(Un)Exciting Slashdot Notes

The Slash source release is wrapping up. I've decided to get a version out the door before I go to work on moderation stuff. The Look & Feel stuff is pretty much functional now (within reason). Check out Taco Hell or Slash to see how different articles on the same server can look. There are glitches yet, but for the most part, things look pretty good. Hit the link to read some notes on the moderation debates, as well as a few notes about recent changes to Slash.

Allright, a minor change that I made yesterday afternoon was to display just an index of comments on articles that break 100. Those pages were getting to be 500k and downloading them over a modem was terrible. Flat mode still dumps the whole mess. I'm not sure if this is worth doing or not. At one extreme, threaded mode could just display the index, but I figure the 100 comments is a pretty good point to switch to indexed.

Next, and most important is the moderation debate (insert spooky music here). After hundreds of comments, at least as many email, several beers, and some debating with Dave, here is the system that were are planning to implement:

• A Group of Moderators will be chosen. Somewhat arbitrarily. initially this group will be a dozen or so folks that we will try to select from a cross section of readers. It'll be tricky, but if all goes well, the moderators can grow to be a better sample. In the not so distant future, anyone with a user account may have moderator access, but we'll see how that goes.
• Moderators will be given a number of 'credits' each day. This is a limiting factor on how many comments they can modify. This number will probably be related to the number of comments posted, so maybe they will get 1 credit for every 25 posted. These numbers will be soft and variable so we can tweak this as necessary.
• Each comment will have a Good/Average/Bad flag. Moderators can pick one of the 3. Good & Bad cost a credit. Average is just "leave it alone". A "Good" comment gets a point, a bad comment gets one taken away. Comments will all start at 0.
• A 'threshold' will be used to determine what comments get displayed. The article page itself will filter on a varying threshold. Initially it will be 0 or maybe -1. As the number of comments grows, that threshold will increase. Maybe 1 for every 100 comments. Maybe it will just change to 1 after 100 comments and stay there. The idea is that as there are more comments, only the best comments stay displayed on the article page itself.
• The actual comment display stuff will have its own threshold. This will be veriable on the fly, or settable in the user preferences. Users can then decide if they want to see all comments rated higher than 'X'. Default will be zero, the hardcore with time to spare can choose -100. The anal retentive super picky might choose 1 or 2.

The idea here is like this: No comments get deleted. No single person can raise op hell on the comments section. Users can always post, but other users can determine what they want to see. The best stuff will be displayed with the article- this gives us all incentive to write better comments *grin*

As I said, initially we'll have a small group of moderators. As time continues, we'll add more. I'm not exactly sure how moderation access will be appointed, however what probably will happen is any time a comment of yours is given a 'point', it'll be tallied in your user account. When we need new moderators, we'll just find the people with the most points. Theoretically, the people who post the 'good' comments, will become moderators. Ideally they know what makes a good comment, and the comments eventually can be moderated by the most qualified people. The trick will be how many people we need. We'll just start with a small group, and add more as we think we need them I guess.

Sure, there are flaws. But I think this is a pretty dang good system. We'll all get to read just what we want, and hopefully nobody will have to spend 15 hours a day weeding through "I got the First Post" or messages calling other people dirty words.

Please don't email me directly about this unless you can be really short and not expect a reply. I'm sorry that I can't reply to everyone, but I've had hundreds of emails, and I'd rather get the next version of Slash done, then answer the same 5 or 6 questions 200 times. I do read everything though, so if you have something worth saying, don't hesitate.

Clarifications:

• Credits will not be distributed based on the number of comments user "Bob" posts. Comments will be distributed based on the total number of comments posted. So if 500 comments are posted, perhaps each moderator gets 10 Credits. If we have a dozen moderators, 120 possible credits are out, so hopefully, the 60 crappiest/offtopic/offensive comments are demoted, and the 60 best/insightful/wellwritten comments are promoted, and the other 380 remain merely average.
• All of these numbers are pulled out of my butt. A dozen moderators? 10 credits/ 500 comments? Whatever. These numbers will be tweaked until it seems to work.
• Credits are not "status symbols", they merely designate how many comments you can thumbs up or thumbs down. I probably won't even display how many credits you have (except on your own user page which only you can see). They merely are a way to ensure that no moderator goes crazy and demotes a comment a hundred times, or makes every KDE comment lose one point in a gnome KDE flame war. This is all designed to distribute the load, and sort of enforce that the load is distributed. Nobody can do a lot of damage. Of course, it is kind of a mean restriction for really good moderators who really are impartial. Of course, ideally, all moderators will be like that.