OSNews

I'm not for an ignore option, mostly because of the fact it tears discussions apart. People you have on your ignore list might make a similar comment to yours, or ask a similar question/post a similar answer, making the comments section a messy place with a lot of duplicate efforts.

That's a good point, and there are also implementation problems. If you ignore a user, do you still see responses to his posts? Also, what if a user with trollish tendencies decides to grow up and amend his ways by making reasonable posts? You wouldn't get the chance to see theses...

We all troll once in a while (me too), so who exactly would you ignore?

Right. We can all have bad days, and sometimes we may strongly disagree on certain subjects and agree on others. I remember getting into some quite intense political flameware with dylanmrjones, but we do get along fine on other points...

I'm among those who suggested an "Ignore" feature during the NotParker debacle, but after thinking the idea over I'm not convinced it's a good idea, at least not on a community-oriented site such as OSNews.

Perhaps we could simply add a "Flamebaiting" option for modding posts down (or add a mention to Flamebaiting in the Off-topic option, since the two are more often than not related...)?

"""
///We all troll once in a while (me too), so who exactly would you ignore?///

Right. We can all have bad days, and sometimes we may strongly disagree on certain subjects and agree on others.
"""

Indeed. "Variants of the word 'Troll' really are more applicable as adjectives, adverbs, and verbs, than as nouns. Few people "are trolls".

It seems that I often find myself in a minority position. I don't know why, but I do.

Sometimes "trolls" are a reality check. I find myself immersed in a particular community, saying things that would be considered absolutely crazy in the outside world, and along comes some "troll" from that outside world to set me straight and give me some perspective.

In my opinion, we would all be the richer if the terms "Troll" and "FUD" were eradicated from the language.

Edited 2006-12-19 17:30

I would be more concerned about the nonlinearity of discussion that ignore would cause, but that already occurs with moderation anyway. Trolls mending their ways is not something that I would worry about. If they want to grow up they can get a new account, but if how they spend their time on the Internet is by annoying others for no reason, then I don't really think I would miss much if they decided to act like a normal person.

For the most part I think just banning people that persistently engage in obnoxious behavior would be more useful than making 60,000 people ignore them individually. It would save some space in the database too. In any event if people really want to ignore others then someone can create a Greasemonkey script to remove comments from the page by username.

"I'm not for an ignore option, mostly because of the fact it tears discussions apart."
Hmm, I haven't seen it that way before but you are probably right.
And thanks for banning NotParker, I sure hope we can get back to normal now

I browse at -5 level for that reason, to see all posts in context. So banning is better than an ignore-option.

"""The number of True Trolls (like NotParker who got banned by me after ignoring a warning a few days ago) """

I would like to go on record as disagreeing with this decision.

I respect your judgment call, Thom. But NotParker, as annoying, provocative, and single-minded as his posts have been, has value to contribute to this forum.

I can't believe I said that but I'm pressing "Submit" anyway. ;-)

I respect your judgment call, Thom. But NotParker, as annoying, provocative, and single-minded as his posts have been, has value to contribute to this forum.

I warned him, placing him under extra supervision; I mailed him this. He then CLEARLY broke our rules by posting the same comment TWICE. Hence, his banning was ENTIRELY justified.

Ignore options won't work the problem I think is the mod points system, today exist a group of unobjective users who deside what is worth to mod up and what is not, and they have the control because they mod up to each other and mod down who don't like togheter, that's why we have trolls like twenex who often insult people and get moded up to 5, or segedenum or whatever who ruin every Novell or SUSE treath with off topic FUD and he is moded up to 5 for the same group and at the same time they disarm more objetives users giving them less mod points to defend their point.

The actual mod system is propense to do that.

Edited 2006-12-19 18:09

"""and they have the control because they mod up to each other and mod down who don't like togheter, that's why we have trolls like twenex who often insult people and get moded up to 5,"""

While I agree with you that the mod system here is shit... try as I might, I've not been able to come up with anything better.

I'll continue to complain, because there must be someone out there who is smarter than I am who *can* think of something better.

And Twenex is *not* a troll. Merely someone with whom you obviously disagree. Get over it. You'll be all the happier for it. ;-)

-Steve Bergman

Yeah, I really like the mod system at times and other times I completely hate it. Back when Thom linked to the story about Hans Reiser getting charged with murder I posted this:
"Now I see why some distro's have said that they will stop using ReiserFS after all these years." I was trying to say that maybe some of these distro's don't want to be associated with that kind of bad publicity, even though it is a great FS.
I don't see any personal attacks or offensive language in this post, but somehow it earned me a -5.
I think that if people get modded down, there needs to be a system in place to moderate that decision, not just let anything fly. OSNews is a fantastic site that never gets closed on my computer, work or home, and I am glad to see actual news rather than some of the junk that gets spewed all over some of the other sites. Thanks.

I think that moderation of the "bads" (personal attacks, offensive language, off-topic-ness and spam) should be separate from the [+]/[-] moderation. I envision a third, separate skull+bones icon. Think 'kill' or 'poison'.

The [+] and [-] should only ever be used for expressing like or dislike, or whether you agree or not, and be completely up to the community.

It might also be neat to display both ups -and- downs for each post, instead of a single, opaque "score". If 5 people vote me up and 5 vote me down, the score doesn't tell.

The 'kill' button would alert the admin, and be purely admin domain.

Here is a radical suggestion. How about *no* moderation system?

Is OSNews really a large enough site to require it?

Moderation is not a site feature. It is a necessary evil for sites that have no choice.

I'm not so naive as to think that there is no need for the proprietors and/or users of a site to exert some control.

But does it really need to be formalized into a mod system, right now, here, for OSNews?

Just a thought...