Crying Wolf: A New Wrinkle in Combating Bloc Collapsing

Why, is there something there? ;-)

I'll have to agree with John, here... I'd see no need to comment on, say, spam. If an article is not only distasteful, but miscategorized, I might flag the miscategorization, and move on without commenting. (And I likely have.)

Yep... If I don't like the way somebody moderates, I just don't go to their threads. Plenty of others.

Agreed Rainkiss. Easy to figure out who posts what. What happened to tolerance?

I've seen at least one occasion where Tyler has made the call to restore someone's reporting ability after having an article they voted to remove restored, as they defended their reasons. I wouldn't know which saves more time, having to review and restore the articles being deleted unfairly, or reviewing "I thought it was a fair call because" e-mails.

I just want to get a straight answer from staff on why they see more value in doing it this way than disabling this feature.

Hi Scott,

Why aren't you in blue? Oh, that's right. Never mind.

Anyway, back to your comment, why would you want the feature disabled? Not everyone has a hidden agenda. How else would you deal with commentors who are absolutely rude, crude and socially unacceptable?

Okay, kidding aside, I have no problem reporting racial slurs and such. With the amount of time it takes for Tyler to respond to a request, it still makes sense to keep the !. Unless you're referring to.....wait a minute, I just noticed that this article does not have the menu up above at the top of the page to report as inaccurate, misleading, etc. Is that feature gone now?

I agree with Susan. You need the ability for the community to police itself, with the Staff backing it up and making the call. So, disabling the feature is not a good idea.

The "!" is still up on other articles. Perhaps since Tyler is a part of the staff, the community has no control over reporting him.

I have more thoughts on the subject, but I already posted them on the first page a while back.

Hi USAF,

I'm sure the reason there is no menu at the top of the article is because it's Tyler's. lol

I firmly believe in the freedom of speech and expression and I absolutely disagree with those who collapse an article simply because they don't like what the author is stating. It's wrong.

However, the ! gives us a tool that when used properly, allows the rest of us to keep the discussion civil and focused.

Anyway, back to your comment, why would you want the feature disabled? Not everyone has a hidden agenda. How else would you deal with commentors who are absolutely rude, crude and socially unacceptable?

We'd contact staff. The staff should be the one deciding if entire articles should come down or at least have the final say before such a thing occurs.

Okay, first you have to understand the system and remember there are literally thousands of post each hour.

The staff is contacted by the system when someone reports. It also has to prioritize the reports. The system would do these by time. I am assuming the programmers also added the infraction and the number of reports to help prioritize.

After "X" number of people have reported an item, it comes down (we know this is not an assumption).

On this, I am assuming the programmers added a ratio that looks at the number of people going to the article verses the number of people reporting the article with a max number of reports needed to collapse the article increasing as the ratio decreases.

For example, say someone tries to post a pornographic story complete with porn pics. Five people visit the article and five report it. It comes down. Yet, a political piece with one in 10 people reporting it, might require a higher number of reports.

If you do away with the "!" feature. You need several new staffers to collect the information being reported (assuming by e-mail), prioritize, sort and deal with the issue. The whole time with the offending and possibly illegal article staying up. That increase possible liabilities from nuts on the internet. Would you want someone posting kiddy-porn to be able to leave it up until a staffer could find time to read the notice check it out and pull it down? They would need staffers there 24/7 to make up for the lack of automation. They would also need more moderators then just Tyler.

Yet, some folks found the ability to exploit the abuse button. So the new rule. As I stated on the other page, it really does create new problem.

Hope that helps.

I think when they set up the system here they did not envision the possibility that one person could email five friends and decide to bring down an article. They gave us tools and one of those tools can do something bigger than the others combined - it can not only take down an article with absolutely no immediate action needed by staff (that comes later) but also gets rid of everyone's comments too and all those users don't even get emailed copies of their deleted comments like you normally do when a comment is deleted. So I may have written my most brilliant comment ever and it may be lost because someone didnt like the p.o.v. of the original seed or article

Notice I have yet to mention the COH? that's because there may not even be a coh violation - it can just be repubs getting rid of a dem article or vice versa. so now we have this new method which is one way of responding to all of this but to me it's becoming not unlike gun control. We know some have guns and may use them the wrong way. Rather than trying to get rid of the guns we're going to try to check to ensure those firing the guns have appropriate reasons for doing so.

I think this is all an admission that this tool can and is being abused and i'm not sure if we the community can be trusted with it. If we just had another moderator - or freed Tyler up from the time spent on projects like this - we'd have other ways of dealing with stories which SHOULD come down because of blatant coh violaitons. but instead we're giving tyler one more thing to do giving him less time to do actual direct moderating. instead he gets to play traffic cop.

If we just had another moderator

See, there, I think that's the problem. I do understand Tyler can't do everything, and I understand his wanting to streamline things for himself - but it isn't streamlinings things for the community, and probably in the end not for himself either, and was implemented poorly and unevenly - in such a way that Tyler and Mike contradict each other (and the policy contradicts the COH) - in "policy statements" issued in places that your average reader doesn't even see them. It's just not workable. And I do think there has to be a workable way around this if people are willing to pow-wow, and we stop thinking band-aids will fix the problem. We need a new system and/or several Tylers.

I understand where you are coming from. Yet, I have to agree with Tyler when he says in #7.4:

I understand the desire for moderator-only modification, Root Boy Slim. But to change that [besides being unrealistic for the reasons mentioned] would definitely be to change the culture of Newsvine.

Yet, it is a conundrum.

You have to have automation to be able to run the site efficiently, but the automation has holes that can be exploited. No matter what system you have, people will find holes and exploit them.

The staff is trying to plug those holes, but in doing so, they are taking away the effectiveness of the automated system (by discouraging reporting), creating more wolf crying (I saw another article yesterday with someone complaining about having an article being removed and claiming it was block collapsing - even though it had name calling in the article that was removed and admited that the appeal was lost), and by creating more work for Tyler (the appeals will now grow and need to be reviewed).

I disagree with the new policy for the reason I have stated on the previous page and for the reason I have mentioned here. Besides, Tyler has said here:

Everyone who was even remotely tied to the bloc voting/reporting/collapsing through the Party with Frog Legs group is banned.

So the questions must be, "Is there more Block Collapsing going on or are people letting accusations fly with what has become a convenient excuse? And if it is (as so many are now claiming anytime an article comes down) then where is the proof?" After all, the staff is apparently checking out allegations and doing something about it. They are banning these folks.

BTW, this crying wolf about an article being collapsed should be stopped too. It causes many to buy into the worse possible scenario without considering the possibility that someone DID BREAK THE RULES.

If they did not, the appeal process allows the articles and the comments to be put back up - that should be vindication in itself (the author yesterday said that he lost the appeal, but still claimed it was block collapsed).

Those articles just cause rumors, speculation, panic, hate and distrust. Even if they where breaking the rules and the article was not block collapsed!

Those folks that reported an article as such and it was replaced should be watched to see how many they are reporting and their Reporting accuracy rates checked. If they are low accuracy then they should be looked at with an investigation. If nothing is found to indicate collusion, they should be talked to about reporting and only then have their reporting privileges suspended. If they are colluding, then ban them.

This would accomplish the same effect they are looking for, plus more: help them find poor reporting individuals, possibly find anyone colluding, make it easier on Tyler and the majority of it could be with automation. Not to mention, not discouraging reporting (which Tyler has said he wants).

The question I keep returning to is this: why wont they hire more moderators, more Tylers? In the history of the company they've hired what one more employees in 3-5 years? Compare that to the stats (which i'd love to know but i'm sure it's at least doubled since the msnbc purchase)

what is wrong with this situation? we keep tossing more work at tyler then some gripe he's not doing enough or fast enough?

I agree, Scott. I have done a couple of things but I'll tell you in an email, instead.

(deleted)

The question I keep returning to is this: why wont they hire more moderators, more Tylers?

I whole heartedly agree. Of course, I am sure that Newsvine or MSNBC has their reasons.

Perhaps what would help would be a few things I saw on one Microsoft website that I was a member of.

First: This website named some members of the community to a position they called VIPs. These individuals were requested to fill the void as moderators and were volunteers. The site paid for a trip to their offices and trained them as moderators and liaisons with the community. Then they could help out while they were on line from where ever they were (the staff could over ride them, or even remove them from their positions if it was deemed as necessary).

Second: The same site also appointed different individuals as judges for inappropriate material. These individuals were named (silently - no one knew who would be a judge that day) based on their accuracy of reporting. This meant that the judges could do so silently an anonymously and no one knew who might be a judge (a by product was that personal attacks declined). High accuracy of reporting rules meant these folks were better at understanding the rules. If their accuracy fell, they just would not be named until it went up.

When you signed in you received a message that asked you to be a judge and then if you agreed you would occasional review material to see if it broke the rules.

You would receive a message showing that something needed to be reviewed and when you went to the material, you judged it and left a comment as to how you saw that it broke the rules, did not break the rules or was boarder line and differed for further review by the staff.

It was not taken down until after "X" number of judges had reviewed it and it was by majority rule. Of course, one judge reporting it as porn or spam and it came down immediately (we had had a huge number of Trolls attacking and posting porn).

It was not reviewed until after "X" number of people had reported it. If the judges for the day had caused an item to come down it was automatically reviewed by the staff to insure the judges were right.

Actually, the judges part was my idea and once implemented it stopped material from coming down that was being attacked by groups of folks (what is referred here as "Block Collapsing").

This gave the staff more time to find out who was doing the attacks and it brought the non-sense to an end. It kept the community aspect of the site, rewarded individuals for being diligent and accurate in reporting and freed up the staff form having to deal with BS.