3 ms·

I was part of solving a content moderation problem for a tech company forum once. The most troublesome users were often the most prolific posters. The people w

I was part of solving a content moderation problem for a tech company forum once. The most troublesome users were often the most prolific posters. The people who had a lot of free time on their hands to post every single day were often the most disgruntled, seizing every issue as a chance to stir up more controversy. It was tough enough to reel in difficult users when they had no power. Giving extra power to people who posted the most would have only made the problem worse, not better. The most valuable content came from users who didn't post that often, but posted valuable and well-received content occasionally. I'm not sure they would have much interest in moderating content, though, because they would rather produce content than deal with troublesome content from other people. Content moderation is a pain. The trolls always have infinitely more free time than you do.

ycombinete 6y ago
How did you go about solving the problem in the end?
ericbarrett 6y ago
I used to moderate a few message boards, and I fully agree. I think empowering the "power users" like this inevitably leads to Stack Overflow-style communities, where arrogant responses are the norm, the taste of a few regulates the many, and the culture of the community ossifies because new contributors are not welcomed.
- johnnyanmac 6y ago
  The factor missing with a SO style "meritocracy" is that it needs to be hard to rise up, but very easy to fall down from misconduct: in other words, a built in accountability mechanism to ensure they don't abuse their power and become arrogant over it. Not necessarily ban worthy offenses (lest, they simply be banned), but ones that make a less welcome community. I'm lost on how to do this within an internet community, however. You don't want burners being made to report over a disagreement in opinion and impact them. Or worse, power users tearing each other down in retaliation. I don't think "election periods" would work well either because few people really care to be a moderator to begin with. I can only see it being done by having professional moderators and having a manager review any potential user complaints. Which I'm sure has other problems.
_carbyau_ 6y ago
Why do you have to give people "unlimited" posts? Why not 5 per day? More posts if people rate your posts highly, to some useful maximum. Less posts if they rate your posts poorly, down to a set minimum that every starts at. Then all the fancy IP detecting, fingerprinting etc tech could filter duplicate accounts and be a boon for once.
dredmorbius 6y ago
The fact that there's very little overlap between those with the inclination to contribute and those with value to contribute, is fundamental to virtually all communication channels / fora. Unless the channel is exceedingly aggressively managed, the former will outweigh the latter. An early form of this appeared as an observation on Hal Varian's page at UC Berkeley (he's an economist, was with the School of Information Management Science, and now works for Google). On HN it's interesting to look at what kind of riff-raff appear high on the leaderboard, vs. revered names in the field who may have posted only a few times. Neither truth nor quality are popularity (or volume) contests.

ycombinete 6y ago

How did you go about solving the problem in the end?

ericbarrett 6y ago

I used to moderate a few message boards, and I fully agree. I think empowering the "power users" like this inevitably leads to Stack Overflow-style communities, where arrogant responses are the norm, the taste of a few regulates the many, and the culture of the community ossifies because new contributors are not welcomed.

johnnyanmac 6y ago
The factor missing with a SO style "meritocracy" is that it needs to be hard to rise up, but very easy to fall down from misconduct: in other words, a built in accountability mechanism to ensure they don't abuse their power and become arrogant over it. Not necessarily ban worthy offenses (lest, they simply be banned), but ones that make a less welcome community. I'm lost on how to do this within an internet community, however. You don't want burners being made to report over a disagreement in opinion and impact them. Or worse, power users tearing each other down in retaliation. I don't think "election periods" would work well either because few people really care to be a moderator to begin with. I can only see it being done by having professional moderators and having a manager review any potential user complaints. Which I'm sure has other problems.

_carbyau_ 6y ago

Why do you have to give people "unlimited" posts? Why not 5 per day? More posts if people rate your posts highly, to some useful maximum. Less posts if they rate your posts poorly, down to a set minimum that every starts at. Then all the fancy IP detecting, fingerprinting etc tech could filter duplicate accounts and be a boon for once.

dredmorbius 6y ago

The fact that there's very little overlap between those with the inclination to contribute and those with value to contribute, is fundamental to virtually all communication channels / fora. Unless the channel is exceedingly aggressively managed, the former will outweigh the latter. An early form of this appeared as an observation on Hal Varian's page at UC Berkeley (he's an economist, was with the School of Information Management Science, and now works for Google). On HN it's interesting to look at what kind of riff-raff appear high on the leaderboard, vs. revered names in the field who may have posted only a few times. Neither truth nor quality are popularity (or volume) contests.