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Do you know where there is a public space to talk with transparent moderation and up/down-vote algorithms?

by antocv 13y ago

anywherenotes 13y ago
I thought reddit is all that. And since people know who got rid of the story from top page, it means moderation is transparent. Although it's fine if you don't agree with the moderation. In prior messages you said "Where can we find freedom to discuss on this large and free internet today, uncensored anything we like? Wikipedia?" I think it's not a good idea to have no moderation - I have a blog where I post once in few months, and daily it gets few spam comments (no real comments). So my point is all websites require moderation - especially popular ones. On a personal note, when I hear the phrase "special relationship", to me it implies that more data is shared. For example Russia shared with US that they thought Boston bomber could be a terrorist, yet there's no "special relationship" there - still the countries share data. It would make sense that countries with a "special relationship" share more. I agree sharing political spy data is terrible, but it's likely that's just a legal clause.
- mcintyre1994 13y ago
  Reddit's up/down votes aren't really transparent, they're obfuscated by (imo reasonable) anti-bot measures. It is open source so it's a transparent enough system, but between that obfuscation and pseudo-anonymous moderators I wouldn't say it really matches the request. I completely agree by the way that moderation is essential on popular and large websites, and I think Reddit has a great balance.
mcintyre1994 13y ago
Nope, sorry. Isn't up/down-voting moderation by the users though? I guess you could list all up/down-voters and that would be transparent. You'd then have no mods with more power, everyone would use the same transparent up/down-vote? I'm not convinced that such a website would maintain quality for long, and I can't think of anyone currently trying it.
- antocv 13y ago
  The problem I see with no mods and really good algorithms for up/down-voting (with some kind of bot/spam-prevention) is still going to get played by clever people, just like PageRank got played, a human touch is always necessary, just like with most ML algorithms. As palantir says it, big data, the best results are a combination of good ML algorithms and human guidence. That means moderation. That basically means we have moved the ladder up a bit, a quite step up from irc. What I think would do better than reddit has done in this situation is much more transparent moderation - no anonymous mods, and mods to be at the mercy of the mass of users. So we could basically ban or demote a mod just as we can upvote a story really high. That system would be more difficult to manipulate. Do you think this is an interesting venue to try?
  - mcintyre1994 13y ago
    The issue I see with ban/demote mods is that, as you say, somebody will find a way to play anything without human input, presumably the admins can't be responsible for checking every ban/demote decision so it would become a really good algorithm which can get played. That means that unscrupulous people can wipe out the moderation, and then play the main algorithm which is now lacking mods? Forcing them not to be anonymous seems like an interesting idea, but could well be dangerous. It's not necessarily a good idea to publish identifying information about people breaking criminal spam/bot rings for example.
    - lymey 13y ago
      If you're afraid of criminal retribution or bribing that's twice the reason to let in the sunshine.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

Do you know where there is a public space to talk with transparent moderation and up/down-vote algorithms?

by antocv 13y ago

Do you know where there is a public space to talk with transparent moderation and up/down-vote algorithms?

I thought reddit is all that. And since people know who got rid of the story from top page, it means moderation is transparent. Although it's fine if you don't agree with the moderation. In prior messages you said "Where can we find freedom to discuss on this large and free internet today, uncensored anything we like? Wikipedia?" I think it's not a good idea to have no moderation - I have a blog where I post once in few months, and daily it gets few spam comments (no real comments). So my point is all websites require moderation - especially popular ones. On a personal note, when I hear the phrase "special relationship", to me it implies that more data is shared. For example Russia shared with US that they thought Boston bomber could be a terrorist, yet there's no "special relationship" there - still the countries share data. It would make sense that countries with a "special relationship" share more. I agree sharing political spy data is terrible, but it's likely that's just a legal clause.

mcintyre1994 13y ago
Reddit's up/down votes aren't really transparent, they're obfuscated by (imo reasonable) anti-bot measures. It is open source so it's a transparent enough system, but between that obfuscation and pseudo-anonymous moderators I wouldn't say it really matches the request. I completely agree by the way that moderation is essential on popular and large websites, and I think Reddit has a great balance.

mcintyre1994 13y ago

Nope, sorry. Isn't up/down-voting moderation by the users though? I guess you could list all up/down-voters and that would be transparent. You'd then have no mods with more power, everyone would use the same transparent up/down-vote? I'm not convinced that such a website would maintain quality for long, and I can't think of anyone currently trying it.

antocv 13y ago
The problem I see with no mods and really good algorithms for up/down-voting (with some kind of bot/spam-prevention) is still going to get played by clever people, just like PageRank got played, a human touch is always necessary, just like with most ML algorithms. As palantir says it, big data, the best results are a combination of good ML algorithms and human guidence. That means moderation. That basically means we have moved the ladder up a bit, a quite step up from irc. What I think would do better than reddit has done in this situation is much more transparent moderation - no anonymous mods, and mods to be at the mercy of the mass of users. So we could basically ban or demote a mod just as we can upvote a story really high. That system would be more difficult to manipulate. Do you think this is an interesting venue to try?
- mcintyre1994 13y ago
  The issue I see with ban/demote mods is that, as you say, somebody will find a way to play anything without human input, presumably the admins can't be responsible for checking every ban/demote decision so it would become a really good algorithm which can get played. That means that unscrupulous people can wipe out the moderation, and then play the main algorithm which is now lacking mods? Forcing them not to be anonymous seems like an interesting idea, but could well be dangerous. It's not necessarily a good idea to publish identifying information about people breaking criminal spam/bot rings for example.
  - lymey 13y ago
    If you're afraid of criminal retribution or bribing that's twice the reason to let in the sunshine.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]