cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/27346179
When an arrogant presumptuous dick dumps hot-headed uncivil drivel into a relatively apolitical thread about plumbing technology and reduces the quality of the discussion to a Trump vs. $someone style shitshow of threadcrap, the tools given to the moderator are:
- remove the comment (chainsaw)
- ban the user from the community (sledge hammer)
Where are the refined sophisticated tools?
When it comes to nannying children, we don’t give teachers a baseball bat. It’s the wrong tool. We are forced into a dilemma: either let the garbage float, or censor. This encourages moderators to be tyrants and too many choose that route. Moderators often censor civil ideas purely because they want to control the narrative (not the quality).
I want to do quality control, not narrative control. I oppose the tyranny of censorship in all but the most vile cases of bullying or spam. The modlog does not give enough transparency. If I wholly remove that asshole’s comment, then I become an asshole too.
He is on-topic. Just poor quality drivel that contributes nothing of value. Normally voting should solve this. X number of down votes causes the comment to be folded out of view, but not censored. It would rightfully keep the comment accessible to people who want to pick through the garbage and expand the low quality posts.
Why voting fails:
- tiny community means there can never be enough down votes to fold a comment.
- votes have no meaning. Bob votes emotionally and down votes every idea he dislikes, while Alice down votes off-topic or uncivil comments, regardless of agreement.
Solutions:
I’m not trying to strongly prescribe a fix in particular, but have some ideas to brainstorm:
Mods get the option to simply fold a shitty comment when the msg is still on-topic and slightly better quality than spam. This should come with a one-line field (perhaps mandatory) where the mod must rationalise the action (e.g. “folded for uncivil rant with no useful contribution to the technical information sought”).
A warning counter. Mods can send a warning to a user in connection with a comment. This is already possible but requires moderators to have an unhuman memory. A warning should not just be like any DM.. it should be tracked and counted. Mods should see a counter next to participants indicating how many warnings they have received and a page to view them all, so as to aid in decisions on whether to ban a user from a community.
Moderator votes should be heavier than user votes. Perhaps an ability to choose how many votes they want to cast on a particular comment to have an effect like folding. Of course this should be transparent so it’s clear that X number of votes were cast by a mod. Rationale:
- mods have better awareness of the purpose and rules of the community
- mods are stakeholders with more investment into the success of a community than users
Moderators could control the weight of other user’s votes. When 6 people upvote an uncivil post and only 2 people down vote it, it renders voting as a tool impotent and in fact harm inducing. Lousy/malicious voters have no consequences for harmful voting and thus no incentive to use voting as an effective tool for good. A curator should be able to adjust voting weight accordingly. E.g. take an action on a particular poll that results in a weight adjustment (positive or negative) on the users who voted a particular direction. The effect would be to cause voters to prioritize civil quality above whether they simply like/dislike an idea, so that votes actually take on a universal meaning. Which of course then makes voting an effective tool for folding poor quality content (as it was originally intended).
(edit) Ability for a moderator to remove a voting option. If a comment is uncivil, allowing upvotes is only detrimental. So a moderator should be able to narrow the ballot to either down vote or neutral. And perhaps the contrary as well (like some beehaw is instance-wide). And perhaps the option to neutralise voting on a specific comment.
I don't like folding at all, i don't care if downvotes happen, votes are meaningless. If folding happens, votes become more important and people must bend towards the mean of "respectable" opinions to even be heard at all. Folding comments is the far worse and pervasive form of content moderation on Reddit (s'why i hate it with a passion)
Civility is not the shining hilltop we should be striving towards, civility towards hate is unacceptable to me for example. i feel your ideas here though presented well would only allow for more abuse and more echoey chamberpots.
Folding comments suck ass and down votes suck ass for similar reasons, I remember that's why we got rid of them and made commenting the clearest way to disagree.
commenting [is] the clearest way to disagree
I agree, It definitely fosters more discussion, which is one (small) reason hexbear is my favorite place. After living this way for awhile I've come to feel a (1)point comment in a well argued thread is a stronger statement than a hundred downvotes could ever be.
I'm sorry that you shared your experience with someone on the internet and they shared theirs back with you. If you'd like to avoid future upsets, there's already an in built solution in the form of logging out.
After describing in detail how a sledge hammer lacks precision for the job at hand, you propose a battering ram. Not only is it a more blunt instrument, it’s also less conducive to quality control. If that tool works for you, why even have moderators?
All you're asking for is to replace clear cut censorship with more subtle, manipulative, petty ego tripping censorship.
To say /subtle/ is to overlook the expressed transparency of mod votes being distinguished from user votes. Anything you understood to undermine transparency is a misunderstanding. Transparency is important. None of the mechanisms mentioned are necessarily opaque if competently designed.
A brainstorm is not meant as a deeply detailed specification. You have to be able to imagine how transparency can be built into the designs.
To say “petty ego tripping” is to misunderstand the purpose of voting. Voting is a means to an ends, not the ends. I doubt anyone gives a shit what the total is (except of course ego trippers). Voting has a utilitarian purpose: to influence a quality score that sinks poor quality content and/or folds it, while raising high quality posts to the top. To have contempt for accurate scoring is to have contempt for quality control and curation.
To worry about voting losing its role of displaying an integer discrete vote count is actually to promote ego tripping. Using the votes for utilitarian purpose diminishes the use case as an ego tripper’s status symbol. So if you oppose ego tripping, you’re actually on the wrong side of this.
Votes could in fact remain as integers, 1 per vote, if you want to preserve the ego tripping function. While the quality score could be a separate number with a composition and calculation that need not be hidden from view.
(update) Consider how SpamAssassin works. It computes a score then it also gives detail on how the score was calculated:
X-Spam-Flag: YES X-Spam-Score: 7.2 X-Spam-Level: ****** X-Spam-Status: Yes, score=7.2 required=5.0 tests=HTML_MESSAGE, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE,SPF_HELO_NONE,SPF_NONE,URIBL_BLOCKED autolearn=unavailable autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4Rough example but a post quality score could be more or less similarly refined using smarter criteria than just equal weighted votes per account, particularly if people get multiple categories to vote on.
That's a lot of words to say "I should have more ways to ego trip while moderating."
What about the post you linked is uncivil?
Are you a person of land?
Lol also, did that commenter cut a landlord? That comment was ice cold compared to most. If you can't handle that level of heat, then get out of the kitchen.
If your not, and are having financial issues, I feel you. We've been slammed with unexpected repairs this year, its hard.
The fact that they aren't answering the many questions asking this means they are one. Crazy that db0 doesn't ban these users.
Warnings would be useful, folding would be useless, vote manipulation would be bad for mod action transparency
folding would be useless
Bizarre that you think that. Bizarre that people are agreeing. Can you elaborate? Why would it be useful to have low-quality content fully expanded by default? Isn’t the status quo with Lemmy to use voting to sink and fold low quality posts?
I personally do not have time to read every single comment when I step into a thread. I want to see the best commentary first and only the less interesting stuff if choose to keep reading, if I have time. The nature of a tree of threads results in some garbage responses to quality comments that rise to the top. If you do not fold anything, you are then forced to see junk before quality, because the 2nd best comment in the tree is still below a low quality reply to the best quality comment.
It would be a waste of mods' time to decide whether each comment should be folded or not
Folding is not an obligation, so no time is wasted.
There is already some obligation for mods to decide whether each comment should be removed or not (as content can be illegal). But luckily there are mechanisms in place so mods do not have to read every comment. If you are worried that users would use the /alert/ mechanism to ask a mod to fold something, that’s already a risk and a problem. Adding the fold capability does not add to that burden.
I suppose you are right that more mod action options does not necessarily increase mod burden, but i still think that its not something that would be very useful as comment removal already functions as a way for getting rid of annoying comments, its not the chainsaw you portray it as, its merely a slap on the wrist
Isn’t the status quo with Lemmy to use voting to sink and fold low quality posts?
No downvotes on hexbear. So no, it's not the status quo here.
You're getting pushback because we don't put a lot of value in civility here and the best way to disagree or criticize someone is to post about it.
No downvotes on hexbear. So no, it’s not the status quo here.
I said “status quo with Lemmy”, thus talking about the software, not the configuration. Note this is a cross-post. The original post was on Sopuli.
The software is designed to use the down votes to arrange the better quality content on top of the thread (to some extent¹). Of course if you disable the functionality on an instance then that particular instance does not use it, which is orthogonal to a discussion of how to improve the software. It would be bad quality engineering to design the software for a specific configuration of a particular instance.
¹ though not entirely because age is a factor AFAICT.
You’re getting pushback because we don’t put a lot of value in civility here and the best way to disagree or criticize someone is to post about it.
You can’t disagree when the post is censored. What do you reply to? I don’t think anyone has yet mentioned an alternative way to discourage a moderator from abusing their power to remove msgs they don’t agree with, which is the most rampant problem with moderation in the threadiverse (not just talking about hexbear but wherever Lemmy runs). The hexbear status quo encourages the abuses of power they think they are discouraging by having blunt tools. Which is not to say I’ve seen any such abuses of power on hexbear.. not visited it much.
A user with that mindset has decided to put faith that the moderation team will make good decisions on what they should read. Okay, sure, fine. You want your users to have that faith. But now you are turning comments that annoy you into "why was this comment folded?" discussions. If you fold a comment that people agree with, you're inviting the community to vent about moderation, which I guess you could sensibly handle by just folding those comments too. Problem solved, everyone's happy.
The whole point seems to be that you're desperately searching for some compromise where the moderator can dictate the discussion while avoiding accusations of stifling free speech. But if your comment is the one getting folded, you might not see your free speech as being respected. Why is there a barrier to people seeing my thoughts, but no barrier for others? It's a dream of reducing visibility of opinions you don't like while still being a heroic free speech warrior.
People on forums understand that moderators exist and there are things they can say that will be censored and removed immediately. So you're working with everyone knowing speech is not free and we need to trust moderation will not overstep. A modlog for transparency helps with that. Visibly seeing that mods are managing opinions that don't cross the line is not helpful.
Mods should not be curators of good and bad content. Their job should be removing blatant spam/offensive content. I do not want a small, private group of users shadow banning comments or massively upvoting posts.
A warning system is probably worth having though :shrug-outta-hecks: I thought removing comments already kinda functioned this way, but I don't think it alerts the user what was removed. That's the only change I think should be made.
Their job should be removing blatant spam/offensive content.
When removal is the only tool you give them, they use it to remove outright content that is on-topic and civil. Limiting them to heavy tools encourages abuses of power.
they use it to remove outright content that is on-topic and civil.
dbzero user
I dunno, moderation on hexbear seems better than db0. Skill issue?
I haven't seen that issue here, broadly speaking.
Some of what you suggest is very subtle, and many people wouldn't notice it being done to other users. It seems like a very direct, but subtle, way for moderators to pick sides and show users they like/don't like different treatment. With removing comments, it is obvious to everyone a comment was removed and checking to make sure the decision was fair is easy. Collapsing a comment because you don't think its great is subtle enough for other users not to notice, and is a very subjective ruling.
Giving them subtle tools is what encourages power. Right now, if a mod doesn't like what I post, they have to justify the removal. They don't have to justify collapsing because "oh it was just low effort" or something like that. With a removal, the reason needs to be concrete and defensible. Which is good, that's the role I feel moderators should have. Remove things for clearly defined reasons.
I’ve seen removals without rationale. The software allows it and mods tend to only give a reason in the most justifiable cases (spam). I’ve also seen robotic removals, where nothing appears in the modlog. These are entirely untraceable. It happens when a removal is systemwide and not by a local moderator.
Of course these features can be designed to spec. A msg folding action could (and should) force a rationale, which would then be more transparent than removals (which users have to go to the modlog for -- only to potentially find nothing). Burying rationale in the modlog is not good for accountability because that’s less visited than the thread, which is where the folding rationale would appear.
And worse, removals are unnoticeable to the author. Authors see their own removed comments just fine. The status quo is very sneaky. I’ve discovered my comments were quietly removed /months/ after the removal, incidentally, because of the subtle way they are implemented. In one case it was because I was searching for my own comment using a different account than what I authored it with, and that was the only reason I could then realize it was removed. If you generally want to know if you have been censored, you need to periodically search for your own posts in the sitewide modlog. It does not get any more subtle than that.
Make it like a vote kick system in multiplayer games. IF you get reported, everyone in the community gets a notification and you can choose to approve/deny the "remove" request. Each person has a 48-72 hr cooldown for this specific remove request.
When an arrogant presumptuous dick dumps hot-headed uncivil drivel
So you would censor this comment you've linked to for being uncivil, but it's cool when you call someone names in a cross post like this? Why are you being so uncivil? I didn't even read your essay because I was so overwhelmed by your disregard for civility.
So you would censor this comment you’ve linked
You’ve misunderstood. You need to re-read that entry.
So you wouldn't censor the comment? Why even bring it up then? Do you just...not consider all this shit you're suggesting to be censorship?
If you want better tools someone has yo build them. Hit the keyboard and get building.
Bit early for that. I think that approach of implementation without design or discussion is largely why tech has become so enshitified in recent decades. Better quality software emerges from a meticulous series of phases starting with analysis (discussion) and design. It seems kids are being taught to run off and code without thinking which is what leads to bad quality s/w.
This is an open source project that you can directly contribute too. Open an issue to start your discussion, create a fork and start implementing the design.
However, enshitification is a result of profit seeking due to the relationship between venture capital investment and the service being invested in. When the burn rate finds equilibrium with the investment rate the only recourse is to manipulate the service in favor of profit driven motivations.
The state the service exists in prior to this moment in its lifespan is one driven by user accumulation, and all its design and function is in service of that goal leading to a product grandly beholden to the demands of the users. This is what development looks like freed from the yoke of the profit motive. However, this user accumulation is always in preparation for the switch to profit seeking, as the larger your user base is the more profit you can potentially wring out of them.
It has nothing to do with "kids these days".
I want more drama, mark comments as reported, and let people hover over the list of reports.
Gamify reporting: Allow mod tools that lets you connect reports to specific rules in the community. If you make a report and the moderator agrees that it violates the rule you get a "good job!" message like someone endorsing your messages on Elden Ring. You have 10 levels that go Snitch, Janitor, Guardian, Curator, Peacekeeper, etc. Then you can prestige and start all over again.
When you get reported, an automated comment should be sent to you letting you know people think you suck and you should stop posting.
Instead of banning people right away, given them dunce caps next to their names, like our profile pictures, but they are unremoveable for the "time out" duration.
Give moderators the ability to award you with a pig and poop balls badge for "worst post/comment" of the day. There's a 24 hr cooldown.
Well, was OP landlord scum?
EDIT: Oh lol, this thread is from the OP from that one. You have to tell us if you're a landleech @diyrebel@lemmy.dbzer0.com
First two seem like decent ideas, the others feel like they would be easily abused.
