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Assorted Slashdot Notes 68

Posted by CmdrTaco from the hey-read-this dept.
First up, news of the Brain Power job search engine Go search for a job and submit your resume 'cuz supposedly we get some money through this as part of their new Affiliates program. Next, A few new Slashboxes to choose from now: a "Random" box, a "10 Hot Comments" box, as well as Wired & Byte. If you know of cool sites with the my.netscape RDF backend, lemme know. Lastly, Hit the link to read assorted comments on the moderation system, as well as minor changes to it.
The first randomly selected jurors have been given access. Currently there's about 20 of them, but when the system gets up to speed, it will be perhaps 100 a day. Here are some changes:
  1. I changed the default scoring around a bit. The range was -1 to 4 (out of -1 to 5), but I've changed it to 0..2. This still gives a certain amount of "Bonus" but much less. I'm considering alternative systems now to reward consistantly good posters.
  2. About 5000-6000 people are eligible for moderator access on any given day. This means they have a low account number, a non-negative total alignment, they are "willing" according to their user preferences, and they are "typical" readers (the middle 50% of comment readers according to the number of comments & article pages they've loaded- again, this weeds out idle accounts and obsessive over-readers alike. It finds the "average" reader. Hopefully).
  3. The system checks up on itself every time 100 comments are posted. You need to be eligible for 2-300 of these intervals (20-30,000 comments, or about 10-15 days) to become a moderator. Those intervals don't need to be consecutive, it simply means that people will gain access roughly approximately equal to the amount of Slashdot they read. The goal is that a regular reader will moderate perhaps for a couple days out of each month.
  4. I changed the cutoff on eligible accounts from the oldest 2/3rds to the oldest 4/5ths. Since the stuff above makes it very difficult to get moderator access, and requires regular reading, I think we can be somewhat less anal about this point.
Anyway its running now, but not at full speed. I'm actually running the script manually and watching it for unusual activity. I'll probably commit to to cron soon (but not until i'm sure its not gonna go crazy *grin*)

So far the feedback has been pretty positive. The most controversial item is the "No Moderating & Posting in the Same Discussion", but as I point out above, since moderating will only happen for a few days a month, it shouldn't be that big of a deal, so I'm going to leave it this way for a while and we'll see how it works.

I've scaled back the number of points given to the 400 moderators. They now are getting approximately the same number of points they would get if they were always selected as moderators according to the new system. When the new system gets up to full speed, we'll decide what to do. Initially I want to keep them around to keep an eye on things because they've (as a whole) proven that they can do a great job (pats on everyone's back) but in a few weeks we'll see how the new system is working and perhaps eliminate them in the name of fairness.

Conclusion: we've got to put a lot of trust in each other to make this thing work... I've got these crazy butterflies in my stomach about this. But I'm a control freak. And I think that I've got the right amount of checks & balances to prevent abuses, as well as let everyone participate. If it doesn't work, we can easily back up to the current system, or try something new, but if nothing else, its a really fun experiment.
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Assorted Slashdot Notes More

Assorted Slashdot Notes

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  • Appearance (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Slashdot is looking strange to me. The colors have been changed, and the boxes aren't in the right anymore (they're down, as if the tables have been disabled).

    I'm using communicator 4.51 (Debian/En/I)

  • Re:How do you know if you are moderating? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Little radio buttons appear at the end of each comment, allowing for + or - selection. A "moderate" button shows up at the bottom of the page. And the total number of moderator points available to you is listed.

    There's nothing on the main page that shouts "YOU ARE A MODERATOR." Just the subtle differences that I pointed out above. If you have been granted moderator access, you'll know.

  • The moderation is A Good Thing (tm) (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I really like the moderation. Maybe I abuse it a bit (as a reader). When I walk into a thread with over a 100 comments (or 500 as the MS FUD) I immediately check and see how many comments I would see if I choose a score of 2, and I usually go with it.

    I just use to sort through the clutter and I really appreciate it being there.

    Chris

    -- must find passwd, second post today ... bad desk ...
  • I might consider using Brain Power's services, if they didn't have an incredibly crappy resume submission interface.

    I mean, come on! I can't even enter multiple jobs (I have had more than one), despite what the page seems to suggest.

    That, and their search engine doesn't seem to work very well, either. Or maybe it's just that they don't have a very large database of jobs.

    Say, Rob, why associate yourself with these guys? They don't really seem to have their act together.

  • I assume that the comment headers look different, but is there anything to tell you that you have been chosen as a moderator on the main page?

    henri
  • Or, moderators could be only be allowed to moderate with a threshold of 0 or 1 - although this would probably have the side effect of no moderation on the MS article (with 700+ comments).
  • Exactly what is the random box supposed to be? It looks like a fortune, but that's rather disappointing. I get one of those at the bottom of each page now.

    I was hoping for a box that would show a random box item. That is, randomly select from the box list and put it on the page. That way I can get glimpses of all the available boxes without having to go and enable or test each one individually.

  • Posted by FascDot Killed My Previous Use:

    Are you under the impression that that job search thing is working? 'Cuz it's totally not.

    Every search no matter what the parameters always returns the same data set.
  • As much as I didn't like filtering comments, I did. I even set it to a threshhold of two. I am finding that a very much like it. Since I can always see the other stuff, and it is reported quite well even in replies, it doesn't bother me one bit.

    Anyway, I for one hope this keeps getting done, just add features, without removing anything during the process.
  • Ever think of experimenting on a NON-production box? ;>

  • Are you reinventing the wheel? Apache::Session.pm handles state pretty well.

  • Trying to use the search form's option to return ads from near a given city returns a list of postings from places that aren't close at all. E.g.: Put, let's say, Philadelphia, in the text box, click on "Near", fill out the rest, and click on "Search." San Diego will show up in the listing, among other cities.

    ^D
  • I think that having a negative alignment should still be possible, for someone who consistently flames (or MEEPT!) This helps to discourage such things, since almost everyone reads with a threshold of at least 0 (so to get out of the hole a person has to consistently get posts moderated up above that mark).
  • How about if which option on polls you voted for where logged and were able to be viewed on your custom page, around preferences or something?
    --
    Scott Miga
  • Okay, I must be missing something because from these tidbits over the last few weeks about how the doc system is being changed, I have yet to understand

    How the overall system works

    How to learn my account score

    How scores are calculated and how they change

    Where this information is kept on Slashdot

    Could someone either point me to the documentation (I'm assuming it exists somewhere on this site (?!?)) or explain to me How It Works?

  • Yes it will definatly be interesting. but what do you have aginst over-zealious users with no life? I mean how does one know if they're in this catagory? I mean if you spend more time on slashdot than, say, you do talking to other people would that count? :)
  • What fun would that be? I mean if it's going to crash it might as well go down with enough flames the whole world can see eh?
  • Especially in the last couple weeks, I've noticed a considerable drop in the -1 scores all around and in the 0 scores for non-Anonymites. Also, I've only seen two "First Post"ers in the last couple weeks. And, overall, fewer "me too" comments. The moderation system is working so well in deterring the poor comments that, as Rob intended, moderators can spend their moderation points on increasing the scores of the really good comments. GOOD JOB!
    Christopher A. Bohn
  • Except that's exactly one of the things the moderation system is for ... to sort through the clutter and find the good comments.
    Christopher A. Bohn
  • I'm so sick of seeing and hearing these words in connection to software and web browsing that I can't even stand coffee ads these days.

    ("internet" or "browsing" or "whatever" *experience* comes in a close and annoying second)

  • Allow people to sort either way.

    That way the lucky moderators can make it easy to see what is to be moderated.

    And I personally like "saving the best for last"...

    Cheers,
    Ben Tilly
  • You make a good point, however, do we then choose moderators based on how well they align with someone's (Rob's) values? I think the %50 idea, though not perfect, is the most rational answer. Else how to choose the moderators? Only pick those who have consistently high scores? Or choose those who read Slashdot regularly and contribute?

    Again, your point is noted, and I agree to a point. However, there has to be a way of choosing moderators from a diverse pool, which will hopefully give us a continuously fresh look at the comments.
  • I curious to know what the comments/articles loaded ratio typically is, and what my value is. I consider myself a lurker. But am I very lurker or little lurker? Also, how is this ratio calculated. Does it apply for the past two weeks, month, or since your account inception?

    I think the moderation feature is great and getting better. Some articles have many comments, that if I read them all, I probably would be fired.


    ~afniv
    "Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
  • I'm afraid that part of the experiment is a social experiment, and he can't quite do that on a NON-production box, since it requires real live moderators. :)
  • I am wondering if it might be beneficial to allow a non-AC to lower the default score on a reply into AC land (or below) from the "Post Comment" page.

    I can see a need for this, especially when someone comes up with a really stupid idea like this one.

    -1 land here I come.
  • I have not understood completely how this works,
    but from what i did understand,
    you need to have an average post/view ratio.
    no lurkers but no obsessive posters.

    I think, I'll have to say that only the lurkers will get moderation.
    (but one must post, i think he must be in the 50%-80% percentile of lurkerness)

    This is because lurkers usualy are less biased towards an opinion,
    They will modertae flames, first!, and meepts,
    instead of the "opposing opinion".
    (you cant control moderation by opinion if you have a thousand moderators)

    Also, since it is "to post XOR to moderate", lurkers will moderate more,
    since they don't post anyway.

    Also some technical difficulties, may cause a person to load many pages but not post,
    these can be from bad connections (i need to reload some times when i get partial pages),
    or some people use slashdot as their homepage,
    and view it every new browser window.

    Lastly, Rob, I think you'll be glad when people will load slashdot more. You get money from ads :-)


    ---
  • Using the BrainPower resume submission form seems to require javascript. I couldn't get past the "Go" button on a secured browser.

    Once again, my hate tank is topped off by half-assed webmasters.
  • That certainly makes more sense. I hope also that this will encourage more moderators to take action. I would like there to be no caps on moderation; it'd be interesting to see how high (and low) posts would get moderated. Imagine what the score would be on "In the Beginning..." by Stephenson would be if that were a post! Should the stories themselves be moderated? That'd be interesting. Probably unnecessary, but potentially amusing.
  • is it just me, or is the brain power search just completely broken?

    yes, i've got cookies turned on, but it's vomiting a STDERR dump at me when i try the search.

    my heart goes out to the poor brain power guy who's having to read all this bitching. but hey - it's one thing to be a startup, and it's another thing to put your new-and-untested system through the /. effect. oh well.
  • I almost believe that MEEPT! is some public account that a select group of individuals have access to, and use occassionaly, to generate random non sequiturs in any given thread, such as commenting on the negatively impacting communist nature of the article, or the gay evil tendencies of a post, etc...

    It doesn't make any sense, and I'm sure neither does this explanation.


    AS
  • It seems to change every other week, so no real documentation exists...
    A few weeks ago Rob and co were the only moderators; then a bunch, like 40, were drafted.

    Then, when alignments and scoring became relatively stable, and automoderation system was implemented in which you were rewarded for good behavior by being allowed moderation powers... you had moderation points you could spend, on a daily basis, and you'd only get moderation power for a short time before it would be handed off to another Slashdot regular...

    Then recently Rob changed the ranking system(different than a score someone has, but related. Higher score is higher rank.) I don't think anyone can get a negative score, but they can be ranked as low as negative one; First Post! and Meept!, for example. Anyhow, the rank was from -1 to 5; it got changed to -1 to 4, and evidently is now 0 to 2...

    No one seems to know what their score is. No one knows really, except Rob, what the current system is since he's always seeming to be tweeking it.

    Rob had set up a wat to calculate rank based on score, but since rank has changed twice already, that calculation system has also changed twice as well.


    AS
  • Hopefully CT will correct me if I'm wrong. Here 'tis: However, by reducing the range of the moderation, it's becoming nigh useless

    If I read the initial notes on moderation correctly, any post can still get moderated within the -1 to +5 range -- what he lowered was the "auto boost" that posters with a so-called "consistent high quality score" were getting. Which fits with what you were saying about how higher base scores can muck up the distribution.

    Secondarily, I will openly admit, however, that I've tended to defend CT's changes -- IMHO /. is 200% improved in the last couple of months-- compared to the months that drag by between worthwhile changes to some of the other sites I visit frequently. Stay tuned.

  • or MEEPT!

    I've seen this several times - anybody care to enlighten me as to it's origin, derivation, or meaning, apart from "I am an annoying dweeb and take perverse joy in that fact"?
  • Actually, I regularly read articles with fewer comments, just because I'm more likely to see an opportunity to contribute. The fewer the comments, the more likely it is to attract my attention as being esoteric, unusual, or just plain new.

    One thing I really like is, I never ever see "First post!" as both subject and complete body of a message anymore; and I didn't have to gag it in my checkboxes. As a few try to abuse the system, the majority try to give it intelligence, rationality, and life. So far the majority is winning.
  • don't know if it counts as a cool site, but it sure looks a lot like my.netscape - http://www.webtrends.net - supposedly for registered users of their product, but seems to be wide open to anyone.
  • What exactly is the number of hits based on? for example, if it is every time I load any page from slashdot, and I am using index mode as opposed to flat, well then my page hits will go through the roof! On the other hand, if it is just based on the frontpage...well, I can't think of anything--why would that be bad? There has to be a reason, right?


  • One last note about cookies... We intend to release our state maintenance module (state.pm) under the GPL as soon as it's a bit more robust and feature-rich. This is how cookies are used... Sessions are simply deleted after 6 hours of inactivity.

    Also, we're starting up our affiliates program for those who are interested... You put our search form, or a special link on your page, and you get $5 every time someone who comes to our site through that form or link and submits their resume...

    http://neuro.bpower.com for those who are interested...

    Fair warning: The sign-up process is still being tested and may be a smidge buggy... Please notify me of any errors you encounter...

    -JF

  • How about "bug free", and "powerful" then?

    Most of the problems we have had in the past have been solved with our state maintenance system. Our code is simpler now. It's cleaner. It's more easily understandable. Things that just weren't feasible before are now trivial to implement.

    -JF
  • If you look at the JavaScript code you'll see it's simply

    onClick="javascript:location.replace('js_reg1.ph tml');"

    Which does *not* make use of a security hole as you suggest. I will look into eliminating the JavaScript though, as it does seem superfluous... I'll talk to the engineer in charge of that as soon as he is off the phone. Expect a fix, or at least a workaround (vanilla link) within the hour.

    -JF
  • Do you have cookies disabled? If so, that would cause this sort of problem.

    Cookies must be enabled to use our site. They are not used to invade your privacy, but rather they are used to make the functionality on our site more robust and rich.
  • Our site now checks to ensure that you have cookies.

    Unlike other search engines, our site does a *lot* more than just do searches. Just because that's all you've used doesn't mean there isn't more. For one thing, when you do a search from SlashDot, the state maintenance system tracks that fact, so if you post your resume at any time that session, SlashDot gets credit for it. The same goes for any affiliate.

    Also we have the BrainCenters -- candidate, company,and recruiter centers for managing your information. The recruiter/company BrainCenters in particular are quite sophisticated.

    The state maintenance system allows our code to be much simpler, more robust, more flexible, and more extensible than an average "search engine". (It also allows for great scalability, but that's another issue for another day)
    -JF

  • Our system will work in non-Apache environments, and we have some specific details in mind to allow very simple clustering/scaling and fault tolerance features to be implemented cleanly...

    It is a bit of reinvention, but it's not horrendously bad and it does have some advantages (you'll see what I mean when we GPL it...)

    -JF
  • Those deficiencies are a result of the poster of the job. Some posters choose to include salary information (which is seperated out and displayed towards the top of the page) but most do not.

    How exactly is information hard to find? We've put a lot of effort into making it easy to find information, although our hands are somewhat tied WRT jobs... Companies and recruiters simply aren't willing to invest the time to fill out a complicated job posting form. We know, we've tried.

    -JF
  • th0m,

    Thank you for alerting me to the problem. It seems to have been a slight code synchronization issue, and has been corrected. Ironically it had to do with checking to make sure that cookies are enabled... *sigh* Somehow a "bad" version of one file got copied to the live site, and that killed searches from affiliates... (I.E. SlashDot)

    Please e-mail me if you have any further issues...

    -JF
  • Again, this would seem to be an issue of having cookies disabled. Is that the case? How many results did you get?

    A search for jobs near Philadelphia (when cookies are enabled) returns 38 results for me. (all default values...)

    If you had cookies disabled, please enable them and try again.
  • Our system is set up to allow you to enter as many prior jobs as you wish. We were having a problem with Netscape in entering multiple jobs, but I'm told that has been fixed as of this morning. I'll look into it and ensure that it has been fixed.

    As for the number of jobs... We have 2,756 jobs which I will admit is a very small number but that is growing at a rate of about 50-60 jobs per day. We are actively working on building partnerships to increase the number of job postings per day. We are a startup, and we have to start somewhere.

    Please feel free to contact me directly if you are having problems or if you have suggestions. We're working very hard to make our system the best it can be.

    -JF
  • The behavior you describe happens if you have cookies disabled. Our site is not usable without cookies. Reenable cookies and try again. If you are still unsatisfied with the expression parser, e-mail me and I'll send you the code for you to evaluate and critique...

    -JF
  • I signed up for the rand slashbox and now I've got two boxes of jennicam! (which is probably two too many) Seems like rand should display a slashbox you aren't already subscribed to.

    Ta,
    Kellan
  • Curious -- What is the average number of loads per day? Also curious -- what are some of the really flagrantly abusive numbers like? How many times do they load per day? :)
  • Looks good. I like the limitations, and the methods. I don't know why anyone would complain about it. I think it's an awesome system.

    I can hardly wait to do a little moderating. Maybe I'm just a power freak. :) But I think it's a wonderful opportunity to help out some of those late posters who have good comments, but don't get read because they're so far down the list, and not many people look down there.
    --
    Matthew Walker
    My DNA is Y2K compliant
  • It's become brunching.com. I just wanted to know the weather
  • Oooh. I like that idea. If it could be implemented as a separate user-selectable setting, then it shouldn't upset any of those who don't want to see ANY posts below a given threshold. But I, like you, would enjoy reading a small sampling of the posts below my threshold.

    As an aside, the only complaint I have about the current system is that, sometimes, a well-rated post will be in response to a less-well-rated post, so I don't see what they're responding to. I don't know if there's an elegant fix for that, though.

    Nonetheless, I think the current system is great, overall. I certainly do spend a lot more time here now. I had sampled Slashdot long ago, but had found it too much trouble to wade through. I'd vgrep'd for post size, but that's not a reliable indicator of quality, as we all know. Heck, just look at this rambling post! :)


    -Joe

  • These changes definitely sound good. I think it'll work well keeping the average reader as the moderator, that way when someone comes across a comment and says to theirself "Wow, that's a good comment!" then the ones that are truly good comments will be upped.

    Likewise, the ones where the moderator says "This is a really lame comment!" will be downed.

    I approve :)

  • I was thinking along those lines myself. The whole moderation thing strikes me a bit as jury duty, but without the negative connotations we often associate with jury duty (never been called so I don't know). The similarity is that we are called upon to contribute some of our time to be impartial for the good of the society/community. I figure if/when I am called upon to moderate I will read articles at the -1 threshold for the few days during which I am a moderator.

    This forces me to see all kinds of noise, of course, but since it is only a few days a month according to CT, I am willing to tolerate it given the possibility that some gems have been overlooked or irresponsibly downgraded. I would encourage anyone who is a moderator to do the same.

    Perhaps, actually, it would be appropriate to force the issue, i.e. set things up so that thresholds are unavailable while moderating. Maybe even the number of comments on articles should be hidden from moderators on the front page so that they are not scared off by posts with a slew of comments (not that flamebait articles are hard to spot...).
  • It's interesting but I've noticed that I've started to only look at the articles with +100 comments because it doesn't seem that the posts with any less than that get any moderation. That way, I can scan all the really good comments (or at least those that by default fall out) and skip much of the rest. Of course, that begs the question of how they became moderated, but that's a whole other post.

    I think that people that have earned the right to moderate should be able to moderate their heart out. It seems that most of the moderators are the cream of the crop as it is and they are in it as part of the community. In my perfect world, moderator status should be something that should be earned, and not something that is thrust on an unsuspecting user. That way, people would be less likely to abuse their power if they knew it took time of really good posting and thoughtful feedback to get to that point.

    It kind of reminds me about how people play Ultima Online. It takes time to get that really good character with lots of fame and good karma. That's why people that are at that level don't go out and PK. It would ruin their rep. They are part of the community and try to help out others. The same sort of thing applies to moderators.

    Gordon
    Can't we all just get along?
  • There are many who belive you do an act for the sake of an act not for fame. Many famouse quotes in history are anonymous. Why? mostly because it was less important people know who wrote the message then it was that people heard the message itself. It's the content not the name that matters in the end. Though something can be said for having name recognition. But the main problem with name recognition is that when a person has faith in you they stop lisetning to you. they follow you blindly and do not think for them selves. The icon becomes more then the man or the idea. When this happens egos inflate and people start holy crusades.
  • Webslacker is right. These amendments to the moderation scheme, I suspect, will prove to have nearly eliminated moderation. There's no reason not to have a wide range for possible scores. With a wide range, scores will follow a happy standard distribution, and people can pick how many posts they want to read.

    Also, the auto-moderation for good posters, I suspect, is discouraging human moderation. Many a time a person with a high base score posts a, while germane, quite inane or simply unexciting post that has been granted a high score based on previous exciting posts. You can already do searches based on author. Why not extend those capabilities instead of munging the moderation scheme?

    I'd like the quantitative results on how much moderation there's been. What time had the greatest percentage of moderated posts? If it's now, then I'll concede that the recent changes haven't discouraged moderation. However, by reducing the range of the moderation, it's becoming nigh useless. Why not reduce the range to 0..1?
  • I really did like the system of -1 to 4, though I do agree that it was too easy to get into level 3... Took me one day of careful insiteful(not inciteful) comments to get to level 2, and the next day got me to level 3...

    Positive feedback loop.

    Moderators would see +2 or +3 first, and spend all their moderation points on them, barring those that spent killing the first post comments.

    It did however lead to really good comments and such, because if people wanted to be heard about the common noise level, they took care to make really good comments... and it also discouraged poor comments because you knew less people would see it if it were lower...

    This probably hurt ACs a lot, actually, and thus the change.

    I like how clear and clean the forums became however, and an idea occurred to me; have a daily decay rate; the more you post, the lower your alignment gets... IE, it costs you a point for each post you make, so if you consistently make good powerful comments, your alignment will stabilize to some positive value. If you make very few, very powerful comments or very many very powerful comments, the result would be the same. Likewise, if you make a few good posts, and a bunch not so good, you won't start getting bumped into the high alignment range.

    Another feature could be gradual decay of your alignment related to how often you post/visit Slashdot. This would not hurt consistenly good posters because they would be getting their points replenished daily by moderators anyhow, and still allow a person to fade back to anonymity if they didn't say anything for a while...

    Two methods to deal with the positive feedback cycle...

    AS
  • Does this explain why some people have lost their former alignment values?

    I'm curious if this has to do with the problem of moderators noticing most only highly ranked people... and thus moderating only the most visible, leaving all the 1's to stay at 1's, boosting 2's quickly into 3's, and forcing down all the bad first comments into -1's?

    One way to solve this is to reset the rankings periodically; good posters should quickly recover their previous ranks... And it also allows new posters to rise along with the older crew.

    Or perhaps it just became harder to go higher in alignment?

    AS
  • The most elegant thing I ever saw was when the number of comments had spilled over the limit and only the subjects were displayed. My regular threshold is -1, so I could easily get to all comments. The really cool, elegant part was that the comments with a score of 3 (there's another treshold value that controls this) or higher were displayed in full - not just the subject. So I could see the scope of the entire discussion, I could go in and look at any comment, and every high-scoring comment was immediately visible.

    It would be nice to be able to switch between to that mode (all subjects + good comments in full) at will without having to reconfigure. Mr. Malda, if you get all these configurable filters set up, we may find that we like two or three viewing modes, depending on the length of the article or its subject or our mood - how about some way to quickly switch between them without having to go the preferences page?
  • they are "typical" readers (the middle 50% of comment readers according to the number of comments & article pages they've loaded- again, this weeds out idle accounts and obsessive over-readers alike. It finds the "average" reader. Hopefully).

    there are still a couple of things that really worry me on this moderator business.

    is the aim of moderating the comments to highlight the opinion of the "typical reader" or to highlight intelligent comments worthy of extra attention?

    there is a big big difference. this is why leaders in a community are so important, they supposedly "understand" things better, and are hence given more responsibilty of influence.

    On that recent Nt4 vs Linux story for example, the "typical 50%" will flame Microsoft and offer explanations for the test results. the community leader will be more level headed and suggest maybe (as did one gentleman) that the whole issue be explored seriously, and that should there be sign of even a minor flaw, then it should be looked at seriously and attacked immediately.

    that's what i want to read, I know what the "typical 50%" thinks already.

    ..... then again the 50% is an important voice, just as long as it does not drown the "leaders", there is a very fine balance to be achieved here I think.

    (PS i believe in the power of anonymous leaders ... there is nothing more inspiring than an AC post with a score of 3+ ... it removes all sense of "celebrity" or reputation or whatever (things that make for abuse))
  • I understad that the people who read a huge number of posts may be using bots just so they can be eligible to be a mod. But, I think that being in the top 25% is not bad. Perhaps the top 5 percent or so should be blocked. Those are the ones with the bots.
  • ... how mean people are there there? ie what are my chances of moderatoring? cause i (and most larkers [sp?]) would love to moderatate, cause i dont have time in the day ( i DO werk and all ) to read messages but some times i see a good comment... well, anyway how many /. accouts are there? ( i have read /. for some time just an account did do anything for me till now... )
    nmarshall
    #include STD_DISCLAMER.H
    R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE

  • My suggestion (Score:3)

    by webslacker ( 15723 ) on Wednesday April 14, 1999 @12:22PM (#1934060)
    I've found that since the moderators have been given less points to moderate with, there've been a lot of good comments (or at least Score:1) that haven't been scored at all and consequently don't show up on my radar when I set my threshold to 1. I could set my threshold to 0, but then I'd be subjecting myself to a greater noise/signal ratio.

    IOW, I liked it better when almost all comments were scored.

  • I think that the new scoring system is working out very well, almost too well in fact. For some high-traffic discussions I'll turn up the threshold up to 2 or even 3 to weed out the worthless comments.

    However, this has the undesirable effect of hiding many worthy comments. If a moderator were to set the same threshold, he or she would never see the lower-rated postings, and these postings could never be promoted to a higher score!

    As a possible solution, I'd like to see a random sampling of the lower-rated articles appear alongside the more popular ones. So in a topic with 100 comments, I would see all 20 articles rated "2" or better, plus 5 or so articles from the -1..1 range.

    David Brin suggested this method for filtering in the novel Earth.

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