This is part of The Pile, a partial archive of some open source mailing lists and newsgroups.
Subject: [Slashcode] A Moderation Proposal
From: Bob McElrath <rsmcelrath@students.wisc.edu>
Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 02:17:12 -0500
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I humbly submit the following idea for your consumption. I would love
to see this happen, and would even implement it myself, but I don't run
a slashcode site, and I have precious little time as it is.
:: Motivation ::=20
1) Slashdot suffers from the "benevolent moderator" syndrome.
That is, in order for its moderation system to work, it requires
moderators that are intelligent, critical, and unbiased. Selection of
such is subjective at best, and time consuming for your benevolent
moderators. Is a given moderator qualified to strike down some
technical error; can the moderation system determine this?
2) Undermoderation: the vast majority of posts don't get moderated at
all. Those that do post early. Ongoing conversations will never have
later posts moderated up, no matter what interesting info they contain.
Well-informed posts, which usually come after a thorough reading of the
material in the article, will come late, and thus have less opportunity
for moderation (not everyone reads, or obeys, or can be expected to obey
the guidelines).
:: A Proposal :: (in brief, details follow)
1) Allow every user to moderate.
2) Allow users to select comment display order by their moderation (i.e. I
want to see "interesting+insightful" and not "offtopic+troll")
3) Create privelaged "experts", one for each topic. Lawyers for law
topics, scientists for science topics, etc.
4) Reserve meta-moderation for experts, mostly to make sure experts are
really experts.
:: Details ::
1) Clearly the current system would not work if every user moderated.
Instead I propose a series of moderation buttons on the right-hand side
of the title for each post. Behind each button use onclick=3D"..." to
activate a bit of javascript that will send the input off to the server
WITHOUT LOADING A NEW PAGE. As users read, they would click these
moderation buttons, not because the moderator guidelines told them to,
but because after people read posta they think to themselves
"hmmm...that's interesting", or "this guy is an asshole", and would
probably click a button to say as much if there was one right there.
(Coincidentially, I think the viability of this is directly related to
finding a set of buttons that accurately reflect the spectrum of things
a user would think to himself after reading a post)
|This is a subject (Score:1) interesting agree well=
-written
|by username on 01:45 AM May 26th, 2000 EST (#65) offtopic disagree infl=
ammatory
|(User Info) http://my.homepage.com
(opposing viewpoints intentionally placed opposite one another)
2) Given that with each post is stored the number of times it has been
moderated in each moderation category (offtopic, interesting, troll,
etc...), the user can select which of these moderation categories are
most important to him. Posts would then be displayed in that order.
One can even envision new categories like "controversial", which is for
posts which receive lots of opposing moderations (i.e. lots of
interesting AND lots of overrated). With access to this kind of raw
data, users will be better able to select the kinds of posts they want
to see.
3) Experts moderate in exactly the same method as regular users, but
their moderation carries extra weight when moderating a topic they are
an "expert" on. In addition, they should be given extra buttons like
{uninformed, informed, just-plain-wrong, etc}. The reason for this is
that I see many highly rated comments that are just plain wrong
(especially on science and law topics). Most slashdotters know a lot
about linux and programming, but little about theoretical physics and law.
4) Meta-moderation among "experts" in a given topic would allow the
identification of controversial viewpoints within a field and people
claiming to be experts when they really aren't. Of course, if one were
to invest some manpower in checking the credentials of "experts", part
of this could be overcome.
:: The statistics argument ::
By placing a maximum of 5 moderations on any given post, you're in the
low-statistics realm, and as anyone can tell you, fewer data points =3D
higher errors, even if the data points are "good". By allowing everyone
to moderate, you move to the high statistics realm, and the accuracy of
judgements made about posts improves. Since many more people read
slashdot than post, there should be many times more moderations than
posts.
I think that by using javascript to send a small snippet of data
containing the comment id and moderation request to the server, you
could do this with relatively low overhead on the server. And think of
how many fewer rants about moderators you'd get as comments on slashdot!
I could go on about how to avoid fraud (ballot stuffing), and how
"noise" moderations can be normalized out, but this is long enough. I
will be happy to discuss further if someone likes this idea.
I hope someone reads down this far and seriously considers this. It
would truly transform slashdot into a "community", as all the mainstream
media likes to call it...
===
Subject: Re: [Slashcode] A Moderation Proposal
From: Chris Nandor <pudge@pobox.com>
Date: Fri, 26 May 2000 08:44:42 -0400
Motivation ::=20 1) Slashdot suffers from the "benevolent moderator"
>syndrome. That is, in order for its moderation system to work, it
>requires moderators that are intelligent, critical, and unbiased.
>Selection of such is subjective at best, and time consuming for your
>benevolent moderators. Is a given moderator qualified to strike down
>some technical error; can the moderation system determine this?
Moderators are not chosen by anyone. Everyone is qualified to be a
moderator, basically, if they post enough and their moderator ability
is not specifically revoked. That is, you can be a moderator just if
you wish to, but I can take that from you as admin, if you abuse it.
There is nothing subjective about who is chosen; it is purely objective.
This is why we have metamoderation. Your moderations are judged. If
you moderate poorly, then you are punished, either by loss of karma,
or by loss of ability to moderate.
>2) Undermoderation: the vast majority of posts don't get moderated at
>all. Those that do post early. Ongoing conversations will never have
>later posts moderated up, no matter what interesting info they contain.
>Well-informed posts, which usually come after a thorough reading of the
>material in the article, will come late, and thus have less opportunity
>for moderation (not everyone reads, or obeys, or can be expected to obey
>the guidelines).
Yep. The idea is that at such a stage, moderation is not needed as much.
>:: A Proposal :: (in brief, details follow) 1) Allow every user to
>moderate.
We do, if they are "eligible". We can't let every joe who has an
account moderate, because that opens it up to far too much abuse.
People would -- I can guarantee it -- create many accounts just so they
can moderate over and over again. There is nothing to stop people now
from doing that, but they need to actually use and post under each
account in order to be eligible to moderate.
But basically, we cannot allow everyone to moderate because of the
abuse that will follow. I see no way to prevent it if everyone is
allowed to moderate. You may think the statistics of having everyone
moderate will overcome it. I don't see it happening. I create
1000 accounts. I then use all of them to moderate my posts way up.
Sure, we can go in and cancel the accounts. But then someone else
does, then someone else, and then another. Sounds like fun, right? :)
It won't work. Perhaps you can think of a way to prevent such abuse
without putting undue burden on the people who run the site, but I doubt
it.
>2) Allow users to select comment display order by their
>moderation (i.e. I want to see "interesting+insightful" and not
>"offtopic+troll")
Hm. I am not sure how interesting such a grouping would be. I don't
think even "don't show me troll" would be very interesting. Perhaps
I get five interesting moderations and one troll. This is why we use
a point system, so it is the overall judging of a post that matters.
>3) Create privelaged "experts", one for each topic.
>Lawyers for law topics, scientists for science topics, etc.
>4) Reserve
>meta-moderation for experts, mostly to make sure experts are really
>experts.
Well, you are really arguing that meta-moderation shouldn't be necessary.
With the kind of numbers you are talking about, moderating individual
moderations would be kinda pointless.
>:: Details :: 1) Clearly the current system would not work if every user
>moderated. Instead I propose a series of moderation buttons on the
>right-hand side of the title for each post. Behind each button use
>onclick=3D"..." to activate a bit of javascript that will send the input
>off to the server WITHOUT LOADING A NEW PAGE.
I think I can safely say there is no way that we will make the Slash
code, especially for a user feature, dependent on JavaScript. Even if
the Document Object Model were stable enough across the major browsers
to support such a feature, and I am doubtful it is, there are plenty of
people who want to moderate who don't use JavaScript, or even a
JavaScript-capable browser.
I know I would have JavaScript turned off in Netscape if it weren't for
the fact that Netscape has a serious bug that when JavaScript is turned
off, style sheets are turned off, too.
I suppose it is conceivable to have two methods, on for where JavaScript is
on, one for where it is not. Jeez, the page takes long enough to load
as-is. But I'd rather not have to deal with such a beast unless there were
a very clear and significant benefit.
>3) Experts moderate in exactly the same method as regular users, but
>their moderation carries extra weight when moderating a topic they are
>an "expert" on. In addition, they should be given extra buttons like
>{uninformed, informed, just-plain-wrong, etc}. The reason for this is
>that I see many highly rated comments that are just plain wrong
>(especially on science and law topics). Most slashdotters know a lot
>about linux and programming, but little about theoretical physics and
>law.
Well, you can always make these "experts" into "authors" and give them
unlimited moderation, so they can moderate the heck out of anything
they want to. We will be adding the ability to have additional
moderation categories, but I am not sure about adding special categories
for "experts" or "authors".
>I hope someone reads down this far and seriously considers this. It
>would truly transform slashdot into a "community", as all the mainstream
>media likes to call it...
It is a community now. It doesn't need to be transformed into one.
Whether or not it is as effective as it could be is debatable.
===