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Grex > Coop > #64: Moderated Conferences? | |
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| Author |
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| 25 new of 133 responses total. |
nharmon
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response 75 of 133:
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Oct 4 19:14 UTC 2007 |
I agree with Mike.
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remmers
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response 76 of 133:
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Oct 4 22:21 UTC 2007 |
Since nobody knows what will work and what won't, I tend to favor an
approach that will allow flexibility and experimentation.
Discussion quality is a problem all over the public-access internet.
Bloggers are constantly struggling with how permissive or restrictive to
be with allowing comments on their blogs, dealing with comment spam,
abusive users, etc. Nobody has a perfect solution. This is a hard
problem.
I'll point out that Jan Wolter's blogging interface to Backtalk will
enable flexibility.
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unicorn
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response 77 of 133:
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Oct 5 06:13 UTC 2007 |
Re #71:
Mike, I'm sure we would all agree that it would be nice if everyone had
immediate access to all that grex has to offer. Unfortunately, a small
number of people have made it difficult to make that a reality. When I
disabled tel and write for new users, I was hoping it would be temporary,
and I'm still hoping that it will be temporary. The person responsible
for the abuse wants us to think it's a bug in the program, but that's
like saying our city streets are poorly designed because they don't
prevent someone from jumping the curb and chasing down pedestrians on
the sidewalk with their car. It isn't a technical problem. It's a
social problem, and we need to prevent people with social disorders
from making the system unusable for others (or from filling it with so
much crap that no one wants to use it). If we don't do that, grex will
die because no one will stick around to wade through the cesspool that
grex has become. What are your suggestions for accomplishing that?
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tsty
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response 78 of 133:
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Oct 5 09:42 UTC 2007 |
solve a social problem iwth a techinical solution? sound slike welfatre to me.
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remmers
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response 79 of 133:
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Oct 5 11:52 UTC 2007 |
(I hope this item doesn't get sidetracked onto a discussion of write/tel.)
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cyklone
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response 80 of 133:
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Oct 5 13:19 UTC 2007 |
Or TS's misquided views of welfare, for that matter.
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unicorn
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response 81 of 133:
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Oct 6 02:17 UTC 2007 |
That wasn't my intent. I merely mentioned that as another example of
the multiple tiers mcnally was referring to. E-mail is another. This
item is about doing a similar thing with conferences.
To get more to the point of this item, let me ask it this way: If we
choose not to take the route of disallowing conference posting for new
users, what are the alternatives that will prevent those with social
disorders from making a cesspool of the conferences so that no one
wants to read them, let alone take part in them?
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keesan
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response 82 of 133:
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Oct 6 02:27 UTC 2007 |
Would it help to ignore such postings instead of giving the poster lots of
attention?
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cyklone
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response 83 of 133:
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Oct 6 13:00 UTC 2007 |
Go back and reread my posts about consensus user-moderation via mirror cfs,
chuck.
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mary
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response 84 of 133:
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Oct 6 13:04 UTC 2007 |
I'm having a hard time with this proposal. It's certainly not what we
started out to do and it could throw up a gate that might keep interesting
participants out. But the neighborhood has changed since 1991 and maybe
it's time to put a lock on the door. Or maybe it's more like a bell.
Sure, the forget command is useful, and we should encourage folks to make
better use of it. As is the twit filter for when forget gets tedious.
But, it doesn't work when the twit sets out to flood the conference and
make Grex unusable. And as infrequently as that happens, it happens, and
when it does the system takes a big hit in terms of morale. Our impotence
at defending ourselves is insidious.
I usually trust in evidence based change. But there aren't a lot of
communities like Grex so comparison gets tricky. But, in my experience,
almost everywhere where public commentary is allowed, either validation
and/or moderators are involved. They tend to avoid being brought to
their knees by vandals. Is it safe to draw a connection? Again, it's
hard to tell for sure, but it may be worth trying the bell thing.
So we can stand firm and weather the storms or we can try making it a
little less easy for vandals to have their way with us. At this point I'd
like to try putting up a few low speed-bumps, reversible speed-bumps, by
slightly closing our open door. I would not support censorship or
moderators for Grex at this point.
We could start with an automated email validation system as is found
almost everywhere else. It asks the new poster to wait less than a minute
to gain access, usually. It does require the person have an off-Grex
email account. Level Two social validation would not be required here.
One problem is this would require some staff coding to initiate. I'm not
sure that's doable at present. But once in place it would give us a
mechanism of disallowing a poster by email address instead of by IP
address. Sure, a determined vandal could persevere but he or she would
have to use a fresh valid email address for each hit. The speed-bump
thing again.
Anyhow, my thoughts on what I'd like to see us try.
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remmers
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response 85 of 133:
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Oct 6 13:07 UTC 2007 |
Re #81: I don't know of an alternative that will prevent the "cesspool
effect", but really, I don't see how disallowing conference posting for
newusers will prevent it either. Are we going to require people to
submit certificates of mental health before being allowed to post?
Short of something like that, I don't see how we can predict someone's
behavior in the conferences at the stage where they'd be asking for
posting access.
Re #82: Yes, ignoring would help, if everybody did it. But based on
20+ years of computer conferencing experience I've observed that there
are always enough people around who refuse to take that route that it
never helps in practice.
I'm wondering, though, if the "ignore" concept could be made to work
with a bit of software assistance. "Social" sites like Facebook,
LinkedIn, Del.icio.us, Flickr, YouTube, etc. all have a concept of a
"network of friends" - basically, your "friends" are people whose
judgement you trust, or with whom you share interests or some sort of
relationship (although you might not even know them personally). The
software then shows you what your "friends" are up to - their latest
posts, webpages that they find interesting, etc.
Now, suppose that on Grex I could specify a "trust network", i.e. a set
of users whose judgement I trusted, such that if one of those users
marks an item as "junk" or a particular user as a "junk poster", then
the software will automatically forget that item or ignore that user on
my behalf, perhaps logging that action somewhere so that I could
override it if I wished to. That is, instead of some conference
administrator or set of users making those decisions on *everybody's*
behalf, I get to specify who gets to make those decisions on *my* behalf.
In other words, make "junk filtering" a social activity rather than the
responsibility of each user. Would that approach provide sufficient
synergy to make the conferencing experience more pleasant for folks? I
don't know, but I find it more palatable philosophically than erecting
barriers to participation.
Adding software-supported "social networking" to Grex could have other
benefits as well, e.g. helping people find discussions of interest to
them. I use the "my network" facilities on YouTube and Del.icio.us to
point me to interesting videos and websites, respectively. It's a
dynamic facility that I can tune to my own preferences; by contrast, the
current conferencing structure doesn't do much beyond providing a small
number of static topic-oriented containers.
Implementing these ideas would require writing some non-trivial
software, of course, so it's a pretty long-term thing. Mary's approach
in #84 would be much easier to implement in the short term. And as it's
automated, fast, and something that's pretty common practice on other
websites, I'd support trying it as a first step.
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cyklone
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response 86 of 133:
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Oct 6 13:11 UTC 2007 |
My proposal does much the same thing, but in real time. Based on some of the
comments I heard from the techies on m-net, the coding would not be too
difficult or time-consuming, as it would involve a specific text that acts
as a flag, plus a counting mechanism to trigger the move.
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keesan
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response 87 of 133:
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Oct 6 13:36 UTC 2007 |
Email validation would not dissuade vandals like the current one. The twit
filter would work better if it did not keep showing blank responses,
especially when people flood every item in agora.
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remmers
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response 88 of 133:
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Oct 6 13:39 UTC 2007 |
Re #86: Not really the same. Your proposal would empower a set of
voters to make global content decisions on behalf of everybody. Mine
would allow
me to tailor my environment according to my own criteria by specifying
who gets to vote on my behalf.
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cyklone
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response 89 of 133:
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Oct 6 17:41 UTC 2007 |
I must be misunderstanding your idea then, because I thought your proposal
also resulted in a global content decision.
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remmers
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response 90 of 133:
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Oct 11 14:35 UTC 2007 |
Putting it another way: I'm suggesting mechanisms that would allow
users to fine-tune for themselves what they see and don't see in the
conferences, based partly on the opinions of other users whom they
trust. Basically, a more sophisticated filtering system than just
"ignore" and "forget", that takes into account that different users will
have different preferences.
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lar
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response 91 of 133:
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Nov 22 10:02 UTC 2007 |
re#90
Do what you like but if you do then remove the blue ribbon. Not that it
matters much. It's just a symbol. m-net doesn't have a blue ribbon but
it generally sticks to free speech due to jerryr's insistence on it. tod
and I are his strongest supporters in that particular area. In fact, the
only time I have seen the principle grossly violated was when the banned
April Morrison aka "hera" from the system for nothing but posting ,what
was in their opinion, bad content. I disagreed with the ban based on
principle as did tod and jerryr. The line of reasoning that was used, if
I recall correctly, was that hera's posts would have a negative impact
on the influx of newusers. We are still waiting for this "influx". We
get new users all the time but most don't dare tread on the bbs . Those
that do will get flamed to tears if they don't have a thick skin. Ask
veek, one flame from twinkie and he ran back here like a whipped puppy.
The world isn't a perfect place where everyone behaves and gets along.
There are total jerks. There are good people who get pissed and act like
jerks. There are good people who use a bad attitude as the first layer
in their self defense mechanism. If you can't handle a few insults that
amount to nothing but a few pixels on a screen then get some counseling
Aren't you the same bunch that screams bloody murder when christians
want profanity and porn removed from movies and TV? You say "Hey, you
don't have to watch it... turn the channel and stop legislating
morality" Isn't a failure to maintain the free speech campaign because
you don't like the content, to a certain extent,hypocrisy?
free speech makes grex. If you have to tolerate those who abuse this
freedom in order to keep it...so be it.
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tod
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response 92 of 133:
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Nov 22 10:33 UTC 2007 |
Give april time...soon this place will be run like a convent
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mary
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response 93 of 133:
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Nov 22 14:14 UTC 2007 |
I think you've got free speech issues confused with intentional acts of
vandalism, lar. Entering the same exact string of words in every item and
then coming back an hour later and doing the same thing again. And again.
And again.
In terms of content Grex has a pretty thick skin.
But that said I'm not sure the totally open model works all that well
anywhere anymore. It's a magnet for people with social issues.
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cyklone
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response 94 of 133:
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Nov 22 14:45 UTC 2007 |
Lar's version of mnet events is only half the story. Some of us simply felt
that Hera did not keep up her end of a bargain she made with mnet many years
ago.
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mary
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response 95 of 133:
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Nov 22 15:40 UTC 2007 |
So if she'd come back and entered great items that were popular she
wouldn't have been blocked?
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cyklone
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response 96 of 133:
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Nov 23 14:09 UTC 2007 |
Actually, I think the agreement (which I was not around for) was basically
to not act like the ass she had been when she originally left mnet. You'd have
to ask someone who was around then for the details.
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remmers
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response 97 of 133:
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Nov 25 13:27 UTC 2007 |
I was around. As best I can remember, she agreed not to come back, in
exchange for a partial refund of her membership donation. After a
couple of years, she came back anyway. The M-Net board noted that she
was in violation of the agreement but took no action. This was, like,
five years ago. In view of the fact that her renewed presence on M-Net
was then tolerated for several years, citing the long-ago violation as
justification for the recent banning strikes me as more of a pretext
than anything else.
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cyklone
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response 98 of 133:
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Nov 25 14:35 UTC 2007 |
I don't, as I don't recall any time limit being involved. My understanding
was the deal was she had to behave a certain way. The fact is she violated
that agreement. Waiting to pull the plug on her was fully within the rights
of m-net. I'm mean, she can't very well tell a cop "hey, I've been speeding
for five years now, you can't give me a ticket!"
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remmers
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response 99 of 133:
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Nov 25 16:20 UTC 2007 |
What I'm saying is that I don't think that her violation of the previous
agreement had much to do with the fact that she was banned.
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