Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator
1–10 of 59 posts
Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator
#2Trolling is a word. It means something: "make a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them."
I can't help but wonder why the author attempts to describe anything he doesn't like, in his moderator role, as trolling. This seems to be a general trend in newspaper people describing their comment sections.
Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator
#3Trolling is a word. It means something: "make a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them." I can't help but wonder why the author attempts to describe anything he doesn't like, in his moderator role, as trolling. This seems to be a general trend in newspaper people describing their comment sections.
To elaborate on your point - from the article:
"They are comment-thread poison – men’s rights activists who act as if articles about women’s issues are their gender’s single biggest problem, climate change deniers who will drag any conversation about energy policy into murky pseudo-science, and borderline racists for whom there is no issue that cannot be pinned on immigration (UK) or black people (US)."
...incidentally these are all people strongly opposing (perhaps to an extreme) some political positions of The Guardian. Not a single example of people strongly supporting (perhaps to an extreme) some political positions of The Guardian - these could never become "comment-thread poison."
Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator
#4Trolling is a word. It means something: "make a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them." I can't help but wonder why the author attempts to describe anything he doesn't like, in his moderator role, as trolling. This seems to be a general trend in newspaper people describing their comment sections.
To elaborate on your point - from the article: "They are comment-thread poison – men’s rights activists who act as if articles about women’s issues are their gender’s single biggest problem, climate change deniers who will drag any conversation about energy policy into murky pseudo-science, and borderline racists for whom there is no issue that cannot be pinned on immigration (UK) or black people (US)." ...incidental…
Those people are probably off being "comment-thread poison" trolls on right-wing websites.
Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator
#5Only 70k comments a day?
As a someone who has been a reddit default moderator for 6+ years (I help out in more than 1 default subreddit), I'd say they're still small time. It's so bad over on reddit that even with a fully active staff, we have to utilize bots to automate much of the work. Without those bots, it would be impossible to have a community at the sizes we're talking. We simply wouldn't exist.
He overstates how bad the job is because they've never experienced "true" bad... The author should see if he could intern for a month on one of reddit's busier subreddits. If he asks, I'd be more than willing to give him an inside peek into one of our subreddits. Weekly 4chan raids, intra-subreddit brigades, people (spammers, SEO types, marketers, etc) trying to game us to reach the front page for profit, and then to add on top of that, we have all the same trolls and racists and psychopaths theguardian has to deal with. That's actually not true, they're not the same, there are more of them on reddit. Many, many more.
I know this isn't a competition, but I look at the average comment there and I can get a feel for what moderating there must be like. And I have to say, it looks like paradise compared to reddit. It would be a vacation and even that would probably be an understatement. Though, TheGuardian is the 128th largest website in the world while reddit is 28th (9th largest in the U.S). That's quite the discrepancy.
Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator
#6Ironically, the last Guardian editor's daughter got in trouble on comments she was supposed to be moderating: http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/21934/guardian-editors-dau...
Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
To elaborate on your point - from the article: "They are comment-thread poison – men’s rights activists who act as if articles about women’s issues are their gender’s single biggest problem, climate change deniers who will drag any conversation about energy policy into murky pseudo-science, and borderline racists for whom there is no issue that cannot be pinned on immigration (UK) or black people (US)." ...incidental…
Those people are probably off being "comment-thread poison" trolls on right-wing websites.
Probably "yes" in the sense that it's those websites where they're being labeled "comment-thread poison", probably "no" in the sense that they certainly do comment on left-wing websites, they just don't ever "derail the discussion" in the eyes of this moderator.
Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator
#8Trolling is a word. It means something: "make a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them." I can't help but wonder why the author attempts to describe anything he doesn't like, in his moderator role, as trolling. This seems to be a general trend in newspaper people describing their comment sections.
> a general trend in newspaper people
It's a trend with the majority of people. There was a case recently where a UK police force (Cambridge) decided to post pictures of poorly-parked bicycles on Twitter. Many people responded by posting images of poorly-parked cars. They were branded "trolls" by the police. Apparently, peacefully, relevantly and sensibly responding to something is now called "trolling". By the police, of all people.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Twitter-spat-erupts-Cambridg...
Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator
#9Trolling is a word. It means something: "make a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them." I can't help but wonder why the author attempts to describe anything he doesn't like, in his moderator role, as trolling. This seems to be a general trend in newspaper people describing their comment sections.
To elaborate on your point - from the article: "They are comment-thread poison – men’s rights activists who act as if articles about women’s issues are their gender’s single biggest problem, climate change deniers who will drag any conversation about energy policy into murky pseudo-science, and borderline racists for whom there is no issue that cannot be pinned on immigration (UK) or black people (US)." ...incidental…
Let's take this example
> climate change deniers who will drag any conversation about energy policy into murky pseudo-science,
That is activism using derailment and off-topic tactics. Not saying that that shouldn't be deleted. Just that it isn't trolling.
Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator
#10The Guardian seems to be doing well on HN recently. For such a one-sided political publication, with no technical merit, that seems odd.