OSNews

I don't even think there should be a moderation system - its clear to me that people on this website aren't mature enough to use a system that requires a degree of restraint. I remember years ago when Eugenia moderated this manually - and did so with an iron fist. There were create contributors like Bascule, for example, who would go into depth regarding Solaris and FreeBSD. I loved coming along here for the debates and dicussion - and as a result I learnt a lot from the discourse between two sides.

I fully agree with your comment there.

Butters was another epic poster who I haven't seen here in years now.

I agree 100% with everything you said, and I'm currently looking for another general tech forum.

You're not alone. I went from a 4 -> 0.72 in 1 week. It's slowly moving back up. I can verify the moment I called people out on it the negative acceleration only increased.

IT People tend to lack a lot of balls. They don't face their limitations and are rarely interested in expanding in other viewpoints for their aim isn't to be enriched, but to simply bitch.

You people put WAY too much emphasis on the moderation system. WAY too much. Let me tell you a little secret. The big agenda behind our moderation system. The ONE reason we (read: Adam) implemented this system.

We, the OSNews staff, are lazy.

That's more or less what it comes down to. Lots of people idealise the day back when we sifted through reported comments, and deleted/approved them. Don't do that. Not only was it painstaking, repetitive, boring, RSI-inducing, mind-numbing work, it was also quite willy-nilly. And that annoyed people - rightly so - and consequently, we got angry emails, which led to pointless back-and-forths between the team and the disgruntled leader. A total waste of bits. And certainly NOTHING to idealise.

In addition, back in those days, Eugenia ran the site, and she doesn't have a job, so she's at home all day, with a lot of time on her hands to do this work. These days, OSNews is run by people for whom OSNews is a side-project, something we do in the often limited free time we have. Speaking for myself, I have a job, study full-time at university, manage a small household (I don't live in my mom's basement), and a social life to manage. And that's just me - the rest have, in addition to the above, a family and children to spend time with.

So basically, we don't want to moderate. So, we said to ourselves, let's outsource it. People have been crying for that for a long time anyway.

And it worked out beyond our wildest expectations. There's no spam on our forums. There's intelligent debate. There's humour. There's off-topicness that doesn't threaten the entire thread.

It's not perfect, but it's a million times better than what we had. If you are so arrogant - as Adam already mentioned - to think that the ONLY reason someone could EVER mod you down is that he disagrees with you, well, then, leave Teh Intarwebs. You're not going to last long.

I usually disagree with Thom regarding moderation - the OSNews staff sometimes cannot refrain themselves from getting personally involved in some heated threads and are not afraid to use their power to moderate at will - but I will have to concede here: he is 100% right.

The current moderation system is far from perfect but it is a lot better than the old one and I can't even imagine how terrible it would be for the administrators if there was no moderation at all as it was years ago and the community itself could not weed out spammers and trolls, leaving the hard work for them.

I've got my share of comments that were moderated down... No big deal. Kaiwai not only has been too focused on this lately but also apparently does not understand that some of his last posts were a little bit inflammatory (calling on people that could not afford Macs, suggesting that everybody in the world should learn English, etc.) and not always with a nice tone to them. If he has to move on, then so be it. However, he may have a point: I don't doubt not even for a second that there are members out there with more than one user account to work around the limitations on the moderation system.

I know that the work to prevent this sort of thing would be overwhelming but I wonder if it is not possible for Adam to simply update the OSNewsv4 back-end code to just trigger an alarm or something along these lines when too many posts or mod points come from the same IP address on a per-thread basis: not to moderate anything, but just to get an idea of which accounts might have been used to trick the moderation system. Of course, it is far from perfect: several people behind the same NAT at their companies or active posters might be caught with this mechanism as well, but I'm willing to believe that the former case is unlikely to happen often and as for the other one, the admins probably already know people that post often and that are not trolls.

That would provide a sample of posts/threads that the admins could keep their eyes on without having to check each conversation themselves and create the means to inhibit to some extent the "group thinking behavior" that bothers Kaiwai so much...

Thom

My usual reply has always been that you could "hire" moderators among trusted users.
I have also been abused sometimes in the past. As a consequence I have "castrated" my comments (meaning that I don't post very often and when I do I try not to say anything controversial).

I think it's highly likely that you were being "victimized" by people who were abusing our moderation system by using up their points to mod down anything you said, just to get your goat. Unfortunately for all of us, you gave them everything they wanted. They wanted to get under your skin and make you have a public blowup, and you wrapped it up with a bow and gave it to them.

Let me just say that, for the record, the better course of action would have been to remain calm and try to contact OSNews staff to see if we could be enlisted in an effort to root out these moderation abusers. It might have taken some persistence. Not because we don't care (we do, and we've considered you a valuable member of the community) but because we all have other jobs and we're busy.

Now, Thom and Adam might be more piqued about this than I am, because I haven't been paying attention until today. But I think it's safe to say that we can all empathize with your emotional state and can understand the temptation to have an outburst and lash out at innocent bystanders. Once you've cooled off, I'd invite you to contact us and see if we can't come up with a constructive solution to this whole mess.

The worse part is when you look at posts that are +12; for +12, you'd expect some mind blowingly awesome post that shakes the very foundations of orthodox thinking! one then takes a look at the post and it is nothing more than 'we does everyone agree with on this forum - and I'll make a witty one liner".

Like I said, I loved seeing robust debates - and from these debates I learnt so much. Btw, if you were wondering, it would have been way back when I first moved to Australia (2001 some time), and I was posting under the psuedonym 'kiwiunixman' or it might have been kiwiunix - I can't remember. Anyway, to cut a long story short, I've been 'here' since the early days, and seen the rapid decline. I would have thought that the owners wouldn't have been so stupid not to embrace this idiotic digg approach to the forums.

Two weeks solid worth of moderating down? Mate - there is an agenda by some against me. No matter what I have said, I have had points deducted. Too bad the cowards who do it are too weak to actually appear in this conversation. Speaks volumes for the sort of people they are.

The funniest part, as Thom has pointed out, is that you are not only extremely positively moderated, not only do you possess one of the highest "trust" ratings on the site, but almost all of your moderation comes from your fellow readers - damned close to 100%.

If your grousing was legitimate, and for some readers here, it might actually be, it would mean something. But honestly, you are WAY too hung up on the mod system. Before we had one, people asked for it all the time. When we implemented one, people wanted it changed, and when we changed it, people complained that it's too easy to abuse. All proposals I've heard for modification are so complex they will make the site itself about moderating.

Eugenia (actually, it was all of us, but she specifically) moderated so heavily that we regularly had to mod down and field emails complaining about her lack of impartiality and the fact that she let herself break the rules. So it's pure comedy to suggest that those were the good old days. You will never be happy, Kaiwai, here or in any other forum.

Open forums need to be moderated or they fill with spam. Your peers have sent you a message on some of your comments - or maybe just in general - that they are tired of your meta-focused grousing. And your response, unfortunately, is to complain about them, complain about the site, the admins, etc.

The audience of any website changes over time, and it may be time for you to find a new home. You're welcome here, but should you decide to bail, don't pretend there's a reason other than your own inability to cope with having some dissenters. You make the call, but know that taking your toys and going home is not going to teach anyone a lesson.

Nothing personal Kawai but you (and this site) are not important enough for an "agenda." For the record I do not recall ever moderating you down, but if I have it has been over a month. Your posts are quite often antagonistic or purposely inflammatory. It would not surprise me if you have pissed in someones wheaties once too often. However, looking though your last 10 posts it seems to me people moderating them down would not be out of the question based on content alone.

I'd sooner see that there is no moderating based on popularism- debates that thrash out the issues rather than cowards hiding behind the moderating system to silence the opposition.

I've got nothing against differing opinions - if I am wrong, I expect to be corrected. The problem I have is with people who moderate down simply by virtue of whether they disagree.

Moderation is based not on 'do I agree' but whether the point is legitimately made, even if one disagrees with it. That is a mature, respectable moderation system - not this pathetic teenager popularism that is on display now.

Therein lies the arrogance of your stance. You don't know that people are voting you down because they simply disagree, you've invented that notion. The fact that you post comments and cannot comprehend that anyone could mod them down for any reason other than that they disagree is the crux of the problem, methinks.

No, people really are modding him down because it's him. Every single comment he posts gets down to 0 or lower for no apparent reason. He's not just paranoid or making it up.

Nearly all from one thread, where he got into a "back and forth" with a few users. It happens. If you participate in any internet forum, you'll need to learn to get over it or just turn off your computer.

What you're presenting is a moral problem, and not a technical problem. This website's code cannot change people's morals, yours included.

Ummm... he is. The above drama queen rant aside, his super-high trust level means his posts start at +2 and his trust dumps a significant amount of the downmodding. Other than an individual comment score, he is less prone to downmodding. The problem is that he can't deal with ANY downmod at all.

Then again, you might have been being sarcastic...

How about staring at the average score instead of just 2?

No I wasn't really being sarcastic. I think there are many (?) people whose comments start at "2". Anyhow, what I suggest is there are 'featured' users, just like on YTMND, shown in pink, just some way to distinguish between them having any kinds of privileges. Currently we only have the rating of the user which doesn't um... *do* much at all. Then again, that may not work for some reason. What do you think of that?

I think that would be terrible. There's no way to avoid favoratism (or accusations of favoratism) with who gets to be featured and who doesn't. Then there's the whole issue of jealousy, ego trips, resentment, etc. I don't think it's necessary. No one should be above being disagreed with, and some people choose to express disagreement with the moderation system. I'd rather see that go than have classes of übermenschen and untermenschen

I think there's a score next to your name that does the same thing. I don't think artificially inflating scores anymore is a good idea, because it makes it that much harder for lower and newer users to ever achieve getting into the top.

If you're a good user, your peers will reward you and you will remain or rise to the top. If you are a troll, vice versa. But if you are a good user and you suddenly expel a raft of crap, you *should* be put into place.

Sounds reasonable and easy to do. I recommend it be looked at.

I'm open to discussing mod stats in general. We are not going to reveal who is modding you, but I'm open to revealing some of the mystery.

What types of stuff should be available?

Yes and no. He puts time and effort into his comments. Your post here highlights the problem with bad quality comments and moderation abuse - nobody gives a shit if he or she is useful for the community, it's all random trolling babble then or as you put it '0's and '1's.

Yeah, you are right. I try to mod up good posts and mod down obvious trolls. Otherwise I don't touch posts. I don't like the modding people down just because you disagree or don't like the person.

Still, people do take this stuff too seriously.

Wow, wouldn't you know it? MS (substituting S for a dollar sign there), now gets helpfully and fully converted to Microsoft. :-)

That service is provided for free!

We do our part to extinguish flamewars before they begin.

nice, Adam Do you also convert other slurs? linsux, microshaft...

We do censor a few words. It's a very short list, but we feel that on our site, there are certain words we don't want to have show up. We also have a few Easter Eggs.

For example, I use computers at home, but most of our users use PCs, we probably have more users than most sites, though. And I know for a fact that several engineers read our site.

You think flamewars are started by a dollar sign and can be ended by not showing them? Wow. I would have though that experience would have told you otherwise by now, and it's actually a rather sad thing to do.

You seem to be forgetting that this still OUR website, and that you're a GUEST, so you'll have to abide by OUR rules. One of those rules is that we don't like childish dollar sign crap, nor do we like racial slurs. So we alter them.

When I'm a guest at your house, I'll play by your rules. When you're a guest in our house, you play by our rules. As simple as that.

If this keeps up, OSN will have the *most* complicated moderation system on the web.