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I tried it a while ago, then left when I realized a terrible aspect of its’ design was being abused: The creator of a debate topic gets to moderate it, which ba
by electrograv 8y ago
I tried it a while ago, then left when I realized a terrible aspect of its’ design was being abused: The creator of a debate topic gets to moderate it, which basically includes full censorship powers of any pros or cons you don’t like.
It boggles my mind anyone designing Kialo would have thought that to be a good idea, or that they wouldn’t foresee it being abused regularly to nudge the tide of an argument in the preferred direction by the moderators.
I’ve seen it all the time: Depending on the agenda of the moderators, one side of the argument mysteriously receives an overwhelmingly large amount of “moderation” for minor technicalities or even outright nonsensical reasons.
I’ve even seen Kialo’s own confusing design you mention here used as a way to subtly suppress one side of an argument: Take any argument beyond the top level, and it’s very easy to simply claim it is a duplicate of a top level argument. For example, if I write a con of a con, moderators can remove it saying it resembled an argument they saw in a top level pro. Or if I write a pro or a pro, they can remove it by saying it’s a duplicate of its own parent!
And this technique applies any number of levels deep in the tree. When this “moderation” gets applies overwhelmingly on one side of an argument, you can shift the entire balance of a Kialo argument quite easily without revealing overt corruption on the surface of your actions.
- Kialo 8y agoWell unfortunately, in the large debates, really many duplicates are being submitted. Take the UBI one with close to 3k unique claims. It's really hard to suggest claims that aren't already in there. If you have specific examples, please point us to them, but we are not aware of any really large (>500 claims) biased debates. The idea is for claims to be canonical for each debate, otherwise you have to rewrite them a gazillion times, including their children. That's what we have linking for. Generally speaking, if you think your claim was unfairly rejected, just hit report and we'll look into it. Having claims rejected as duplicates, happens to us too. :) If you have any suggestions, other than reporting, and roaming powerusers (which we will introduce soon), please let us know!
- acover 8y agoHave you considered democratizing moderation? If many people agree that a claim is a duplicate of another claim then it's probably a duplicate or at least the community wants to treat it as such. Also instead of removal just make it less visible. With a big arrow pointing towards the main discussion. If people still choose to discuss there then they must see value in doing so. PS: thank you for making this
- perfmode 8y agodelegated democracy (page rank) is pretty ideal but complex