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

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

#51

Post by marbletiles »

pessimizer wrote: post #35
marbletiles wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

No, and I don't know where you got that from.

"Troll" is rapidly coming to mean "person who behaves offensively, abusively or objectionably online". Of course the Guardian will have a different definition of what those behaviours are to, say, the Daily Mail. Or to HN!

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

#52

Post by digi_owl »

dagw wrote: post #46
c594815 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right-wing, besides being capitalist, also means being conservative. Which implies respect for tradition, etiquette and savoir-vivre. Other than diet, another interesting aspect is architecture. Leftists like brutalism and modernism, while right-wingers like traditional architecture, have a look here: https://www.facebook.com/ArchMMXII .

another interesting aspect is architecture. Leftists like brutalism and modernism, while right-wingers like traditional architecture, On the other hand, preserving old traditional buildings tends to be a leftist cause, while wanting to bulldoze them and replace them with new modern buildings tends to be a right-wing cause.

And this is why i find the concept of a dual axis political sorting better.

One axis is economic, the other social, with the traditional left-right divide being mapped to the social axis.

Here is the tricky bit, that once you start mapping liberal and conservative on the economic axis things tend to reverse compared to the social one.

So quite often social conservatives end up in the economic "liberal" (or laissez-faire) end.

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

#53

Post by mahranch »

elaus wrote: post #31
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 se…

> t's like I'm saying "moderating reddit is easy, I barely see any spammers or trolls there" (as a user).

Except since I have 6 years experience, I truly can get a feel for what their "before" looks like just by looking at the "after". That's what I meant. I can get a pretty good baseline on what their before looks like because at one point, our subreddits were smaller and had a similar baseline. Their comment system is about what reddit's was like circa 2011-2012. Coincidentally, I think reddit was approximately the same size traffic-wise.

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

#54

Post by mahranch »

grey-area wrote: post #44

I think the problem with sites like the guardian is that they still haven't adjusted to the inversion of power between writer and reader that the Internet brought (the article hints at this but doesn't fully address it). When they still see the article (which is often rushed insignificant fluff) as primary, and comments as secondary, optional and in need of gardening by qualified moderators, they get the commenters t…

> Maybe it's time for a new kind of journalism without journalists or ads, with a focus on primary sources, and empowering interested communities to report and verify for other readers. It's unlikely to emerge from old media though.

I don't know, but it sounds a lot like you're describing reddit.

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

#55

Post by mahranch »

pessimizer wrote: post #35
marbletiles wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

> Are you saying that "troll" now means

I think the overall meaning of his comment is basically "Languages evolve." And I agree with him. It's as inevitable as death and taxes.

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

#56

Post by grey-area »

mahranch wrote: post #54
grey-area wrote: post #44

I think the problem with sites like the guardian is that they still haven't adjusted to the inversion of power between writer and reader that the Internet brought (the article hints at this but doesn't fully address it). When they still see the article (which is often rushed insignificant fluff) as primary, and comments as secondary, optional and in need of gardening by qualified moderators, they get the commenters t…

> Maybe it's time for a new kind of journalism without journalists or ads, with a focus on primary sources, and empowering interested communities to report and verify for other readers. It's unlikely to emerge from old media though. I don't know, but it sounds a lot like you're describing reddit.

Well I think Reddit is heading in the right direction on certain subs and has the respect for readers/writers, but I was also thinking of something that takes the very real challenges in reporting something like a war and tackles them using technology, e.g. Providing verified sources on the ground, context in terms of long history, background on the key players, infographics on stats.

Unfortunately Reddit is still a popularity contest, so in that sense it doesn't always surface the best content, just the most superficially popular.

So more something that would be invaluable to a historian 100 years from now trying to write about a topic, or a person reading about a subject for the first time.

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

#57

Post by grey-area »

lucozade wrote: post #47
grey-area wrote: post #44

I think the problem with sites like the guardian is that they still haven't adjusted to the inversion of power between writer and reader that the Internet brought (the article hints at this but doesn't fully address it). When they still see the article (which is often rushed insignificant fluff) as primary, and comments as secondary, optional and in need of gardening by qualified moderators, they get the commenters t…

I agree with you. My anecdotal opinion is that commentary works well where the article is intended to impart information. A lot of HN submissions are of this type because they're posted precisely because someone learnt something from them and often lead to extra information being imparted in the comments. It's true, to a lesser extent in Guardian articles that are simply reporting. Where it doesn't work well, on HN o…

Yes agreed, on opinion pieces, everyone has their own opinion, and wants to shout about it. I'm not even sure they are useful on a news site, but they drive traffic and due to the perverse incentives which drive places like the guardian (ads and clicks above all, the competition for traffic on google), they will start to dominate over didactic pieces which take more effort and drive less traffic. Our journalism is turning into Buzzfeed because of the quest for traffic at all costs.

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

#58

Post by _yosefk »

tinco wrote: post #50
_yosefk wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 famili…

> 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), That is a straw man argument, as you can see nowhere I claim that he chose his examples random…

If you seriously believe this moderator was biased in his examples because that's his "writing style" but that he wasn't equally biased in his moderation, fine (I'd bet money on you being wrong if I could.) And I don't think I was artificially polarizing this discussion, I think you were, which is exactly the kind of disagreement illustrating the need for moderate moderators who wouldn't delete either comment, which was my only point all along (and apparently we're mostly agreeing there.)

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

#59

Post by beeboop »

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…

Could I send you an email? I'd like to ask about your moderation experiences for a project I'm working on, if you have the time. Thanks!
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