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Gave up looking for a clear definition of what a "toxic comment" is. All I found is a statement that they use some score from some tool and link to the tool dev

Gave up looking for a clear definition of what a "toxic comment" is. All I found is a statement that they use some score from some tool and link to the tool developer's site so I'm required to sift through the developer's site to understand what the core part of the paper is, or I've missed some other part of the paper because they include so many dense paragraphs of nothing useful informations (as well as a nice promotion for the tool developers).

Ensorceled 3y ago
A good way to begin to understand about toxic comments is to look for the "dead" comments on HN. Dead comments fall into a few categories: trolling, advertisements, conspiracy/culture war and toxic. It's pretty easy to figure out which is which.
- lolc 3y ago
  No the question is how the authors decided which comments were toxic for their evaluation. If they say "gut feeling" then replication will be greatly hampered.
  - Ensorceled 3y ago
    The article explains their methodology for identifying and tracking toxic comments.
    - lolc 3y ago
      The original comment said "All I found is a statement that they use some score from some tool and link to the tool developer's site". So if that's all there is regarding classification, their methodology is not nailed down very well in my view. But maybe there's more and we haven't found it?
      - Ensorceled 3y ago
        There is an entire section dedicated this at the end of the article. They are using at established tool for this domain and there are links explaining how it works and definitions.
- VancouverMan 3y ago
  As somebody who wants to see as much discussion as possible, even if I might disagree with or dislike what's being expressed, I find the moderation here tends to be more "toxic" to my user experience than the dead or grayed-out comments are. I wish this site had a setting like "showdead", but that disabled all moderation-related impacts on the display of the discussion. There wouldn't be any grayed-out comments, for example, and the ordering would depend only on when a comment was posted.
  - Ensorceled 3y ago
    > As somebody who wants to see as much discussion as possible, even if I might disagree with or dislike what's being expressed, I find the moderation here tends to be more "toxic" to my user experience than the dead or grayed-out comments are. Be careful what you wish for. The problem is that you are in a minority. People are leaving X in droves because of this approach of letting terrible people be terrible. I've left X because almost all the people I follow have departed. HN would be the same.
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    Agreed, and I'd even be willing to opt out of the karma system entirely to get this. The self-defeating nature of "graying" comments out is just utterly mind-blowing. It calls more attention to the undesirable content rather than less... yet nobody in power seems to understand that. (For starters: if I turn on showdead, it means I don't want my view censored. So stop doing it.) Anyway, it's OT for this story.
    - johnnyanmac 3y ago
      The idea is that it's harder to read and much easier to skim over. It does elicit curiosity, but if everytime you take that effort and you end up reading nonsense, you're gonna assossiate that fade with nonsense. I'd say it's the most interesting interpretation of "ignore the troll" that I've seen, if nothing else.
    - natch 3y ago
      I’m not inside your head so I don’t know if you would agree, but I would love to see this say content that is deemed undesirable as opposed to just straight “undesirable.” My problem with gray text is a bit different: Since the dumbness of crowds can happen even on HN, I’d like to be able read comments myself and decide for myself what to think about them. With some topics the hater community is very strong, and comments get so light so fast they cannot even be read without some disruptive workflow, and they aren’t always useless comments.
- t0bia_s 3y ago
  It's not easy. Definition of toxicity is fluid. Also, polotical topics are regularly flagged, even though source information is reliable and solid. I miss something like explanation/select of category if giving a flag. Without any explanation, why link is flagged, no one is learning.
cbondurant 3y ago
I had to ctrl+f to navigate enough to find it but they mention that their method for identifying toxic comments is under the methods and materials section. Its just some kind of trained ML model. In that section they link to a page (Id share it directly but it clearly has some annoying "heres your temporary access key" query parameters that would probably cause the link to break super fast) that gives examples of how it ranks different kinds of comments, and I think that list of examples is enough to trust that it does at least well enough at classifying to draw at least light conclusions from.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

Ensorceled 3y ago

A good way to begin to understand about toxic comments is to look for the "dead" comments on HN. Dead comments fall into a few categories: trolling, advertisements, conspiracy/culture war and toxic. It's pretty easy to figure out which is which.

lolc 3y ago
No the question is how the authors decided which comments were toxic for their evaluation. If they say "gut feeling" then replication will be greatly hampered.
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  The article explains their methodology for identifying and tracking toxic comments.
  - lolc 3y ago
    The original comment said "All I found is a statement that they use some score from some tool and link to the tool developer's site". So if that's all there is regarding classification, their methodology is not nailed down very well in my view. But maybe there's more and we haven't found it?
    - Ensorceled 3y ago
      There is an entire section dedicated this at the end of the article. They are using at established tool for this domain and there are links explaining how it works and definitions.
VancouverMan 3y ago
As somebody who wants to see as much discussion as possible, even if I might disagree with or dislike what's being expressed, I find the moderation here tends to be more "toxic" to my user experience than the dead or grayed-out comments are. I wish this site had a setting like "showdead", but that disabled all moderation-related impacts on the display of the discussion. There wouldn't be any grayed-out comments, for example, and the ordering would depend only on when a comment was posted.
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  > As somebody who wants to see as much discussion as possible, even if I might disagree with or dislike what's being expressed, I find the moderation here tends to be more "toxic" to my user experience than the dead or grayed-out comments are. Be careful what you wish for. The problem is that you are in a minority. People are leaving X in droves because of this approach of letting terrible people be terrible. I've left X because almost all the people I follow have departed. HN would be the same.
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  Agreed, and I'd even be willing to opt out of the karma system entirely to get this. The self-defeating nature of "graying" comments out is just utterly mind-blowing. It calls more attention to the undesirable content rather than less... yet nobody in power seems to understand that. (For starters: if I turn on showdead, it means I don't want my view censored. So stop doing it.) Anyway, it's OT for this story.
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    The idea is that it's harder to read and much easier to skim over. It does elicit curiosity, but if everytime you take that effort and you end up reading nonsense, you're gonna assossiate that fade with nonsense. I'd say it's the most interesting interpretation of "ignore the troll" that I've seen, if nothing else.
  - natch 3y ago
    I’m not inside your head so I don’t know if you would agree, but I would love to see this say content that is deemed undesirable as opposed to just straight “undesirable.” My problem with gray text is a bit different: Since the dumbness of crowds can happen even on HN, I’d like to be able read comments myself and decide for myself what to think about them. With some topics the hater community is very strong, and comments get so light so fast they cannot even be read without some disruptive workflow, and they aren’t always useless comments.
t0bia_s 3y ago
It's not easy. Definition of toxicity is fluid. Also, polotical topics are regularly flagged, even though source information is reliable and solid. I miss something like explanation/select of category if giving a flag. Without any explanation, why link is flagged, no one is learning.

cbondurant 3y ago

I had to ctrl+f to navigate enough to find it but they mention that their method for identifying toxic comments is under the methods and materials section. Its just some kind of trained ML model. In that section they link to a page (Id share it directly but it clearly has some annoying "heres your temporary access key" query parameters that would probably cause the link to break super fast) that gives examples of how it ranks different kinds of comments, and I think that list of examples is enough to trust that it does at least well enough at classifying to draw at least light conclusions from.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]