On the Subject of Trolls 476
So it happened again recently. You guys who read a lot probably know where but this time it was much more hurtful then usual. So I've implemented 2 changes to help prevent this from happening again.
First I added an additional scoring penalty to posts. Originally the default range of comment posting was 0 for ACs, and 1 for Registered Users. In addition, a +1 or -1 could be Registered users based on their posting history (I'm gonna use the word "Karma" to describe the sum of all moderation activity done to a given user: thanks nate). If a user has karma of +20, they get a +1 bonus to their comments. If their karm is -10, they get a -1. I've added an additional rank of -20 which ads one more -1 to the post, which will make it possible for a comment to be posted at -1.
There are only 2 accounts out of the 80,000 that are this low.
Second is a bit trickier. The code now checks for "Trolls" as part of comment validation. Essentially, when a comment is posted, a troll factor is computed for your Account and your IP. This is the sum of all moderator activity done to your account in the last 24 hours or so. If your IP or your User Account has a -5 or worse total, your comment will not be posted.
Right now there are 5 accounts in the system that should show up as trolls. 3 of them are the 3 worst offenders from the story that caused me to have to write this code.
It was hard for me to do this. I'm feeling pretty wierd because this is the first time I've ever made it impossible for anyone to post. My guess is that in the end this won't help: There is no end to the number of IPs or User Accounts a determined troll can acquire to continue pestering people trying to have a real discussion. All I can say to those of you who are offended is to try to browse at Score:1 or Score:2 because the moderation system as a whole works quite well. And to those of you who are causing the problem (and I know who you are) please grow up.
Update: 09/05 01:51 by CT : A lot of good points are being made in the comments, but let me try to justify something: I'm not trying to cause censorship, I'm trying to prevent a denial of service attack. Under this system it will be quite possible for a troll to post 5-10 comments before the system rejects him. This isn't a censorship thing: He's been given plenty of opportunity to speak, he's just screwed up. He's not trying to communicate, he's trying to drown out other speakers. This is precisely the kind of thing that we need to resolve to allow a rational discussion to continue at the scale we're dealing with here. There are most certainly loopholes here, but no system can stop all abuses. This will just make it a little trickier.
Other Ideas:
- No Anonymous Posts. You all know how I feel about this one.
- Restrict the # of comments any single IP/Account is allowed to make in a single article. This gets problematic: anyone have a good idea on how to make this fair, that will scale from 1 comment to a thousand?
- Assorted restrictions on AC posting (Allow only 1 AC per registered post? Allow only registered users to post top level comments? No AC posts after 100 comments in a story? There are dozens of ideas, but I think they all are bad)
Oh, and if enough people bitch, I'll remove the extra '-1' from new posts. I'm not convinced that its a good idea, but it *did* serve to solve the current problem.
Interesting problems, thanks for the feedback (good and bad!) I'm glad that some folks are addressing the issues instead of just swearing and screaming at each other. I'm open to any suggestions, but anything angry will simply be ignored.
Option to filter anonymous posts (Score:1)
Client problem (Score:2)
Moderation of itself seems to work -- fairly well, most of the time. Posts which are "good" get moderated up consistantly, posts which are "bad" get moderated down consistantly. Posts which are controversial, however, get bounced up and down, and the net score may not reflect the true measure of the post's significance.
I've suggested previously a couple of changes to the browsing interface:
I've often found my five moderating points are insufficient to the task. I also dislike the fact that I cannot both post and moderate, and am about this close to coming up with post-only and moderate-only IDs.
Other vague gripes -- it's not always clear what the moderation categories mean (is "funny" up or down), it might be better to simply have an up or down vote, plus optional description. The current options should have an indication of direction (+/- would do it). The categories seem incomplete.
Finally, there ought to be a feedback discussion for Slashdot where users can post their concerns and vote features up or down. Re-open the discussion on a regular basis (say every week or two) to flush out and start over, but keep the old feedbacks for historical perspective.
Re:a modest suggestion... (Score:1)
Re:Another nail in the coffin of free speech. (Score:1)
moderation cencorship.
In the threads about Richard Stevens I stumbled upon this,
------snip-------
I am imploring the AC or AC's who insist on posting their drivel to this page to desist. One of Stevens' sons loves to read Slashdot and is
extremely distressed to see some of the posts that are being "written" here today. If you have a heart, just give it a rest.
----end snip-----
Now think about his son, and what he read, and
say that moderation couldn't have saved him some
pain.
thanks
-p.s. Slashdot isn't a government organization,
Rob built this from the ground up, if he doesn't
like the way somebody smells he should be able
to delete that persons post without people
complaining. If people don't like it, why don't
they make a slashdot themselves?, thats what the
internet is all about, if you don't like it, do it
better, just stop complaining.
No: ceiling to allow low-post scans (Score:1)
Usenet once was pretty sweet (Score:1)
Answer a "skill-testing question" about the subject and you can moderate the discussion. The author of the story would come up with the question to go along with the story.
Glad someone remembers when Usenet was still pretty cool. Like many people here I'm sure, I remember a time when most people you met on the Net (Usenet, irc, gopher - WWW what's that?) were intelligent, friendly people that were almost always a pleasure to converse with. Why do things always have to seek out the lowest common denominator.. sigh. Good luck Rob.
Anyone considered the core problem? (Score:2)
Introduction -
Did anyone even consider if this is a technical problem or a social problem?
The natural conclusion is given (it's a social one).
Past AOL - USENET issues has proven this.
Can you straighten social problems out solely using technology?
To some degree yes but you will never get to the root of the problem.
Thesis -
My thesis is that you have to decide if you want an open forum or a closed forum.
Explanation -
Open forums render spam and all sorts of shit in masses and there's nothing no one
is gonna be able to do about it (it's like freedom of speach, even nazi opinions can be expressed).
Though the as they are open they are in a way the nicest ones.
Closed forums means you have to be a member to express your opinion and the nice thing is you can keep
track of the users and see what they do and controll them if they missbehave. Though it is a closed
forum meaning it's not likely to gain any wider acceptance among the broad public.
The current form of semi-open forum with means of sensorship (moderators) is obviously not working.
The spam gets thruu.
The moderators are flooded.
The maintainers of the forum is being adressed and complained at.
Theory -
Adding extremely complex security like systems will in the end probably mean the forum becomes less userfriendly.
This could create a situation where only those who either has a whole lot of time to waste or those who are
really smart will catch up on how the forum actually works in depth.
Giving this it's likely the forum will decrease in popularity among serious users and history has told us that
the more complex the security systems gets the more intense gets the destroying efforts.
To assume the forum could drop a whole bunch of people/users here, however passively, is not unthinkable.
The effect of such an event may not show in the site maintainers user logfiles since most of these users are likely
to silently leave, without actually removing their accounts why the actual result would show in less serious
debating and fewer real discussion as a whole.
Re:Restrictions (Score:2)
Re:Another nail in the coffin of free speech. (Score:2)
However, idealism goes a long way. I once frequented a web board which censored posts constantly. It ended up becoming so bad that if a DISCUSSION started about anything 'possibly offensive' like religion, or violence, etc. the entire discussion would be removed. After I stopped visiting the site went down permanently within a couple of months.
It's different on slashdot, I know. We don't want to have to see flamebait, and trolls, and advertisements all over the place.
But freedom of speech has much greater implications than some people seem to realize. This is especially so in the information age. Censorship goes against the principles of the internet itself. A medium to supply information. Who gets to choose which information we get to see?
The non-censorship of slashdot is not a government thing, it's an idealist thing. If we, the
To an idealist, the only person who should be allowed to censor what you say is yourself.
Moderation is different, but is from a certain perspective a form of censorship. I'm not condemning it - it's a 'necessary evil' like the only choice people like me had when voting in the poll for ACs. But moderation so far has worked (ok, there is some moderator bias, but c'est la vie). Moderation of posts does not have as much of the so-called 'chilling effect' as would the rating system proposed for the entertainment industries, but it does have one - especially with the 'moderator bias' many people have noted going on here. People with positive views on, say, windows NT may be discouraged from posting because a bias moderator might moderate it down and call it 'flamebait.' I personally believe this is a form of censorship (in the same way that government agencies with an agenda could go after certain movies with this rating system for propeganda purposes).
Anyways, like I said, I agree Rob can do whatever he wants with this site. It is his, but I submit that his strong belief in free speech should apply to all parts of his life, and all his creations - if not for our sake, then for hypocrisy's.
-reptilian
Re:Karma system must change - give us a choice! (Score:2)
Here's one solution: give us a choice! The posting form could have a box that gives us the option of posting at 0, 1 (if registered), 2 (if karmic), or 3 (if a demigod; we might as well give Bruce Perens this status!). That way we can knock down casual comments to 1, and responses to assholes all the way down to 0.
As for "demigod", that could be someone with a substantial history of posting well-received material. Demigods should be much easier to identify if users with karma have the ability to self-moderate.
Finally, I don't buy the DoS argument with trolls. Let them post, but give them an exponentially lower default moderation code. E.g., the current trolls would be -2, if they still cause problems they're dropped again -4, and so forth. Or maybe not; some people might find pleasure in seeing how low they can go.
Bad Moderator Against an Individual: A Solution (Score:2)
Anybody else have ideas+/opinions?
Longer moderation time (Score:3)
Troll Stomping (Score:3)
Re:Bad Moderator Against an Individual: A Solution (Score:2)
At the very least, /. should be tracking frequencies of moderator by poster. Vendettas should stand out quite clearly -- normal moderating patterns will tend to be fairly random (and highly AC, I suspect).
Moderators doing this get a nastygram the first time (and lose moderation points, and have current moderation undone). Second time they are permanently banned from moderating. Subject to personal appeal.
Whats all the fuss about (Score:2)
It's just FANTASTIC. Talk about lacking a sense of perspective.
I mean, come on, OS's are important up to a point, but death threats?
Having said that, anybody coming to
Can I suggest allowing people to see only posts that have been moderated down below a certain level that way I can ignore all the serious stuff and concentrate on the amusing psycopaths for my thesis.
The psycopaths are all part of what make
Re:Slashdot changed - no kidding (Score:2)
I fondly recall those days (not all *that* long ago) when Slashdot (almost) resembled 80's Usenet. Clued-in folks knowlegeably discussing the stuff they're interested in.
I would note, however, that many who are here now would see threads like the one you pointed us to as representative of a banal Linux admiration society. Perhaps. But it was a lot more fun then than it is now. I'm still here, so it's still fun, interesting, valuable, etc. It's just that it used to be moreso.
There wasn't much bickering in those days; I think that's what I miss most. But there was still lots of valuable content.
I realize that banning ACs wouldn't make things back the way they were. I don't know that there is an answer. Once something has become as popular as Slashdot is, I'm afraid there's no hope in preserving/restoring its contributors' high quality.
I still wonder if separating comments by user agent and/or OS might not keep some of the sniping down. But, then you'd miss out on good comments by people who are on different platforms than yourself. Maybe if only comments of 2 or better broke the "platform barrier?" Hmmm...
--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page [slappy.org]
How about a "Kill File" (Score:2)
This would allow people a choice of setting thier threshold, OR, ignore "Anonymous Coward" or any users that happen to be rubbing them the wrong way.
Re:relative moderator points (Score:2)
I disagree. As one famous Supreme Court ruling said, the best antidote to bad speech is good speech, not no speech, and sometimes a bad original post prompts an excellent response that teaches the rest of us something valuable. (If nothing else, how to respond to messages like the first!)
If you propogate moderation, many of us would miss the excellent responses. Worse in some ways, it would encourage people to start new threads instead of responding to existing ones lest their comments get lost in a downward moderation.
Freedom of Speech does not guarantee a forum. (Score:2)
People stories are different (Score:2)
I realize that censorship is a bad word for many people. However, there are bounds of human decency that one should not cross. Not all stories are created equal. Those dealing with people are prone to greater abuse and hurtfulness, and therefore need to be dealt with accordingly.
Ironically, I'm watching a PBS show featuring a round-table discussion about the Internet while I writing this (pre-emptive multitasking).
BTW, banning AC's may not have completely solved last night's problem. The idiots would just keep creating new login accounts.
Freedom of Speech != Freedom to be listened to. (Score:2)
Under the 1st amendment, one is free to say anything one wants. That doesn't mean I have to listen to you.
I generally browse Slashdot at +2, with highly-moderated posts sorted at the top. I find that when I bother to look below +2, I find much less worth reading. Sure, there's the occasional overlooked post that really should be moderated up, but generally, especially with a day-old discussion, the good stuff has been noticed.
One of the wonderful things about /. is that the "censorship" really tends to be more on style than on opinions. I see plenty of posts which express alternate opinions than the "community norm" moderated up -- but those posts tend to be well-written and polite. The post to which I am replying ("Another nail in the coffin of free speech") is a perfect example of this.
/.
If you want to be listened to, then express your opinions politely and with respect for your opponents as well as for your friends. If you want to be an asshole, don't expect to be listened to. This goes for all of life, not just
Adam
Re:Karma system must change (Score:2)
Perhaps one's karma should be based on the points accumulated after the initial level. That way a +2 person only gets karma points for +3 above.
Elsewhere there has been comments about daveo. I too support the effort to get daveo back to the +1 level. Then again, I am also a person who really misses MEEPT.
Off-topic: I'm also watching TV right now. I just saw a Miller-Lite commercial with Norm McDonald (sp?) and Marc Anderssen (sp?). Lot's of bad dot.com puns.
Re:Something wrong with moderation (Score:2)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Re:Another nail in the coffin of free speech. (Score:3)
Censorship in and of itself is not a bad thing. We all do it. How many of us use an answering machine to filter out the calls we don't want, or immediately trash any junk and mass-market snail mail? We all filter information. Even the most open-minded of the media do it, otherwise our morning papers would be three feet thick!
Censorship by a government is a bad thing. These are people who can't even run their own lives but try to run ours, and with our tax money to boot. It's an instance of our "rulers" determining what we see.
However, if slashdot deletes posts, that is a completely different thing. Slashdot is not the government. Unlike a government, when it deletes a post it is not eliminated from all other internet and real world outlets.
I don't own slashdot. You don't own slashdot. Only slashdot has any rights whatsoever in determining what gets posted and what doesn't. This affects nobody's freedoms. You have no rights to slashdot, just as nobody but you have rights to your website.
Freedom of speech includes the freedom not to speak. Freedom of the press includes the freedom not to publish.
Re:DHCP? (Score:2)
Let the user do his own moderation (Score:2)
In the User Preferences, have a list of every moderation point (Insightful, Informative, Funny, Flamebait, Troll, etc). Next to each one, let the user pick whether the moderation point should be worth -1, 0, or 1 points to the moderation total.
This way, people who only want "intelligent" posts can mark Funny, Troll, etc as -1, and have Insightful/Informative and friends marked as 1. People who only want to read the rantings of the broken people can do the opposite, if they wish.
Well, that's just my 3CA3D70A.
Guess this is necessary (Score:3)
<RANT>
What I do not agree with, is what is moderated. Too often I see technical posts moderated down, and jokes moderated up. This is not "Slashdot: Comedy for Nerds." This is "Slashdot: News for Nerds." I want to learn, so I want to read posts from professional tech people. If I want to laugh, I'll listen to a professional comedian.
</RANT
Yes we need more moderator points BUT... (Score:2)
--
# of comments. (Score:2)
The fairest way I can imagine would be first, to resist anyone with a low alignment -1 to maby only a handful of first level comments. Also replies within a thread should be limited only by who its in reply too. For instance you should only make maby 3 or 4 direct comments within an individual tree branch. No that doesn't make sense either, basically you should be able to indefinatly continue a thread, for instance if someone replies to something I should be able to reply to that then reply to my replies to reply to other peoples replies. But one should be limited on how many comments he/she can make 1 step down from a specific comment. Give them 3 or 4 mainly in case they forgot a point they where trying to make or correcting typos exedera, but if someone makes a comment on thier comment they automaticaly would want to be able to comment on that. I know I didn't make myself very clear, but its harder to explain, than it would be to program.
Re:it appears so (Score:2)
You've misidentified the new rule. For several months, the rule was that a poster with karma of -10 or below is given a default score of zero. The new rule (which leaves the old rule intact) is that a poster with karma of -20 or below is given a default posting score of -1.
Re:Karma system must change (Score:2)
Actually, if you look at his User Info [slashdot.org], you will see that he starts off with a 2, like all other "good karma" posters.
There may a certain amount of moderator worship for him, but I did see one of his posts moderated down once (and left that way) to a 1, as "flamebait."
--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page [slappy.org]
Restrictions (Score:2)
Maybe... (Score:3)
I'd say "Let us keep our moderation points for longer than 3 days", since I often see nothing worth moderating during the 3 days I have my points, and end up either not using them, or wasting them on moderating down some childish post. I know that this will cause abuse, but I'll waste a paragraph on the idea anyway.
Maybe we could be issued a few more points, or be allowed to keep them for a few more days...
No Full-Time Moderators! (Score:3)
Though I sometimes don't agree with what moderators do to posts, I usually feel comfortable enough to browse at 0... the -1's usually trully are flame bait and such... I find it amusing when I post something, put clearly in the subject field that "This is Flamebait", ramble about something stupid, and then see the comment moderated up and spawning a whole new discussion thread!
My two cents are that:
1 - Moderators should get more points - I often don't moderate comments down because I feel my points would be better served highlighting the more insiteful comments than by filtering out people... With more points, I would feel more tempted to help point out the trolls.
2 - Posters of comments should be allowed (at least registered ones) to moderate themselves (just so you can see what they're thinking - I could moderate myself as offtopic, just so people would know that's what they're getting into). Don't have that posters moderation change the point total, just use it for a "mood"
3 - we need more categories for moderation
4 - allow more people to moderate at a time... Again, I tend to hold onto my points for a couple of days, hoping an interesting article gets posted, rather than getting drawn into an Apple vs Linux, or Redhat vs. Debian, or everyone vs. microsoft discussion. Having more active moderators with more points would definitely weed out the trolls and polish the gems.
5 - People who are consistently moderated down probably should start at 0... Don't make them go any lower than that, but rather send an automatic email to their account as a warning, and then discontinue their account... They can then sign up again with the same login, just make it a tad bit more difficult for people who abuse the system.
It's a shame we have to go to this. (Score:2)
Re:is daveo a "troll" (Score:2)
But everyone, at some time, has posted stuff that's badly written. DaveO has at least caught on that all-caps posts are bad, and one of these days he'll realize the same about the third-person voice.
I agree with Malda that something ought to be changed to prevent a repeat of the "I jizz on WRS's corpse" posts. However, scapegoating DaveO and Ellis-D will solve nothing.
Re:Karma system must change (Score:4)
> posts at an automatic 2, I certainly have to
> agree. There are many times when I've posted
> something off-the-cuff that I've wished I
> could specify that it should be with a score of 1.
As another "+2 karma" poster, let me just say "me too", for precisely the same reasons.
More specifically, I propose that - at the time of posting - the poster of an article ought to have:
(a) his or her karma score displayed on the "post comment" form
(b) a pull-down option to select whether the post should be posted with a score of -1, 0, 1, or 2.
As for the issue of whether or not ACs should be allowed to post, IMHO they should. While there are many trolls and abuses of this privilege, there are also benefits. I find myself reading crypto/NSA/spooky posts and science posts at level 0, largely because in the case of the former, people with clue may also have a reason to want to post anonymously, and in the case of the latter, those with clue may not post frequently enough to Slashdot to justify the trouble of registering with the site. When it comes to astronomy, I'd much rather read the AC post at 0 from the Ph.D. in Astrophysics debunking the 5-10 registered posters at +1 who have no idea what they're talking about.
It's not just the blatant trolls (Score:5)
It's not just the blatant trolls that get under your skin. What's troubling (and disheartening for people concerned with the current state of humanity) is the huge number of attitudes expressed at Slashdot with attitudes like:
Keep in mind that here I'm not talking about people who are just saying that to get everyone riled up (i.e., "real trolls"), but people who say it with true spite for other people behind it.
I honestly do believe that there's a relatively high number of people here that have damaged psyches and could use some mental help. Stuff like this makes me think of Jon Katz's Hellmouth series and wonder if these people suffered abuse when they were younger which turned them into such despicable human beings. No matter how much it might seem like a short-term fix, cutting down other people instead of improving yourself will never give you the peace that you seek.
This site can be an entertaining read, but when you look at the big picture, it can be one of the most depressing sites on the web.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
P.S. Sorry if you've read some of this before, but I thought that this was a more appropriate thread for it.
Re:is daveo a "troll" (Score:2)
:)
Hmmm (Score:3)
First, I have to thank Malda for going through all the work of implementing a reasonably sane moderation system for the comments. Second, I'd like to point out that even though user comments comprise a substantial portion of the site, they're still a very small part of the "Slashdot Experience". Just remember to stay on target with the news and features (and of course the radio show :) and things will be good.
Re:Ooh, here's an idea! (Score:3)
As far as the 'slashdot junkie' problem, that's exactly why I proposed that. If someone gets their /24 block banned from posting and there's a lot of other people on that /24 block, there'll be MAJOR hell to pay for the person getting them banned, and quite a few people will be quickly sending angry comments to their ISP, thereby removing the troll permanently, or at least until they get another ISP.
As far as spoofing, the IP address which is banned won't have been something that would have been validly routed at the time. If the ISP knows what they're doing, they'll realize that someone was spoofing. Unfortunately, most ISPs don't know what they're doing. :/ I don't see TCP/IP spoofing as being a major source of these problems, though. Most of the ACs in question are just (well, seem to be) stupid kids who know nothing but try to shout everything. Most notably being that one (I hope) particular AC in the Rich Stevens article who was spamming the discussion thread with porn sites under the guise of on-topic conversation and is likely the same one who kept on talking about "spraying his petrified face with scalding-hot jizz" or whatever. He made me nauseous with rage, in any case.
Maybe just punishing ACs on the same subnet, then, yeah... or maybe every day posting a list of the banned IP addresses and who caused the ban, if applicable.
And yeah, I know what Pvt Pyle did in that movie. :) But Pyle can't go and blow away Rob (well, actually, Rob's home address *is* easy to find...) and Pyle had other problems to begin with (not that the bad ACs here don't seem to to begin with). But as you said, it was an analogy. Just an analogy. :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
It's only to be expected, after all (Score:2)
Ouch! A learning experience for Rob!
Anyway, if slashdot had less tolerance of anonymous yammerheads I might find it more worthwhile to read - as it is, it's rare for me to click on anything but the links to the stories that sound interesting - and if I did, then it would probably be worth the trouble to login. Yeah, I have a login, but why should I bother with it when I only drop in to check the headlines? Heck, these days I most often find the rare item here that's worth reading by way of a link from one of the more useful news sites.
Besides, slash has way too many time-wasting graphics and ads these days. I see I need to update the blocklist again...
How to set preferences. (Score:2)
Set your threshold to 1. And use hard thresholds, since this will hide all responders to the Troll also.
Rob, I think that you should use these settings for new accounts, since most people doesn't bother to change these.
I have also removed Display Scores, since I prefer to decide which postings I like. Banning the worst abusers seems to be good solution also. I also remove postings less than 15 characters to remove 'First Post' and other uninteresting stuff.
Unfortunately, I have spent almost all my moderator points on Trolls instead of promoting interesting postings.
At last (Score:3)
I considered stopping to read the comments posted, because of the immaturity of many posters, but many of the comments are Insightful, and I enjoy reading, and contributing to them. Plus, the open forum idea adds to the overall quality of Slashdot. The A/C's detract from that quality, and piss a lot of people off. (Not only that, but as I pointed out to Rob, they're using up system resources with their bullshit too.)
This is a big Thank You to the management staff of this site. While I agree, it won't solve the problem of immaturity among posters, but it will curb it quite well.
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
Beware the knee-jerk reaction, Commander. (Score:2)
I know you've been considering the AC issue for quite some time now, but this strikes me as a bit of a knee-jerk reaction. And it really isn't a solution. If I were branded with a default -1, I would simply change nicks or go AC (or change IPs) and keep on trolling. As you pointed out, this really isn't going to stop anybody who really wants to troll, and that's what we're up against on the (unreferenced) message chain.
I do like the idea of karma on moderation (especially positive karma). But it isn't going to stop the hell-bent or the insane. It is a good gesture, but why throw in a solution that you know isn't going to do the job?
Respectfully, ADC.
Biassed Moderators (Score:2)
The moderators do not follow their own rules.
If you want slashdot to be a forum of linux zealots to pat eachother on the back and blast anything that is not pro-linux, then leave it the way it is, but don't lie to us by claiming the moderation system is fair, Rob.
For those of us that want to see all intelligent posts, we are forced to put our threshhold at -1 because of the immature, biassed moderation. You suggestion of setting the threshold of +1 or +2 is only acceptable for those who want to see only pro-linux posts.
Re:Guess this is necessary (Score:2)
DHCP? (Score:4)
2) I've marvelled that there's no ad-spam on slashdot. Do you guys have a team of grunts that deletes those, or do the folks who flood USENET with "Pamela suck off Tommy Lee" posts just not peruse slashdot? If there is a troupe of squirells to delete ads, maybe they can be used to delete the really bad trolls.
3) What were the offending posts that inspired this?
My take on the Karma system... (Score:2)
Registered accounts begin life with a Reputation of 1 (AC posts start at 0). Furthermore, Reputation is carried over from week to week.
Now, let's say that Karma is the sum of all moderation activity a person has had done on them for the past two or three weeks. Furthermore, the Karma is calculated the first time the person posts on a given day. How the person's Reputation is altered would be determined something like this:
If a person is already at -1 Reputation and gets docked due to negative Karma again, they're downgraded to Troll status (and are notified by e-mail of this fact). Troll status would probably be best implemented by a simple flag in the userdata. All of their posts start at -1, regardless of Reputation. The Troll status is lifted when the person's Reputation reaches 1 again (in other words, over a period of time they have to accumulate enough Karma to get two +1 bonuses to Reputation).
The idea of this is to add two advantages to the current systems: 1) People with a high Reputation have to maintain it in order to keep it, and 2) Consistent trolls have their accounts severely punished, but can still work their way back up (though not without really posting some good stuff).
Re:Deleting is a bad road to go down... (Score:3)
There's also the question of where to draw the line. It is a tough one, and over time it is easy to become a little less stringent.
Re:It's a shame we have to go to this. (Score:2)
Re:Excellent suggestion (Score:2)
That's what moderation is for (Score:2)
Re:is daveo a "troll" (Score:2)
:)
on the same day as the censorship story... (Score:2)
I think that the moderation is crucial. First, its not done by some sort of "advisory board" or by the owners of
The trolls will never go away. There are people who are small-minded and shallow and will post inane, stupid or worthless comments strictly to see people fight or to try to cause "chaos". These are the same people who put a bunch of fighting-fish into a tank just to watch them kill each other. "kaos rulz" and all that crap.
I say, give the worst offender a chance to write in an email where her or she tries to justify their position on trolling. Then let *that* get moderated. If it turns out that they have some deep, complex social reason for all this, well, hey. Let 'em back in. The other result - the community giving them the collective finger - is to lose posting priviledges forever. Maybe its just a random thought - but its certainly not intended as a troll.
Thanks CmdrTaco (Score:3)
Yet, I am really happy to see CmdrTaco trying to do something, even if it proves futile. I've seen too many online communities suffer and wither from the irresponsible behavior of a very small minority of posters. I beg those leaving to consider that they are only giving the assholes exactly what they want, and worsening the problem by reducing the number of worthwhile posts.
I have to believe that if there is a technological solution that sufficient quality minds exist at slashdot to find it. CmdrTaco has made a good start.
The major problem I see is that its too easy to start a new account with a clean record. Could the number of new accounts created from a single IP be time limited - say no more than one per week?
I am not sure how dynamic IPs (for the majority of us on dialups) work into this scheme. Could someone explain?
NOT free speech (Score:2)
Re:Something wrong with moderation (Score:2)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Boost AC's on logged-in replies? (Score:2)
This way, lurk-readers can read at a 1-threshold and not miss out on context started by an AC post, and moderators need not worry about wasting points on "me-too/first" comments.
Thoughts?
(Aside: As a 2-level poster, it would be nice to be able to pre-moderate my comments down a notch when they're off-topic or off-the-cuff. Save the 2-level for more relevant/topical postings.)
Randomize option (Score:2)
Re:it appears so (Score:2)
And yes, we *can* see your post history: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op =userinfo&nick=DAVEO [slashdot.org] Looks like you've been on a downward spiral for quite some time.
I dunno; I think the system's working fine.
Re:is daveo a "troll" (Score:2)
Should a user be moderated down on the basis of his previous comments??
I think that just reflects reality. Truth is that if a person's comments are routinely moderated down, the next one probably will be too.
Based on the stats in the article, it doesn't sound like too many users will end up in that category anyway.
It's borderline trolls? (Score:2)
There is no doubt in my mind that the average "mental maturity" of slashdot posters is adolecent. But some (not all) of the borderline trolls are pretty good.
The fact that the comments are negitive about a person, project, product, or concept are not in itself a troll. The ones that stick out in my mind are the posts reguarding Red Hat, SGI, and X-windows. These topics always bring with them a small segment of "flame-bait" posts. But, although some are flat out flame bait, some comments are actually solid criticism, with a leg to stand on.
Red Hat != Microsoft, and blatent flames are anoying, with "Red Hat Sucks" being a common responce. But, with all of Red Hats newfound money, it's odd that they don't clean up thier contribs, and they have been shortsighted in not accepting input from the outside world. They did screw up the squid packages when there were good squid packages in the contribs. They have made a mistake making thier base install a minimum of 120M. Some criticisms are well justified. Calling them the Microsoft of Linux, flaming them for the simple fact that they are now worth a few billion, and some of the harsher comments with no basis are flames. But not all criticisms are flames.
SGI obviously has some problems. Thier investors have a right to be consirned when at one time SGI was worth over $40 a share, and now hover around $10 a share. Thier motives in suddenly embraceing the GNU/GPL community seem a little suspect. They have lost key developers. There are many negitive things about the company that can be discussed intellegently. And it almost seems that it's some of the "positive" comments that are "flamebait." I have long respected thier MIPS based hardware, and listening to SlashDot script kiddies say how much "SGI rocks" because they now have an Intel based Linux box makes me feel like an intellegent discussion about the company impossable.
X-Windows, and specifically the XFree86 project are no doubt greatly benificial to almost everyone using a open source *NIX OS. Yet, there are still some shortfalls and limitations. I have never seen a truely intellegent discussion on SlashDot about what is good and bad in XFree86, only people spouting off how "we need a replacement, like Berlin" without supporting the comment, or "I can't wait for 4.0 because that will have all the cool stuff in it" without actually justifing what the needs for these new features will be. I don't doubt that an OpenGL implementation will be benificial, I know it will hell people who run software that requires OpenGL, but frankly, the only products I have used personally that use OpenGL are propriatary and don't run on Linux or any other free OS to start with. A vast majority of the comments, good and bad, might qualify as trolls.
So, I guess what I am saying is, just because a comment is negitive doesn't qualify it as a trool. There are many "This Rocks" type comments that are equally trolls. There are many "This sucks because X should do Y and part ABC has been core dumping every time you do a PDQ procedure" that are negitive, but not trolls, just true observations about shortfalls of the subject in question.
So, moderation may help. But, the true problem is probably that most SlashDot readers are more likely to be in the adolecent phase of "UNIX is cool, computers rock, I'm a 3113+3 H4X0R" catagory, and too few of slashdots readers bring long term, educated and experianced comments to the table.
Slashdot changed - no kidding (Score:3)
Postings by none other than Alan himself, Bob Young, Jim Pick, Rasterman, and someone at Transmeta. And absolutely no mention of any bodily fluid. :/
Rob, I hate to see it, but I hope that your new code to deal with the trolls helps with the recent problems. I was saddened by the posts I saw yesterday. It's amazing how callous people can be. Sad little boys...
Another nail in the coffin of free speech. (Score:5)
If you really want to stop things like hate speech or blatent trolls, the only way to stop them is to get/teach people to NOT respond. The only reason someone posts this on a public forum like
Let's face it, this is a
I hope Rob you'll reconsider this move. 99.99999% of us may loathe 0.0001% of the posts, but that doesn't mean that we should censor them out, even if they are blatent trolls. We all have to learn to grow up and just ignore them. Trying to censor them won't make them go away; rather it will just make them more determined to find a way to work around the censorship.
Until we as a society learn that we don't really want the government/media to protect us from ourselves, we're doomed as a nation to greater losses of freedoms. By
If you want to rate them -20 or something like that, so that people have to opt-in to read trolls, that's fine. But don't kill the posts.
Liberty isn't Anarchy (Score:3)
Freedom of speech OK, anarchy NO.
Most of the people who will protest against Rob's decision are the ones who, in their posts, usually promote the idea of censoring everybody who doesn't share their opinions.
Every society finds itself confronted with this very problem eventually, which can be seen i.e. with the "first ammendment" of the US constitution. On behalf of a supposedly guaranteed freedom of speech, how many morons/lunatics/facists abuse the system every day? I'm not promoting censorship (censorshit?), far from it. Just agreeing with the idea of keeping immature and stupid people away from what would one consider as an intelligent discussion space, at least until they *learn* something from their peers.
Opinions are like assholes, we all got one but you ain't forced to show it to everybody.
Just my 0.02 (let's be different!)
Re:That's what moderation is for (Score:2)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
It's going OK (Score:2)
Slashdot is the first news forum I've ever been on where reader comments more or less work. It's one of the few places where I might actually *want* to read what everyone has to say about a story. The Slashdot team deserves a lot of credit for this, as does the Slashdot readership.
As Slashdot has grown and become more of a mainstream medium the quality of the comments has gone down. Not just the obvious flamebait, but lots of uninformed speculation and general cluelessness. This is to be expected, it is the natural lifespan of a medium. Slashdot has weathered this fairly well, and the moderation system is a big help.
Collaborative moderation is very difficult, I am impressed to see it working so well. These kinds of tweaks are necessary, and every one seems to improve things. I think Slashdot is doing a good job of walking the line between censorship and editing.
Simply not true (Score:2)
It's apparently the "hip" thing to bash on Linux and Linux users now, and the trolling is just a part of this.
The only real solution is to eliminate AC posting once and for all.
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OK, Millennium's Proposed System v1.5... (Score:2)
Karma is the sum of all moderations done to a person's post in the past three weeks. Reputation is the score at which a person's posts start out.
The Anonymous Coward always has a Reputation of 0, whereas user accounts start with a Reputation of 1. The first time the user posts in a given day, the Karma is tallied up.
If the person's Karma is 10 or more, his/her Reputation increases by 1 and the Karma score is reduced by 10 (to offset the increase in Reputation). Note that a user can recieve only one such increase per day.
If the poster's Karma is 5 to 9, his/her Reputation does not change, nor does the Karma score
If the poster's Karma is -2 to 4, his/her Reputation is decreased by 1, down to a minimum of 1. This allows for a person to make a few small slip-ups without a severe penalty. It also decreases the Reputation of people who do not post for a long time, but does not let that Reputation slip below that of an ordinary user ( if the person's Reputation is already 1 or less, it does not change). It is also an attempt to offset the effect on Karma of a good post dropping off the list.
If the poster's Karma is below -2, his/her Reputation is decreased by 1, to a minimum of -1. The person's Karma score is increased to -2 (to offset the decrease in Reputation) If the person was already at -1 Reputation, that person is given Troll status.
If a person is at Troll status, his/her posts start off at -1 regardless of his/her actual Reputation. Troll status is automatically lifted once the person reaches a Reputation of 1 again. In other words, a person with Troll status can only lose that status by a consistent string of good posts.
Note that as a corollary to this system, a person should be able to know his/her exact Karma score at any given moment (probably best to put it in a Slashbox).
Re:Expression of opinion is fine if it's on topic (Score:2)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Re:Ooh, here's an idea! (Score:2)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Something wrong with moderation (Score:2)
being moderated down. His past comments have never
got a score less than zero (or more -- though some
were quite informative) and his comments in this
thread don't deserve a minus 1 either.
Could it be someone dislikes daveo?
I've posted only 2-3 times earlier, lets see
how this one fares...
Re:Restrictions (Score:3)
1) someone dials up to my ISP and floods slashdot. They get a -10000 rating.
2) Said person disconnects
3) I dialup to my ISP and get the same IP address as this luser.
4) I try to post
5) my post is rejected.
It seems to me that basing my rating on my IP is __very__ dangerous.
Ok, but it's not completely fair (Score:2)
E-mail abuse to Malda (Score:2)
Re:Different != Troll (Score:2)
The general idea is that moderators are a relatively educated cross-section of slashdot posters. If the majority feel that a comment is unworthy of attention, you will tend to see that comment with a lower score. If a moderator notices a comment has a lower score than he/she feels it deserves, it's perfectly within their ability to moderate it up a point.
If a moderator is out on a vendetta against you, or someone is abusing their moderator privileges, E-MAIL ROB. Send him a link to the appropriate comment and explain the nature of the problem.
Re:Ratings system (Score:4)
How many people will be turned away from /. by those events?
Tom Christiansen sure looked disgusted with Good riddance, Slashdot in the title of his post [slashdot.org].
I understand that seeking attention is part of the puberty process, but if you kids have really chosen Linux as your operating system of choice because you think it has potential, not just because you hate (or think you hate) Windows, then please, act so.
Good way to get attention from the linux crowd:
- Submit interesting/meaningful comments... Be mature, that's you're chance to be listened to!
- Code! Didn't Alan Cox said something like [linux.org] he wished
/. would be more first patch! rather than frst psot!!!!!! - If you can't code, do something for the community! submit bug reports, write documentation, help people installing Linux...
- Last but not least, please do not annoy anybody... Sure this isn't a perfect world, but if you call yourself a Linux user, behave like one and show respect.
Do kids really get a kick behaving like assholes? Is that it? Well kids, seat back and think about the way you have hurt W. Richard Stevens's family. The guy is dead. He was well respected and a lot of people will miss him because he wrote good unix books and knew in depth the stuff he was talking about. Think about the way you have made not onlyNow, nobody actually asked you to use Linux. If you get pissed at people because you can't use it, there are alternatives!
Download the latest litestep [litestep.org] and show your hax0r dude friends on IRC how cool you are while running those warscr1pts on your illegal copy of mirc [mirc.co.uk]...
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Re:Why not just delete the offensive comments? (Score:3)
The problem with this idea is, who would do it?
Enough people think that moderators are biased as it is. Giving moderators the power to delete posts would be disastrous. There are an awful lot of moderators, and I'm sure there are a few bad apples among them, even with all the controls that are established. The good thing about the system as it currently stands is that other moderators can counteract the effects of an evil moderator, and possibly even identify him as ineligible for moderation (The system is still vulnerable to the excesses of democracy, but I digress).
Giving the power of deletion to moderators would take away that balance, since once a message is deleted, nobody can undelete it, because nobody will know that it was there, except the poster (who will, of course, start bombarding Rob with e-mail about how he's being censored). I suppose you could set things up so that other moderators could see deleted posts, but then that wouldn't be deletion anymore, it would just be adding a -2 moderation level, which wouldn't really solve anything.
Furthermore, regardless of whether moerators actually did abuse their power, accusations of abuse and censorship would fly back and fourth, and everyone would start b*tching about how they are being censored. It just wouldn't be worth it.
As for CmdrTaco personally doing it, as you seem to be suggesting, that would be even worse. It's not like he doesn't have enough to do, and get enough flameage already, without becoming the Troll Police. There's just too many comments for one person to check them all, especially one person who happens to already be administering the site, and would also be way too much of a strain on that person. Rob claims to have asbestos skin, but I really doubt he'd want to take on this job, considering the (literally) thousands of flames he'd get for it.
Two queue's for posts (was Slashdot changed) (Score:2)
On the Subject of Trolls ...
Occasionally comments get
(Read More... 4 of 9 comments | Discussion... 101 of 120 comments )
Thanks for reading.
Ooh, here's an idea! (Score:2)
When someone gets a -5 for the day, their entire /24 subnet should be banned with the message "Sorry, but [username,] a user at (their IP address) at (time of last bad posting) has messed things up for you by being an abusive poster. You may want to contact your ISP's abuse department so this user [(email address)] can be dealt with. This temporary block can go away in 24 hours."
Of course, this global block would only apply to ACs and registered users whose karmas are less than, say, +10.
I think with the threat of someone losing their Internet access they'd think twice before racking up a -5 daily karma.
Of course, this is still open to abuses (as I stated elsewhere), and it'd certainly be problematic for non-trolls who get affected by this - but that's the whole point. Kind of the "Since Private Pyle has donuts, I'm going to make the rest of you do pushups while he eats them all!" trick.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Re:1 point != ban (Score:2)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Another troll-reducing option (Score:3)
Re:it appears so (Score:2)
If your comments are either left alone or moderated DOWNWARD (and never up), that should say something about your posts.
Full Disclosure (Score:2)
Re:I'm just curious... (Score:2)
Check out the recent article (or don't, if you're not in the mood for getting annoyed) about W. Richard Stevens's untimely death.
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Did you read my post? (Score:2)
Really, this bogus "blame everything on Linux users" thing is really grating on the nerves.
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Want the good stuff? Set it to 2. (Score:2)
With that said, I think Rob has done well with his decision. I didn't read the thread that made him do this (yet) but I did read one about a week or two back that was just as bad (somebody saying Windows was the best, etc, etc over and over). And I only saw that because someone who had score of 2 had said something about all the off topic posts. I'm glad we all have a choice to view what we want, but when people just keep posting crap, over and over, it just reminds me of when Usenet went to shit way back when.
We all have to remember though, this is Rob's site, he can be as hard or easy on anyone as he wants, and he should have that right. He's the one who's put in the hours and hours of hard work for all of us. And I for one would like to thank him for making the net a better place, regardless of how many "bad apples" are out there.
Re:Karma system must change (Score:4)
What I really dislike is how many of the automatic 2s are because of funny posts. IMO, 'funny' points shouldn't count towards positive karma. Conversely, 'troll' points should count twice towards negative karma or, perhaps, if the -5 daily karma limit is hit, that should count as an additional of -5 overall karma too.
One flaw with your treatise, however... rather than doing a hard reset every 2 or 3 weeks, the "karma zone" should just take a running time period of 2 or 3 weeks. So, the comments I post in the last 2 or 3 weeks would count towards my karma.
Another thing that would help with is the opposite of the problem with automatic moderation up: moderators are, as far as I've observed, less likely to moderate up a comment which is already scored 2. The only notable exception of this is certain people whose comments always immediately get moderated up to +5 for being insightful (*cough*Bruce Perens*cough*), though I'm not too bitter about that since said peoples' posts usually are insightful or informative. :)
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
relative moderator points (Score:2)
A personal kill file?? (Score:3)
This wouldn't help much for AC's, so I propose getting rid of them entirely. If someone waned to post something anonymously, they still could. You could also have 'soft' anonymity, and 'hard' anonymity. With Soft, things like default scores, and kill files would still work. Hard anonymity would strip the identity in the software, forever removing any record of 'who' posted. It would get a +1 score. Perhaps for problem users, we could remove the 'hard' anonymity option
Sorry my writing is so crappy, I just woke up
"Subtle mind control? Why do all these HTML buttons say 'Submit' ?"
The Karma system (Score:2)
Re:No more anonmous cowards. (Score:2)
Unfortunately, it's definitely too late to take ACs away. All that would happen is people would create anonymous-type accounts and blast the messageboards with "HEY IF U WANT ANONYMOUS U CAN USE USER/PASS OF FLAMEMONKEY/FLAMEMONKEY" or whatever. Of course, then these accounts would be quickly canned and/or some smartass would change the password and email address, but the comments would remain and still clog up the messageboards.
---
"'Is not a quine' is not a quine" is a quine.
Survival of the fittest (Score:2)
The thing to be worried about is overadaption to certain ecological niches. Creatures that are supremely adapted to a particular environment don't survive when that environment changes. It is better to maintain flexibility and variety so that different and what appear to be useless and wasteful traits still appear in a population. That way when the the environment changes, when new abilities are needed, they exist in the population. If they don't the population dies out.
To translate back to slashdot. If people who are liked at slashdot are the only ones who score well at slashdot then the varied points of view, the genetic diversity, dies out and we get a bunch of people patting each other on the backs and telling each other how smart they are to use linux and read slashdot. No variety of ideas or insights. No robustness in the population. When things change in the computer industry (well nothing ever changes in computers
Maybe there should be a lottery function thrown in. At random times random idiots should get a whole lot of moderation points regardless of their merit and past performance. Or even because they were such jerks in the past. That way, people would be more cautious how they treat others and what they say because the people "on the outs" with those who temporarily have the "power" might not be the ones with "power" tomorrow.
Read Juan Louis Borges short story I think it is "The Lottery in Babylon"
Re:Maybe... (Score:2)
Being issued points more frequently would be a good thing. (Thereby increasing the total avalible number of points).
I can see multiple good reasons to have points expire after 3 days, mabie bumping it up to four or 5 days wouldn't hurt, but imagine if one malicious moderator got 15 or 20 points built up. Eeek! Especially if that person decided to abuse one of the "As Someone Questions" articles. (That'd be 3 4-5 rated questions, asking things like "What's your favorite porn site?")
Giving a user more than 5-8 points per shot poses the same difficulties as letting points accumulate.
Re:Simply not true (Score:2)
Re:Something wrong with moderation (Score:2)
No, it could be that DAVEO's first posts were B1FF-like rants in ALL CAPS with no content nor relevance to the story and deliberately misspelled words in what I had assumed was an attempt to look like an AOL newbie. After a day he turned off his capslock key and within a week he was actually posting on topic, although he never dropped the third-person and grammar errors, and he still hasn't fixed his sig. By this time the moderation system had given him a default of 0 for his posts, the way some users get a default of 2 for regular high-quality posts. Apparently when Rob switched over to the new system DAVEO's score was so bad his default became -1. I agree with you in that he doesn't deserve it, as he's been a good citizen as of late.
-Perpetual Newbie
Allow "mobbing" of trolls? (Score:3)
If, say, tree different moderators decide to moderate a post down, they get back the moderation point they used. This way, stamping really obnoxious stuff doesn't cost the moderators any points and can thus be done witout running into the "moderation DoS attack".
Re:Another nail in the coffin of free speech. (Score:2)
when you impose technological limits, it only
encourages people to try to find a way around them
(we see this especially with all the `kewl
h4xx0r5' stuff out there). And it is also true
that bullies, trollers, detrimentors of society
generally lose interest in being harmful when
society stops paying attention to them. However,
that is the major problem: How in the world do you
get society to ignore them? It is extremely
difficult, especially in a place like slashdot
where so many new people are flooding in all the
time. Teach one group, and before you know it
another group has come in, and become upset at
a troll and decided to respond and tell them how
detrimental they are (which obviously doesn't
help). Someone else mentioned trolling as a
fishing term, ie, if you take the bait you lose,
and if you don't then you win. I think that is an
excellent analogy, and it would probably help the
new people understand why it's bad to respond to
trolls.
I think you're playing up the Slashdot
censorship thing, although it would be easy to
debate the `slippery-slope' theory (allow it,
even if it only affects a few accounts, and it
will grow to affect many accounts). It is
difficult to see where limited censorship may
grow to in the future, and perhaps if we even need
to have deletion of comments to have a sane
environment. We know that the slippery-slope
theory generally holds true when discussing the
government, but it's really new ground with an
environment such as this, where Rob is not making
every attempt to gain power over us (unless you
consider those html tags...).
Well, good thoughts all around.
There is no evidence of a pro-Linux conspiracy (Score:2)
OK...I realize that you may be trolling me, but, given that you have what appears to many to be a legitimate beef, I will address it.
I have seen this complaint posted over and over and over and over, and every time I ask for evidence of such behavior, it is met with deafening silence.
Why don't we take a gamble, and actually look at some evidence?
You gave the example of BSD vs. GPL licensing; let's look at the most two recent threads involving BSD:
The most recent was: Berkeley removes Licensing Clause [slashdot.org].
In this thread, contrary to your claims, the highest rated comments are neither pro- or anti- either license (at least not strongly.
Lower down in the thread, we see a post that was moderated down which celebrates the license change and suggests GPLing BSD [slashdot.org]. It was borderline; it didn't really have any content, so I think it was properly moderated.
On the other hand, Brett Glass (or an AC posting as him) went on a trollfest, starting with an attack on the FSF [slashdot.org]. Not one of his anti-GPL ravings (which included red-baiting) was moderated down.
In the next most recent thread, Clearing up FreeBSD confusion [slashdot.org], which, if it were a post rather than an article, would qualify as borderline flamebait, the most highly rated comment, Try it, then decide for yourself...I know I will [slashdot.org] is mildly anti-Linux (at least anti-Linux-user).
In summary, the most recent evidence contridicts your claims, and shows that anti-Linux comments are indeed being moderated up, not down.
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