4 ms·

Easy solution - give the users tools to filter what they don't want to see individually rather than decide for them.

ceejayoz 4y ago
You and I have different definitions of "easy" solutions.
graeme 4y ago
Then you're left with two scenarios: 1. Users themselves have to see the stuff to filter it. This kind of work has burned out scores of classifiers. There's some really, really horrible stuff out there 2. The job will be left to people to make content filters. And those people would need to look at the stuff to filter it. And face legal consequence to doing so. And probably not get much compensation Who or what group would fill #2? It would either be a group that sought to profit from it, or a group funded by governments, or a group that wanted to be at the node point for the spread of such material, or a group that wanted to influence society (e.g. for spam, or a foreign government seeking to mess with a society, etc) It is hard to fathom the sheer volume of horrible content our filters deal with unless you've done any sort of moderation. And usually if you're doing moderation you're well downstream of the worst bits.
vharuck 4y ago
That's already available. Turns out, admin moderation is still necessary to make the website tolerable. Besides, boards generally have just 150 threads running at once. If the majority of the live threads are just spammed crap, that makes everything worse. If there are 100 topics with lively discussion and 10 or so spam threads that haven't been culled yet, no problem. If there are 80 spam threads, then there's going to be a ton of churn as everyone competes for the other 70 threads. Each new one bumps another off the site. There'll be discussions started anew, with the same crap filling it up because people think they have to say it every time. This is what happens on fast-moving boards. And one could ask "Why not change the number of live threads? Or never retire threads?" To which I'd respond, "If you have to keep recommending changes to fix what your other changes cause, maybe the original change wasn't good."
asdff 4y ago
Filtering is a game of constant whack a mole. That's why mods and janitors are used to do it, because it would be overwhelming if it was on each and every user and, you'd spend the bulk of your time online seeing egregious content and updating your filters, as well as dealing with the stress of actually seeing that graphic stuff.
yifanl 4y ago
It takes one mildly determined person and 30 dollars to rent a server farm to post 150 threads of garbage, and there goes everything else on the catalog. edit: actually, in the world where there's _zero_ moderation then you probably wouldn't even need the server farm since there wouldn't be any risk of being IP flagged.

You and I have different definitions of "easy" solutions.

Then you're left with two scenarios: 1. Users themselves have to see the stuff to filter it. This kind of work has burned out scores of classifiers. There's some really, really horrible stuff out there 2. The job will be left to people to make content filters. And those people would need to look at the stuff to filter it. And face legal consequence to doing so. And probably not get much compensation Who or what group would fill #2? It would either be a group that sought to profit from it, or a group funded by governments, or a group that wanted to be at the node point for the spread of such material, or a group that wanted to influence society (e.g. for spam, or a foreign government seeking to mess with a society, etc) It is hard to fathom the sheer volume of horrible content our filters deal with unless you've done any sort of moderation. And usually if you're doing moderation you're well downstream of the worst bits.

vharuck 4y ago

That's already available. Turns out, admin moderation is still necessary to make the website tolerable. Besides, boards generally have just 150 threads running at once. If the majority of the live threads are just spammed crap, that makes everything worse. If there are 100 topics with lively discussion and 10 or so spam threads that haven't been culled yet, no problem. If there are 80 spam threads, then there's going to be a ton of churn as everyone competes for the other 70 threads. Each new one bumps another off the site. There'll be discussions started anew, with the same crap filling it up because people think they have to say it every time. This is what happens on fast-moving boards. And one could ask "Why not change the number of live threads? Or never retire threads?" To which I'd respond, "If you have to keep recommending changes to fix what your other changes cause, maybe the original change wasn't good."

asdff 4y ago

Filtering is a game of constant whack a mole. That's why mods and janitors are used to do it, because it would be overwhelming if it was on each and every user and, you'd spend the bulk of your time online seeing egregious content and updating your filters, as well as dealing with the stress of actually seeing that graphic stuff.

yifanl 4y ago

It takes one mildly determined person and 30 dollars to rent a server farm to post 150 threads of garbage, and there goes everything else on the catalog. edit: actually, in the world where there's _zero_ moderation then you probably wouldn't even need the server farm since there wouldn't be any risk of being IP flagged.