and somewhat nonorthogonal qualifiers ("Informative", "Interesting", "Insightful").
In this design, abuse is fairly difficult. It is only possible to get "power" by granting ratings highly correlated to those of a given target audience. You can only use this power to try to knock down so many comments from that audience's sight before the engine decides your ratings are no longer correlated to those of that audience and you lose your power. Also, the system has a lot of inertia; it should take a large concerted effort to knock out any given comment.
Moderation points are restricted in the existing design because of the potential for abuse; as we see above, that's much less of a concern here. The proposed design also provides (to a certain extent) natural incentives to rate under-rated comments. A user who sees an incorrect rating for a given comment may stand directly to benefit by rating it himself, since it's possible that the engine doesn't yet know about him that he doesn't like that kind of comment. Of course, after the system has had some time to learn about the user, this explanation becomes implausible, and the alternative explanation -- that not enough people have bothered to assign a rating to this comment -- comes to the fore. In this case the user's only incentive to assign a corrected rating is his abstracted "public" self-interest.
In the existing design, certain controversial comments get large amounts of moderation points burned on them in either direction. This represents a waste of moderation effort. In the proposed design, the engine should be able to make a guess as to which user will be on which side of a controversy and show a different rating to each. This should limit the amount of wasted moderation effort.
In the current design, ratings are discrete and very granular. In the proposed design, ratings are continuous. (They also can exist over an arbitrary user-chosen range, since they're predicted to match the user's also-arbitrary ratings.)
A concern described for example here [slashdot.org]. With respect to the collaborative filter itself, every user is his own most powerful moderator; a concentration of "moderating power" within some viewpoint opposing that of the user is (to that user) merely irrelevant. (An exception would be the concerted knocking-out described above.) Of course, selection would still be possible in forces acting outside the filter, such as administration or top-level article-posting, but that's not necessarily a problem.
Some of the concerns that arise in this design:
While collaborative filtering has been an interest of mine for a while, I haven't actually looked at the literature on the subject (d'oh!), so I don't know how hard it would be to put together. It certainly wouldn't be trivial.
Again, I'm similarly clueless. I know there's linear algebra and sparse matrices involved, but that's about it. After all the prerequisite number-crunching is done, though, I can guess that the incremental cost of predicting a single rating for display shouldn't be more than about ten or a hundred numeric operations (depending on how much simplicity is chosen for the model that the number-crunching generates).
All the other proposed designs are fairly straightforward, and it's relatively easy to understand their workings and what might go wrong with them. This design is not simple. Understanding of its inner workings requires some technical knowledge, and it may have some hidden pitfalls that aren't obvious without study.
The proposed design requires gathering a significant amount of information from each user.
As described in the parent message. [slashdot.org] A related problem is that this design would cause an expansion of the discussion load on Slashdot because off-topic discussions would no longer be discouraged to the people interested in them.
A few concerns can be addressed by extending the proposal somewhat:
Clearly, the anonymous reader will need some kind of rating system. One option would be to perform principal-components analysis (that's what it's called, right?) on the entire body of ratings, and then use the strongest correlation as the one presented to the anonymous user as a representation of the interests of the Slashdot majority. Another option would be to take the top (say) five dimensions that come out of the analysis, investigate and hand-label them (#1: popular vs. unpopular; #2: funny vs. serious; etc.), and have the anonymous user assign a numeric weight to each, retained as a cookie.
Perhaps some days (or for some discussions) users will be interested in funny comments, and in other cases in serious comments. It might be a good idea to grant users some plural number of ratings categories, such that they can choose one or another (or mix among them, or even among the predefined ratings discussed above) for the purpose at hand. (Perhaps if a user hit the limit of a fixed number of categories, they could "retire" old ones they don't want anymore, to be removed from the engine's model (or whatever it is that happens to old ratings).)
It would probably be a good idea to give the engine some automatic ratings categories -- for example, some for authorship, to specify a rating of (say) 1 if a given person wrote the message in question and a no-rating if they didn't. This would give the engine more information to draw from, and in the example would permit it to associate authors with the ratings their comments get.
Some posters have stated that self-rating ("Off-topic", demoting oneself to 1, etc.) might be a helpful option. The proposed design makes self-rating impossible -- one can only give a single rating to any given comment, including one's own, and that rating may get drowned out by everything else that the system knows about the comment (its size, its writer's prior record, etc.). It's possible that this could be prevented by granting the writer the option of telling the system how much he wants the comment to be associated with him, such that his record doesn't reflect on the rating of his less-valued comments and vice versa. While this helps, it's only one-dimensional, so it doesn't help in case the author wants to flag the message 'funny' or something. Another option would be simply for the author to flag his message manually in the subject line, although then the flags might get propagated to replies' subjects and look weird. Of course, the whole thing isn't *that* much of a problem, since misrated messages are supposed to be self-correcting in the first place.
The drop-down list that currently selects the rating threshold has to give discrete options. The proposed design gives continuous-valued predictions, so it would probably need an input box or something, with maybe a list box to show what percentiles correspond to what ratings.
And finally, here are some strictly optional... um, options.
It's my sporadically-educated guess that the math that you have to use for this job inherently involves tracking of uncertainties -- if only because the sparse matrices need some way to distinguish between "rated as zero" and "unrated". It might be nice to include options in the user interface to make use of this uncertainty directly. For example, one could tell the engine to sort comments at the 95th percentile of their possible range, so as to highlight comments with a high uncertainty (i.e. not-yet-rated ones) for reading and rating; or at the 1st percentile, so as to only show the comments that the engine *knows* are good. At the very least, the engine should display its uncertainty level along with its predicted rating.
...perhaps a given user's determined preferences could be used to influence the choice of ads?
Moderation of AC's (Score:4)
Now, it seems to me that an "Insightful" post should have a score of at least 2 no matter what the source. So if a moderator marks an AC's post as Insightful or Informative, it should jump immediately from 0 to 2. I realize this can get complicated really quickly, for instance, if an AC posting with score 2 gets marked DOWN, does it go back to 0 or 1?
Just something I noticed... (Score:4)
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Moderator Moderation is Excellent, in Moderation (Score:4)
Unfortunately, Slashdot regresses at times. It grows a square jaw and furry, burrowed eye-sockets. It loses stature and walks in a hunched over lurch. In these times, it can not articulate its thoughts and resorts to grunting and pointing. And each time, even though it manages to return to its typically evolved state, a lot of us worry just a little that it may get stuck in that regressed period one of these days.
Many of us saw Slashdot regressing again this weekend. The entire Stevens article was appalling. What should have been a brief chance for people to thank the man and talk about his achievements and contributions became a free-for-all where civility evaporated from most of the posting souls and floated into the ether.
I would never have imagined that the people who frequent Slashdot would ever have conducted themselves so astonishingly and with such a lapse of sympathy. I thought that most of us were professionals. Professionals would not walk into the office and, upon the news of a co-worker's death, start bad-mouthing them and standing on their operating system / programming language / philosophical soap-box.
That article seemed to be the Columbine of Slashdot. The call to action, if you will. Now everyone at Slashdot seems to be frantically looking for a solution to allow us to moderate ourselves when we can't conduct ourselves in a tolerable manner on an individual basis. (I can only imagine what the people at Andover.net must have been thinking of this whole drama.)
But moderation alone is not the answer. We're familiar with the cliché that "absolute power corrupts, absolutely", but whatever degree of power is given to a person can be equally corrupted to that same degree. There are always going to be people who will use their small chance to have power to get a laugh or wreak a little havoc. Even something as simple as ticking the score of a post up and down on Slashdot can't be trusted to some people.
After reading the Moderator FAQ the last time I wielded moderator privileges, I was of the understanding that the pool of posters was plucked from the group of Slashdoters who were in the median range. That is, they made the average number of posts, visited Slashdot the average number of times and did not have a history of heavily negatively-moderated posts of their own.
Which means that the people who abused that chance were the same people who had been treated fairly in the past by having their posts moderated appropriately.
So the answer Rob has devised is to moderate the moderators. This strikes me as a parallel to fixing a government problem with another government program (making government larger).
I actually agree with this idea, though. The average Slashdot reader is probably a rather agreeable sort who isn't going to misuse his or her points. So when the occasional misuse occurs, the chances that one of the other moderators will correct the misuse is pretty high.
A typical scenario that I've seen is the following, which occurred to me (I'm using myself as an example, but I have seen others have the same experience):
Out of four or five posts I made in the last 24 hours, two of them were marked as flamebait -- without cause, I feel. Yet, two of the other posts were moderated to a +2 and a +3. None of the posts were written with the intent to disrupt, inflame, anger, disturb, insult or offend anyone. All were intended to share one person's view-point and eventually, disappear into the Chasm of Old Slashdot Posts.
One of my posts seemed to be moderated strictly out of bias or maliciousness. While the post had been ticked to flamebait, it simultaneously drew a half-dozen emails from fellow Slashdotter's who agreed with what I said and thanked me for voicing it. A couple even went so far as to say that they intended to make a donation to W. Stevens' favorite charity (which was discussed in an earlier post) after reading my comments.
My comments were not particularly insightful. In fact, most of my comments are not particularly insightful or funny, even when moderated with such notation. But being moderated down as a result of a moderator's misuse of the system is aggravating and frustrating. Especially when it reduces a post that, at least, had some heart and thought put into it to the same section of Slashdot as the "I'm jizzing in my pants" and "first post" comments.
I hope that when people receive their moderator-moderating points, they do not just skip them to move on to moderating un-moderated articles, but take the time to browse the previously moderated ones, too.
I also hope that there is a way to allot karma to moderators. Those who use their moderation points wisely could, perhaps, get an extra point or two. Those who squander them and are constantly over-moderated by other moderators who come along and clean their mess should lose a couple karma points (in the very obvious and malicious instances).
Moderation seems to be a very fickle thing around here. Sometimes it lifts a hum-drum comment far above the level most would agree it belongs at and other times it kicks a well-deserving comment under the rug to be ignored.
Nobody knows the absolute and correct answer to the whole problem, but unless moderation is done wisely, fairly and reliably, a lot of people are going to be discouraged from participating.
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icq:2057699
seumas.com
Nameless can be good... (Score:4)
Makes you wonder how many high and mighty people in the tech world are AC's here....
My two cents... (Score:4)
The way I understand your implementation of karma, every post I make influences my karma and goes into the number to be averaged. This means that every post I make has to be awesome. A large number of responses to other people's posts w/ questions or clarifications aren't likely to be moderated up, so when I do post my "awesome" comment, the effect of the moderation applied to it is watered down by all of the unremarkable comments I made. I think that only moderated comments should count towards karma.
I think that the opposite approach should be taken. The default post wouldn't have the bonus, with a check box to enable it. I see a lot of lame comments at a 2 or 3.
You mentioned in the moderation FAQ that you were thinking of implementing a waiting period inbetween posts. I think this is an excellent idea. Imposing a half-hour or hour waiting period between posts would be fine. It would force
This is where I want the biggest change. The current moderation system penalizes well thought out comments. The sooner you post, the more likely your chance of being moderated up. Later posts have little chance of being moderated, because most moderators have moved on to newer articles. For example, I posted to the Berkeley removes advertising clause [slashdot.org] article. I researched copyright law and posted a article related to the many posts on GPLing BSDL code. However, because I posted on Saturday, two days later, there is no chance of my comment [slashdot.org] being moderated.
And what about the commments that are a few layers into a thread? What about the comments tacked onto the end of a thread? The point is, there are a lot of comments slipping through the moderation cracks. I think that you need a radical change to the moderation system.
Here's my proposal. I realize that it is probably extremely difficult to integrate any of this into your system, but maybe some of the ideas can be adapted to fit in.
Instead of giving moderators points, give them articles. You use the current system for selecting moderators, except you do a check everytime someone accesses an article. So when Joe Schmoe tryies accessing the "Microsoft's new evil plan..." article, his chances of being a moderator are checked. If he isn't selected, he goes onto view the page normally. If he is, however, he is taken to the moderator version of the page and given, say, 5 comments to moderate. The page looks like the standard version. The article at the top, comments below, but inbetween is the listing of his articles to moderate, listed similiar to the way your articles are listed in your user page. As I mentioned, the rest of the comments are below it, but the catch is nothing (including the 5 to moderate) has a score displayed. Now, Joe's job is to read those 5 (or 3 or whatever) comments (and any of the other comments) and give those five a score. Once he does that and submits it (or he clicks the "Decline" button), he is taken to the standard version of the page and he is free to post comments.
Couple more things.
This way, one comment doesn't get moderated 50 times, and hopefully all comments get moderated at least once. If the threshold for moderator is set high enough, every comment should get moderated multiple times, with the final score being the average of those moderations, possibly weighted by the moderator's karma.
This is done in the scripting, so you don't have two moderators moderating all of the same articles.
In fact, you could not display any comments until you get 20 (or 10 or whatever), which would cut down on those annoying posters who try to get first post (like it's a race or something). Or, perhaps you have something like a moderation acceleration curve, where the chance to moderate is modified by the number of posts.
So long as comments from any thread they have responded to are banned, there is no reason they shouldn't be able to. It isn't very likely that they would remember what score articles have gotten if they had been there before, and they would most likely get newer articles that they hadn't seen yet. This way, the more traffic a discussion gets, the more moderation.
Everybody starts at 3, and the better moderators increase in the number of articles they moderate, up to their maximum. Also, perhaps people with a default bonus can only be moderated by people with an equal or greater default bonus. This prevents trolls from getting a large number of articles to mark down, or getting a chance to mark down people who may be over their head. : )
Many
These are just some ideas. I have tons more, if you're interested. I realize implementing any of these may be impractical, but maybe they'll trigger something that is. I think that encouraging more moderation is only a good thing, and by increasing the moderation threshold so that every comment gets moderated multiple times, you'll increase the usefulness of the moderation system.
Thanks,
n8
Is "logged-in anonymity" really anonymous? (Score:5)
If in the future, people are required to give a handle or an email address to post "anonymously", their identity could be compromised, since /. would have an email address that might be possible to use to track down the person.
Not that I don't trust Rob and Co. with my privacy-- they have proved time and time again to be reliable. But such a record of the source of "anonymous" postings might even be exploited against their will.
Case in point: some guy X posts something "anonymously" in slashdot that offends some powerful company. Company considers the post to be difamatory, and demands slashdot give the email address of the poster. Slashdot refuses; the company sues slashdot for their posting records.
Even if the suit is unsuccessful, it wouldn't definitely be nice for /. to get harrassed.
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Anonymous Cowards Are Necessary (Score:5)
http://www.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/09/0
http://www.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/09/0
Read these to understand why AC posts are excellent to have around.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Once you pull the pin, Mr. Grenade is no longer your friend.
moderation of extremely nested comments (Score:5)
The thing where it always displays the full text of posts score:4 or higher is nice, but the problem is the moderators usually don't bother reading messages nested that deep. so they just scroll by without even knowing that message is there, and it stays at score:1.
maybe you ought to set up some kind of flagging system, something where everyone, even non-moderators can say "this derserves moderating up".. and even though it wouldn't count in points, a little red icon invisible to non-moderators would appear next to the posting's listing in the parent threads. so that the moderators would know it's worth looking at.
I dunno how well this would work-- seems pretty easy to abuse. You'd have to set it up so people couldn't flag their own posts.. might be worth thinking about though.
Fixing Slashdot Moderation (Score:5)
The Steven's piece has pointed out several weaknesses in Slashdot moderation. If Slashdot moderation were ideal all you would have to do is set your threshold to 1 and you wouldn't have to worry about this. This is not an ideal system
Here are some of the previous proposals:
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1) Make it easier to score thing negative.
The current moderation system can be overloaded by spam like attacks. This is useful because you want moderation pts spent on finding good posts, not weeding out bad ones. But how do you make sure this is not abused? or that valid but possibly inflammatory comments are not marked down? Both things will happen.
2) Eliminate Anonymous Cowardice...
This sounds extreme.. even if we do something simple like requiring a mail address to post I think many good comments from knowledgeable
sources will not be made.
3) Combat moderator overload by making more moderators
The problem here is that average posts may get marked higher than they should.
Here goes what I propose as a solution.
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1) Make the score system secondary to classification system. Let moderators classify posts as "Funny", "Informative", or "Flamebait" without spending pts. This way a post might show up as 30%flamebait but 70% funny. This make fair moderation a non-issue because every moderator gets a say about every post. Add a second category to measure the quality of the post as "Must Read", "Good Read", or "Average" this might cost points to moderate or simply be an average of what all the moderators think.
2) Instead of having moderators make only 5 moderations take a look at post volume on that subject. Discussion threads with a very high number of posts need more moderation than normal. Detect this and let moderators make multiple changes cheaply in these threads.
2) Personalize the scoring system for each reader. Already in preferences there are ways to add pts to long posts or subtract from short. This would be an extension to let the reader decide what kind of posts show up. Here goes a list of possible features.
1) each feature listed here may be turned on or off in preferences
2) add/subtract pts to posts from certain authors.
3) subtract pts from all AC's
4) add/subtract from certain types of posts -i.e. humor +1 flamebait -1.