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The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt (2014)

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Re: The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt (2014)

#41

Post by jacquesm »

saint_fiasco wrote: post #29
bluedino wrote: post #27

What's the problem with letting the community work 'for free'? They are receiving benefits, even if non-monetary. Peer recognition, control, power... If foobar.com's forums asks me to an un-paid moderator and I gladly comply, I have no right to decide 6 months down the road that I shouldn't have been doing that work for free and deserve payment for it.

Work laws are weird like that. There are certain things you can't consent to even if you really want to. For example, you can't agree to work for less than minimum wage, you can't agree to work for free to get rid of a debt, you can't agree to have sex with someone in exchange for money. These things apply even if you voluntarily sign a contract saying you consent.

It's all relative depending on your location any or all of those could be legal.

Re: The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt (2014)

#42

Post by brazzlemobile »

jacquesm wrote: post #41
saint_fiasco wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work laws are weird like that. There are certain things you can't consent to even if you really want to. For example, you can't agree to work for less than minimum wage, you can't agree to work for free to get rid of a debt, you can't agree to have sex with someone in exchange for money. These things apply even if you voluntarily sign a contract saying you consent.

It's all relative depending on your location any or all of those could be legal.

I think everyone understands that different places have different laws.

Re: The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt (2014)

#43

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

Karunamon wrote: post #40
NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are a small handful of unaccountable people determining what is a "negative contribution", on the sly no less On some of the smaller (but not tiny) subreddits, a submission can be both against the rules and plainly a bad idea as it pollutes the subreddit's goals. But because voting is anonymous, no matter how much everyone complains about them being upvoted, no matter who weighs in and admonishes people to stop…

a submission can be both against the rules Lock the thread (with AutoModerator) and explain why. No need to disappear it. Over time, people submitting good content stop doing so, and people who submit bad content start doing it more. Vicious circle. Is this really the case? It's a common complaint, but it's usually presented without any backing. Why is the content necessarily "bad" if the community has chosen to feat…

Removing the single submission doesn't fix the problem.

The people who upvoted things that shouldn't be upvoted are the problem. They may never notice that it was removed anyway.

So now the subreddit (which may only have 15,000 users) has to staff dozens of moderators just to keep track of the shit.

And those posts still polluted the subreddit. They can't be instantaneously removed.

> Why do you suppose that is?

Because in groups of thousands and tens of thousands of people, there's always someone who thinks not only was the meme post funny, but that everyone should lighten up and allow it anyway.

They argue publicly in a pseudo-anonymous forum. And you can't make them stop either, or even more backlash occurs. Nor can you remain silent, or out-argue them.

So a flame war erupts, and everything goes off-topic even more.

> An upvote can mean "like", or "on topic", or "contributes to the discussion", or about 20 other positive things. A downvote can have just as many other meanings in the other direction. The other thing is that with multireddits and /r/all, "on-topic-ness" isn't even going to be evaluated by the users

Unless those users are punished for failing to evaluate.

Re: The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt (2014)

#44

Post by brazzlemobile »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #20
JanneVee wrote: post #16

This is partly what is happening. Reading in out of the loop subreddit the trigger is Victoria but the problem is different. The one I see as one of the biggest problems is. The unpaid volunteers aren't given the tools necessary to handle moderation of subreddits by reddit corporate. The tools moderators use comes from third parties and volunteers. [0] As an outsider I have understand why they are angry, trying to cr…

I'm not sure the reddit community (either moderators specifically, or redditors in general) are intelligent enough to know what tools they need. I once tried to suggest a new tool, and was attacked there for 3 weeks after on subredditdrama for requesting such a tool. My crime? Suggesting that moderators be able to ban everyone who (wrongly) upvotes an offtopic post. This would allow them to steer things back on topic…

To be fair you used to post some really antagonistic and trollish comments. Maybe you still do. You're not exactly well known for your agreeable and altruistic behavior.

Re: The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt (2014)

#45

Post by Karunamon »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #43
Karunamon wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a submission can be both against the rules Lock the thread (with AutoModerator) and explain why. No need to disappear it. Over time, people submitting good content stop doing so, and people who submit bad content start doing it more. Vicious circle. Is this really the case? It's a common complaint, but it's usually presented without any backing. Why is the content necessarily "bad" if the community has chosen to feat…

Removing the single submission doesn't fix the problem. The people who upvoted things that shouldn't be upvoted are the problem. They may never notice that it was removed anyway. So now the subreddit (which may only have 15,000 users) has to staff dozens of moderators just to keep track of the shit. And those posts still polluted the subreddit. They can't be instantaneously removed. > Why do you suppose that is? Beca…

Guess we're going to have to agree to disagree on this - but let me know if you ever start a community website, because I want absolutely no part of a place where I can be punished for not liking things the staff wants me to like.

If you're going to run a community like that, why even have the people there in the first place? What you've just described is a blog.

Re: The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt (2014)

#46

Post by smcnally »

chc wrote: post #28
nitrogen wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I think I read once that HN weights votes or comment positions by how often someone is drawn in by political "honey pot" stories. I don't know if it's true, but it at least suggests less drastic alternatives to banning for voting.

That sounds like the same basic idea -- moderators putting a mark on posts that basically says, "An upvote for this is a negative contribution to the community." Is the problem with the general idea, or with one specific detail which could be modified in implementation (banning versus ignoring votes)?

Slashdot's metamoderation achieves this well. http://slashdot.org/faq/metamod.shtml

It's not fully transparent -- not to the moderators and meta-moderators, at any rate -- but it's an effective check and balance for "policing the police."

Re: The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt (2014)

#47

Post by cma »

Karunamon wrote: post #35
cma wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since a moderator can kill an entire post, nullifying "the only control that a user has over content" anyway, is it really going out on that big of a limb to allow moderators to ban people who, say, upvoted child porn to the top of r/politics?

Moderators can't disappear posts outright, they can only remove the links from their respective communities. If someone has the link, it still can be interacted with in the usual way. The hypothetical you chose is disgusting, unnecessary, and impossible in the real world. Arguments to child porn I think are the modern equivalent of godwin's law - the moment it gets brought up, all productive discussion stops and is r…

Moderators can ban people for posting things. OP was talking about banning people for upvoting things. Your point about the link being removed vs the content doesn't fit. Let's say it just partially bans them and still lets them post stuff that won't make it to the actual page, but if anyone has the link they can see it. Is that really a meaningful distinction?

Re: The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt (2014)

#48

Post by Karunamon »

cma wrote: post #47
Karunamon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderators can't disappear posts outright, they can only remove the links from their respective communities. If someone has the link, it still can be interacted with in the usual way. The hypothetical you chose is disgusting, unnecessary, and impossible in the real world. Arguments to child porn I think are the modern equivalent of godwin's law - the moment it gets brought up, all productive discussion stops and is r…

Moderators can ban people for posting things. OP was talking about banning people for upvoting things. Your point about the link being removed vs the content doesn't fit. Let's say it just partially bans them and still lets them post stuff that won't make it to the actual page, but if anyone has the link they can see it. Is that really a meaningful distinction?

Yes, because the latter doesn't stifle discussions already in progress. It's the difference between saying "you can't talk about this here" and "you can't talk about this at all".

Re: The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt (2014)

#49

Post by cma »

Karunamon wrote: post #48
cma wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moderators can ban people for posting things. OP was talking about banning people for upvoting things. Your point about the link being removed vs the content doesn't fit. Let's say it just partially bans them and still lets them post stuff that won't make it to the actual page, but if anyone has the link they can see it. Is that really a meaningful distinction?

Yes, because the latter doesn't stifle discussions already in progress. It's the difference between saying "you can't talk about this here" and "you can't talk about this at all".

That doesnt seem meaningful, if a mod happens to catch it fast no one sees it, if she catches it slow, people can begin and continue a discussion. If it was based on any kind of fundamental right of discussion, it is hard to imagine moderator attention and reflex speed factoring in to the underlying principles.

Plus, moderators already use bots to instantly pre-ban things things and then go through and manually whitelist them.

The distinction is between banning for posting vs banning for upvoting. One reasonable argument I can see is that Reddit goes to some length to hide what you up and down vote in every other context, and people might be able to use the ban tool to dox people who thought votes, as opposed to submissions, were wholely anonymous.

Re: The Aol Chat Room Monitor Revolt (2014)

#50

Post by Perceval »

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #39
Karunamon wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire idea is problematic, massively , in that it allows for covert manipulation of a community. Why are a small handful of unaccountable people determining what is a "negative contribution", on the sly no less, when the whole reason for the existence of karma systems is to do that organically and by consensus? More importantly, what does such a system accomplish via deception that flattening such posts in a vis…

> Why are a small handful of unaccountable people determining what is a "negative contribution", on the sly no less On some of the smaller (but not tiny) subreddits, a submission can be both against the rules and plainly a bad idea as it pollutes the subreddit's goals. But because voting is anonymous, no matter how much everyone complains about them being upvoted, no matter who weighs in and admonishes people to stop…

> Mods can't just delete those posts either, because this reddit gets pissy that they're playing favorites.

You absolutely can, and it's easy to do so. I moderate a small sub, and you can remove individual posts with the click of a button if you don't think they're a quality contribution.

But beyond that, AutoModerator allows you to automatically remove posts according to criteria that you set up in advance. You can ban certain sites, titles with certain keywords, certain types of content, posts from certain users, and so on. It makes moderation much, much easier.

There is always the problem that users will discover the filters and revolt if the mods haven't been transparent about filters. /r/technology users threw a fit when they discovered that the mods had been filtering stories with NSA in the title. Lots migrated over to /r/futurology as a result.

> It would be better if the mods were able to say "if you think this is upvoteworthy for this subreddit, you are no longer welcome here".

Banning 100s or 1000s of users in one fell stroke for having upvoted a single low-effort post would be far more disruptive and unjust than simply removing the offending post.

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