Moderation Issues (3)

Please use this thread for alerting admins to moderation issues and for discussion or complaints arising from particular decisions.

4,124 thoughts on “Moderation Issues (3)”

  1. Alan Fox:
    . . .
    Repetition is the issue I was trying to address. When does repetition of a quote mine or an unsupported assertion (especially when addressed previously) become enough of a problem? After ten? A hundred? Should there eventually be some kind of sanction at some point?

    I really like the idea of letting the community decide by up voting and down voting. Comments that don’t add to the discussion will be rated low enough that they’ll require people to click on them in order to read them. That should encourage more voluntary ignoring of noise without censorship.

    Since we don’t yet know of a plugin that will support that, another alternative is a bot. Most of the people repeating PRATTs have very predictable, repetitive writing styles. A not-terribly-bright bot could detect those claims and respond with a link to the refutation. That might actually increase the noise, though.

    Just spitballin’ here.

  3. Well, I finally managed to consummate my early retirement, before it became a late retirement. My last day of work was Friday.

    That means I’ll have some time to look into an implementation of this:

    Setting aside questions of technical feasibility, it sounds like the ideal solution would be a software solution in which:

    1. Comments would not be moved to Guano, but simply tagged as Guano, so that…

    2. …readers who desire “housekeeping” services would see only the comments that were not tagged “Guano”, and…

    3. …readers (like me) who do not desire “housekeeping” would see all comments in their original contexts.

    You wouldn’t be controlling what people write or what they read, and people could either opt in or out of the moderator-supplied “housekeeping” services.

  4. keiths:
    Well, I finally managed to consummate my early retirement, before it became a late retirement.My last day of work was Friday.

    Congratulations!

    That means I’ll have some time to look into an implementation of this:

    Don’t forget the up/down voting, kill files, threading, and recommendation system!

  5. I prefer moderator tagging to voting. Not that I think theists and supporters of ID are outnumbered here, or anything like that. 🙂

  6. This could even be democratized further into a “choose your own moderators” scheme.

    Let’s say you were daft enough to trust Mung’s judgment. You could choose Mung to be one of your moderators, and maybe phoodoo too. If any of your chosen moderators rejected a comment, it would be hidden from you.

    If you chose no moderation, no comments would be hidden from you.

    There could also be options like:

    a) hide a comment if n or more of my chosen moderators reject it; and

    b) hide a comment if n or more commenters reject it.

    In effect, option (b) would be like choosing all fellow commenters as your moderators — a downvote system. You could also set the threshold n.

  7. Patrick:

    Congratulations!

    Thanks! It feels great.

    My first retirement adventure was to drive down and watch this.

  8. keiths:
    This could even be democratized further into a “choose your own moderators” scheme.

    Let’s say you were daft enough to trust Mung’s judgment.You could choose Mung to be one of your moderators, and maybe phoodoo too.If any of your chosen moderators rejected a comment, it would be hidden from you.

    If you chose no moderation, no comments would be hidden from you.

    There could also be options like:

    a) hide a comment if n or more of my chosen moderators reject it; and

    b) hide a comment if n or more commenters reject it.

    In effect, option (b) would be like choosing all fellow commenters as your moderators — a downvote system.You could also set the threshold n.

    I like it, but we can make it even smarter. After some period of time there will be enough information to determine who likes the same types of comments that you do. With that data we can assign a personalized score to each comment.

    The drawback is that we may end up with two or more clusters of users that never interact with each other.

  9. keiths:
    Patrick:

    Thanks!It feels great.

    My first retirement adventure was to drive down and watch this.

    Awesome. Were you hoping for an explosion, just a little bit? 😉

    Seriously, I’m a Musk fan boy.

  10. keiths: Let’s say you were daft enough to trust Mung’s judgment.

    🙂

    It’s managed to keep me alive and out of prison. So far.

  11. keiths: Well, I finally managed to consummate my early retirement, before it became a late retirement. My last day of work was Friday.

    Congratulations!

  14. Alan Fox: You can call one comment stupid but a general reference to stupid comments is an attack on th commenter.

    More Alan just chomping at the bit to implement his guerilla skepticism.

    Alan couldn’t possibly find instances where atheists make general references to stupid comments as a pattern..oh dear no. They hardly exist!

    I mean, Alan can’t read everything, his has a job, it is just entirely coincidental that he just so happens to only stumble upon the rules violations of the ideas he is opposed to. A mere coincidence!

    And if someone were to point out to Alan, time and time again, where he is not applying this rule about referring to a series of comments as stupid to atheists, well, he never saw it, its too late now, ok next time, well if you see a rules violation, just point it out, so Alan can ignore it, oh well they didn’t use the word “a” oh, well they said they FEEL like, oh, well, that comment had other content so you see, well, that commentator generally follows the rules, so…

    You are becoming more full of shit by the day Alan. But at least your are making your guerilla skepticism entirely obvious now, I guess that is a plus.

  15. keiths,

    Chose a moderator to hide comments from yourself? What??

    keiths: If any of your chosen moderators rejected a comment, it would be hidden from you.

    Did you mean something else by this?

    Let’s be honest here keiths. You have three fucked up moderators who are instigators as much as they are contributors. They they use their moderation power to promote one side of an argument, any chance they get. So if I get to vote, here is what I am going to vote: Alan, Patrick and Neil don’t get to touch a single one of my comments anymore. If Mung wants to delete any of my comments, I will let him.

    No more partisan guerilla skepticism from Lizzies skirt chasers. Ok, do you second this keiths?

    Great, progress!!

    Now Patrick can chose his own moderator for his comments. Anyone left for this?

  17. phoodoo:Let’s be honest here keiths.You have three fucked up moderators who are instigators as much as they are contributors.

    If you mean that all the moderators are pro-science and anti-superstition, then you have a good point. I have yet to find a discussion forum where moderators are forbidden to contribute, and I have yet to meet a human person without opinions and biases.

    They they use their moderation power to promote one side of an argument, any chance they get.

    If by this you mean they post support of science and oppose superstition, again you are correct. If you mean that their efforts to increase the signal (science) to noise (superstition, sniping, and personal attacks) ratio display bias, I think you are also correct.

    Not that most atheists aren’t also superstitious in some ways, of course. Just that atheist superstitions do not generally make them feel the need to wall themselves up inside their own set of custom facts.

  18. Flint: If you mean that all the moderators are pro-science and anti-superstition

    Nope, not here anyway. Science requires testable claims and it appears the mods don’t quite grasp what that means.

  19. phoodoo:

    Now Patrick can chose his own moderator for his comments.Anyone left for this?

    I’d choose no moderator. Why would I risk missing any of your deathless prose?

  21. Patrick: I really like the idea of letting the community decide by up voting and down voting.Comments that don’t add to the discussion will be rated low enough that they’ll require people to click on them in order to read them.That should encourage more voluntary ignoring of noise without censorship.

    Since we don’t yet know of a plugin that will support that, another alternative is a bot.Most of the people repeating PRATTs have very predictable, repetitive writing styles.A not-terribly-bright bot could detect those claims and respond with a link to the refutation.That might actually increase the noise, though.

    Just spitballin’ here.

    What about the ID PRATTs? The BS about the who, how, why and when- all of which come AFTER design has been determined and is studied- comes to mind

  23. Mung: Like keiths, I’d choose no moderation at all. But the mods are too scared to go there.

    I am a scary guy and people can’t be trusted to not dick around on the internet while at work, so…

  24. keiths:
    This could even be democratized further into a “choose your own moderators” scheme.

    Let’s say you were daft enough to trust Mung’s judgment.You could choose Mung to be one of your moderators, and maybe phoodoo too.If any of your chosen moderators rejected a comment, it would be hidden from you.

    If you chose no moderation, no comments would be hidden from you.

    There could also be options like:

    a) hide a comment if n or more of my chosen moderators reject it; and

    b) hide a comment if n or more commenters reject it.

    In effect, option (b) would be like choosing all fellow commenters as your moderators — a downvote system.You could also set the threshold n.

    You think this is clear keiths? If one chooses ALL of the posters as their moderator, ANY one person could decide there is a comment you do not need to see? Or you need ALL to agree that a comment will disappear? A supreme court? A jury? Hundreds of little dictators?

    Ok, its clear, but totally ridiculous.

    But any system which no longer allows Alan and Patrick to to have total unchecked control over this site is probably only slightly better than Alan and Patrick having total, unchecked control.

  26. phoodoo:

    If one chooses ALL of the posters as their moderator, ANY one person could decide there is a comment you do not need to see? Or you need ALL to agree that a comment will disappear? A supreme court? A jury? Hundreds of little dictators?

    Jesus, phoodoo. This is not that difficult. Your questions were already answered in the very comment you just quoted. Read it again. Look for the phrase “n or more” and see if you can figure out what it means.

  27. Frankie:

    I am a scary guy and people can’t be trusted to not dick around on the internet while at work, so.

    Rich:

    Frankie,

    Stratus.

    Oh, snap.

  28. keiths:
    phoodoo:

    Jesus, phoodoo.This is not that difficult.Your questions were already answered in the very comment you just quoted.Read it again.Look for the phrase “n or more” and see if you can figure out what it means.

    N is not actually a number, see keiths? Its not that difficult.

    So is N going to be 1, or 10 or 100, or everyone on the site…?

    Its not important, because anyway you slice it your proposal is slapstick, but I just enjoy its meaninglessness.

    I chose no moderator, now ALAN, butt the hell out!

    How many moderators do you want keiths?

  29. The idea of a letter representing a number is too abstract for phoodoo:

    N is not actually a number, see keiths? Its not that difficult.

    phoodoo:

    So is N going to be 1, or 10 or 100, or everyone on the site…?

    Answered already, in that very same comment:

    You could also set the threshold n.

    Some homework for you, phoo.

  31. What about Stratus, Richie? The company had to shutter its two buildings. It then split with some people in a rental unit in downtown Maynard with the bulk now in Ireland. I know 4 people who are still there in Maynard.

    But then again you don’t care about the facts and reality. All you do is try to score moron points.

    Is it my fault that evos are such cowardly losers that they had to tattle on me like little babies? They couldn’t stand being put in their rightful place so they had to try to stop me- whoopsie, it didn’t work and I ended up with a much better job, with higher pay at a much better company.

    So what was your point, Richie?

  33. ID makes testable claims, adapa, OTOH your position does not- for example you cannot say how to test the claim that vision systems evolved by means of natural selection or any other materialistic process. Yet we can say how to test the claim that vision systems were designed. And there is a blog post that covers it.

  39. I don’t care too much about moderation, though I can see the point that moderators have been unfairly biased against the creationists here.

    One point, though, is that I think it’s unreasonable for us to be bound by Lizzie’s rules. She’s not here, and she hasn’t been here for a while. I don’t think it makes sense for us to be bound by rules when the person who implemented those rules isn’t part of the community that is affected by those rules.

    What we have instead is something quite ironically messianic — who will find favor with Lizzie when she returns, as foretold in the ancient scriptures?

    Um, no.

    The people who are actually part of the community should be the ones to decide on what the rules should be that govern the community.

    If that means that we need to purchase TSZ from Lizzie and pay for site upkeep ourselves, I’m fine with that.

  40. Kantian Naturalist:
    I don’t care too much about moderation, though I can see the point that moderators have been unfairly biased against the creationists here.

    One point, though, is that I think it’s unreasonable for us to be bound by Lizzie’s rules. She’s not here, and she hasn’t been here for a while. I don’t think it makes sense for us to be bound by rules when the person who implemented those rules isn’t part of the community that is affected by those rules.

    What we have instead is something quite ironically messianic — who will find favor with Lizzie when she returns, as foretold in the ancient scriptures?

    Um, no.

    The people who are actually part of the community should be the ones to decide on what the rules should be that govern the community.

    If that means that we need to purchase TSZ from Lizzie and pay for site upkeep ourselves, I’m fine with that.

    Well, she does pay for the site, or so I’m led to believe.

    That’s always going to count, including how it affects her reputation.

    Not that only her word should count, but so long as this place remains her responsibility as site owner, it’s going to count the most.

    I don’t think anyone’s been clamoring to buy this site, but of course that would make things very different.

    Glen Davidson

  44. Alan Fox: That’s not a new thread. That’s a copy-paste from 2009 which is itself a copy-paste. And it’s plastered with mark-up errors.

    No interest in resyndicating Untelligent Reasoning – those posts already have a venue and the audience they deserve. Did Joe just get caught plagiarizing?

  47. Richardthughes: No interest in resyndicating Untelligent Reasoning – those posts already have a venue and the audience they deserve. Did Joe just get caught plagiarizing?

    Well, he is miming to his own record at least!

  49. Umm, Richie, the blog post was not copyrighted. There isn’t any binding legal issues with my re-use of it.

    Try again

  50. Richardthughes,

    Thanks for the link, Rich.

    Self-plagiarism is also known as ‘reuse,’ ‘recycling fraud,’ or ‘duplicate publication,’ and consists of a person re-purposing their own written material without providing proper attribution by citing the original content.

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