@walesgrey The point is that instead of focusing on stopping people from shitposting, suggesting that people learn how to ignore what they consider shitposting is going to be more effective for everyone. The downside is that it is presumably harder since each person has to accomplish that themselves, as opposed to letting someone do what they hope to be the right thing in banning the people they want banned.
For my imagination this is the only way to consider everyone's sensibilities, even if a person's sensibilities are to be offended, same as if a person's sensibilities are to be an asshole. The alternative is that you have the moderation system and hope that they agree with you on what falls under hate speech, lest you find yourself in the same boat as the people you currently argue against.
You may think that your sensibilities are the same as everyone else's, but my very existence would indicate that that simply isn't the case. Theoretically, that would also include people who are way more sensitive than you and may report something you said that you would consider reasonable.
Clearly everyone has a line, but not everyone's line is in the same place.
The blocking feature is designed to make up for that.
Just bear in mind that the overall goal is to foster a healthy community where everyone is happy to participate. People will have differing views, as seen in this thread, but being able to discuss those views in a reasonably friendly environment is what makes this community thrive.
Out of curiosity, on your end, how are reports sorted? I can envision a few reasonable methods of doing it. Though, I have no clue on how important it is (I like to envision us as.a large community, primarily made up of calm, level headed adults. But.... even as I write this I cannot imagine anything but an army of chuunibyou Megumins shouting "EXPLOSION" with their staff pointed at my head).
A few methods, sorted roughly by complexity:
1) By count, posts reported by most people at the top. (assumed default sort order due to simplicity and effectiveness) 2) By age, oldest report first (reduces likelyhood of reports dying in history)(Doesn't scales at all, but could be used as a main sort method if a scalable method was available in a side panel)
3) By age, newest post first (focuses on the face of mangadex, the posts people are more likely to read in the near future due to the way we expose posts) 4) By historical exposure, most viewed posts first (focuses on current and historical faces of mangadex, posts/discussions that the community has shown interest in at any point in time get priority) (significantly less useful than current exposure, only benefit is it doesn't require time to be calculated in)
5) By current exposure, most viewed posts over time range first (focuses on the face of mangadex, posts/discussions that the largest amount of the community is currently viewing get priority) 6) By report rate, much like how top chapters are determined, sort post by quantity of reports/some time range (A sort of indirect balance between sort by count and current exposure) 7) By reporter rating, use some function to calculate a reliability rating for each report, probably attached to the user reporting it.
it effectively builds/tracks/calculates the reporter's reputation.
One method of doing this would be to keep table of | reportid | postid (new reports for the same post go under existing reportid, unless all existing reportids are closed) | reporters | closed_status | (id is postid + report index), and weight their current reports by the number of their previous reports with closed_status of resolved (reputation++) & the number of reports with status of rejected (reputation--).
The benefit of this method is that even if there are thousands of valid posts improperly reported by various users, an offensive post reported only by reputable reporter X on unpopular thread Y will still be seen. Also may help if your ever low on moderators and mod nominees. A person with a high reputation would essentially have already done normal mod duties, but in a supervised fashion.
but far more complex of a system than I expect anyone to do. Especially when up till now they were getting by without even having a report system in place.
I do not believe there are enough bad seeds to report for Zephyrus to not be able to handle it all himself. However, with the increased ease/availability of reporting, combined with our well loved, growing, and notoriously passionate, eternally chuunibyou, otoku user/fanbase, I can easily envision reports getting out of hand.
In my personal opinion, a solution like 6 would be ideal (seems both easy and effective) so long as that type of data is recorded (just a post view count/time, with thread view count/time being a very close substitute). Solution 7 would be interesting, but at least sightly more complex and time consuming to implement correctly to be worth it.
Solution 1 is perfectly valid and a great(and normal) way to prioritize issues, but falls slightly short by only highlighting issues after they have received exposure. I believe 5 and 6 provide valuable insight that is useful for an overwhelmed mod, and should be used in the sidelines (read side panel) along with solution 1 (or perhaps 2/3).
5 focuses on the face of mangadex, problems that the most people who visit the site would see right now. It should be brought to attention not because of how reliable the report is, nor how offensive the content is, but because of how much exposure the problematic post would get should the report be valid.
6 brings up posts that people are reporting at the fastest rate. This means the post either
1) has higher exposure than equally offensive posts being reported
2) has more offensive content than equally well exposed reported posts (more offensive = more offended = more reports)
To me, this seems like the 2 types of posts a mod would want to address first. And ones a busy mod should focus on.
However, unlike other sort mechanisms, this one relies on active reporting by multiple users, and will only be beneficial if users are prominent and feel encouraged to report offensive content. (Plenty of users. People love to complain and there is a freaking report button right under the post! I don't think we really need anything else). But if the reports don't overwhelm the staff now that they are so easy to do, or if offensive content is not reported more frequently than non-offensive content of equal exposure, then we would see no benefit from this.
Seriously, if you do not get overwhelmed by reports, tell me. The environment I am used to dealing with involves lots of children that sit on the report button bc the chair is too uncomfortable. There is normally no punishment for false reports in my env though, so nothing to dissuade them. Actually, reporting is like a meme. When they are bored, they report someone and then report their report to all that can hear.
@firefish5000 Reads essay.... Reads report.. Read this wall...... ... ........... pauses to read time.. goes to bed
@Zephyrus and @Holo - This is my personal suggestion about the matter "community", it work like a premium service.
- Everyone have access to any content any time like now, but H stuff of course, you don't need to register.
- If you want to customize the interface, post comments, create topics or edit stuff you need to register and become a contributor, just onetime and lifetime, with a minimun of 5$.
- Uploaders and group scanlations are exceptions since they have already privileges.
This will affect only normal users that want to comment and edit stuff and be part of the "community", with this you prevent multiple and fake accounts to be created, or at least limiting the issue to a certain degree, and you can moderate better all comments since if you get banned you lose everytime 5$. Without control the community will inevitably become toxic, you should always expected the worst not the good from people, because is the human nature to bring everyone into the ruin, moderation and rules exist to prevent overtime degradation.
I made no such claim, nor did I make the implication.
In that post of mine which you've quoted, my main point was (which I attempted to show by analogy) that moderators are like cops. Ideally, they should exist only to enforce existing rules. Nothing more, nothing less. And just like real-world cops, they should have some discretion. Not every speeder receives a ticket. Many receive a warning, and most speed limit violators aren't even pulled over at all. At least where I live.
Similarly, I think moderators should also have some discretion on when to let certain things slide and when to come down hard.
This doesn't make them "superior." Just like actual police officers aren't superior to their fellow citizens. They're simply doing their job.
Separate Topic: Now, since you brought it up, if we're talking about "superiors," then my own belief is that the people who run and administrate this site ARE superior to the regular users, and you can quote me on that. (Note: I'm specifically referring to the people who built up the site, like Holo et al. [NOT to any moderators who only enforce rules, if such people other than Zeph exist.] The "founders" and "administrators," in other words.
Now, I make this claim because the way I see it, the founders and administrators are the ones who (1) have put the time and effort into creating the website in the first place, (2) are continually adding new features while improving existing ones, and (3) who even now continue to maintain it by working to make sure it continues to function even through unexpected hiccups (like the recent DDOS).
The way I see it, users who do not or have not put in that same level of work for this site have no basis to claim that they are on an equal footing with those who do.
Anybody who spent any time at all on 4chan (including me) is well aware that isolation from "the masses" led to 4chan mods acting like a collection of deranged circlejerkers ranging from the lazy to the actively malicious, who openly mocked users for their powerlessness in the face of mod banning. Anybody who was a regular user is well aware the most of the great flamestorms in 4chan history were directly caused by mods trying to frivolously ban/counter/manipulate things they found irritating. Entire spin-off websites have been spawned by the truckload for no reason except that moderator tyranny became intolerable.
No one is entitled to use this site. I'm sure that if there's ever some dissenting group of users who come to strongly disagree with how this site is run, then such a group would be more than welcome to create their own alternative. I'm sure that if such a schism ever did occur, then it would actually solve many issues in one fell swoop.
Respectfully, I feel I should point out that that's not your decision to make. You don't get to tell the administrators how they MUST run their site. They have no obligation to follow, nor even to consider, any demands like "There must be tools!" Users can offer suggestions to the site's leaders, but users have no standing to make demands.
And yes, that quote as written is clearly a demand.
@Nick86
That doesn't seem like a feasible enough solution, since really dedicated users won't miss those 5 bucks. Even if they have to pay them again. But it's an interesting idea, like SA, the parent forum of 4chan.
Will the rules be applied retroactively for old posts/comments? Will people get banned for, say, posting a comment several months ago that will violate the new rules?
Also, would an auto-archive system be a good idea? Like, for example, threads that have no activity for x number of days will be archived automatically and no one will be allowed to comment on the thread.
@kenx - Was just a mere suggestion, indeed 5 bucks aren't a big deal but they can be something for spammers and trolls since they have to create new account pretty often and can be expensive.
Sometimes i read in comments death threats and insults to the original author or publisher when a story don't go how a user want it go, this behaviour should be punished too, imo.
Wouldn't be worse than the death threats Anno & co. received after the last episodes of the Evangelion anime. Times have changed, and like you said, people who send death threats have very big issues and they should be punished, but they are without individual power outside that place, unlike before. Even if it seems more toxic, the internet and the internauts are not what they used to be.
@Nick86
So a paywall to stop a huge amount of people from discussing something they enjoy reading to stop a few trolls, you really think it's a good tactic?
@karappo
I believe Zephyrus said they might go over them but would be very lenient in moderating them or something to that effect
though what I do find interesting is that people are reacting so much to just a notice that enforcement will be more active and not new, its like the Police were over at the donut shop instead of out om the beat and now they are out on the beat.
and found it
Now that there is a proper report system for comments, I am able to begin properly enforcing the forums and comment rules. Before, I only moderated what I came across or what someone reported to me via PM. You will see me posting more often, especially on older reports that come to my attention. I might be a bit more lenient on these older comments/posts depending on their content since people may not have been aware that yes, there actually were rules to posting and that there was a mod in charge of enforcing them.
