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Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator

theguardian.com

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Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator

#31

Post by elaus »

mahranch wrote: post #5

Only 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…

> […] 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.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you're seeing in the comment section of the Guardian is AFTER moderation has taken place – both longterm (blocking trolls) and short term (removing/blocking comments). So obviously it doesn't look as bad as what you're seeing WHILE moderating reddit comments and you can't really compare that.

It's like I'm saying "moderating reddit is easy, I barely see any spammers or trolls there" (as a user).

Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator

#32

Post by rawTruthHurts »

takno wrote: post #20
pieter1976 wrote: post #12

Seems vastly overblown to call this "the worst job in the world". There are far, far worse things people do to get paid. Sure jumping out of your tree-hugging everybody-love-everybody mindset is probably a shock, but there's plenty of hatred in the real world.

The article finishes by saying it's the best job in the world. Did you read it?

And if you read it to the very end, it leaves some doors opened (to the tree-hugging argument I mean): "It’s the best one I’ve ever had."

Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator

#33

Post by iorrus »

spriggan3 wrote: post #28
megalodon wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every newspaper is inherently political or "one-sided". Look it up.

> Every newspaper is inherently political or "one-sided". Look it up. Unfortunately Yes. I've been thinking about a way to take multiple articles on the same subject from different sources and separate facts from opinions and narratives in an automated way. I wonder if such an app already exists. By comparing multiple sources from different political sides / locations , it should be possible to eliminate bias (unless…

It can be argued that comments that might be flagged as 'trolls' do exactly that. They point out inconsistencies in the writers opinion and present them for the world to see often along with links to the relevant information.

Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator

#34

Post by isxek »

pluma wrote: post #15

I thought YouTube moderators had the worst job? http://www.buzzfeed.com/reyhan/tech-confessional-the-googler...

All this talk about worst jobs reminded me of that old show "Dirty Jobs"[0] from a decade ago.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Jobs

Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator

#35

Post by pessimizer »

marbletiles wrote: post #27
im3w1l wrote: post #2

Trolling 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.

This is as tedious a fight as the old "hacker doesn't mean cracker!1!" one was. Words (and phrases such as "begging the question") mean what they're understood to mean by the majority, much though those of us who understand their "proper" definitions might like to fight those tides. Sure, you can still use the lesser-known or overtaken meanings in particular scenarios when you know your audience has a shared understa…

Are you saying that "troll" now means "people who disagree with our established positions"? That's far less a new usage then an intentional relabeling to imply that censorship is justified against any group - like redefining "terrorist" to mean "critic of government policy."

Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator

#36

Post by vixen99 »

m0nty wrote: post #24
jensen123 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "Guardian-reading lentil-munching sandal-wearing lefty" is a popular caricature I find some of these caricatures interesting. Like how many leftists are vegans or vegetarians, and how many libertarians are meat-lovers. You would perhaps think that diet should have no correlation with political opinions, but it certainly seems to have. Or take clothing. Among leftists, there seems to be more people wearing stuff…

> if you're an economic loser, I guess left-wing politics (tax the rich!) is appealing That is, in itself, an appalling caricature, albeit some left-wingers might be in that category. It's like saying all libertarians/right-wingers are Gordon Gecko "greed is good", devil-take-the-hindmost callous money-grubbers.

It's you who has used the word 'all'. Replace all with some in your counter example and both are undoubtedly true. Appalling? I agree.

Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator

#37

Post by arethuza »

jensen123 wrote: post #17
m0nty wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one-sided political publication They certainly are left-aligned: they are famous (and notorious) for it. The "Guardian-reading lentil-munching sandal-wearing lefty" is a popular caricature, I've even seen people criticised during debates for being a "good Guardian-reader" (i.e. a part-time socialist). But they do publish articles on relevant topics, and are prepared to stick their collective neck out for important…

> The "Guardian-reading lentil-munching sandal-wearing lefty" is a popular caricature I find some of these caricatures interesting. Like how many leftists are vegans or vegetarians, and how many libertarians are meat-lovers. You would perhaps think that diet should have no correlation with political opinions, but it certainly seems to have. Or take clothing. Among leftists, there seems to be more people wearing stuff…

"When I see pictures of libertarians or right-wingers, they often seem to be wearing conformist looking clothes"

Isn't simply a case of advertising that you are part of a particular social grouping (or at least aspire to it) by conforming to the styles used by that group?

NB My own favourite example being spotting genuinely posh people by the colour and state of their cords trousers... (is it an ex-army thing?).

Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator

#38

Post by _yosefk »

tinco wrote: post #11
_yosefk wrote: post #3

Earlier 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…

Not a single example out of two examples chosen to be familiar to his target audience, it must mean he moderates with a strong bias. Great to have you in this discussion, did you realize you were drawing an exaggerated conclusion from weak evidence when you wrote your comment? Do you realize it now? Would you consider your comment to be one with an agenda as the author theorized or do you have a different motivation?

Actually it's 3 examples, which I think is enough to show a bias towards one of two sides (c'mon, nobody chooses one side out of two 3 times in a row accidentally, and if he chose a side with equal probability for each example - yeah right - the result we got is a 1 in 8 event, so not a great support for that hypothesis), and as to "familiar to his target audience" - again, come on, his target audience will be familiar with their fellow extremists' arguments just as much as it will be familiar with the other side's extremists.

As to what I think of my comment - I think it shouldn't be removed by a forum moderator, nor should your (IMO tremendously biased) comment be removed by a moderator, and neither comment constitutes "trolling" or "comment thread poison." A moderator removing either and doing similar things consistently is creating a forum I would not like to participate in either as a reader or a commenter.

Re: Welcome to 'the worst job in the world' – my life as a Guardian moderator

#40

Post by pessimizer »

m0nty wrote: post #13
cbeach wrote: post #10

The Guardian seems to be doing well on HN recently. For such a one-sided political publication, with no technical merit, that seems odd.

> one-sided political publication They certainly are left-aligned: they are famous (and notorious) for it. The "Guardian-reading lentil-munching sandal-wearing lefty" is a popular caricature, I've even seen people criticised during debates for being a "good Guardian-reader" (i.e. a part-time socialist). But they do publish articles on relevant topics, and are prepared to stick their collective neck out for important…

"Left" is a pretty simplistic way to characterize the Guardian's editorial stance. It's far more authoritarian and New Labor than you would expect from something described as on the Left. 70% of the non-entertainment stories are based in identity politics, so that would seem very left, but it also aggressively attacked Wikileaks, and is constantly attacking Corbyn and Sanders.

I'd probably describe it as economically Liberal (in the non-American sense), pro-safety net/NHS, and pro-legal enforcement of civility. Basically the non-angry upper-middle class. Anti-petty bourgeoisie. Fabian.

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