4 ms·

I don't understand why nobody came up with a technical solution for this problems yet. It can't be that complicated. Make a better Twitter. Add reputation manag

by dorgo 9y ago

I don't understand why nobody came up with a technical solution for this problems yet. It can't be that complicated. Make a better Twitter. Add reputation management. Enforce strict rules on argumentation. Reduce/forbid redundant arguments. Add better structure for arguments. Arguments should be as short as possible but not shorter. Add ratings to arguments (a la hackernews).

marklgr 9y ago
Oh yes, it's hard. Reputation and ratings are abused by "brigades", groups of people who upvote all posts of other members and downvotes those of opponents. Eventually, it's a batlle of the most zealous and organized groups who are willing to put up the most time in this. These groups can be some volunteers on the Internet, but they can also be professionnal teams working on e-reputation/web-influence, and they know very well how to bypass the (mostly rudimentary) protections against astroturfing. It doesn't look like it, but it's a big business.
intended 9y ago
Not sure if missing an /s But any system can be gamed. The moment the community creates any value - political/advertising/creative People will swoop in to take advantage of it. This sets of a cycle 1) If no moderation, debate on the need of moderation - given time this will be resolved in favor of moderation 2) Moderators try to deal with attackers, posers, abusers 3) Attackers start masking their presence, they start debating the rules, they develop increasing sophisticated counter attacks to the rules At this stage, its important to note that common sense is thrown to the window. People will argue incessantly whether X post/comment is within the scope of the rules or not. The term is forum lawyer. 4) Moderators have to start going to greater and greater lengths to deal with rule breaking, rule defining and disruption. The best case scenario is indifference and manageable rule breaking. 5) Eventually if the process escalates, we end up at profiling users based on words, either through mod experience, or worse - automated means. IP addresses are tagged, users are tagged. Moderation is the intersection of being a debate adjudicator and a full fledged editorial board for a newspaper. ANY technical solution should be looked at with DEEP discomfort. Any solution to this problem can and will eventually be used to suppress or modify behavior on forums. Whats worrisome is that this arms race is escalating, if you see how mod tools have expanded on reddit, they have completely stopped entire methods of grass roots retaliation to mod power. Earlier - if a forum had an issue, it could split organically into a subreddit. Users would vote with their feet. Famously the split of weed lovers to r/trees. With the creation of automod, any mention of an opposing sub can completely be removed. Stopping that entire method of dealing with mods. Sub splits do still happen, but its a lot harder to achieve and organize.
ManlyBread 9y ago
It won't work for the same reason it doesn't work for reddit - it still needs to be maintained by a human. Which means that bias and agendas will enter at some point of the process and there's absolutely nothing a mere user can do about it. >Add reputation management Doesn't work at all for reddit, the "karma" means nothing, the karma requirements for some subreddits only make it harder for new users to join or to have any kind of a meaningful discussion. On top of that posting in some subreddits automatically gets you banned from many others, regardless of the opinions actually expressed, which means you can't even try to have a meaningful discussion with people holding an opposing view. Not like it matters though, any solid argument is labeled as "concern trolling" anyway and thus deemed banworthy. >Enforce strict rules on argumentation. Add better structure for arguments. Arguments should be as short as possible but not shorter. Again, a human will have to do that, which in case of reddit means biased moderator decisions, selective enforcement of ToS and admins editing your comments. >Add ratings to arguments Easily gamed, as evidenced by any upvote system (reddit especially, their "anti-brigade" measures are laughable and pretty much punish everyone aside from the people who are actually "brigading").

by dorgo 9y ago

marklgr 9y ago

Oh yes, it's hard. Reputation and ratings are abused by "brigades", groups of people who upvote all posts of other members and downvotes those of opponents. Eventually, it's a batlle of the most zealous and organized groups who are willing to put up the most time in this. These groups can be some volunteers on the Internet, but they can also be professionnal teams working on e-reputation/web-influence, and they know very well how to bypass the (mostly rudimentary) protections against astroturfing. It doesn't look like it, but it's a big business.

intended 9y ago

Not sure if missing an /s But any system can be gamed. The moment the community creates any value - political/advertising/creative People will swoop in to take advantage of it. This sets of a cycle 1) If no moderation, debate on the need of moderation - given time this will be resolved in favor of moderation 2) Moderators try to deal with attackers, posers, abusers 3) Attackers start masking their presence, they start debating the rules, they develop increasing sophisticated counter attacks to the rules At this stage, its important to note that common sense is thrown to the window. People will argue incessantly whether X post/comment is within the scope of the rules or not. The term is forum lawyer. 4) Moderators have to start going to greater and greater lengths to deal with rule breaking, rule defining and disruption. The best case scenario is indifference and manageable rule breaking. 5) Eventually if the process escalates, we end up at profiling users based on words, either through mod experience, or worse - automated means. IP addresses are tagged, users are tagged. Moderation is the intersection of being a debate adjudicator and a full fledged editorial board for a newspaper. ANY technical solution should be looked at with DEEP discomfort. Any solution to this problem can and will eventually be used to suppress or modify behavior on forums. Whats worrisome is that this arms race is escalating, if you see how mod tools have expanded on reddit, they have completely stopped entire methods of grass roots retaliation to mod power. Earlier - if a forum had an issue, it could split organically into a subreddit. Users would vote with their feet. Famously the split of weed lovers to r/trees. With the creation of automod, any mention of an opposing sub can completely be removed. Stopping that entire method of dealing with mods. Sub splits do still happen, but its a lot harder to achieve and organize.

ManlyBread 9y ago

It won't work for the same reason it doesn't work for reddit - it still needs to be maintained by a human. Which means that bias and agendas will enter at some point of the process and there's absolutely nothing a mere user can do about it. >Add reputation management Doesn't work at all for reddit, the "karma" means nothing, the karma requirements for some subreddits only make it harder for new users to join or to have any kind of a meaningful discussion. On top of that posting in some subreddits automatically gets you banned from many others, regardless of the opinions actually expressed, which means you can't even try to have a meaningful discussion with people holding an opposing view. Not like it matters though, any solid argument is labeled as "concern trolling" anyway and thus deemed banworthy. >Enforce strict rules on argumentation. Add better structure for arguments. Arguments should be as short as possible but not shorter. Again, a human will have to do that, which in case of reddit means biased moderator decisions, selective enforcement of ToS and admins editing your comments. >Add ratings to arguments Easily gamed, as evidenced by any upvote system (reddit especially, their "anti-brigade" measures are laughable and pretty much punish everyone aside from the people who are actually "brigading").