The Guardian Publishes Comment Abuse Stats, Invites Debate On Moderation (theguardian.com) 303
AmiMoJo writes: British newspaper The Guardian has published some stats on its popular comment sections attached to each story. So far the Guardian's site has received 70 million comments, of which around 2% were removed for violation of community standards. Articles written by women tended to get the most blocked comments, especially if they were in male-writer dominated sections like sports and technology, while fashion was one of the few areas where men got more abuse. Further down the article the reader is invited to moderate some sample comments and see how their actions compared to those of the paper's staff. You can leave suggestions for improvement here.
The fuckin guardian (Score:2)
should concentrate on their own credibility first, then worry bout their posters.
The so-called 'community standards' (Score:3, Informative)
I have given up on commenting there because I know how they rate their 'community standards'
It was an article on the flood of millions of migrants into Europe and I was asking if it is wise to allow so many of those who have no intention of integrate into the European culture ... and my comment was nuked
There was no cussing
There was no degrading of any specific race
There was not even any mention of religion
I was only commenting on the wisdom of allowing so many of those who had shown to not interested of in
Same at Scientific American (Score:3, Interesting)
Same experience on Scientific American. No violation of their own stated policies. Not even mentioned global warming.
Comment deleted.
I complained and their reply was that I lost my "privilege" to post.
I cancelled the renewal of my subscription and unsubscribed from any of their mailing lists.
Absolutely disgraceful.
Re:The so-called 'community standards' (Score:5, Informative)
And, after that I found out many readers have the same problems with this 'moderation system', no matter they are left or right, and they joke that 'CiF (Comment is Free, is what The Guardian call their comment section), but some comments are freer.
And, their 'community standard' is very obscure, while some personal attacks are still there, some normal debates were deleted. When I demanded they show how I violated the rules (yes, with "please"), they deleted my comment also.
It's not that I'm whining, I'll be fine that I must respect the 'rules', I will be OK if, 'you violated 'Section 1, clause 3', so your comment was deleted', but in The Guardian there is no rule. It's likely the moderators delete comments they don't like.
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Your comment was nuked because you made a baseless claim that they don't want to integrate. That is degrading. If you can't see why, you should get a refund on your education, as it failed you massively. If you could post the verbatim full text of your comment we could get to the bottom of this. As it is it sounds like your lack of critical thinking and desire to leap to the inaccurate led to the nuking, which is fair enough. I guess the Guardian doesn't want their comments section filled with idiots m
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My wife (a doctor) sees patients (both male and female) who have lived in this country for 15 - 20 years, and they still need a translator because they haven't bothered to learn the local language. Some people simply don't want to integrate.
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Some != all.
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Any == too many.
Re:The so-called 'community standards' (Score:5, Insightful)
(I'm in Belgium)
When governments and societies take foreigners and group them together geographically, you end up with small enclaves where there's ca no reason or need to learn the national language.
I can show you places in here in Belgium, where Arabic will help you more than French or Flemish, there are sections in Frankfurt where you might as well speak Turkish, large area in northern Mexico where half the population only speaks german and sections of Spain where no-one speaks anything but UK English.
Yes, some people have no interest in integrating, but when there's no way to even use the national language, at lot of foreigners end up giving up trying to learn it.
Re:The so-called 'community standards' (Score:4, Insightful)
Get real. Comments that go against the agenda are nuked for any or no reason beyond that they go against the agenda. The standard you're applying is only applied to one side of a position. One thing you can say about Slashdot, your comment may be moderated to the basement by groupthink, but at least it's there for people looking.
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So, you've established that the Daily Mail doesn't have the same standards as the Guardian.
What a surprise.
Re:The so-called 'community standards' (Score:4, Insightful)
>"Muslims are 'not like us' and we should just accept they will never integrate, says former racial equalities chief Trevor Phillips"
Replace "Muslims" with "Black people" and you have an exact quote from Hendrik Verwoerd. He was wrong, so is this "authority" you are appealing to now.
Ironically -even if it was true, why is it an issue ? Why does emigrating have to mean giving up your culture ? As long as you abide by the local laws, why can't you keep your culture ? Why would "not integrating" scare anybody ? I don't recall British folk showing up all over the world ever making any effort to integrate in the countries they showed up in (dominate and steal all the resources yes, integrate - nope). Compared to that, some people living there who have another culture and leaves you alone is frankly not even an inconvenience, let alone a reason to be concerned.
There are quite a lot of my fellow Afrikaners living in Britain and Australia now. They all still speak Afrikaans. Still have their weekend braais the way *we* do them (which is nothing like a barbeque), hell the import large swaths of our cultural delicacies like Biltong into those countries and are even starting to produce them locally. They sure as hell didn't fully integrate into those societies, in fact, they mostly live together in neighbourhoods where their neighbours speak their home language.
I don't recall ever seeing anybody post a panicked response about the influx of hundreds of thousands of Afrikaners into those countries - and considering the vast majority of the Afrikaners who left genuinely *are* the worst of the worst our culture has to offer, the hardcore racist fucks who couldn't stand the idea of a black government (and those who left for other reasons - career related and such really are a tiny minority) - they actually deserved scrutiny, far more than some people fleeing for their lives from countries torn apart by wars which the UK helped start.
So where was your comment then ? The vast majority of all emigrants *ever* has chosen not to integrate and even where some integration happens hardly any has ever FULLY integrated. You know what ? That's okay.
You don't NEED to push integration, in a generation or two it happens all by itself. You have kids growing up in a culture thats different from the one at home, speaking a language in school other than the one their parents speak - they grow up a lot more integrated, and their kids even more so. The internal culture-clash of imigrant children does the integration for you - no need to force it, no need to even ask for it. Just sit back, relax, have a beer and let it happen automatically like it always has.
And maybe you'll end up with a few of those rare enclaves where it really doesn't happen - like the small town in Argentina where Afrikaners settled who fled British rule after the war a century ago, or the towns in Southern Brazil that mostly speak German and Italian... and if that happens ? So what ? None of those groups are harming anybody. None of them are affecting the rest of the population in any negative way. Not a single one is intruding on anybody else's right to live by whatever culture THEY prefer... why should you demand the right to dictate the muslim emigrants MUST adopt western culture to live in western countries ?
You wouldn't give up YOUR heritage so easily, and white folk living in the middle east make no effort to integrate generally, they don't abandon their heritage - why do you think you have a right to demand it of these folk ?
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Some fair points, but one quibble. It took more than a generation or two, for integration to happen in South Africa. There's a balance between people living a sort of self imposed segregation, and them wanting to change the country's laws to enforce it. And it isn't about food and music, it is the critical issues like women's rights and gay rights and what kind of education children receive, where the law has to draw the line at something and that law needs to apply to everyone. People demonise Islam, but t
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...and you know this how?
Re:The so-called 'community standards' (Score:4, Insightful)
Integration isn't a binary thing. I doubt anyone doesn't integrate at all, not eating any local food, knowing any of the local language, watching any local TV, importing all goods and possessions from their original country etc. Between that and integrating so much they couldn't be distinguished from a native there is a whole spectrum.
Anyway, is there any evidence that significant numbers don't want to integrate to any significant degree? And what do you consider significantly integrated? Being fluent in the local language, giving up their religion for the local one, finding a job?
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Because attacking anyone who raises issues of equality as an "SJW" is such an extraordinary sign of tolerance.
There's nothing I love better than a partisan of one side of the political spectrum attacking members of the other side in a way that makes it clear they're just as guilty of the same illogic and sheer stupidity. Or, to put it more simply for someone like you; POT... KETTLE... BLACK
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RASCIST!!!!!
Re:The so-called 'community standards' (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe if you didn't put labels on people to such a staggering degree, and thinking that all wearers of a label you've given them think entirely the same, you'd have fewer problems with people calling out your lazy thought processes. In a single post your argument hinges on all "SJWs" thinking exactly the same, and all "leftists" too. You appear to be terrible at critical thinking. No wonder you are so confused and angry.
Re:The so-called 'community standards' (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe if you didn't put labels on people to such a staggering degree, and thinking that all wearers of a label you've given them think entirely the same, you'd have fewer problems with people calling out your lazy thought processes. In a single post your argument hinges on all "SJWs" thinking exactly the same, and all "leftists" too. You appear to be terrible at critical thinking. No wonder you are so confused and angry.
So using their own label that they've defined theselves is a "lazy thought process." Why do I bet that if this was 1989, you'd be right there screaming about the regressive right, and whining that people too stupid and unable to engage in critical thinking to be able to take care of their nutjobs.
But hey, if you want to learn something then go back and re-read my post. If however you want those people who are the regressive left to continue turning around and pissing all over your values while saying "peo
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So using their own label that they've defined theselves is a "lazy thought process."
It is when the people you accuse of being evilpaedoterroristcommienazis er I mean SJW don't actually call themselves as such. I'm pretty sure you've called me an SJW before but outside of some exceptionally facetious posts, I have not identified myself as one.
Why do I bet that if this was 1989, you'd be right there screaming about the regressive right,
You bet that because you're a nutjob who brands everyone who doesn't agre
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Well... it's a label describing a particular mode of thought and argumentation. If you aren't one of the ones who thinks and debates in the way Mashiki is describing, then he wasn't talking about you.
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No, it's just a lazy label like "feminazi" or "cultural Marxist". What it usually indicates is that the person using it is being intellectually lazy.
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Leftists do not tolerate challenging questions, legitimate or otherwise.
Extremists of ALL political and religious colours abhore dissent, humans are born and raised on a handful of innate moral principles [youtube.com]. For example "purity" is expressed on the far right by their puritanical view of sex, on the left it is all about the purity of our food and water. The unpopular and difficult solution for avoiding these mental cages is to try not to attach yourself to firmly to any particular political/religious tribe. It is difficult because it violates the innate morality of "loyalty".
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woa so much agression. I can't take it
Re: The so-called 'community standards' (Score:4, Insightful)
Quit blaming us for your own clear inability to get along with each other. You are barbarians stuck in a highly sectarian backwater. If you don't have some brutal tyrant keeping you in line, you start killing each other. Even if you manage something resembling modern democracy, you will immediately start to abuse each other.
You can't blame the West for the fact that you hate and kill each other. You also can't blame the West for the fact that the only kind of government that works for you is subjugation by a brutal warlord.
Your humanitarian crisis is all on you.
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I went through their list of would you allow or block thing, and wow. Most of the comments I looked at and said, "well, I disagree with your opinion, but you're free to it and it's not overly trolly so allow", and they blocked almost all of those. It sort of felt like censorship of anything that didn't fit their view point. If that's how they run their news site, I actually kind of get your statement on credibility.
Re:The fuckin guardian (Score:5, Interesting)
Well they've got to go down this path bu choice, they're only 5 years out from complete bankruptcy that includes the money from the trust. They need to try showing people that they know how to remain solvant and can get their head on and fix the problems...and see...those problems? We want your opinion!
Personally, I think them having Jessica Vallenti was a great idea, it was a really good comedy section. I mean look at these examples: One week she gets to tell the idiots that wolf whistling is sexist, a few weeks later, she says it's sexist not to wolf whistle at someone. Then she starts going off about how air conditioning is sexist, but it's really not sexist all in the span of 3 weeks.
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I think the Guardian is a bit beyond your reading comprehension level, if that's what you got from those articles.
I'm not a fan or regular reader of The Guardian, but I can see and respect what they are trying to do. Newspapers are dying and they are trying hard to go with the change, having picked a particular niche that does seem to be under-served. That is, high quality journalism and a high quality debate with fairly strict moderation, somewhat like a live debate would have.
Of course you can argue if th
Opportunity missed (Score:5, Insightful)
What they failed to do was publish articles written by one gender/race under the alias of the opposing gender/race, serving it to part of the internet and seeing if there is a difference in the number of negative responses. They also didn't track the geographic region of the originating blocked posts. No conclusions can be taken from these numbers besides, "some people on the internet are assholes" which we already knew for a certainty thanks to the youtube comment sections.
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The gender/race alias thing would be genius.
It'd be so easy to do online you almost wonder why they haven't done it already, unless they're worried about what theories it might not validate.
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I see the dismissal and accusations of cherry picking are here already. The point readily highlighted by their data is that people seek out and shit on people based on race and gender. It's unlikely the A/B testing the GP cited has been done, as it'd be difficult and is somewhat outside the scope of a newspaper.
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I haven't dismissed their findings, I'm simply saying that any conclusion drawn from this data is premature, aside from the conclusion that some people on the internet are assholes.
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So far as it goes, it seems like a reasonable conclusion to draw. They have found a pretty strong statistical correlation between writers who are female or non-white. If you read some of the analysis, there is some good points that there may be some selection bias going on, particularly as some moderation doesn't appear to follow the Guardian's community standards, but even with that in mind, there's a strong enough signal there to suggest that women and non-whites who contribute to the Guardian are more li
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That may be the case, but you can't then come out and say it's because they're women and ethnic minorities, which is what the article and the berk who submitted it are trying to imply.
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I didn't say that it said there was causation. I said it implied it. You can imply things by not saying anything.
The writer of the article probably knows that most Guardian readers graduated in underwater basket dancing and will form the required conclusion anyway.
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That's your opinion about the article. That's not what the article states. All the article does is saying that they did some data mining in their 70 mio comment database and found some strong correlations, which they list in the article. It's solely you who concluded that the article somehow constructs a causality.
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The writer of the article probably knows that most Guardian readers graduated in underwater basket dancing and will form the required conclusion anyway.
Laying on the irony thick there. Bias is only bad when it's the wrong kind of bias, eh? lol.
Re:Opportunity missed (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, you mean "going undercover" is a new thing that journalists don't know how to do? They never ghostwrite anything or use pseudonyms or otherwise mask their identity? And I'm sure it would be *so hard* to mask an identity on the Internet, I mean, nobody gets away with that. On the Internet, everybody knows you're a dog.
While it doesn't entirely surprise me that columnists identifiable as specific genders or races might attract more negative comments, it'd be illuminating to have data on how often they write any kind of advocacy journalism or, and if, and to what extent they make their race or gender part of their subject matter.
My guess is that high visibility blacks and women are highly correlated with either controversial opinions and/or controversial subjects. And that hostile commentary is highly correlated with controversial opinions or subjects.
It seems less plausible that blacks or women who write in identity free tone about uncontroversial topics will attract identity-focused hostile comments.
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On the Internet, everybody knows you're a dog.
While that is an option, most journalists prefer to have their name attached to their stories because it's how they build up their careers
It seems less plausible that blacks or women who write in identity free tone about uncontroversial topics will attract identity-focused hostile comments.
That's kind of the point. People shouldn't have to hide their race or gender to avoid the abuse those attributes seem to attract.
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Yes, that's the point I'm making.
I'm also making the point that high visibility white guys have had controversial opinions forever and it was all considered normal. And blacks and women don't require controversial opinions to draw identity-focused hostile comments. They get them just for existing.
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I wish they had gone further too, but this does provide solid evidence for a couple of important points.
1. There is a real gender bias. It's mostly against women, but in a small number of categories it's against men.
2. This bias may be partially accounted for by the feeling that a predominantly male/female space where the commentator feels safe and comfortable is being "invaded" by the other sex.
It's also interesting that there seem to be certain trigger words that some people developed a Pavlovian response
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Gotcha. I find it often. You just need to write certain keywords that quickly someone writes a crazed response. As example in my country if you just type "communism", promptly someone will want to kill you as if we were still in the cold war.
"Community"? Orwellian terminology... (Score:5, Insightful)
What's with the "community"? There are no "community" standards — the removed messages were deemed offensive by a handful of moderators. Moderators prone to keeping some posts more equal than others [dailymail.co.uk] and susceptible to manipulation by evil regimes [theguardian.com].
Calling them "community" is redefining terms [wikipedia.org]...
Re:"Community"? Orwellian terminology... (Score:5, Interesting)
For what it's worth, my comments to the Guardian are these days are now in the category of: "Your comments are currently being pre-moderated".
This is because I disagreed (in a fairly reasonable way - certainly not aggressive and not obscene) with the remarks of a British reporter, based in New York, who was making remarks about the situation in my home town of Baltimore. In that case it appeared that the reporter himself may well have been the person removing the negative comments. The fraction of comments removed from all posters for that article was a huge fraction of all those posted. However the Brit reporter (who may not even have visited B'more ) was apparently very sensitive to criticism - even if it wasn't that different from the criticism he was dealing out to some of the locals. One factor may be the "knee-jerk" anti-Americanism of certain segments of British society - who are surprised to receive similar criticisms back themselves.
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Authors can and do get away with expressing outrageous opinions, not just ones that are factually incorrect, but offensive remarks, sexist and on rare occasions statements implying approval of physical abuse. If they gad appeared in the comments, they would have been removed. But moderation is not applied to their authors.
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More sites should use Slashcode (Score:5, Insightful)
Or at least... a Slashcode-like commenting, moderation, and meta-moderation system.
For all we complain about it here, and for all the trolling that occurs, the Slashdot moderation system seems to have passed the test of time reasonably enough.
Perhaps it's a little like that infamous definition of Democracy: It's the worst form of government except for all the others that have been tried.
Re:More sites should use Slashcode (Score:5, Interesting)
Slashdot's only real weakness is that people, especially groups of like-minded people, can use the -1 mods to try to silence people they disagree with. While I think having down-mods is a good thing generally, once a post gets a single +1 all the -1s should only count for -0.1 each.
Controversial != troll.
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Agreed. The system does very well with technology and science articles, as there's typically little argument over the facts themselves. However politics articles are highly prone to groupthink, with libertarian-leaning comments tending to do better than anything else (and heaven help the Trump supporter!).
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You're "experiment" though - that's just bullshit.
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Why don't you defend your position instead of spewing hollow insults?
Why doesn't it have more imitators?
Because slashdot is an echo chamber. Few people outside slashdot thinks the moderation system in use here is worth using.
More than 1 person disagrees = groupthink/echo chamber. Yeah. Looks more like fucking whinging. Browse at -1. Done.
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Except that that only applies to people reading with mod filters on.
Unless this is some sort of game for you where you think you don't win the golden ticket if people don't think your posts are great.
Diversity hires (Score:2, Interesting)
It looks like The Guardian just got a first-hand lesson on the flaws of "diversity". When allow racism and sexism to dictate your hiring policy, you'll inevitably get people who wouldn't have been hired on their merit alone.
I wonder how much of the "abuse" was of the "you suck" [youtu.be] variety. Maybe The Guardian needs to ask the UN to censor their critics as well.
Actual debate, or controlled opposition? (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlike The Guardian, Slashdot doesn't answer to political grievance groups (and has only removed one thing for Scientology).
I'm not sure that this is debate as much as it is a justification.
The gender bit is misleading (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's not about the gender of the author, it's about the agenda of the author.
How do you figure that? It sounds like you are saying female authors troll their readers more.
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Some do in the Guardian. Jessica Valenti, for example, is a notorious troll.
In TFA she is quoted as saying:
Hundreds of people say this, because it's true.
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Had I said "Hundreds of people say this, so it's true", you could have sensibly made that comment. But I didn't.
She deliberately provokes aggressive reactions with her pointlessly inflammatory articles: she is a classic troll.
Then she has the gall to complain when she gets the reaction she wants. The Guardian used to be leagues better than to publish the kind of drivel she writes for them: it's on the intellectual level of the Daily Mail.
I assu
Huge flaws in their analysis (Score:5, Insightful)
So, for example, they cite that 8 or their 10 most "abused" contributors were women (4 white, 4 not). But since the newspaper has a great deal of coverage of "women's" issues including a lot of highly opinionated articles about feminism -- but no corresponding articles, or sections, concerning men's issues their coverage is neither balanced, nor able to show how much abuse their "men's" writers would get, since they don't have any.
They also counted all "moderated" comments (ones that do not meet their community standards) as being abusive and they assume that the abuse is directed against the author. However, they remove comments that are off-topic and ones that make personal comments about other commentators. So a comment that was removed because it insulted a commentator who was attacking the article (i.e. the insulter was supporting the author), would be counted as abuse against that author. They do not give reasons for removing comments and only have the single classification.
Finally, The Guardian admits that it does not moderate either consistently: applying different levels of rigor depending on the topic, nor does it moderate all articles to the same extent. It also does not open all it's articles up to comments.
In all, while their analysis does point to there being online abuse - they reckon they delete 2% of articles, from the 70 million submitted so far, the results are patchy, inconsistent and cherry-picked. It would never pass a peer review and seems to have been published more to push the newspaper's own agenda, rather than as an authoritative work to highlight a problem (they don't say if the level of "abuse" is rising or falling since they started in 1999).
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Peoples lack of attention to details like you've described seem to be a considerable problem.
I find commonly the responses from going into detail into the problems with articles like this are "YOU HATE WOMEN" and other things along those lines.
I've yet to find a way to get people actually interested in the details, rather than spewing forth knee-jerk hatred.
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The newspaper has an article that explains a little of how they analysed their data (Postgres, cloud, Perl).
I think I found the problem!
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The Guardian seems to be trying to set a high standard for comments in order to present itself as a place for serious, insightful debate. They obviously haven't seen Slashdot, which generates insight by tolerating pretty much anything within the bounds of the law.
They also counted all "moderated" comments (ones that do not meet their community standards) as being abusive and they assume that the abuse is directed against the author.
That's not quite right. They aren't saying those comments are abuse, they are just saying that they were moderated (e.g. for being off-topic). Certain topics and certain genders tends to have more comments moderated, meaning there is either more ab
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of highly opinionated articles about feminism -- but no corresponding articles, or sections, concerning men's issues their coverage is neither balanced, nor able to show how much abuse their "men's" writers would get, since they don't have any.
That would be a total false equivalence. If group A runs most everything and group B does not, then arguing for more rights and privileges for group B is a qualitatively different thing than arguing for more rights for group A. You could only fairly make that comparison if everything was both now and historically equivalent for both groups.
I don't think this should be a difficult concept. You don't see people get nearly as angry at kids punching adults in public as they do at adults punching kids. The pow
The "dark side" of Guardian comments? (Score:2, Interesting)
Those comments that they showcased in the article were in many cases perfectly legitimate debate.
The comment was:
“A 12-year-old boy, out at night, waving a BB gun? What sort of parent allows that? What happened is the product of a fucked up
society/community/culture/upbringing. I'm sorry to say, but often black people are their own worst enemies.”
You answered allow. We thought differently.
This was removed for racism (“black people are their own worst enemy”; “fucked up community
Which brings up the obvious question (Score:2)
Articles written by women tended to get the most blocked comments, especially if they were in male-writer dominated sections like sports and technology, while fashion was one of the few areas where men got more abuse.
How did the articles on sports/technology fashion fare?
Censoring comments, why? (Score:2)
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Why are they censoring comments? That's just comments for chrissake!
If the comments are so worthless that they're junimportant "just comments", then why bother having them at all?
The Guardian's 8 test comments (Score:2)
Which comment would you block? Play the moderator role and take our quiz to see how your decisions compare to those of Guardian moderators
In an opinion piece about what makes one a "feminazi": “Funny how so many journalists are female, and how many are feminists! A disproportionate number pollute journalism. Jusrt shows that men DO tend to do 'harder' jobs than keyboard bashing, while the technology that men designed and built is used to provide these harpies with a medium from which to spout their bi
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The Guardian decisions seem quite reasonable to me. The censored comments are generally offensive, frequently assume the author's pet position with no backing, and really don't add much to the discussion.
Oh the irony (Score:2)
"The Guardian Publishes Comment Abuse Stats, Invites Debate On Moderation" - by disabling commenting on the article in the link. I'm a regular on the Grauniad's website, and their censoring of comments has become ridiculous. I've have comments removed because I highlighted an author's hypocrisy, use of logical fallacies and general intellectual dishonesty.
Ex-Guardian reader (Score:2)
I recently gave up visiting the Guardian website after being an avid reader since my student days in early 80s. The reason for this was an increase in click-bait articles combined with heavy handed and capricious moderators in the comments section.
Guardian Censorship (Score:3)
My comment that people take screenshots of their Guardian comments and tweet them with the hashtag "#censoredbycif" was itself removed by the Guardian's moderators.
http://www.chadfield.com/2015/... [chadfield.com]
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When I get off my arse, I want to write a script that scrapes comments, and if it sees they've been removed, flag the cached record as such. That way I can see what's been deleted. It would be pretty easy to then tweet them automagically. In fact, that might be my task before the pub quiz tonight.
Re:Moderation is a tool for abuse (Score:5, Informative)
People who hold views that are contrary to the majority are targets for abuse. Moderation promotes groupthink. Take Slashdot for example.
You don't understand Slashdot's moderation method? And no one is blocked - ever. browse at a lower mod level, and accept that not everyone will agree with you.
You might even be exhibiting a little bit of Guardianesque ideas, in that you don't seem to want anyone to disagree with you.
We've had a number of posters here lately that are pissed that someone replies, and disagrees with them. Life just doesn't work that way, and Slashdot has come up with the best way to exist with the tragedy of the commons ever.
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Abuse and blocking are not the same things. Take your comment for example. You're suggesting that someone needs to browse at a lower than default moderation level. So someone needs to go out of their way to see comments that don't conform to the standard group think, and that can be an "abuse" of the moderation system to hide dissenting views.
Slashdot moderation is like democracy. The worst form of government except for all the others. It's not broken (you can see alternate views quite frequently), it's not
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Slashdot moderation is like democracy. The worst form of government except for all the others. It's not broken (you can see alternate views quite frequently), it's not perfect (look at any AGW or nuclear power story to only see one side of the comments by default), but I'll be dammed if I've ever seen a better system.
Having been around the intertoobz for a long time, I've seen that slashdot has avoided the tragedy of the commons - and that is incredible in itself. The world is filled with all manner of people, some great, some who just want to watch the world burn (why oh why did one of the most insightful statements in the universe have to come from a Batman movie?)
But now we might have some 11 year old with an attitude on the same forum as a Nobel laureate. On the exact same footing. And over the years, in usenet g
Re: (Score:2)
I don't agree. And please don't say "Guardianesque" again, ever.
Ohhh, okay.
Re:Moderation is a tool for abuse (Score:5, Insightful)
Since you can turn off all moderation filtering (which I do, the site is quite boring if you read at higher mod levels), it's up to you as the reader. That seems to me to be the best approach. In other words, short of a few rather abusive posters (like APK when he goes off his meds), moderation only exists if you, the reader, decides it does.
Re:Moderation is a tool for abuse (Score:4, Funny)
Shut up, APK
Re:Moderation is a tool for abuse (Score:5, Informative)
[...] but there is a fair amount of groupthink here, [...]
It's less of a problem than many people who are part of the groupthink clusters seem to think. My observation is that with a few exceptions, any comment which falls into groupthink territory tends to have its "+1, Agree" upvotes and "-1, Disagree" downvotes balanced out. Such comments never get to either -1 or +5.
It's rare that all groupthink clusters align on Slashdot to the point where a non-troll comment gets moderated to -1. I think the only time it's ever happened to me was when I advocated Deep Space 9.
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If you get a combination of +1s and -1s on the same comment on a contentious topic, you can reasonably infer what happened.
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Slashdot allows you to read at -1, so there's a way around its moderation. What you write certainly applies to sites like the Guardian, but it cannot be said to apply to Slashdot to the same degree at all.
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If you believe in punishing criminals like those who use ransomware to blackmail users, you'll be constantly told what a fool you are, and probably be modded down as flamebait.
Don't buy it. As full of gimps as slashdot is, I don't think there's a conspiracy in favour of ransomware operators. I think that's a pile of bullshit tbh.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
and even supported the bullying and defamation of a Rosetta scientist because of a shirt he wore?
The guns and lingerie tee shirt was not appropriate dress for a globally televised event. Not least because the female engineers and technicians visible in the background were appropriately dressed, which implies a double standard. There are social obligations which come with being the public face of your project.
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Well then, you can't claim feminists speak for all women either. Not when polls have repeatedly shown that less than one in four women is a feminist [huffingtonpost.com].
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Well then, you can't claim feminists speak for all women either.
Well then, you can't expose yourself in public and expect to get away with it.
[no that has no relevance to your point, but your point had no relevance to mine either given that I did not make such a claim]
You also realise that according to that poll, 82% are actually feminists, but seem somewhat confused on the definition.
http://www.merriam-webster.com... [merriam-webster.com]
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While I have my problems with the Guardian (their coverage of the Tower Hamlets and Rotherham scandals were awful), what you're referring to seems to be on the Comment Is Free section; basically their editorial section. By and large, comment pieces are either written by editorial staff, regular columnists, or guest editors and submitters, and should not be confused with the journalism that appears in other parts of the newspaper or website. I find the likes of Jessica Valenti to be pretty odious, not so muc
Re:Seems that most newspaper sites these days (Score:5, Interesting)
What I've found from the news sites that have gone to Facebook is not only a much smaller set of comments, but a great increase in spam. By putting their faith in Facebook to weed out the malcontents, many sites literally destroy their comment sections.
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Who's to say that isn't what was intended? I'm sure many sites would like to get rid of user comments. "Just pay for our content. We don't need no talkback, especially if it is critical."
Re:Seems that most newspaper sites these days (Score:5, Informative)
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Your notion of civil discourse runs the gamut from A to A.
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Thus proving your own ignorance and prejudice. There was nothing stupid about the comment to which you replied. It was accurate and made a salient point.
Re: (Score:2)
And the one poster who frequently has his posts outright removed from Slashdot appears, to demonstrate that there is a level of insane trolling that not even the /. editors will tolerate.
Do you ever actually post anywhere else?
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And APK's other trick, to pose as his own defender. Do you think we're all idiots?
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And APK's other trick, to pose as his own defender. Do you think we're all idiots?
And yet another of his tricks - hijacking my account to post this:
When has APK's posts ever been removed from slashdot?
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Where'd you post that in this article before the date of your post now? You didn't. I checked your post history today https://slashdot.org/~goose-in... [slashdot.org] You panicked and are now caught sockpuppeting MightyMartian after apk you out a fool https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org] and you do what he says trolls do using sockpuppets https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org] You have proven apk right about what goes on here. You're busted MightyMartian/goose incarnated (or whatever many sockpuppet names you use).
You missed the sarcasm in "And yet another one of his tricks - hijacking my account"? So, by me challenging MightMartian's assertion (basically defending APK), you feel I *am* him? Do you even read?
Re: (Score:2)
So: “These people contribute nothing to the countries they enter”; “The more corpses floating in the sea, the better”; “LET THEM ALL DROWN!”
These all suggest 'apathy' to you.
Riiiiiiight.