On Karma and moderation
One topic that I have not seen mentioned regarding any community is "karma points" the way these are implemented in SlashDot. (A very old "social" website that has not been mentioned).
In SlashDot you can gain or loose karma points by posting or commenting and by your posts being evaluated by others.
As you have more karma you gain privileges within the community, for example to post or help moderate posts.
Moderation, being organic, is carried out by automatic aggregation of moderator responses. Moderators have the choice to comment or moderate, but not both.
Moderation is kept in check by the meta-moderation of moderator's actions.
That way the community itself, by its own actions, sets and cements its own rules.
– I just found out that Reddit also uses them, but I am not sure if it is the same implementation.
– Slack and other technical communities have similar concepts.
– I am not sure about this, but Minds's use of cryptocurrency might have similar characteristics.
https://slashdot.org
One topic that I have not seen mentioned regarding any community is "karma points" the way these are implemented in SlashDot. (A very old "social" website that has not been mentioned).
In SlashDot you can gain or loose karma points by posting or commenting and by your posts being evaluated by others.
As you have more karma you gain privileges within the community, for example to post or help moderate posts.
Moderation, being organic, is carried out by automatic aggregation of moderator responses. Moderators have the choice to comment or moderate, but not both.
Moderation is kept in check by the meta-moderation of moderator's actions.
That way the community itself, by its own actions, sets and cements its own rules.
– I just found out that Reddit also uses them, but I am not sure if it is the same implementation.
– Slack and other technical communities have similar concepts.
– I am not sure about this, but Minds's use of cryptocurrency might have similar characteristics.
https://slashdot.org
Nope. None of the above. I won't judge you if you don't judge me.
ReplyDeleteneither slashdot nor stackoverflow are healthy environments for those not part of the 'in crowd'. If you don't tow the party line, you're turned on by the mob. Nix.
ReplyDeleteEven on a very tolerant site like perlmonks.org, a few have earned the wrath of most users, and are severely downvoted at every turn (sometimes warranted, mostly not).
ReplyDeleteBesides, look what populists have done to recent elections in Europe. perlmonks.org - PerlMonks - The Monastery Gates
This is one of the reasons I am eying Discourse atm...
ReplyDeleteblog.discourse.org - Understanding Discourse Trust Levels
DL Keur The "in crowd" is arguably a better measure than "the corporate owners." In either case, there is a group of people that ultimately decide the feel of the community. It does have its downsides, but at the very least karma points is a way for the community itself to decide what direction to go.
ReplyDeleteAs Winston Churchill once said: Democracy is the best form of government except for all the others.
I would never be welcome to be posting in an alt-right group, but I don't see that as a bad thing.
en.wikipedia.org - Reputation system - Wikipedia
DL Keur
ReplyDeleteThanks for that comment
+Shane Libeling Seems like a well thought-out implementation. But that pricing is rather steep!! Good thing it is open source.
ReplyDeleteEdgar Brown Yeah, looks like you can just DIY and they seem to have the DIY stuff pretty well automated for you as well.
ReplyDeleteEdgar Brown If you, at the present moment, are sold on simple mob/majority rule/simple democracy as the sanest way for viable human community, might I suggest you do some solid historic research on how it actually functions in human societies that adopted it before locking yourself into advocating its adoption. Just a suggestion.
ReplyDeleteapplying any kind of reward/punishment system will skew the opinions given. Makes those opinions worthless to me.
ReplyDeleteDL Keur What is the alternative? The benevolent dictatorship of the G+ model?
ReplyDeleteEither one only works thanks to freedom of association. If I don't like a dictator/junta I can go to a different dictator/junta. If I don't like Google or FaceBook I can go to another platform. If I don't like a community's democratically chosen rules I can go to a different community.
There are only two extremes in that continuum: dictatorship and mob rule. You can add rules restrictions and regulations that move you inside that continuum. "Sanity" is hard to achieve.
As a moderator/owner of a large G+ community, that came to "power" as part of a coup and then had to step down due to a revolution, I wish I had had more democratic tools at my disposal.
Craig Barratt And what exactly are "likes", "pluses", and "page views"?
ReplyDeleteEdgar Brown not punishments that's for sure. I did say reward/punishment
ReplyDeleteI would say the best model, Edgar Brown is one where the least amount of rights, choices, and freedoms are impinged, but that mandate mutual respect, and enforce responsibility for self and to others with do no/incide no physical violence/harm upon any other as prerogative. The republic is a good model, too, as are three basic precepts from my lifeway: 1) the right to exist; 2) the right to self-determination; 3) the right to non-interference. What has historically in human terms worked the best are in fact the republic and benevolent dictatorships. A study of history is always the best teacher in understanding systems that best suit the superpredator human.
ReplyDeleteCraig Barratt Anyone that has been an active member of a properly moderated community in G+ would have seen plenty of punishment being brandied about:
ReplyDeleteA quoting of community rules, a moderator warning, the removal of inappropriate posts, the removal of inappropriate comments, a temporal suspension, or outright banishment.
Or, on the more negative side due to the lack of tools, your leftist posts/comments being marked as "child porn" by alt-right community members (and vice versa).
Regardless of the platform providing the tools, punishment is always an integral part of a community.
Edgar Brown you're missing the point, and honestly I can't be bothered work out how you might need it presented to you.
ReplyDeleteDL Keur We are talking about actual implementations not utopic ones.
ReplyDeleteHow exactly does a "Republic" differ from any of the Karma implementations?
How do countries that are considered "democracies" differ from a republic?
How does a community "elect" a benevolent dictator?
Toy problems, philosophical monsters, and slippery slopes are fine argumentation techniques. But we are talking about the reality of social media communities.
Craig Barratt I understand your point perfectly well. I even agree with it. But you are the one that is deluded in thinking that just because there is not an explicit and obvious punishment mechanism there are no actual punishment mechanisms. Every society (and social media is not exception) has a few.
ReplyDeleteAs Peter Singer said: whatever cannot be said clearly is probably not being thought clearly either.
I often wondered why Slashdot's karma and moderation system wasn't more widely copied. It seemed fairly efficient in separating signal from noise if you read at +2 level or above.
ReplyDeleteJuha Lindfors It is around in different forms, but it always has had to be tuned to the specific community. SlashDot's implementation is perhaps too confusing for the average non-technical user.
ReplyDeleteEven political sites, like the DailyKos use some derivative (I believe the DailyKos started by using SlashCode itself).
Reddit uses some version of it, and this is likely a reason for its popularity.
Edgar Brown In particular, I think the element of randomness and limits on the moderation were efficient design.
ReplyDeleteIf I remember correctly, you were allowed to moderate topics only randomly, and only given a few moderation points to do so.
It wasn't possible for a mob to land on a specific post and +1 or add likes to it endlessly to bring their point of view (undeserved) visibility. It essentially crowd-sourced management of bot abuse often seen on modern social networks, and put a check on the tyranny of the majority, also by limiting the top at +5.
Meta-moderation helped keep poor moderators in check as well.
Complicated it was, but if you didn't want to participate, you didn't have to.
Juha Lindfors I haven't used SlashDot in a long time (or its fork, as the site was sold to someone the team did not agree with). But you are right.
ReplyDeleteYou only had a very limited number of karma points as a moderator or meta-moderator.