[quote=“Wired”]Patient Zero here is Slashdot, the tech site that pioneered one elegant way to police trolls: crowdsourcing. Slashdot has an automated system that randomly picks a handful of readers and gives them, for a day or so, the power to describe others’ comments with terms like “funny” or “off topic.” Those descriptions are translated into a score from -1 to 5. Readers can set their filters so they see only comments with high ratings—and trollery effectively vanishes. One academic study found that the majority of Slashdot readers filter out comments rated 2 or lower. Indeed, the concept of crowd-voting has worked so well that sites as high-traffic as the The New York Times now use it.
Here’s another hack: selective invisibility. It was invented by Disqus, a company whose discussion software handles the threads at 90,000 blogs worldwide (including mine). In this paradigm, if a comment gets a lot of negative ratings, it goes invisible. No one can see it—except, crucially, the person who posted it. “So the troll just thinks that everyone has learned to ignore him, and he gets discouraged and goes away,” chuckles Disqus cofounder Daniel Ha.
My personal favorite innovation is disemvoweling, a technique pioneered by Teresa Nielsen Hayden, who moderates the discussion threads at the geek-culture blog Boing Boing. Whenever Nielsen Hayden encounters a nasty post—an ad hominem attack, for example—she leaves it up but removes all the vowels: y r fckng sshl, for example. The result is incoherent enough that it’s neutered, yet coherent enough that no one can cry censorship. The comment hasn’t vanished.[/quote]
Wouldn’t that just trade tyranny of the select few for tyranny of the masses? The mods have a tough job but I don’t think crowd-sourcing works in every situation. It works on Slashdot for techies because techies tend to be more egalitarian. It also helps when someone is an expert on a particular field that they, and a few others, will contribute and it gets pushed to the top. The other things that get pushed to the top with +5 Funny on Slashdot are rather silly. How do you do that with something that doesn’t have a clear cut answer, such as opinions in IP?
If you aren’t careful you will quickly develop a system full of post retribution. The Slashdot system works with real trolls because most troll posts are really off topic for a technical website. It doesn’t do as well with opinions because it isn’t designed for that; it’s designed to weed the crap that has nothing to do with technology. When it comes to opinions the onus is to side on restraint as long as they fall within the rules and guidelines of the site. It wouldn’t be an extreme view to see a future war on comments. You modded all my comments down because you didn’t like my opinion so I’ll get you back when it’s my turn. In forums like IP and Taiwan Politics, which are the touchy subjects, that will become the norm rather than the exception.
Even if you think AC is a troll, as long as his posts don’t violate site guidelines then they should stay unmodified. Ignore them if you want but hiding them is silly. What happens when it’s his turn for a day or two to be a temp mod? If his posts have constantly gotten -5 off topic, even when he occasionally hits a nugget through all the silt, what is he (or anyone else) going to do? Mod -5 to every post that he disagrees with.
I think the current mod situation is better than trying to implement the Slashdot system.
