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I've wondered if a percentage system wouldn't work better as a metric -- sum of down votes versus sum of up votes.

Here's hoping report doesn't become overused in the new mod system.

All in all, seems a good compromise. Thanks for listening to your users.

I'm not really sure I like the idea. While it's true that some times it's really annoying to see some comments modded down just because users disegree with it, I find the system too digg-like. Hope the comments themself don't turn very digg-like

We'll see how it fares anyway

I thought scores of 1 to 5 were good enough; then came huge mode numbers with huge mod points. Self defeating.

People who comment in a thread shouldn't be able to moderate in said thread. That would cut down on a lot of abuse.

I realize this is a result of my own incompetence, but I absolutely HATE when I mod a comment the opposite of what I intended, and then I'm not allowed to fix my mistake.

So, with that said, I will continue trying not to make that mistake often

Okay. If you are going to have a popularity ranking system, please show two separate figures: one for "mods up"; and one for "mods down."

By showing these two figures (instead of just one figure for the sum of mods up/down), the reader gets an idea of the power and controversy of the comment. For instance, say a comment showed 1000 mods up and 999 mods down -- such a score would indicate that the comment is very powerful and has gotten a huge reaction. However, with the current system, such a powerful comment would merely show a score of "1".

I can't help wondering - why have comment scores at all? Yes it is gratifying to come back to a comment and find it's been modded +5, allowing me to think "Oh hooray, I am a comedy genius after all!", but how much do we need to know how anonymous users feel about our posts? More than that, how much do we need to know how anonymous users feel about other people's posts?

The most gratifying thing is when other named users engage with us in the comments. Perhaps I'm the only one, but too often I'm guilty of lurking here and using the mod points as a lazy-man's way of participating.

Strangely enough, I quite like having the mod points, but in the interests of debate I wondered what an argument in favour of abolishing them might sound like!

I was thinking about a "credits" mechanism;
let's suppose I have just registered into OSNews... the system gives me "20 credits"; with those credits, I can submit 20 comments. If I am modded up, I will gain credits, and if I am modded down, I will lose credits.

If I am with 0 credits, I will not be able to send any comment for a timeframe, after that, the system will give me, let's say, 5 credits...

If I got modded down again, I will lose the capability of comment for a longer time, and so on...

In this way, people that wants to participate in the comments, will comment in a constructive way and the negative commenters will be removed gradually from the OSNews users.

Good idea, the up and down are already simply used as a score anyways, adding the report button seperates rule violation from popularity.

not to nit pick though, but the report button itself could use a bit of work. I don't know exactly what your mandate is for things like loading speed or javascript use, but you should really consider going with a real "web two-point-ohey" style js library, like YUI or Ext.

Keep report, and do away with +/- entirely. All it does is ensure vacuous speech from apprentice politicians.

I can't remember this feature of No Moderation Allowed After Commenting. It doesn't encourage participation either way. If you comment, you can no longer vote, so you hold back your comments to the last minute??

I don't think comments should be modded up or down at all. The result of any debate is the collective conscience if you like of all the participants in regard to the subject discussed; anything which is way off the mark (off-topic), irrelevant, or plain incorrect will be countered by a comment saying so, If no-one can muster anything against a particular comment, then it cannot have articulated anything very mad, bad or dangerous to know about.

Keep the reporting however: flamebait-throwers, the vitriolic, and downright 'I-fancy-being-in your-facers' will,if they receive a number of reports against them from different users, be seen to be offending against generally accepted rules of conduct (if there's a ding-dong reporting battle between two individuals, then they both get a ticking off, and perhaps a suspension from the moderators).

This method may stop the 'apprentice politician effect' as someone else has called it. It may also give a bit more motivation to folks who have something to say, but use the voting system to say it, rather than commit to expression. Let's have your participation - it will mix things up and the collective conscience will be richer for it ;-)!


Edited - one sentence incomplete

Edited 2008-02-20 07:45 UTC

I'm sure looking at the changes in the moderation system and the data of who mods which posts in what way would make an interesting psychosocial experiment.

Excuse me, but what will 'reporting' bring exactly? BTW, I remember we used to have that back in OSNews v2 or whatever... So anyway, what would prevent an abuser from making another account and just doing the same stuff all over again? I think it's kinda useless. So we're going to weed out some users but without a system that prohibits registering in the first place this will achieve nothing. Unless we want to separate the newly-registered users in a special highly untrusted group and they'll have to earn trust by posting valid comments. Then I see it working. Otherwise it's a waste of everyone's time.
To recap, what's the strategy, again? Or is it just an ad-hoc implementation of another idea?

Thanks for what seems like a step in the right direction towards much needed change (getting rid of modding down abuse).

I have been frequenting OSNews for several years now, 5 IIRC. Back some number of years ago I frequently participated and even wrote an article. The changes in the rank system over the last 1-2 years has led me to stop participating. I would love to rejoin-but unless some changes take place to return to a level playing field I doubt I will. Here are a few suggestions:

1) get rid of the exorbitant ranks- anything beyond 5 is simply absurd and means that the "default viewing level" is basically useless. Please explain why something like level 15 is even necessary.

2) the real weakness of the OSNews forums has been that it has not properly dealt with voting down posts. For years you could only vote a post down by trying to associate a particular post with some violation. Nonsense. People have a right to their opinion and that includes the right to vote others down. Make the forums self-moderating, reduce your workload, reserve "reports" for anything which is a clear violation of server standards and let people +1/-1 individual posts-scrap the accumulative point system(it is only there from POV to reward popular posters and punish those who post flame bait).

Those two issues: exorbitant rankings and the accumulative point system go hand in hand and have, for me, eliminated the feeling that there is a level playing field here.

Perhaps something could be done to allow one to choose whether they wish to contribute or moderate when they visit a topic(instead of comments link-have 2 links, participate and moderate). The maximum number of points that any one post can get (ideally 5) should be the number of moderation points for a particular topic a user visits to moderate (ideally 5). Once a user has visited a topic via the moderate link and submitted their moderation the moderate link for that topic could be disabled.

If you wish to prevent people from participating and moderating have 3 links instead of 2 -1) read 2) participate 3) moderate and once someone has moderated or participated 2 and 3 would be disabled out leaving only 1(read). As far as editing your own posts-you could have your recent posts (last 5 days) available via preferences to edit once the links have been disabled.

Additionally if you want people to be able to participate and moderate in the same thread having only the same number moderation points available as could be gained by a posting (ideally 5) makes this a level playing field. I do however understand the desire to prevent participation and moderation in same thread.


It would also be nice if when moderating if one could tag the moderation(informative, misleading, funny,etc.) and combine this with the default viewing level to exclude posts marked as misleading, or only those which are marked informative.

Please focus on a) simplicity b) a level playing field. Lately popular posters automatically get +15 even if their contribution is a 1 line rebuttal of someone else and posts which required thought and energy languish at +1. I do not post quips- when I respond I take a little time and attempt to actually write something.

Just some ideas, maybe something useful here.

I've never liked the system of only voting up, what proponents of this idea fail to acknowledge is that it is a system that polarizes instead of moderates. The more polarizing a comment, the more up votes it will get by the supporters, no matter how flamebaiting or downright hate-mongering the comment is.

A balanced up/down voting system is much more likely to reward informative and insightful comments over polarizing comments. The fear that it will be used by groups to support a cause is mostly theoretical in my experience. Of course it can happen in isolated cases, but generally I believe that the silent majority is going to balance this out.

Boooo i liked having the power to make someones comment look good, don't remove it

Adam,

I'm kinda just thinking out loud here, but could there be some sort of metric so that the more you mod down, the less your votes count? The only way to restore your voting metric could be elapsed time. Restoring it by modding up would be too easy for people to abuse.

Furthermore, you could possibly make negativity visible to others. That way, if you make excessive negative comments, it shows. And, again, you are stuck that way until after some time has passed.

I've never really thought about it before. But, there does seem to be some relationship between the power to vote people down and the increase in unwanted traffic.

I can appreciate what you are trying to accomplish here. I've often wished I had a way to mod people down because I disagreed with them. But, I've resisted because I try to respect the spirit of the rules. But, not having that ability may be one of the things that keeps the OSNews threads/comments as clean as they are and what keeps OSNews unique.

So, I would caution you to be very careful about giving too much control to people to mod down. And, if modding down is continued, attach some negative consequence to discourage it. Come to think of it, do we really need to mod every post we read, either up or down? If you really feel strongly about a post, just reply to it. Maybe too much modding (either positive or negative) should be viewed as bad. A real world example of where this happens is, getting a credit report. Simply checking your credit worthiness lowers your credit score.

Finally, remember that OSNews has done well over the years, and just because a majority of people agree, including me, it may not be what's best for them.

I read OSNews everyday. I appreciate what you guys do. Keep up the good work.

Seems to be how people used it anyway... so I guess it is a good change.

I use the threaded view all the time and I wish that when I clicked on a reply, then clicked the back button that the scroll bar went back to the position it was at when I clicked on the reply. It does this on slashdot and digg, not sure why it doesn't happen here. It worked before the upgrade as well.

Who cares about up and down? Post your comment, that's enough.

I was reading through this post, and it had a link to the Rules page, which I then read to update myself.

I have a request.. Is it possible to space out, or put a single new line between each point mentioned in the Rules page? It'll make it much easier on the eyes to read.

Thanks.

First of all I would like to say I welcome this change and I definetely think it's a step in the right direction. I'm glad that you're actually listening to our feedback. Keep up the good work.

On what is Norways largest newssite with commenting system(Dagbladet.no) they've tried some things. Among this is the voting. After a while they decided to remove the "minus" vote altoghter. Why? Because controversiel and politically incorrect opinions where voted down even if they where well-written and well-argumented. People used this as some kind of ceonsor-system against opinions they didn't like. It must be said that the comments where viewed in order of highst to lowest points. (And as this is nationwide public newspaper there where a lot of comments.)

I think their solution(getting rid of minus altogheter). This is good because then what some people think is good will always get high points, even if equally people think it's bad. This way what people appriciate get's high up.

Possibly not right for this site, but I definetely think it's something to consider.

Just my 2 cents, but the problem with moderation on any site is that a lot of folks seem unable to distinguish between disagreement and abuse. You can mod a post down because it violates site policy but not because you happen to disagree with it. The latter is called intolerance. And so long as a moderation system exists at all, that is always going to be a problem.

You could look at reverting to limits: +5 is surely more than enough, while -1 should be a limit in order to stop gangs of fanboys trying to mod a post down until it ceases to appear at all. That one's called censorship and I've seen it happen too often on the web. If a post really is mega-problematic, then it's up to the site admins to remove it or keep it.

Alternatively, drop the points system and as others have suggested, instead use a ./-style quality rating - interesting, informative, very interesting, funny, boring, etc. You could use icons instead of text if text is felt too dull.

A way to make folks think twice about abusing any mod system would be to make public every member's moderation record via a new tab in their membership details. But I guess this might add hugely to msql overheads, etc. Or, limit that record to modding down only - a light threat of naming and shaming for those who think the mod system is for promoting/demoting their favourite hobbyhorses.