Dealing With Venom on the Web 326
theodp writes "In a world where nastiness online can erupt and go global overnight, BusinessWeek finds Corporate America woefully unprepared and offers suggestions for how to cope, including shelling out $10,000 to companies like ReputationDefender.com to promote the info you want and suppress the news you don't. And in what must be a sign of the Apocalypse, BW holds Slashdot's moderation system up as a model for maintaining civility in message boards."
Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, Slashdot has a relatively mature audience compared to digg (I know, I know). While there are imbeciles here too, for the most part, the Slashdot crowd tends to be in the industry and/or college and seems a tad experienced in the ways of the world.
Digg crowd, for the most part, seems to be full of highschool kids who just learnt about the Intranets and decided to hop on and share their extremely mature views on things. And give these people the ability to moderate anyone and everyone, you have an inherently flawed system.
Not that Digg doesn't have the occasional good article or two, but the comments and the participation are not anywhere close to the levels seen on Slashdot. Once again, age plays a role - Slashdot comments, ignoring the idiotic and inane ones, tend to contain a few genuinely good ones. Even if you took an article on something obscure (say, something obscure in medicine or chemistry or whatever), you will find the occasional comment by someone who knows what's going on.
This is hardly the case with Digg, which has a bunch of kids who have no idea what's going on, and is choke full of nothing but opinions and little else (not that Slashdot doesn't have its fair share of asshats, it's just not as big a number).
My two cents.
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You wouldn't be referring to the bitchslap.pl woud you?
LK
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Digg I _used_to_ read for the headlines & links.
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's lots of bad things that can be (and have been) said about Slashdot, but the comment system is one of the things that actually seems to work well. Shit happens on occasion, with troll comments getting modded up or legitimate (if controversial) ones getting modded down, but it's my impression that this is relatively rare and that metamoderation is taking care of it; and of course, nobody and nothing is perfect, anyway, so the fact that there are *some* errors *occasionally* doesn't mean that Slashdot's comment system isn't working.
And as others have remarked already, a good amount of the comments on Slashdot really *are* insightful, interesting, informative or funny, too. I, too, read Slashdot mostly just for the comments - if those didn't exist, I really wouldn't care much about the site, or at least not more than I care about any other news aggregation site.
NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
A lot of good comments go unnoticed because they get a 0 score (for being ACs), while an entire ocean of useless babble get automatically promoted to +1 (registered users) or +2 (karma loaded jerks).
And how does a jerk get +2? Just think about how many people voted for some idiot... as one writer once said in my country: "All majorities are dumb."
Heck, I've seen a lot of +5, Insightful which are (IMO, granted) totally clueless. It really hurts to read them... automatic scores do lower the content-to-noise ratio.
Of course, it's important to avoid useless racist posts; but a lot of valuable content comes from comments -- and in those, a lot of good-willing ACs contribute with things they wouldn't otherwise say... yes, I know, there is no real anonymity on the Internet, but what is stopping ill-intentioned guys from faking names? (Good people do not want to lie, they'd rather go AC).
Some stories get 300 +1-rated posts and another 80 0-rated ones: what would go wrong in displaying these extra 80?
Say what you want. On Digg, you can get the "upcoming stories": non-voted, not-yet-manipulated. On
Digg is now what
As of the last year, I've been even refraining from posting. I may well one day surrender and register, but I'm sure to feel defeated if I do so... and, besides, will
Re:NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you stand to gain? You can realistically have a conversation if you accept e-mail notifications. You gain the ability to moderate down those nonsense +5's, metamoderate the ones that put them there in the first place. Save your prefs, etc.
The system only has value by having people registered. By refusing to you're merely complaining about things you're being too lazy to help fix.
There's an advantage to attaching a name to your words, but you always have the ability to take the penalty and detach that name to say something that either needs to be said, or probably shouldn't be said but you feel like it anyway.
Stop seeing registering as surrender, stop celebrating your sloth (or maybe paranoia, but I have no idea what your reasons are. I can't even understand them). Really, it's just another column in a database that can't realistically even be linked to you. You seem to care by what you say, so why don't you care enough to participate that much? Stage fright?
Re:NO! (Score:4, Interesting)
Really, it's just another column in a database that can't realistically even be linked to you.
Actually, when the aggregate of all your posts, plus writing style, which is extremely hard to disguise, is considered, it's not that hard to link it, if anyone cares to.
Me, I support anonymous posting, including being able to post with a handle but without registering. I've never been happy with the present system.
Re:NO! (Score:5, Informative)
Slashdot does display 0-rated posts, just not by default. What would go wrong? Spam. If people have to go out of their way to view an anonymous post, then fewer anonymous trolls will bother, because their posts will get modded down before they get seen. If 0-rated posts were seen by default, there would be 300 +1-rated posts and 2,000 0-rated posts.
0-rated posts that are worth anything get modded up.
You're free to browse at 0, by the way.
Re:NO! (Score:5, Insightful)
YES! (Score:4, Insightful)
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The vast majority of comments should come from registered users, for one main reason - it allows conversation. If you're being commented on by two AC's, you've no way of kno
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? [EDIT] (Score:5, Funny)
Sorry, just clarifying the sentence for you.
And comparing
Clearly the six year olds are more intelligent, but they're still six years old...
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I certainly prefer those stories. Usually it is in the more obscure stories (some which don't make to the homepage) that have better Signal to noise ratio ans as they are more "obscure" less people try to pose as knowing about the issue.
Digg comments are completely stupid. Although I like the speed in which Digg gets the new
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This is the funniest thing I've seen in a week. Although for certain values of "ways of the world", I think you are right. Certainly compared to Digg. I've tried to add something constructive to the Digg comments, but mostly I feel like it's a waste of time. Plus, given the fact that there's no easy way to track your comments to see what others say, or to be able to respond (more than one le
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:5, Funny)
Is that a new protocol or something?
I tried to find it in Archie and Veronica, but all I found were some old DigDug ROMS.
Is there an RFC I've missed? I admit I'm a little behind on comp.sys.networking these days.
Perhaps one of these newfangled Gopher links?
DG
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:5, Funny)
And what, you are here scouting it out for them?
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll say this: here, I'm not likely to mod up a post that I strongly disagree with (unless it's very insightful in a way I've never heard before, factually and logically sound). I guess an alternative viewpoint must meet a stronger standard than one that just seems obvious to me. Maybe thats not completely fair.
I'd be interested in you pointed out your posts that have been modded troll while being "well informed, concise, accurate and written in a professional manner." Generally the posts I see modded as troll are disrespectful and incomplete. Tone matters. If you really think there's some vast conspiracy to undermine your positions, well . . . a tin foil hat might not be thick enough.
Slashdot's moderation has instructions--bring posts deserving attention up, and get the completely unproductive stuff out of the way. Digg doesn't have this. There are no guidelines at all. What criteria should I use? If I'm participating in a thread, should I mod the people up that have agreed with me? Mod down the ones that don't? Mod up the buried comments that are well stated but not the popular opinion? If a comment is modded +20, what does that mean? It's a popularity contest. In terms of groupthink, digg's system will always be worse when everyone's opinion matters all the time.
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:5, Insightful)
Anytime someone says something useful and productive on Digg, it gets buried.
That is unless it's about tits, condoms or illegal drugs, all of which seem to be priority #1 on Digg.
Commenting on Digg is a total waste of time. Unless you're a teenager.
Just goes to show the level of maturity of the average, typical Digg member.
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:4, Interesting)
I took a peek at Digg when it started and looked at it every now and then for the first few months. Now it's below useless. Even the stories that get voted up are for the most part regularly more fit for News of The World than for some kind of techno geek website.
Bah, it's september all the time nowadays, what can you expect...
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd say on most days it does a fair job of at least hiding the blatant trolls from view. The nice thing about Slashdot's threaded system is that heated arguments don't mean the entire story is taken over. Besides, I think arguments in the comments is one reason some people read them.
Of course Slashdot's moderation is also at the whim of the subset of users that have mod points on a given day. For example on April Fools, all somebody has to do is say "Please mod my post insightful! kthxbye." and they hit +5 in minutes. Alternatively, a story like this might prompt someone to say "Reverse the polarity of the moderation flow!" suggesting moderators go nuts modding up trolls and flamebait and modding down everything else. (That would actually be pretty funny. Read More -- 10 of 381 comments). And of course moderators would probably do it, just to spite the system
(That actually sounds like a funny April Fools joke for next year. Give everyone mod points for the day and then randomize or invert what they do. Heck, even just giving everyone infinite mod points would be funny, and probably break Slashdot in the process).
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Unfortunately, it also lets fanboys/shills for platform/company/philosophy X hide comments critical of platform/company/philosophy X. And they do, with great regularity.
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Unfortunately, it also lets fanboys/shills for platform/company/philosophy X hide comments critical of platform/company/philosophy X. And they do, with great regularity.
Yes this is exactly how all moderation systems fail. Regardless of forum, any community driven karma system becomes dominated by agendas. Karma tends to promote group think and more individual opinions are stifled. Even though trolls, redundant posts, and other useless posts are pushed down, so are plenty of thoughtful, intelligent posts.
On Slashdot, for stories that I care about I typically read threads on 0 up to see a more diverse selection of opinions, because the +5 points are usually either jok
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Unfortunately, it also lets fanboys/shills for platform/company/philosophy X hide comments critical of platform/company/philosophy X. And they do, with great regularity.
Are you saying this as a knee-jerk reaction, or are there actual, recent incidents you can cite? As someone who moderates pretty frequently, I almost always browse comments at -1. Not to rain on your tin-foil hat, but my experience is that flamebait/troll/offtopic ratings are generally accurate. Good information, well-argued opinions, and funny jokes tend to rise to the top. Of course, you could unmask this conspiracy by just browsing at -1 yourself, and reveal the secret information about the 200mpg c [snopes.com]
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By letting only a subset of the whole audience moderate, by forcing a choice between posting and moderating and awarding moderation points according to meta-moderation, it is much less likely that a given Company X fanboy or shill has moderation points when an article about X gets posted.
By financing enough fanboys or shills, Company X can swing the posts somewhat to its side, but those shills would get caught in meta-moderation and would become useless in a short tim
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:5, Insightful)
The more I think of it, the more I think that's a bonus. A huge problem on digg is that people will go through and mod up or down anything that they either agree with or disagree with, without regard to the actual content of the post. At least when mod points are scarce, users generally only use them on posts that are actually deserving.
As has already been said, there's a great difference in the userbases of each site. I'd be willing to bet that the average Slashdot user is better educated, has more experience (in industry, in life, ...), and is older. Digg is just in it's infancy compared to Slashdot; I think there could be a lot of improvement when they fix their commenting system and their user base ages a bit.
As a community, Slashdot is pretty critical of itself--but it really is one of the best online communities out there. If you don't believe me, you spend way too much time here.
Re:Slashdot moderation maintains civility? (Score:4, Insightful)
Erm... if by 'blatant trolls' you mean the GNAA posts, then yes, I agree. However, I've seen quite a few cases of moderation being based on public opinion, as opposed to a more objective line of thought. Unfortunately, I think this has caused the community to develop a style about how they post here that goes against the initial wishes of this system. For example: Take ANY cell phone story and you'll find several +5 comments about how people angrily wish they could get a phone that's just a phone. Umm.. okay. So... that encourages people to make the same post in every story. Microsoft product in a car story? A mad rush to be the first to make a 'crash' joke. Sony? Hehe, you know what I mean.
I do like the moderation system, I just wish there was a better sense of objectivity. Fortunately, though, my complaints about this have gone down a LOT in the last 5 years. I'm just not sure if it's because M2 is actually working (albeit slowly) or if it's because public opinion has shifted in my favor.
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Alternatively, a story like this might prompt someone to say "Reverse the polarity of the moderation flow!" suggesting moderators go nuts modding up trolls and flamebait and modding down everything else. (That would actually be pretty funny. Read More -- 10 of 381 comments).
The mod system is designed to prevent that -- moderators don't go nuts so much when mod points are limited. And I'm very glad of this; if the comments in /. articles ever start looking like this [digg.com], I'll be taking a break from /. for a few months.
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Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
If
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
I like Tufte's thoughts on moderating [edwardtufte.com], particularly his point about avoiding "the chronic internet disease of 'All Opinions, All the Time.'" Different websites have different goals of course, but there is nothing inherently wrong with refusing to allow anyone to publish any opinion on your website. Tufte's own forum is much lower traffic than Slashdot, but it has the interesting property of discussions that are years long, and the majority of posts are on-topic and very useful. Slashdot discussions more than a day or two old are all but dead. One thing I see often enough that it bugs me is a post like, "So and so behaves in ways X, Y, and Z" and a followup post correcting it, "No, it's most like X, Y, and W"; further posts support the correction or provide links to further info, but as a reader I'm still stuck reading the whole conversation when I'm more interested in the correct information that could have fit into a single paragraph. Discussion sites tend to shy away from editing and consolidating correct information, preferring to leave everything as individual posts. It would be a lot of work to implement, and perhaps even impossible, but I get the impression that the reason nobody tries is not due to the difficulty but because individual posts are treated as sacred; any editing is "censorship". At the very least, one should not be afraid to delete the GNAA trolls and the like at -1...
Admittedly, editing of comments may be a waste of effort on Slashdot. But many tech blogs will post an article and some points will be corrected in the reader comments. The blog publisher will update the article yet leave the comments as is, creating a confusing page of comments that refer to an article that is no longer there. Is there any reason, other than it's too much work, to not delete the comments that no longer make sense and credit in the article those who made corrections?
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
It's actually a nice way to bring closure to a topic or to restart discussion at a much more advanced level.
Of course, you would probably have to hire a serious amount of editors to do that to every article on
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And if you call shenanigans with the editors? Everyone in your thread goes to -1 and you never get to mod again.
Case in point: your post. You first said how nice the system is, then made legitimate criticism over a minor issue, and even a suggestion for improvement. I see now that you are modded as a troll. You've got to drink m
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
I try to maintain the same level of civility on the interweb tubes as I do in RL, and AC posts allow me to express opinions that, while I would be willing to have a civil discussion with most people on, may not acceptable to many of the businesses for which I may want to work.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the AC's point is perfectly valid. I know in the time I've been visiting /. I've posted sufficient clues for anyone to deduce precisely who I am -- not that I particularly mind, as I didn't choose my nick for anonymity.
And yes, there's a danger in that: the danger of temper tantrums, mostly. If you've never lost your temper online, you're a better person than I am. (I basically just figure as long as I don't say things that are too much more outrageous than what a lot of colleagues say on professional-oriented mailing lists every day, I should be OK. :-)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If an employer decided to profile me based on what I said here, and then decided not to hire me based on what they read, I don't think I'd want to work there anyway.
Opposite problem (Score:4, Interesting)
Why? I don't want them to learn my Slashdot username. Not that I really have anything to hide, but it's more out of trying to retain some semblance of privacy. And they do have that annoying censor firewall in place, though my boss is nice enough not to care what I do online so long as I get done what he wants done.
Oddly, I end up submitting almost as many stories as comments, and waiting an hour to post another anonymous comment is kind of annoying, but that's somewhat better, because it makes me think about which comments are the most useful, rather than dashing off every post that comes to mind
Slashdot moderation is *far* from perfect... but it's a hell of a lot better than elsewhere. You have to wade through a lot less crap to get to the good stuff than you do anywhere else. Fark comments aren't worth reading, although the photoshop contest pics can be cool. I don't even read Digg, and sites like Groklaw are nice enough, but it's really time consuming to find the interesting posts. Unless PJ reposts them as a story, you'd never know that the 39th post in that huge thread was the interesting one, while all the rest just said "when will SCO get delisted?" (Short answer? They'll hit bankruptcy first.)
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No help for smaller businesses. (Score:5, Interesting)
I have personally dealt with this where I refused service to someone for harassing my other members on my online business. It's actually less a business than just a hobby, but my name and business name are out there and involved nonetheless. This underage person freaked out and spent months inventing various things to complain about and posting them on every recommendation site possible. They even went so far as death threats and attempting to extort getting their account back or else they'd spread rumors about improper discussions with said person by myself (the owner). Now, again, I never did any actual business with this individual and I knew nothing about them other than they were harassing my users so I shut down their account. That was the extend of it. Yet they have been a thorn in my side for two years now and there is nothing I can do about it. Anyone searching for my company online will find the most horrendous things said about me by a completely anonymous nutjob.
It's just an ad pretending to be an article. (Score:5, Interesting)
An author over-hyping a situation for his new book. How
If you've ever worked for or with a PR company, you'll know how wrong that is. "Transparency" is exactly what they do NOT want.
And so on. This is nothing more than an ad piece.
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Maintaining Civility? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yep, but.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The bottom line, to me, is that when dealing with humans who by nature are imperfect, no system can possibly be perfect.
Still here, for the comments. (Score:4, Interesting)
Slashdot's moderation and meta-moderation system was carefully thought out, and kept ahead of the wave of forum-spam and general "hey look maw ahm on the interweb" disruption that you find in every other forum. For that, it should be held up as an excellent example of the ThinkAboutItCarefully pattern.
Oh, and my UID's lower so thhhhppppt.
As it is (Score:2)
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I like contributing to
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Re:Maintaining Civility? (Score:5, Interesting)
Been there. Yes, it's stupid and moronic. Yes, it happens. There are plenty of mods who feel "overrated" is there to be used on comments with which they disagree.
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The groupthink is having trouble deciding wether or not to agree it is groupthink.
Responsibility is iffy online (Score:3, Insightful)
Why *I* like the /. moderation system. (Score:5, Funny)
TLF
Re:Why *I* like the /. moderation system. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Thank you.
TLF
Here's a thought ... (Score:4, Informative)
2) Empower your employees to deal with problems when they arise and make things right
3) Obey laws (for instance don't cook the books, backdate stock options, spy on employees and the press).
4) Have contact information for problem resolution on your web site.
5) Admit problems when they occur, publicly state what you're going to do to fix them, never cover things up.
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Metamoderation helps (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Metamoderation helps (Score:5, Interesting)
I read people posting and complaining that they never get to moderate. I've often wondered why this is, especially in how slashdot manages people who get negative metamod's, etc.
Personally I think I get to moderate alot - Probably about once a week, sometimes more often. There are times when I let my 3 days slip by, because its too hard to keep up.
But I do take the moderating seriously. I actually rarely moderate people down, but rather try and pick the good posts and push them up. On a personal stand I've pretty much stopped using underrated and overrated moderations - I may as well be judged for my actions too. Then again, I've never posted anonymously (which you will just have to take on faith as I obviously can't prove this).
Anyway, whatever I do, the mod points seem to keep coming back.
Personally I like to think its because the way I moderate is approved by the majority of meta-mods.
Michael
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I usually receive mod points the same day when I bother to spend time looking at deeply nested threads. This seems consistent with the idea that moderators should try to mod well-formulated yet obscure posts up, rather than to mod high-profile posts down. I can't otherwise find a correlation of meta-moderation and the likelihood I get mod points.
I'm sorry to say I also tend to let my mod points expire. The task of finding gem in a haystack takes too much time for me, and I think other moderators do a good
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You only get feedback for being metamoderated as "Unfair".
I actually saw quite a string of these for a while.
I'm not exactly new here. I've always had good-to-excellent karma, had mod points fairly often, usually used them (although not always), and metamoderated pretty frequently (whenever eligible, pretty much). I like to think I've been pretty evenhanded all round (posting, moderation, metamod).
However, a couple of years ago, there was a spell of about 2 months where most if not all of my moderations got negatively metamoderated. I've no idea why - all I know
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I gave up meta-modding when I was negatively M2'd a couple of times, never to recieve mod points again. Silly thing was, I was M2'd over a couple of BS posts about Microsoft. Since then, I've registerred a new nickname and get mod points occasionally. Sadly, I'm hesitant to use them. If my objectivity goes against public opinion, I'll have to start all over again.
I wouldn't mind
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I know that diversity preservation it is not easy, as moderation/metamoderation are based in very simple heuristic
snake oil (Score:4, Insightful)
No tell me exactly how they are going to remove my old website from archive.org, my embarrassing posts in news groups from google groups, or porn pics done in my youth shared by millions on p2p networks ?
Short of bombing every server on the planet you cannot do anything. Once things are out, there are out, you cannot take them back.
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Sooooooo.... what happens when two companies pay the $10000+ to ReputationDefender and have opposing viewpoints?
RD salesman, to client #1: "Yes, that slanderous party are a tenacious bunch, aren't they? I can sign you up for our premium DefenderPack, it's another $20000.... but what's your reputation worth? You will? Ok, we'll start straight away and do our best."
RD salesman, to client #2: "Yes, that slanderous party are a tenacious bunch, aren't they? I can sign yo
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http://www.positiveliberty.com/2007/03/reputation- defender-continued.html [positiveliberty.com]
Apparently, they just piss off the slanderers even more, and this just causes more and more of the postings Reputation Defenders is supposed to deal with. Look what happens when you Google the name of one of Reputation Defender's first clients:
http://www.google.com/search?q=heide+iravani&ie=ut f-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls [google.com]
Err moderation system? (Score:4, Insightful)
Personal story (Score:5, Interesting)
As everyone was walking out, I talked to the asshole and said "You fucking pig, shouldn't you be helping in NYC, not fucking harassing innocent students who are trying to make a difference?" I got arrested, charged with felony riot, disobeying a peace officer, summary harassment, and disorderly conduct. The two most serious charges (riot and disobeying...) were dropped the next day. The two other ones, I plead no contest to in exchange for 48 hrs. community service and a year's probation with the informal understanding that I leave the state after graduating that spring and completing the 48 hrs. In retrospect, I should have fought it and plead not guilty, but I was young, naive, and had a stupid attorney.
Anyway, after two years, my record was expunged. However, the original newspaper article; written before I was interviewed but NOT before the police chief was interviewed, remained the first thing that appeared under a Google search of my name for another year or two. Was kind of interesting to explain when I was interviewing for jobs!
For some reason, this no longer appears at all when you search for my name (I think the campus and local newspapers have put up a robots.txt file, and, anyway, there's more recent stuff by me and my business website on the web).
-b.
Information that you don't approve of (Score:2, Funny)
The current administration must love this site! On a more paradoxical note, I bet there's nothing but positive reviews of this website on the web, at least if they're doing their job correctly.
What can "ReputationDefender" really do? (Score:5, Interesting)
Accord to the website: "Our trained and expert online reputation advocates use an array of proprietary techniques developed in-house to correct and/or completely remove the selected unwanted content from the web."
Yeah, okay. And that would be what? Send an email to the website maintainer? For $15.95 a month, I doubt that ReputationDefender will be filing any lawsuits.
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ReputationDefender does a lot more than just emailing website maintainers. Obviously, there are additional service fees for higher levels of service, as the article in ques
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You pay the $29.95 to Reputation Defender even if they fail to remove the item. Legal avenues "may" incur a further fee. I expect that their business model is to harvest lots of monthly payments from paranoid people and supplement them with overpriced one-off fees for intimidating web s
Re:What can "ReputationDefender" really do? (Score:5, Interesting)
In any case, services range from sending polite requests on customers behalf (automated and manual depending on context), search engine optimization techniques, arranging for legal intervention in certain cases, and more. You can find much of this information on our Frequently Asked Questions [reputationdefender.com] page. Many of our customers have found our techniques effective and feel like we've provided them with excellent value for their money.
Nobody can make bad content posted repeatedly by a determined adversary disappear entirely, obviously, and we would be foolish to claim that we could do the impossible.
I should also mention that we hold ourselves to a very high ethical standard regarding the types of intervention we perform and the types of clients we will take on, and we are very sensitive to First Amendment issues and not trying to interfere with the dissemination of genuinely newsworthy content. However, there are a lot of people out there who've faced crazy stalkers and people trying to unfairly bash them, or just chunks of stale information out there that they really didn't want to be public, and having a service offering to track down that information, figure out who's responsible for it, and attempt to get it removed, or in some cases reduce its impact, is quite valuable to many people.
Thanx for reply, but I'm unimpressed (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, from your FAQ, legal stuff is rarely done, and costs more. So that leave letters and SEO. Letters are hardly some great proprietary technology. And SEO does not remove anything.
I suppose there could be some use for the service, but I'm not impressed. This article seems like a
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
In a world where... (Score:2)
But a new wind was about to blow! Payback. This time, it's for real.
Sometimes real life makes you more careful (Score:5, Interesting)
So today I usually think twice about whatever I post, and there's many times I decide it's better to just hit the delete button. I've been shocked at what some people post online in their blogs; or anywhere on the web with the same user name over and over. They never seem to think that it's very easy today to link it all together and see all the things they assume no one will ever know. You could say I'm just being paranoid, but in today's world it's better safe than sorry.
Easily explained (Score:2, Redundant)
This obviously means that the BW editors are a bunch of fucktards.
Slashdot even gives moderation privileges to morons who think irony is an element in group 4 of the periodic table.
We do OK (Score:2, Insightful)
Now and then, a nasty word or a Troll sneak in, but the Nazgul consume them quickly.
Groklaw does ok too. (Trolls there glow orange when they pass the door)
Those other sites though.....
Kathy Sierra (Score:3, Insightful)
Is it just me?
Also, the comments about holding /. as a template for moderation... more boring nonsense. Stop feeding the troll.
Site EULA may be hazardous. (Score:5, Insightful)
The ReputationDefender user agreement [reputationdefender.com] looks dangerous.
They become your legal agent. But not your attorney. "You authorize us to be your privacy advocates. In this role, we might contact third parties, including creators of unwelcome content, hosts of unwelcome content, and other parties who might have control or authority over such content. You authorize us to take such action on your behalf, and to identify ourselves as acting on your behalf. You recognize that such contact may have unpredictable side-effects, including but not limited to negative responses from others. We are not your lawyer and cannot dispense legal advice, nor does this Agreement or the Services create any attorney-client relationship or legal representation."
Then they try to escape any liability: "You agree that you will hold harmless ReputationDefender, Inc., and its officers, directors, and employees, from all claims arising out of or related to your access or use of, or your inability to access or use, ReputationDefender's services, this Web site, or the information contained in this Web site or other web sites to which it is linked."
As your authorized agent, if they do something they shouldn't, you are liable. That's what "agent" means, legally. [wikipedia.org] ReputationDefender doesn't take responsibility for its own actions. That's a dangerous position to be in contractually.
Usually the people you might let be your agent, in the legal sense, are regulated in some way. Realtors, stockbrokers, accountants, private detectives, employment agents, and lawyers may act as your agent. But those are all regulated businesses, for good reasons. Such people take on liability and usually carry insurance coverage. There are established guidelines for what people in those fields can and can't do. That's not the case here. ReputationDefender, which is unregulated, wants you to take the responsibility for their actions, while being rather vague about what those actions might be. This is an open-ended risk.
It would be a very good idea to consult a lawyer before signing up with ReputationDefender.
The moderation system works well... (Score:5, Interesting)
I unchecked "Willing to Moderate" in my account preferences, because I know I'm an intensely biased, flawed person, and I would happily ostracize my enemies and laud my friends regardless of the quality, or lack thereof of their posts. I hate a lot of people. A lot of the people on here, come to mention it. Having mod points gives me the power to act on the desire to do something about it, and power (even the power to demote your post because I think you're an idiot, or meta-moderating with an agenda) corrupts. I, apparently, am quite easily corruptible. I couldn't enjoy reading this site, because I was looking to deal with people I thought should be pushed down. Now that I can't do anything about it, it's a lot less frustrating to read things here.
However, I've set my highlight threshold to +4, because experience has taught me that even a bunch of my fellow random idiots on the internet can't be wrong all the time. Approximately 90% of the stuff that gets modded that high, I can only assume as a result of some kind of emergent reasonableness from a sea of unreasonable stupidity. The other 10% is easily skipped, and doesn't enrage me like reading the vast sea of idiocy those posts have somehow risen above does.
It's a bit hypocritical of me, to take the product of the moderation system without contributing to it, but if that matters, you shouldn't allow people not to opt out. I don't contribute to any open source projects, either financially or by helping at all, and use the hell out of their software either, and that doesn't trouble me much either.
What the smeg are these smegging smeggers smegging (Score:3, Funny)
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Digg moderation is horrifically worthless (Score:5, Insightful)
The lack of nesting makes it harder to filter out irrelevant discussion subtrees; in short, with Digg, you display all messages or you miss out. Slashdot's moderation may be far from perfect, but it's outstanding compared to the adolescent pack mentality on Digg.
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Re:Civility or groupthink? (Score:4, Insightful)
If I participate in a real-world discussion, whether in a social or academic context, and just start behaving disrespectfully (or present an extreme view and don't make a good case for it, or whatever), there are repercussions, which can range from mild social disapproval to being dragged outside and getting my ass kicked.
Moderation systems, in my opinion, do the same thing online, where otherwise anonymity removes those repercussions. I don't see it as a bad thing. I just wish there were more "groups" to choose from with good moderation systems.
Re: (Score:2)
Why do I picture this line being spoken by a seven foot tall man who has been smoking cigarettes since childhood [ensight.org]?