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Unfortunately I'm pretty sure mean spiritedness is too semantic to catch with a filter. Dumb jerks are not the problem. The type who curse a lot get downmodde

by pg 17y ago

Unfortunately I'm pretty sure mean spiritedness is too semantic to catch with a filter. Dumb jerks are not the problem. The type who curse a lot get downmodded into oblivion and eventually banned. The problem is smart jerks. And unfortunately these are not uncommon in our world.

gregwebs 17y ago
generally, I agree, but I do find, for example, that as programming.reddit.com got worse the swearing went up, and as HN has gotten worse swearing has gone up. Now the swearing is not always mean-spearited, and probably the mean-spirited swearing gets down-modded on HN. But swearing could just trigger a filter that says "swear words are used to get attention in important situations. Do you really think this is that important?". Even if you can find some effective filters to use, most may eventually be worked around by commenters as you are implying. But they could give you more breathing room to find long-term solutions, and may help in that effort by increasing your awareness of what exactly the problems are.
astine 17y ago
Maybe a 'jerk' flag? Something that wouldn't effect individual comments, but would aggregate. A user with a high number of jerk flags could be called into scrutiny and possibly be dealt with if he was abusing the site. Another thought... What if we could filter out users who's comment we didn't want to read or we felt were offensive or a waste of time? This would reduce the noise for indivudual users without anything so draconian or subjective as flagging plus moderation. Another less-pleasent thought is more aggressive banning policies. I remember being part of older BB-esque forums that managed to maintain strong communities by enlisting members as moderators and enforcing strict and clearly promulgated discussion policies. It worked because it was transparent and because the enforcers were active members of the community. They had reputations and interest in keeping the quality of discussions high and are bound by the same rules that apply to everyone else. If need be, their rullings could be appealed if they were abusing their authority. I always felt that that system worked.
bokonist 17y ago
Create an expanded group of users whose judgement you trust. If they flag a comment for being uncivil, then everyone who up-voted the comment has their voting power reduced (from then on, if their up-vote would count less than everyone else's). I think this would help with the problem of highly up-voted, mean, comments.

by pg 17y ago

gregwebs 17y ago

generally, I agree, but I do find, for example, that as programming.reddit.com got worse the swearing went up, and as HN has gotten worse swearing has gone up. Now the swearing is not always mean-spearited, and probably the mean-spirited swearing gets down-modded on HN. But swearing could just trigger a filter that says "swear words are used to get attention in important situations. Do you really think this is that important?". Even if you can find some effective filters to use, most may eventually be worked around by commenters as you are implying. But they could give you more breathing room to find long-term solutions, and may help in that effort by increasing your awareness of what exactly the problems are.

astine 17y ago

Maybe a 'jerk' flag? Something that wouldn't effect individual comments, but would aggregate. A user with a high number of jerk flags could be called into scrutiny and possibly be dealt with if he was abusing the site. Another thought... What if we could filter out users who's comment we didn't want to read or we felt were offensive or a waste of time? This would reduce the noise for indivudual users without anything so draconian or subjective as flagging plus moderation. Another less-pleasent thought is more aggressive banning policies. I remember being part of older BB-esque forums that managed to maintain strong communities by enlisting members as moderators and enforcing strict and clearly promulgated discussion policies. It worked because it was transparent and because the enforcers were active members of the community. They had reputations and interest in keeping the quality of discussions high and are bound by the same rules that apply to everyone else. If need be, their rullings could be appealed if they were abusing their authority. I always felt that that system worked.

bokonist 17y ago

Create an expanded group of users whose judgement you trust. If they flag a comment for being uncivil, then everyone who up-voted the comment has their voting power reduced (from then on, if their up-vote would count less than everyone else's). I think this would help with the problem of highly up-voted, mean, comments.