4 ms·

SocialMod - automatically moderate the "idiots that rule"

30 points by swombat 17y ago

swombat 17y ago
Thought this might be interesting to mention as a solution to the Trent Reznor problem.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
tylermenezes 17y ago
A cool idea, way overpriced in my opinion, though. $24-$149 a month for "you moderate" packages? I could roll my own in almost any programming language in 1/10th the time it would take me to integrate with their service. The MTurk services are a little more reasonably priced, 2.9 cents a comment is about what I'd offer the users directly.
- anigbrowl 17y ago
  I have my doubts about whether the Mturk payments are going to attract moderators capable of handling more than the 'LOL I TROLLED U' comments, though. It seems like more of an anti-spam/swearing tool than anything likely to elevate the quality of discourse; that's useful enough in and of itself for quite a few sites though. I do think it's fairly pricey. 15k messages/mo ain't much on a busy site. Some political blogs rack that up in a couple of days, but I don't see them putting down several thousand a month for crowd moderation.
chanux 17y ago
Now the site make sense. A lot better than last time it was on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=628257 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=628257 Kudos.
pacemkr 17y ago
It is quite sad that we have to use actual people (Mechnical Turk) to simply filter out the garbage. We've more or less figured out how to train spam prevention systems. How is "troll prevention" a fundamentally different problem?
- DTrejo 17y ago
  Maybe trolls are less smart than spammers, but a troll's goal is more amorphous. Can filters catch sarcasm, negative tone, or lack of intelligent thought?
  - paraschopra 17y ago
    Your answer: the stupid filter - http://stupidfilter.org/main/index.php http://stupidfilter.org/main/index.php
    - Semiapies 17y ago
      This is a very hard problem and I remain skeptical of this project. For instance, a test phrase I ran through the online demo: "lol this will never work you stupid wankers get a real job" Result? "Not likely to be stupid."
- endtime 17y ago
  Spam is automated, trolling isn't. So it makes sense that spam detection is easier to automate than troll detection. A different way to say just about the same thing: Trolling can be customized to a specific context, it can rely on sarcasm or social references, etc. I don't think there exists any NLP system that can pick up e.g. written sarcasm.
  - jasonkester 17y ago
    Spam is not automated anymore. Automated spam doesn't get through modern countermeasures such as human-detection and bayesian filtering, so it is not worth considering. The spam that you actually see today on most sites is hand-pasted by real human beings (at least the stuff that makes it onto my site is. I'm sure you can still find plenty of phpbb sites that are overrun with the old sort). It's hard to do anything about because they'll simply strip the content of an article that would fit well on your site, and stick a link at the bottom. Or maybe they'll skip the link for the first dozen blog entries until they think they've gained your trust. Real spam (versus the wikispam v1agra stuff that gets automatically swatted down) is tricky. And these people are a lot more motivated than trolls, since they get paid when they get a working link on your site.
TrevorJ 17y ago
The biggest risk in this is the stick situation you come to when somebody who feels that a legitimate comment was moderated and feels the need to make a fuss about it. It's a little hard to come up with a thoughtful response to that. "Well, my moderators made the decision." "Who are they?" "I don't know them."
req2 17y ago
What if this service were used to moderate the administration of Adsense bans by Google? "Independently verified enforcement of TOS brought to you by SocialMod"

30 points by swombat 17y ago

swombat 17y ago

Thought this might be interesting to mention as a solution to the Trent Reznor problem.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]

tylermenezes 17y ago

A cool idea, way overpriced in my opinion, though. $24-$149 a month for "you moderate" packages? I could roll my own in almost any programming language in 1/10th the time it would take me to integrate with their service. The MTurk services are a little more reasonably priced, 2.9 cents a comment is about what I'd offer the users directly.

anigbrowl 17y ago
I have my doubts about whether the Mturk payments are going to attract moderators capable of handling more than the 'LOL I TROLLED U' comments, though. It seems like more of an anti-spam/swearing tool than anything likely to elevate the quality of discourse; that's useful enough in and of itself for quite a few sites though. I do think it's fairly pricey. 15k messages/mo ain't much on a busy site. Some political blogs rack that up in a couple of days, but I don't see them putting down several thousand a month for crowd moderation.

chanux 17y ago

Now the site make sense. A lot better than last time it was on HN. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=628257 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=628257 Kudos.

pacemkr 17y ago

It is quite sad that we have to use actual people (Mechnical Turk) to simply filter out the garbage. We've more or less figured out how to train spam prevention systems. How is "troll prevention" a fundamentally different problem?

DTrejo 17y ago
Maybe trolls are less smart than spammers, but a troll's goal is more amorphous. Can filters catch sarcasm, negative tone, or lack of intelligent thought?
- paraschopra 17y ago
  Your answer: the stupid filter - http://stupidfilter.org/main/index.php http://stupidfilter.org/main/index.php
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    This is a very hard problem and I remain skeptical of this project. For instance, a test phrase I ran through the online demo: "lol this will never work you stupid wankers get a real job" Result? "Not likely to be stupid."
endtime 17y ago
Spam is automated, trolling isn't. So it makes sense that spam detection is easier to automate than troll detection. A different way to say just about the same thing: Trolling can be customized to a specific context, it can rely on sarcasm or social references, etc. I don't think there exists any NLP system that can pick up e.g. written sarcasm.
- jasonkester 17y ago
  Spam is not automated anymore. Automated spam doesn't get through modern countermeasures such as human-detection and bayesian filtering, so it is not worth considering. The spam that you actually see today on most sites is hand-pasted by real human beings (at least the stuff that makes it onto my site is. I'm sure you can still find plenty of phpbb sites that are overrun with the old sort). It's hard to do anything about because they'll simply strip the content of an article that would fit well on your site, and stick a link at the bottom. Or maybe they'll skip the link for the first dozen blog entries until they think they've gained your trust. Real spam (versus the wikispam v1agra stuff that gets automatically swatted down) is tricky. And these people are a lot more motivated than trolls, since they get paid when they get a working link on your site.

TrevorJ 17y ago

The biggest risk in this is the stick situation you come to when somebody who feels that a legitimate comment was moderated and feels the need to make a fuss about it. It's a little hard to come up with a thoughtful response to that. "Well, my moderators made the decision." "Who are they?" "I don't know them."

req2 17y ago

What if this service were used to moderate the administration of Adsense bans by Google? "Independently verified enforcement of TOS brought to you by SocialMod"