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posted by NCommander on Tuesday April 01 2014, @03:00AM   Printer-friendly
from the now-with-longer-half-lifes dept.
*cough*

Ok, I meant to have an open forum about moderation *way* before this point. I did read the various feedback and comments left on my journal and the last moderation, and have made some changes to the moderation system.

First, mod points now expire after eight hours. I'm willing to extend this to 12 or 16 hours after I'm sure comments will still reach +5 fairly regularly. With luck, we'll get to the point we can extend mod-points to last a full 24 hours which I suspect will end most of the complaining on them vanishing too soon.

Second, I'd like to open the floor to making a more fundamental change to the moderation system. Specifically, allowing people to post AND moderate in the same discussion. We've seen plenty of posts get up to +5, which means 3-4 people gave up their right to post to keep our comments high quality. This was brought up during our last plea for stories, and I wanted to solicit more feedback before unleashing this upon the site.

I've floated the idea on IRC, and it seems there's a fair bit of support for removing the post/moderate split, though we'd need to make some changes to prevent rampant abuse. Here's what was suggested to keep things sane:
  • Mod points won't roll back after a post
  • Moderators can post in the same discussion (either before or after moderating), but can not moderate replies to their posts.

I've heard various ideas such as limiting it only after mods have expended their points (this will require implementing a cooldown to prevent a user from getting points again too soon). I want to hear your feedback, and I'll roll together something for the next major update of the site. Leave your comments

 
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  • (Score: 1) by RaffArundel on Tuesday April 01 2014, @08:54AM

    by RaffArundel (3108) on Tuesday April 01 2014, @08:54AM (#24101) Homepage

    I'm not saying you shouldn't make change, but what is your goal? What problem are you trying to solve?

    If it is simply beecause the site-which-must-not-be-named had it, and your users expect it - make the code stable and move on.

    If you want to improve the quality of the discussion (or pessimistically, reinforce the group-think) give more mod points and the ability to do things (like mod a thread you commented in) based on karma.

    If you want more participation hand out mod points like candy, expire them quickly, and let anyone mod whatever. Throw in some gamification and be done with it.

    I haven't noticed any abuses, so it there really an "issue" that needs to be solved?

  • (Score: 2) by Open4D on Tuesday April 01 2014, @09:49AM

    by Open4D (371) on Tuesday April 01 2014, @09:49AM (#24145) Journal

    What problem are you trying to solve?

    Not enough comments-per-story?

    I haven't noticed any abuses, so it there really an "issue" that needs to be solved?

    I've commented above (#24027 [dev.soylentnews.org]) that I don't think this change would make too much difference to comments-per-story. And there are some abuses, but this might make them more frequent.

     
     
    Instead of these particular moderation changes, I like the suggestion I've seen (at least once [dev.soylentnews.org]) for moderation previews. If this was an option in the preferences, I'd enable it.

    On the preview screen, if you were about to do any down-mods, it could have a reminder: "remember, don't down-mod just because you disagree".

    It could also inform you if there had been any other moderations on the comments since you loaded the previous page.

    And maybe if you didn't have enough points for all your moderations, it would let you choose which ones to go ahead with.

  • (Score: 2) by NCommander on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:12AM

    by NCommander (2) <mcasadevall@dev.soylentnews.org> on Tuesday April 01 2014, @10:12AM (#24167) Homepage Journal

    The problem here is moderation had some fundamentally broken aspects to it, which is why the mod point algo had a rewrite before we went live. I wrote a small novel going into detail why the old algo was broken and we scrapped it. The four hour limit was an emergency change. The algo I wrote has some off assumptions which I'm going to fix for v2, but moderate^post was brought up several times in previous stories, so I wanted to open the floor to getting feedback on improvement as someone who moderates will feel a pressure NOT to post as to not undo moderations (I've seen rare posts on the other site that they posted undoing mods because they felt strongly on it)

    --
    Still always moving ...
    • (Score: 1) by RaffArundel on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:44PM

      by RaffArundel (3108) on Tuesday April 01 2014, @04:44PM (#24460) Homepage

      I wanted to open the floor to getting feedback on improvement

      I'm sure that is appreciated since many of us are expats because the lack of concern for the feedback on that other site. It looks like this has more than the normal number of comments, by a wide margin, so you got it.

      someone who moderates will feel a pressure NOT to post as to not undo moderations (I've seen rare posts on the other site that they posted undoing mods because they felt strongly on it)

      Let 'em post AC! Gawds forbid they can't swing around that low UID to make whatever point they felt they needed to both mod and support/attack!

      Seriously, I don't particularly care since I'm not a heavy poster nor feel strongly about modding - my points came and went without anything standing out during that time to use them on. If I were food in the fridge, I'd let people mod everything except their own post. I'd also give anyone with positive karma mod points often, that don't expire rapidly. I wouldn't add limitations until there was a compelling reason to do so. It would be interesting to see what the community does, especially while still small.