Slashdot style moderation?

shreyasonline wrote:



"Ignore This Thread" would be better. Here only the SPAM/Racist like threads can be ignored instead of ignoring the user(s) totally.

Shreyas Zare

But the problem for me isn't ignoring complete threads. The problem is the "hijacked" threads that were perfectly valuable until trolls bring them down into flame wars. I want those threads (and any other) to live longer by content management of the thread itself. Simply ignoring threads wouldn't suffice for me because then a perfectly valuable thread would be gone simply because of trolling.

blowdart wrote:



What I think would be useful is a slightly cut back slashdot moderation; where you can mark comments as spam (and those marked enough they hide from those with the default view), whereas the rest of the options are positive (interesting, insightful, another blowdart post etc.) Perhaps the only other "negative" would be "off topic", where someone posts a technical question in the coffeehouse etc.

I like this idea. Of course, I also like the more complete /. idea. I'm for anything that lets the community moderate itself and will help contribute to threads living longer, remaining on topic, and discouraging trolls.

To do this though, I agree with jsampsonPC that you would need to find a way to prevent trolls from merely creating 10 different accounts and voting themselves up. OTOH, maybe this could be accomplished by weighting the various values. Meaning, a "SPAM" vote would only be negated by five "Interesting" votes or something like that. But my fear with that (talking to myself here ) would be that anyone who posts about a good "opposing" feature could be bashed into oblivion by someone like DarthVista (I love ya' man, but I don't want your prevalent "message" becoming all we see on C9, sorry). I for one like the opposing opinions and viewpoints.

Regardless of all that though, I think _some_ kind of community-based moderation would be a good thing. If the C9 community is moderating itself, it's merely one less argument that MS is tightly controlling the content here to push its own agenda (why do I fear that a troll is going to pick up that comment and derail this thread ).

shreyasonline wrote:



Rory wrote:  Massif wrote: We've had the discussion about ignore lists before haven't we? I thought it was decided that you could get some strange looking conversations because of people ignoring replies. Yeah... the problem with ignoring is that you'll still see posts from the user mingled in with the thread - you just won't see posts directly from the user you're ignoring. It can make things a bit strange.

 

"Ignore This Thread" would be better. Here only the SPAM/Racist like threads can be ignored instead of ignoring the user(s) totally.

Shreyas Zare

Ignore this thread is something we've been thinking about for a while.  We need a really good way to do this and need to think about it, but we believe it would be useful.

LaBomba wrote:

I don't know who mentioned it (maybe adam or duncan..) but when you vote to ignore a user their posts aren't completely lost but rather become minimized and you would need to click to expand; to view the post(s) from that user.

So because we agree that darthvista is a troll; albeit an entertaining one. While his posts won't show up by default it's still there for you, if you are looking for a laugh.

This is basically what we're thinking.  But thanks to Rory spawning this thread, it helped refine the idea (at least in my head) a bit.

So how I'm picturing it as a feature where you can say "ignore user".  That is ALWAYS is applied to conversations and shows their posts grayed out, but you can click expand if you REALLY must see what they're saying.  Then, the number of ignores is tallied per user that then fits into a rating (0 through 9 maybe?  ).  Users can then opt in for how high of a rating they want to ignore, so then their ignore list becomes a combination of who they think should be ignored, combined with who the community thinks should be ignored.  And if there's a lot of abuse to that system, people will most likely just opt out.  So the true control is there for each individual user, while giving the community control as well, but still up to each person on how much "advice" to take from the community.

What do you all think?

My concern is that when I noticed increases in troll-like activity, it wasn't the increase of trolling threads that was the problem. The greater problem was hijacked threads. I would hate to see those threads locked when the threads themselves are usually valuable (and just degrade off-topic because of the trolling). So, I don't like the idea of moderating at the thread level.

My concern with just collapsing the reply from just the troll, is that subsequent replies to that troll from people I don't want to ignore would potentially have them quoting the troll. I would much rather have a system where it can be moderated to the point that not only the troll's reply, but everyone falling for the bait and replying to the troll would also go away (be hidden). That way, the thread remains valuable as it remains as close to "pure signal" as you can get. My hope would be, in turn, that threads would stay alive longer as they aren't derailed into oblivion.

JasonOlson wrote:

My concern is that when I noticed increases in troll-like activity, it wasn't the increase of trolling threads that was the problem. The greater problem was hijacked threads. I would hate to see those threads locked when the threads themselves are usually valuable (and just degrade off-topic because of the trolling). So, I don't like the idea of moderating at the thread level.

Ignoring at the thread level is completely up to you and on a thread by thread basis and unrelated to ignoring users.

JasonOlson wrote:


My concern with just collapsing the reply from just the troll, is that subsequent replies to that troll from people I don't want to ignore would potentially have them quoting the troll. I would much rather have a system where it can be moderated to the point that not only the troll's reply, but everyone falling for the bait and replying to the troll would also go away (be hidden). That way, the thread remains valuable as it remains as close to "pure signal" as you can get. My hope would be, in turn, that threads would stay alive longer as they aren't derailed into oblivion.

This is exactly what we're planning.  You'll have to wait until Adam posts the the screenshots, but the idea is and ignored comment by someone on your ignore list shows up as grayed out and only has an "expand this comments" link and the user's name.  You will not be able to see what happens beneath that comment unless you explicitly click on the expand link.

HumanCompiler wrote:



JasonOlson wrote: My concern is that when I noticed increases in troll-like activity, it wasn't the increase of trolling threads that was the problem. The greater problem was hijacked threads. I would hate to see those threads locked when the threads themselves are usually valuable (and just degrade off-topic because of the trolling). So, I don't like the idea of moderating at the thread level.

Ignoring at the thread level is completely up to you and on a thread by thread basis and unrelated to ignoring users.

JasonOlson wrote:  My concern with just collapsing the reply from just the troll, is that subsequent replies to that troll from people I don't want to ignore would potentially have them quoting the troll. I would much rather have a system where it can be moderated to the point that not only the troll's reply, but everyone falling for the bait and replying to the troll would also go away (be hidden). That way, the thread remains valuable as it remains as close to "pure signal" as you can get. My hope would be, in turn, that threads would stay alive longer as they aren't derailed into oblivion.

This is exactly what we're planning.  You'll have to wait until Adam posts the the screenshots, but the idea is and ignored comment by someone on your ignore list shows up as grayed out and only has an "expand this comments" link and the user's name.  You will not be able to see what happens beneath that comment unless you explicitly click on the expand link.

Ahhh. If that's the case, it sounds good to me .