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posted by NCommander on Wednesday April 02 2014, @08:35AM   Printer-friendly
from the understanding-the-community dept.
We've gotten some incredible feedback regards to the moderation system and the karma system, and trust me, its not going into /dev/null; I'll have a writeup done by the weekend. However, I've noticed something today that made me sit back, and think for awhile. Our community is healthy and vibrant, and we're far more cohesive as a group than we ever were on the other site. Furthermore, our users are significantly more active here than the other site. Almost all of us are from the other site, but there's a huge difference between us and them.

I can sum up the difference in four words: We ARE a community.

While many of us decried the other site calling us an audience, I'm not sure I can say I was a part of the Slashdot community. I read articles, and comments, but I hadn't moderated (or even logged in) on the other site for years. This wasn't always true; I'm UID 700139 on the other site (registered sometime in 2003), and I was fairly active until 2009. Then I stopped. I didn't even post on the Audience Responses post. I've talked to others on IRC, and it turns out I'm not alone; a LOT of people who are active here were permanent lurkers on the other site.

I need to understand why to keep us a community, and to prevent us from just becoming a passive audience. If you're going to post on any story, let it be this one, and tell me your story. We need to know.For this request to make sense, I need to make a distinction between not commenting, and lurking. Lurking is people who have user accounts, but don't sign in, never moderate and never post, even on topics that interest them. They are someone who is completely passive on the other site. Its fine that people comment on every single article; even at my most active on the other site, I posted at best one a month. A lot of people just like to read the comments, and perhaps moderate.

There is nothing wrong with that; those people are still part of the community even if they don't speak often. We've had two stories yesterday that broke 100 comments: Moderation: Discussing !(post^moderate) and OK Cupid Protests Against Mozilla CEO. Looking back at the history, nearly every single article we've run discussing the site broke the hundred comment mark. This is incredible because as of writing, we only have 4007 user accounts total, and slashcode reports seeing 54,620 unique IPIDs* for yesterday.

By chance, Slashdot ran the same article at roughly the same time as we did: OKCupid Warns Off Mozilla Firefox Users Over Gay Rights. This is what made me sit up and take notice. Slashdot does not post their stats publicly, but when DICE acquired Freenet, they posted some rough numbers in the official press release. From that article:

Slashdot, a user-generated news, analysis, peer question and professional insight community. Tech professionals moderate the site which averages more than 5,300 comments daily and 3.7 million unique visitors each month.

As I said before, we don't have a really good idea on the number of unique IPIDs visiting the site, but we do have solid numbers for our daily comment counts. Here's the graph as generated by slashcode for a biweekly period:

Biweekly Comment Count Graph

(due to a quirk in slashcode, the graphs don't update until 48 hours later; our comment count for 04/01 was 712 comments total).

Taking in account averages, we're roughly getting a little less than 10% of Slashdot's comment counts, with a considerably smaller user base. As I said, the OkCupid story made me take notice. Here's the comment counts at various scores between the two sites

         | SoylentNews | Slashdot.org |
---------------------------------------
Score -1 |         130 |         1017 |
Score  0 |         130 |         1005 |
Score  1 |         109 |          696 |
Score  2 |          74 |          586 |
Score  3 |          12 |           96 |
Score  4 |           4 |           64 |
Score  5 |           1 |           46 |
---------------------------------------
Furthermore, I took a look at UIDs on the other site, the vast majority of comments came from 6/7 digit UID posters. Looking at CmdrTaco's Retirement Post as well as posts detailing the history of the other site most of the low UIDs are still around, and are simply in perma-lurk mode.

Here's the rub. If Slashdot is really getting 3.7 million unique visitors per month, and there most popular articles only get to 1000-2000 comments (Taco's retirement, and the Audience Responses post both reached 2k), then Slashdot's readership is passive. Like, insanely passive. Let's assume that the average poster posts 5 comments a month (which is an extremely conservative estimate in my opinion). then out of those 3.7M unique visitors, only one person out of a thousand (1060 to be specific) is posting a comment. That's a horrendous ratio, especially for a site that allows anonymous postings.

I don't think this is inherent to the site itself; if we are getting 100-250k unique users (and I don't think its anywhere close to that high), then our numbers are still drastically better than Slashdot's. I suspect for every 100 users, one is posting, and if not, they're at least moderating or using the site. On average, we float 200-300 logged in users at a time, spiking up to 800-1000 in the evenings. On April 1st, we saw 3842 unique users logged in every day (out of 4007!).

I don't want this site to become a passive audience, I want people to be involved, and active in the site. This doesn't mean posting, but moderating, or at the very least, browsing while logged in. I suspect the vast majority of us were in the perma-lurk mode on the other site before coming here, and I want to know why. Tell me your stories so we can be a community, and not just a website with an audience. Let me hear them loud and clear, and tell me if I'm wrong; let me know if you were one of the most active posters on the other site, and if so, what sense of community did you feel over there.

* - due to the way we use varnish for ACs, the number of unqiue IPID per day is likely far higher it is in actuality. Due to our setup, the backend only sees one AC every five minutes + all logged in users.

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by lhsi on Wednesday April 02 2014, @08:43AM

    by lhsi (711) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @08:43AM (#24722)

    On Slashdot, I would read a discussion, see the comments and then note that I did not have anything to add that hadn't already been said. I did moderate from time to time.

    Here I comment a little more where I can and think it adds. As there are less comments there are more opportunities to post something new that has not already been raised.

    I mostly submit stories, however. A lot are from Open Access journals directly to allow the community to comment on it directly, without the slant of any journalist. Some get more comments then others, so its hard to gauge which ones will be an interesting topic and what wont, but I sort of leave that up to the editors :-)

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +4  
       Insightful=4, Total=4
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 02 2014, @08:57AM

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@soylentnews.org> on Wednesday April 02 2014, @08:57AM (#24727) Journal

    Fair point. There are enough commenters on the other site that unless you get in early, what you have to say is probably going to be redundant. So you don't bother posting and just read. Then it gets to be a habit. Then it gets to be just how it is.

    Also, there are a limit to the number of comments you can easily follow, even with the userscript to collapse/expand threads. Most of the way-down-the-page comments on the other site are probably never read by anyone but the poster.

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    • (Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:31AM

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:31AM (#24819) Journal

      I lurked the other site after a distinguished tenure because I was banned from posting. They even banned me from posting journals after I posted an entry about being banned by the Jew Timothy. However, I did frequently have excellent karma, one time scoring 5 5-point posts(2 as AC) in a single discussion because I was a subject matter expert.

      Every forum needs a resident asshole, one you agree with from time to time while hating yourself for doing so, one who says what others are afraid to.

      The attitude I had with Slashdot was that if the discussions were really worth a shit, they wouldn't need me to waltz in there with a flashy catchphrase and edgy racial epithets.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:46AM

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@soylentnews.org> on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:46AM (#24843) Journal

        Every forum needs a resident asshole, one you agree with from time to time while hating yourself for doing so, one who says what others are afraid to.

        Agreed. We really do not need a resident racist though. I don't think anybody does. Racial epithets aren't edgy. They show their users to be ignorant, closed-minded assholes. Ignorance can be cured but not in a closed-minded person, so there's nothing to be gained by talking to them beyond pointing this out. Hence...

        End of conversation.

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        • (Score: 1) by Yog-Yogguth on Thursday April 03 2014, @03:58AM

          by Yog-Yogguth (1862) on Thursday April 03 2014, @03:58AM (#25389) Journal

          If we could all just agree about things from the start this site would already be dead. Right? :3

          Damn right we need "racists" or whatever. We need lots of clashing opposing views. We need people who waste their energy on hating me or anyone else who says they find genital mutilation like circumcision and similar damned offensive because such topics are not kosher or halal to talk about. Or who jump into "thought police" mode at the mention of anyone finding it extremely offensive that people are beheaded and animals bled to death in the name of some severely impotent "god" with serious self-esteem issues. Or who are diligently ready to suppress "illegal opinions" if I find it extremely offensive that most gays don't really want anyone talking about all the gay people that are being hanged each year or that feminists don't want to talk about women being treated as cattle their whole lives. Don't get me wrong: I sadly don't understand women anyway and I've tried several times.

          The list goes on forever and that's just some samples related to one or two silly religions and "interest groups"/people who think it's a super-good idea to politicize sexual preferences :o

          Because it's crucial to teach people to shut up most if not all the time so they don't risk losing their jobs or being threatened with violence or other harassment if they ever say anything wrong or call someone an eskimo or draw a cute cartoon of a black boy with a bone through his afro or headknot (as if blacks don't find that shit funny too; it's no different than Cheech smoking an actual roach by mistake).

          Too much of "society" is already filled with absurd and often stereotypical hypersensitive junk about things that either really shouldn't matter much or really ought to be discussed loudly. And hopefully not by me because I'm damned tired of it all (most topics actually, not just nasty stuff like some of the above) and thoroughly disgusted and that dovetails nicely with why I eventually became a lurker at Slashdot.

          Luckily for me this place is actually something slightly different no matter if the above stays as it was on /. or not, by picking up where Slashdot and code veered into corporate insignificance this place unlocks amazing potential for everyone making everything feel fresh and new again :)

          tl;dr: we need to maintain diversity, that means we need "bad" as well as "good", often that's simply called freedom. Yes that stank of a weird kind of mutated political correctness :X

          --
          Buck Feta? Duck Fice! And Guck Foogle too!
          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday April 03 2014, @07:16AM

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@soylentnews.org> on Thursday April 03 2014, @07:16AM (#25453) Journal

            I agree about the diversity of opinion. I even agree racists have a right to theirs and to speak it. I simply don't think they're worth listening or speaking to. They've got one stupendously moronic belief that is not subject to rational discussion, so they likely have plenty more. If they're just race trolling, that's not as bad but it's still picking the absolute lowest hanging fruit, so they're worthless even as a troll.

            I've got to stick with my original statement. I've got no use for them and don't believe they enrich the site in any way.

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      • (Score: 2, Funny) by meisterister on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:14AM

        by meisterister (949) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:14AM (#24887)

        Every forum needs a resident asshole

        I'll be that guy... you... uhh cheese...face?

        I'll work on it.

      • (Score: 2) by naubol on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:29AM

        by naubol (1918) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:29AM (#24906)

        At the first, I think I misunderstood you. I generally agree with what you're saying, but I think the "edgy racial epithets" are giving a false first impression. I'm genuinely curious when I ask if you think they're just all in good fun or if there is some sort of intent behind them?

        Regarding being the "resident asshole" who speaks the truth, I could not agree more. Communities need mediators and antagonizers, they're part of the adaptation process. But, the antagonizers have to be clever about it, as if they take it "too far" they lose all traction with the community and thus lose their power to truly antagonize.

        That said, when I mentally delete the "edgy racial epithets" from all of your posts, I tend to enjoy them.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:30AM

        by VLM (445) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:30AM (#24907)

        "Every forum needs a resident asshole"

        Yeah, in theory people thought that would be a great idea. Their outlook was rapidly corrected in practice moments after meeting Mr Goatse, a very prolific poster and former resident of .cx aka Christmas Island. If a reader (noob) has no idea who he is, the reader is better off not meeting him.

        So you may want to rephrase that one. And "Every cup needs its two girls" or "every tub needs its girl" would not necessarily be an improvement.

        • (Score: 1) by modecx on Wednesday April 02 2014, @01:38PM

          by modecx (1925) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @01:38PM (#25044)

          Try this one on: "Every party needs its lemon?"
          Oh, the nostalgia, it's nearly palpable.
          Nearly. Thank God for that.

          • (Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday April 02 2014, @03:10PM

            by VLM (445) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @03:10PM (#25088)

            There's also a classic goatse quote about if you gaze into the abyss, it gazes back at you, which if you recall the posture and geometry, is true. Although I couldn't weave it into the narrative.

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by mcgrew on Wednesday April 02 2014, @12:06PM

        by mcgrew (701) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @12:06PM (#24951) Homepage Journal

        I lurked the other site after a distinguished tenure because I was banned from posting.

        And with good reason, you're an offensive little troll whose comments are designed to disgust and inflame.

        Every forum needs a resident asshole

        Bullshit. Assholes are welcome nowhere and needed nowhere. Assholes are only tolerated, and then only when toleration is necessary.

        one you agree with from time to time while hating yourself for doing so, one who says what others are afraid to.

        That's not being an asshole. Posting goatse and GNAA trolls is being an asshole.

        --
        Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Rivenaleem on Wednesday April 02 2014, @12:19PM

      by Rivenaleem (3400) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @12:19PM (#24960)

      I heartily agree with this statement, but I'd like to add that I don't browse the site, I check my RSS from time to time and am often a few days behind and regularly join the topic after a lot of discussion has already taken place.

      The majority of my comments tend to be jokes, as usually all the insightful and informative stuff has already been said. Also, my area of expertise is very narrow, so there are really only a few topics, typically in the world of Pharma, that I would consider myself worthy of chipping in something really meaningful on.

      That is something really worth taking into account. A lot of readers on /. and here are specialists in some area or another and will browse and read a lot, but can't really be relied on to be a source of information outside their own areas

  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday April 02 2014, @09:07AM

    by mhajicek (51) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @09:07AM (#24729)

    This. However I am odd enough that I often had something unique to add.

  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by weeds on Wednesday April 02 2014, @09:17AM

    by weeds (611) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @09:17AM (#24741) Journal

    "Same" On the other site I am 1086039. I lurked there for quite a while before I saw a story I thought I could comment on and then signed up and commented. After that I mostly lurked. In most cases either I didn't have anything to add or what I had to say was already said. Based on the comments I did make, I had the "feeling" that if your ID wasn't low enough, you didn't get modded up. It felt like a closed community. There is some sport here over lower id's but it seems to be done with appropriate humor. Submitting stories was nearly impossible as the likelihood that I would get hold of a story soon enough to get it posted was just about nil.
    There is a general feeling that bigger is better, but I would need some convincing on that. A single home page can only carry a finite number of stories per day or per hour. Comments on those stories have a practical limit before one has to move on. So ultimately I think there is a limit to the size of the community that can be active. I suspect you could estimate the "active community" maximum size based on the max number of practical stories you can run per day and the maximum number of unique id's that can comment on the stories (with max practical comments per story). That's a lot of assumptions, but I should think you could get an order of magnitude out of it.
    As you have said, even if everything there is to say on a story has been said and one has nothing to add, log in and moderate. Be part of the community.
    Lastly, I am a huge fan of IRC. When you talk about a healthy community, there has to be dialog. Dialog in the newspaper via letters to the editor, does not suffice. (Now I know that the comments are more than that as there is back and forth) But IRC is more like a town meeting. Here you can have a closer discussion with other posters or site management (members, editors, and even developers) for me this has been a great addition to the community.

    --
    Get the strategic plan going! [dev.soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 2) by elf on Wednesday April 02 2014, @09:45AM

      by elf (64) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @09:45AM (#24764)

      If I had Mod points I'd mod the parent post up. I'd agree 1000 comments isn't something you can easily read and get something out of it and a lot of comments here are actually quite good. It will be interesting to se how things change as the site grows.

      I think IRC throws up some good conversations. I think it would be interesting to have an area which highlights some of the funny / interesting conversations that go on (like bash.org)

      • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:53AM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <reversethis-{moc ... {8691tsaebssab}> on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:53AM (#24933)

        I disagree. I was at Slash from the old days (like the other poster i lurked for quite awhile) but we would often get 300+ post threads on subjects like CPUs or even file systems, but that was because the mods stayed out of it and let the discussion actually flow naturally. this was before the groupthink and modbombing got bad over there so that mods were only mod-dropping trolls like Goatse and "You must be a stupid nigger" type crap while letting those with differing viewpoints actually defend their positions...it was fricking awesome and even when you didn't agree you LEARNED and left with some serious thoughts on the subject!

        Oh and as for Ethanol Fueled? he got banned because he WAS the guy posting "you must be a stupid nigger" crap so no shit he got banned, he added ZERO to the conversation and only derailed the flow. There is a difference between being a "resident asshole" that has an honest viewpoint that differs from the group and posting shit like "I bet you're a filthy Jew" which the last few months EF was posting at Slash was the extent of his "conversation". While I am against banning ANY form of speech I DO hope that if all EF does is scream racial remarks like a kid learning to swear that he WILL be downmodded to the basement where he belongs.

  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by CoolHand on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:09AM

    by CoolHand (438) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:09AM (#24782)

    I agree with this... I wasn't a "lurker" on the other side by your definition - I would almost always be logged in, and occasionally moderate, but I posted very seldomly. That was normally because there were a couple hundred comments by the time I got through reading the comments, so there wasn't a lot to say.

    I think there is a "critical mass" of comments that can be reached, where most discussion on an article has been had, and after that it can be kind of pointless to add more... So, we haven't quite reached that saturation point on most articles yet, but once we do, I suspect the pattern here will be similar.

    --
    Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
  • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:12AM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <reversethis-{moc ... {8691tsaebssab}> on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:12AM (#24787)

    Welllll, I think you are CLOSE to nailing it but at least for me there is one MAJOR DIFFERENCE between here and slash, the FUCKING STUPID GROUPTHINK!!!!!!

    On slash you can say the most PANTS ON HEAD RETARDED thing you can possibly imagine and if its 1.- Said in praise of GPL or Linux, 2.- Said in praise of Google, or 3.- Said against Apple, MSFT, Seagate, or any company like FB that is the "2 minutes of hate"? Instant +5. I know some called it "Karma whoring" but that is bullshit, what it was was the fact that Taco let certain groups into the inner circle, they formed clics, and those clics always supported "fellow travelers".

    At least here when I see somebody saying something obviously and easily proven to be outright horseshit? Thanks to modpoints being much more evenly distributed the bullshit and crazy sinks to the bottom, while the well written thoughtful posts, even if they are 100% against the current? Straight to the top. I LIKE THIS ! 1000% PLEASE KEEP!!! Because it is the difference between well thought out dialogs and circle jerks where post after post is obviously written to whore the groupthink or appease the mods.

    So to me that is what makes the difference, here there can be long thought out discussions, whereas with slash every thread just dies because either the mods crush all those that go against groupthink or the trolls derail the thread. Soylent is doing a GREAT job with the former, I hope that their skill in dealing with the latter will be equally great. Hell just the other week I had a TEN PLUS POST DIALOG with other posters here in a thread about CPUs!! Do you have ANY idea how long its been since that happened on Slash? Easily more than 5 years. PLEASE KEEP THIS!!!!!

    • (Score: 4, Informative) by Nerdfest on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:23AM

      by Nerdfest (80) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:23AM (#24804)

      I'm not sure about the Apple thing. I was very regularly modded down just for *questioning* Apple most of the time, much less saying anything derogatory. On occasion I was also modded down for questioning Microsoft, or even pointing out completely factual information, although I think in the case of MS that actually pay people to astroturf many sites.

      As for me, I rarely got mod points for the last 4 years or so, perhaps from posting fairly regularly of their algorithm being broken. In any case, I found I almost never modded down, and I think down-mods should almost be something where you need two or three of the same type to apply a single reduction. Flagging the usual trolls is a different matter.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:37AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:37AM (#24829)

        Astroturfing is a good point. As this site grows, it also will get growing attention from paid shills. I hope this site can withstand their attacks.

      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:33AM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <reversethis-{moc ... {8691tsaebssab}> on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:33AM (#24909)

        Which is why I still say AC posts should either be outright banned or at least start with a -1 so that it isn't so easy to shill and troll. It takes...what all of 3 minutes to make an account? and you can put pretty much anything in for data, so you can say you are a 20 year old member of the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders for all the system cares but at LEAST you have to expend just the tiny amount of effort of making the account before just pouring crap on the screen!

        And as I nice bonus I have noticed that places with no ACs have a LOT less paid shills, as its easy enough to see a shilling pattern in their posting. if the person ONLY posts on a single subject AND always in favor of said corporation who is the subject of that subject? Well it really ain't hard to put 2 and 2 together.

        If you want to keep ACs at least give them a default negative modifier so they actually have to post something thoughtful to get up to the same level as those that took the time to register, that is fair. Otherwise there is no real benefit to registering and we might as well become another chan.

        Oh and one other thing THANK YOU MODS for not having that FUCKING TIMER!!! I am a considerate person and therefor like to answer when someone posts a reply, but I only have a limited amount of time in the day to get on here and that stupid fucking slash timer meant that maybe ONE person out of the dozen that responded to my posts would get a reply, the rest ignored. thanks for not having that stupid crap so when I pop on here before work and see a dozen people have responded in a half a dozen threads I can actually have a DIALOG and discussion with them on the subject, Praise the FSM its a miracle! What a great way to encourage dialog, +1000!!!!

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Popeidol on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:48AM

          by Popeidol (35) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:48AM (#24923) Homepage Journal

          AC posts start at zero, and regular users start at +1. The solution to avoiding AC posts without merit is to set your threshold to +1, so they have to be modded up before you see them.

          The system you are describing is already in place, just shifted one digit up.

        • (Score: 2) by githaron on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:48AM

          by githaron (581) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:48AM (#24924)

          Another option would be to have a second slider. The first is for non-AC and the second is for AC.

          • (Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Wednesday April 02 2014, @03:35PM

            by egcagrac0 (2705) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @03:35PM (#25105)

            Or, to add a "reason modifier" for AC.

            Some people may want to further obscure the AC's, some people may want to undo the default, some people may value the comments of the AC's more than the sheeple who log in to post.

        • (Score: 4, Insightful) by moondrake on Wednesday April 02 2014, @12:43PM

          by moondrake (2658) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @12:43PM (#24990)

          I think its a misconception that ACs are trolls. I lurked (without account) for over 13 years on /. And regularly (perhaps once a week occasionally, but perhaps less on other times) commented. I cannot remember that I ever have been modded troll or flamebait. Though sometimes my highly intelligent (feeling particularly modest today) comment was missed because it started at 0.

          In general, my internet behaviour is this: if I see something on some place that I could comment on (most recently a question about some bug in a linux driver that I fixed locally but had not yet bothered to send upstream), I will not comment and help the person out if I have to go through the trouble of registering. I believe I am not alone in that behaviour. Even here on soylent there are some regular ACs (gweg (sp?) for example) that I appreciate. And I think it is a particular bad idea to downmod an AC before you even read what he has to say. So far, there have been plenty of modpoints so if it is not contributing to the discussion, somebody will be happy to pass judgment (IMHO most people like doing this).

          As you point out, it takes little effort to register, so I do not think this should somehow guarantee that people with an account post better comments.

          There is an even more important reason to value AC posts: it allows people in the know about internal affairs to post something very informative. These people may have accounts, or may not and have been referred by others or have stumbled on the site because an issue was discussed there that they know more about. I do not want to see such whistle-blowing or otherwise very informative comments hidden at -1 and feel 0 makes a good compromise.

          Oh, and the claim that places with no ACs have less paid shills sounds unlikely to me, got any evidence for that?

          • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday April 02 2014, @03:37PM

            by Hairyfeet (75) <reversethis-{moc ... {8691tsaebssab}> on Wednesday April 02 2014, @03:37PM (#25108)

            I think you are missing the point friend, which is that its easy to spot patterns when a person has an account but if they can post as AC? they can shill to their heart's content, no way to know if the AC that just posted that loveletter to corp A is the same AC who just posted that second loveletter to corp A or not.

            Believe me I wish it weren't so but we have more than enough evidence to be reasonably certain that all the major corps are paying for "spin control posting" on pretty much any site that crosses their radar. just look at the crapflood of "I heart Windows 8!" AC bombs that hit Slashdot right before the Win 8 release, they even used classic marketing terms like "vertical integration" and "product synergy" that no non marketing drone uses IRL so it was pretty damned obvious yet because they could just crapflood the AC channel there was no way to say who was shilling and who wasn't.

            And I think the other poster nailed it, we need a "no AC" button so that those that believe in the AC system can have it and the rest won't ever have to see it...more choice is of the good, yes?

            • (Score: 2) by moondrake on Wednesday April 02 2014, @03:59PM

              by moondrake (2658) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @03:59PM (#25122)

              I guess it would be possible to hash the IP and add it as a AC "id". Not sure how I feel about such an identifier.

              As for the button, yes, I would not object to it, though I would just feel sorry for the people that use it!

              • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday April 02 2014, @05:45PM

                by Hairyfeet (75) <reversethis-{moc ... {8691tsaebssab}> on Wednesday April 02 2014, @05:45PM (#25185)

                Why is that? Look at what ACs have become on the other site, you get such "useful" posts as "You must be a nigger" or like my stalker "die you fat fucker die".

                With ACs you are completely killing the point of places like this which is dialogs and conversations. if all you want to do is just throw something on the screen and never see it again? That is what yahoo news is for, but with a site like Soylent the appeal, at least for me, is that you can have an actual discussion of the topic at hand. Since the AC will never see a response its a "throw shit and run" post by design.

                Now if that is what appeals to you? I have no problem with that but it would be nice for those of us who care about conversations not to see ACs.

                • (Score: 2) by moondrake on Thursday April 03 2014, @04:36AM

                  by moondrake (2658) on Thursday April 03 2014, @04:36AM (#25405)

                  I just accept some crap together with very interesting posts. With ACs, we would never have known the details about Operating Thetan Level Three, for example.

                  And as Ethanol-Fuelled has pointed out quite literally elsewhere, you get the crap with logged in users as well.

                  But I am just rehashing my argument. I fully understand your argument, I just like to point out that not everybody has such an opinion.

                  Furthermore, I would be against such a "hide AC" button for anyone with modpoints.

                  • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday April 03 2014, @07:54AM

                    by Hairyfeet (75) <reversethis-{moc ... {8691tsaebssab}> on Thursday April 03 2014, @07:54AM (#25468)

                    Why is that? I can already state I would never waste modpoints on an AC post as there would b ZERO point in doing so. karma exists so that the posters that post thoughtful and considerate posts float to the top while Ethanol and his "you must be a jew" crap sink to the bottom. Again by the very nature of the AC post it does neither, the AC poster gets no karma and can crapflood all the racist or shilling they want and get no penalty for doing so. in fact if you think about it the AC post is almost by design a troll's wet dream, hell go to the other site and pick ANY article and see the signal to noise ratio when it comes to ACs, you are looking at best a 3-4 to 1 crap versus useful.

                    But at the end of the day choice is always of the good and I see no reason those that like AC posting can't have it and those that hate AC posting can't have it blocked, after all we aren't owned by Dice and aren't trying to force shit on the users, are we?

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @06:20PM

            by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @06:20PM (#25205)

            there are some regular ACs (gweg (sp?) for example) that I appreciate
            {Deep theatrical bow} 8-)

            (sp?)
            That's gewg_ (phonetically "goog").
            When I first used it online, it was almost uniquely googleable (aside from 2 obscure Working Groups).

            Years ago, I had 2 submissions accepted at the other site and, again, years ago, would occasionally post, sometimes even getting modded up. [google.com]

            -- gewg_

        • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @02:18PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @02:18PM (#25063)

          I have an account at the other site (680k range), though I stopped posting under my account because of personally targeted moderation. I could post identical comments in a thread (using my account and as AC) and the one from my account would often get down modded to oblivion, and the AC post would get modded up. So I just posted as AC for the last several years.

          When I used my account I posted often enough, and submitted a few stories a week, so my karma was always good. The only reason I tried to maintain good karma was so my posting rate wouldn't be limited by bad karma. The effort wasn't really worth it, so I just posted as AC and used varying IP addresses (proxies, VPNs, Tor, etc) to get around the AC limits if I wanted to post more than once or twice.

          I haven't posted often here (either under my account or as AC). The environment seems much friendlier, though the lack of other posts kind of limits the "conversation" part of posting. It's a bit of 'the chicken or the egg', but I'll wade in slowly and mostly lurk. Down modding for "I don't like you" or "I disagree" isn't here yet (I don't think), but I'll wait for the paint to dry to see what SN turns in to.

          Oh, and that "every site needs an asshole" who posts the racist crap? The racism has no place here. The asshole? That often depends on which side of the conversation you're on.

          • (Score: 2) by moondrake on Thursday April 03 2014, @04:51AM

            by moondrake (2658) on Thursday April 03 2014, @04:51AM (#25410)

            This is interesting. Suddenly I feel modding is more like peer review in science than I previously realized.

            One solutions some journals applied is that you do double-blind reviews. I think it would be pretty interesting to hide user IDs when you got mod points. Probably wont work well in practice though (view the site without logging in to see who posted what)

            • (Score: 1) by Yog-Yogguth on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:22AM

              by Yog-Yogguth (1862) on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:22AM (#25422) Journal

              Along those lines when this site grows big enough and with liberal supplies of mod points it would be interesting if each moderation would require an identical moderation to take effect, i.e. each mod point would in effect be half a mod point.

              Maybe the server overhead wouldn't be worth it but it would be interesting to see how it worked out :)

              --
              Buck Feta? Duck Fice! And Guck Foogle too!
      • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday April 02 2014, @03:46PM

        by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday April 02 2014, @03:46PM (#25113) Journal

        I rarely got mod points for the last 4 years or so, perhaps from posting fairly regularly of their algorithm being broken

        It could very well be the randomizer being broken. I used the C# randomizer recently and thought Man, this is crap. Curious, I had it output random integers between 1 and 10 in a loop 3000 times. I stuffed it into Excel and generated a count and made a line chart. I expected to see each integer generated about 300 times. The result was anything but that. Loops that involved tens of thousands of randomly generated numbers got more level line charts, but I think it can be inferred that it still may not be representative of making good random numbers. I'm not sure what Soylent News or the other site is using to generate random numbers. Might be worth setting up a check to see how good it is.

        • (Score: 1) by Yog-Yogguth on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:17AM

          by Yog-Yogguth (1862) on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:17AM (#25418) Journal

          Random numbers and series don't really work the way you (and just about everyone initially and maybe even much later or occasionally or possibly even always if a field of study/specialization "says so" because it makes everything easier) think they should. The following example is short and trivial but mathematically 11111111 is as just as random as 11010001 despite the fact that 11111111 is a very easily recognizable pattern and thus fails "randomness tests". It's a common trap in statistics too (it's precisely the same thing) and people wade right into it all the time with their eyes wide open no matter how smart they are :)

          Slashdot shouldn't have used randomness (if they did/do, I don't know that), they should use something giving an even distribution when biased according to their preferences (activity levels etc.). Something which in fact is both as non-random and predictable as things get! :D It can of course still be badly broken.

          Likewise cryptography doesn't really want randomness nor even entropy but unpredictability/anti-patterns. So yeah words are misused all over the place just as in most (all?) sciences because it's so damned practical to do so as informal shorthand (and then it sticks).

          --
          Buck Feta? Duck Fice! And Guck Foogle too!
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by umafuckitt on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:32AM

      by umafuckitt (20) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:32AM (#24822)

      All sites develop groupthink. It'll happen here too if it hasn't already. It's unavoidable.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:57AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:57AM (#24861)

        Actually some people demanding that Slashdot's name is never explicitly used in comments is already a sign of beginning groupthink.

        • (Score: 1) by DECbot on Wednesday April 02 2014, @02:33PM

          by DECbot (832) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @02:33PM (#25071)

          You said the word! You said the word!

          'Tis the word the knights of Soylent cannot stand to hear.

          Stop saying the word!

          --
          • cats~$ sudo su
          • cats~# chown -R us /home/base
      • (Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday April 02 2014, @04:26PM

        by aristarchus (2645) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @04:26PM (#25143)

        I think we can all agree that it won't happen here!

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Wednesday April 02 2014, @12:17PM

      by mcgrew (701) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @12:17PM (#24958) Homepage Journal

      1.- Said in praise of GPL or Linux, 2.- Said in praise of Google, or 3.- Said against Apple, MSFT, Seagate, or any company like FB that is the "2 minutes of hate"? Instant +5.

      In my experience this is simply incorrect. I was frequently modded down for bashing MS and Apple (and even Sony!) when the bashing was completely warranted, as well as being modded down for favorably comparing Linux over Windows.

      You forget, a lot of folks here and at slashdot owe their paychecks to MS or Apple in one way or another, few can credit their incomes from Linux. You repair Windows machines, don't you? So you have a dog in the fight.

      --
      Free Nobots! [mcgrewbooks.com]
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @05:52PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 02 2014, @05:52PM (#25187)

        Your eye lighted on the same stuff as mine did, brother.
        My reaction, however, was a bit different.

        s/GPL or Linux/openness
        s/Apple, MSFT> /closed-source code

        With MICROS~1 in particular, I see a culture of **let's put in as many bells and whistles as we can and if we have time at the very end we'll try to paste on some "security"**.
        Exploitability has ALWAYS been MICROS~1's giant weakness (if you ignore their abusive business model).
        On top of that, the concept of having to wait until the 2nd Tuesday of next month to get patches has always struck me as insane.

        You repair Windows machines
        That aspect occurred to me as well.
        Yeah, hairyfeet is in the hardware sales & service sector.
        His vantage point is going to be significantly different from the coders who haunt this place.
        Openness in the code and inheritability of software libre is crucial to folks who are able to work at a lower level [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [goodbyemicrosoft.net] and not just dealing with pre-packaged solutions to assemble a final bundle.

        I'll acknowledge that hairyfeet is critical of faults on both sides of the divide, but his bottom line ends up praising the wrong camp IMO.

        ...and he constantly blames Linux/FOSS developers when HARDWARE isn't compatible.
        Obviously, producing device drivers is the responsibility of the HARDWARE manufacturers.
        The fact that the Linux Driver Project manages to reverse-engineer compatibility [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [lwn.net] for so many otherwise-unsupported items, often with no assistance from those manufacturers, deserves kudos on a grand scale.

        The flip side of that is that the manufactures who DON'T provide proper support deserve scorn; hairyfeet chooses instead to blame software developers who are dancing as fast as they can even though all the lights in the room have been left turned off.

        Finally, the manufacturers who DO provide proper FOSS drivers deserve not only your praise, but your money.
        People giving their cash to vendors who provide crappy support just boggles my mind.

        -- gewg_

      • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Wednesday April 02 2014, @06:11PM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <reversethis-{moc ... {8691tsaebssab}> on Wednesday April 02 2014, @06:11PM (#25196)

        No I don't as I'm a system builder which MSFT has always treated system builders like dogshit. We get NO discounts, NO support, we pay no differently than if you were to walk into a Best Buy and pick up a copy of Windows so believe me no love there. In fact myself and the other local shops refuse to carry Windows 8/8.1 because we all pretty much agree its shit, not something that a fanboy would be likely to do.

    • (Score: 2) by morgauxo on Wednesday April 02 2014, @01:45PM

      by morgauxo (2082) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @01:45PM (#25049)

      I disagree.

          The other site had plenty of both Apple fanbois and Apple haters. Microsoft fans were a bit harder to find but there were some. Historically it was pretty Linux/GPL friendly but there are plenty now who like to tear down RMS and GPL along with him. A lot of those Mac fans do have some not-so nice things to say about Linux too.

      My experience was that posting for or against any of those topics meant you would get moderated one way or the other. Some good people will mod any post up that makes a valid point regardless of if they agree with the conclusion. Unfortunately many are not like that. It just mattered which group of people find your post first, the ones who agree with you or the opposite.

      If Soylent is going to be any different in this regard as it grows I sure wonder how.

    • (Score: 2) by Tork on Wednesday April 02 2014, @05:35PM

      by Tork (3914) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @05:35PM (#25174)

      Welllll, I think you are CLOSE to nailing it but at least for me there is one MAJOR DIFFERENCE between here and slash, the FUCKING STUPID GROUPTHINK!!!!!!

      I've pondered this problem for a long time and the conclusion I came to, to prevent the GroupThink I mean, is to have actual professional moderators in each thread. The way Slashdot does it right now is they basically give deputy badges to random people on the site and say: "Now go bust somebody!" What do those deputies do? They mod down the people who use the smartphone OS they hate. Imagine what would happen if somebody interested in maintaining civility, as opposed to whatever side of the walled garden they're on, came in and undid the negative mods on posts that clearly didn't deserve it.

      I know my approach doesn't cover all the bases, but it's easy to implement and doesn't actually restrict anybody's freedoms. It just means: "If you spend a mod point unfairly, you might lose it!"

      --
      Slashdolt logic: 1600 x 1200 > 1920 x 1200
  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by kebes on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:23AM

    by kebes (1505) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:23AM (#24805)
    I agree that opportunity is a big part of it. I think it's entirely natural that the "percentage of users who comment" will decrease as the user-base grows:
    - As there are more users and more comments, the opportunity to say something new/different decreases. So a given user is less likely to post.
    - As there are more users and commenters, the pace of commenting rapidly increases. Thus, to get in a comment (and have a chance of it being seen/moderated/appreciated) is more and more difficult (you have to jump on the story as soon as it is posted). If you don't get in 'early', your chances are low. This decreases the likelihood of commenting, because the user feels like it is pointless.
    - As the community grows in size, hostility tends to increase. This is both because for a given percentage of trolls, a bigger community will of course have a large absolute number of trolls. But it's even worse, because in a big community, people feel more anonymous and tend to be less polite. Worse still, trolls tend to gravitate towards large communities so that they can get more attention. The end result is that it decreases one's desire to comment. Even if troll comments are always knocked-down to -1, the community-at-large likely won't read them, but the commenter likely will read them. Even though we all know trolls are idiots, dealing with a bunch of hostile comments (or comments that totally miss the point you were trying to make) gets tiring and causes people to lose interest in commenting.

    It's also worth noting that SN, by the nature of its inception, has created a selection effect: the most motivated people, those most 'passionate' about commenting, were the first to jump over here. As time goes on the demographic will likely shift towards having more lurkers.

    I'm not sure that a decreasing percentage of commenters is in itself a bad thing. It seems somewhat natural. In fact, I think it's necessary to have some subset of people who are lurkers. There's nothing wrong with it (e.g. you may be a lurker on one site but active on another). In open-source software, some users may never contribute code or even bugfixes. But they still play a role (evangelizing, giving the contributors a sense of purpose, ...). It's the same for a website.

    On the other hand, I get the argument that we want the community strongly engaged, and commenting is one obvious measure of engagement (it takes much more effort to post than to just skip). So, I'm all for strategies that make commenting easier and more fun. But I would just caution against trying to maximize a particular metric (like "% commenting"): at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that we're all enjoying the site.
    • (Score: 1) by CoolHand on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:50AM

      by CoolHand (438) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:50AM (#24926)

      hmmmm...
      I wonder if some sort of "blind commenting" system could be implemented where for the first x amount of time comments aren't displayed -- no one can see them besides moderators. That would give everyone time to put out initial comments without being intimidated by the number of other posts that may cover the same ground.. Moderators could make sure the best well thought out comments covering the same subject matter rise to the top...

      I dunno... just brainstorming

      --
      Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job-Douglas Adams
      • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Wednesday April 02 2014, @03:51PM

        by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Wednesday April 02 2014, @03:51PM (#25118) Journal

        Interesting. I don't think I agree with trying this, but since we're brainstorming, I have another crazy idea. Don't show the name of the commenter for a fixed amount of time, but allow moderation and replies. Perhaps make an exception for friends or enemies.

        I don't know if I like my own suggestion, but as you said, just brainstorming.

    • (Score: 2) by etherscythe on Wednesday April 02 2014, @02:57PM

      by etherscythe (937) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @02:57PM (#25085)

      I agree with pretty much all of this. I was a long-time lurker on the other site until I finally made an account, and over the course of maybe a year managed to get a few +2's and +3's and a SINGLE +5. Many times I would continue to lurk because someone had made a comment pretty much exactly making the point I would have, in which case it came down to whether I had mod points to give them or not.

      I would add that there's a large convenience factor involved. The other site has inline expansion of comments, which when I am modding and looking for interesting comments to mod up, is a very good thing. Here, I think we see only the more determined commenters sticking out the rougher experience, as well as already having more of the "frontier" personalities as parent post mentions, due to age and circumstances of this site's genesis.

      Right now there aren't so many comments that I feel the need to trim them down with a visibility threshold, but if we get inline expansion and the site userbase goes up, this will probably change. It will probably help encourage discussion when it's easier to keep track of the threads also, so that the same subtopic doesn't spring up in different places and fracture the discussion.

  • (Score: -1) by Bill, Shooter Of Bul on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:41AM

    by Bill, Shooter Of Bul (3170) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @10:41AM (#24839)

    This, and the fact that at one point this site was broken in such a way that I couldn't comment. With the lower userbase here than on /., moderation is quite a bit more harsh. Slashdot style moderation only works with a higher level of scale.

    Pipedot on the other hand and seems to get that right.

    Also, stop calling it a community. It makes me throw up. Its not the right word for what this is either. This site seems to be a collaborative effort, no doubt. But my requirements for what makes a community are much higher than that. My coworkers and I are not a community. Using that word at this point in the site's history is very disingenuous. Especially with the drama associated with it.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by weeds on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:00AM

      by weeds (611) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:00AM (#24867) Journal

      com-mu-ni-ty
      noun
      1. a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common.
      2. a feeling of fellowship with others, as a result of sharing common attitudes, interests, and goals.

      By definition, this is a community.
      It may be that none of the above applies to you. That does not make this any less of a community.

      --
      Get the strategic plan going! [dev.soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 1) by Yog-Yogguth on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:44AM

      by Yog-Yogguth (1862) on Thursday April 03 2014, @05:44AM (#25428) Journal

      Hmm how about a commons? It's what this place really is; a digital commons. And in case that doesn't suit you then another english word: pub :D

      (Why you're currently moderated -1 is beyond me, hopefully someone fixes that here or elsewhere).

      --
      Buck Feta? Duck Fice! And Guck Foogle too!
  • (Score: 1) by Tramii on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:56AM

    by Tramii (920) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @11:56AM (#24937)

    "On Slashdot, I would read a discussion, see the comments and then note that I did not have anything to add that hadn't already been said. I did moderate from time to time."

    Pretty much this. Any time I have something actually useful/interesting/insightful to post, someone else has already posted it, and so I end up modding them up and moving on. If there comes a time when I have something to say and no one else has said it, I will definitely post it. But for now, I guess I will keep "lurking".

  • (Score: 2) by morgauxo on Wednesday April 02 2014, @01:32PM

    by morgauxo (2082) on Wednesday April 02 2014, @01:32PM (#25041)

    I would agree with this. Also.. even if I didn't see my thought already written by someone else when there is a sea of 1000s of comments already who is going to bother to read mine? I like that Soylent is smaller. But.. with time.. more will arrive.

    Then again I often commented anyway so maybe my thoughts aren't relevant.