Comments About Comments 276
theodp writes "This weekend's NY Times is all-about-the-comments. First, Michael Erard recounts the history of Web site comments and explains how their technical origins have shaped the actual commentary we've come to expect as usual today. On dealing with people-behaving-badly, Erard writes, 'Only a few [high-traffic sites] seem to have tried user-moderation systems like the one developed by Slashdot's creator, Rob Malda. Founded in 1997, Slashdot rapidly began to suffer from what Malda called 'signal-to-noise-ratio problems' as tens of thousands of users showed up. Rather than embracing the chaos (which was a hallmark of Usenet, another digital channel of communications) or locking things down with moderators (which e-mail lists did), Malda figured out a way for users to moderate one another. Moderation became like jury duty, something you were called to do.' Next, NY Times community manager Bassey Etim, who oversees 13 comment moderators, offers up his comments on comments, agreeing that 'the comments are where the real America is.' Finally, there's Gawker's next-generation Kinja, which aims to further blur the lines between stories, blog entries, and comments."
Re:The most valuable part of some sites (Score:5, Interesting)
I same those comments as bookmarks. I wonder why there's not a "favorite" option to save them.
Everyone should have a single "Supermod" point once per month that would work as a normal mod point except it would allow going past +5.
So after the holidays we could quickly read the articles with only the very few +6+ posts.
This is beyond stupid. . . . (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I've got 14 mod points (Score:4, Interesting)
You can prevent people from using them as a weapon in discussions they themselves have posted in.
Bah, no competent Slashtroll has less than 4 accounts to cycle. One to post, two to upmod, a fourth to badly argue against the initial post, and two anonymous comments mocking everyone.
I've thought about setting up a second, sock-puppet account with which to argue with myself, but haven't yet, either due to laziness or a general lack of self-interest; not sure which, and really don't care enough to bother with it.
PS yes, that sounded as insane in my head as it does on the screen. Fuck it, it's Monday - posting anyway :)
Re:The more moderated, the less honest (Score:4, Interesting)
How is moderation by site-users more honest than moderation by site-operators? You get biases either way.
A blessed and approved site admin has ultimate authority to delete viewpoints that disagree with his. It's won't have a community feel - it is simply an opinion portal for the admin. And frankly, most people have so many biases that they're unable to pull it off and keep their site both interesting and relevant. The internet's history is littered with these kinds of failures; see kuro5hin for a dramatic example.
By contrast, on Slashdot each user is given very few mod points, and then only when they participate positively, and is further prevented from moderating in a thread where they've posted. It limits one person's ability to really sway a discussion. Instead, you get a general overall idea of which comments are worth more according to the entire community. (There's also the flag mechanism for notifying an admin of true spam and racist copy pasta trolls, but the admins still have to answer to each other for wielding that weapon.)
Sure, you could probably farm a bunch of sock puppets and mod-bomb people you disagree with, but there's no payoff. You get no personal benefit or gain out of out-trolling someone, certainly not enough to make it worth the effort.
It's an elegant solution to a really, really hard problem.
Re:God help us! (Score:4, Interesting)
I fucking pray that Yahoo comments are not "where the real America is," because if they are, we are sooooooooooooooooooo fucked.
Nothing but a bunch of idiotic, xenophobic racists over there, man, I swear. Hell, I'll go to Yahoo and stick a comment or two of pure factual information, with references, just to balance out the stupid... comments which then get modded into oblivion because I don't follow their groupthink of "Muslims bad, liberty bad, police state and genocide good."
To reiterate, I really, really fucking hope Yahoo comments are not representative of the pulse of the nation.
Re:The more moderated, the less honest (Score:5, Interesting)
The simple answer is that there is no perfect moderation system; they all suck in different ways. Democratic systems like that on Reddit give the power of moderation to the users, and democracy is frequently called "tyranny of the majority" for a good reason: unpopular, minority opinions are always suppressed because the majority doesn't like them. The alternative is non-democratic moderation, where the moderation is done by a group of elites, which is what you usually see on sites like newpaper sites. The problem there, of course, is that you're subject not to the biases of the majority of the users, but the biases of the elites or the owners of the websites (so comments the newpaper owners don't like get deleted). Or, you can try to have a hybrid system somewhat like Slashdot has, where there's some elites who have super-moderation capabilities but the users also have powers, and also some of the users are given more powers (metamoderation). This sounds good in theory, but doesn't seem to work out in practice any better than the alternatives, it's just different.
Personally, I think the big problems with moderation on Slashdot are 1) users don't have many opportunities to moderate (they're only given points once in a while), unlike on Reddit where any user can mod any post at any time, and 2) users aren't allowed to moderate posts in the same discussion as one they post in, which leads to many users (like myself) not bothering to use the moderation points they're given. I don't feel like being restricted from speaking my mind just because I tried to mod up someone's post.
Since moderation is on-topic ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Since moderation is on-topic ...
The biggest weakness with Slashdot's current system is the way that early posts get a disproportionate amount of attention, and mod-points. When a new story shows up, so long as I post within 5-10 minutes it's pretty easy to get modded to +5, even as an AC.
Try it yourself - as soon as a new story hits, quickly summarize your gut reaction to the summary, hit post, and watch the mod-points accumulate. The downside, of course, is that anybody who shows up late will struggle to get heard amongst the noise.
Oh yes, and I really dislike it when 50% of an entire comments section consists of replies to one post. This seems to happen because people want their post to get noticed.
Can anybody think of a good solution to these problems? Or are there other moderation problems which need dealing with?
Problem is as the internet... (Score:4, Interesting)
... became widespread and new generations grew up with the internet, 99% of internet comments are mostly garbage. I've found that Websites run by intelligent, educated people who put their real face, name, background on the net tend to be more informative than random commenters as the net has grown. Since as more of the general population and new generation of kids begin to lurk and comment on websites comment quality goes through surges of greatness and mediocrity as generations come and go.
As an adult I find partisan comments the most uninformed, history and politics for anyone with any intelligence is IMMENSELY complex. Trying to apply black and white solutions and old out-dated 19th century political ideologies to complex problems is not sign of intelligence. Most of slashdot tends to fall into the extremely distorted american political spectrum since most slashdot commenters/moderators are american.
I find as the internet became a mass phenomenon slashdot comment quality has become almost as awful as the rest of the internet. The political comments tend to be the most uninformed since it highlights the deep indoctrination of the american public. Since most comments tend to be from the most populous country (america), 300 million vs say 30 million in canada.
So you get a massive boatload of nonsense when anyone mentions politics, anything deep and requiring serious thought and analysis can only usually be found through those who are honest and open and put a face to their opinions.
Those of us who see the world through technical eyes know many of our current values, ideals and institutions are not in line with what is actually true about the universe. We're doing all sorts of irrational bone headed shit in all areas. I find america and americans bizarre in their adherence to simple minded political and values based sloganeering. It's not the sign of an erudite mind.
In order to find solutions you have to study how institutions change over time and they must be informed by how the universe and nature actually operate, all of our institutions are totally out of line with this kind of thinking.
Comments are mostly an avenue of hate and tyranny (Score:5, Interesting)
This is likely to get modded down to "-1 Disagree", but I guess that's the point. If someone says something positive about religion, protecting their children's innocence, etc... it gets modded down. Don't think like the loud members of the group? Here's a mod down for you. Think that the teleology of the universe points to a cosmic designer? Here's a "-1 Disagree" for you and a bunch of hate to go with it. You must think like the hive mind or go unheard.
Comment moderation like that on Reddit and Slashdot censors dissension and encourages hate.
No More Anoymous Moderating. (Score:3, Interesting)
Moderators should be identified.
If you are going to moderate, you should be willing to stand behind your moderation. Anonymous moderation leads to people down modding things they simple disagree with rather than flagging actual abuse.