Thursday, October 05, 2006



Moderation

A couple of weeks ago the comments to my post on blogs and debate were dominated by discussion of the poisonous atmosphere in blog comments, particularly Kiwiblog, and how it was destroying debate. It seems that DPF agrees. Following in Jordan's footsteps, he has decided to experiment with moderation in an effort to raise the tone of his blog, and is calling for volunteers to do the donkeywork. It will be interesting to see what effect this has, and whether the threat of moderation will encourage a little more politeness from his commenters, or whether they will continue inthe current vein. Though judging from the feedback on the new policy, people don't seem very keen on it at all...

Posted by Idiot/Savant at 10/05/2006 01:39:00 AM

20 comments:

Im actually pretty dubious about David's ability to remain unbiased in his teams moderation...
I expect his options for unbiased moderators are limited anyway.
Still, good luck to him.

 Posted by Genius : 10/05/2006 07:16:00 AM

indeed, considering that many of david's posts are deliberate attempts to inflame argument (witness the 'scrap the 39%' post), i doubt he wants to moderate them too much.

and with many of his commentators being a tiny step above trolls, trolls with links to their blog no one actually reads, it's in no-one's interest to raise the tone too far.

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/05/2006 07:49:00 AM

It's an interesting glimpse into pre-WW1 thinking, a colonial time-warp where they know not what they say or do.

It's beautifully archetypal. With moderation kiwiblog will really mirror the Guards, Prisoner experiment.

I'm keen to see the flip flops and Baby Albert's response to the big fluffy white rabbits that are DPF's little fire-starters.

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/05/2006 08:47:00 AM

There is an opening for a serious political blog:

1. No moderation except for a strict no personal abuse rule.

2. No anoms or noms. Open registered, real names only.

3. A limit of say three comments on any one open thread. Closed threads with unlimited comments could accomodate those who want to engage in longer conversations.

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/05/2006 09:05:00 AM

I do find it interesting that DPF's concern only comes after the Brash stuff that happened a few weeks ago. He hasn't seemed overly worried in the past about toxicity around other (non-National) targets...

Philip - why do you think real names would make a difference? One of the most septic appears to use his real name, (and also how would you know it was real anyway?)

 Posted by Span : 10/05/2006 09:21:00 AM

I think it's great the way it is. I just didn't realize how many people of that type are out there functioning, as it were, in NZ society.
It seems to be a great outlet for them, perhaps they kick their dog less?

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/05/2006 11:16:00 AM

to be honest, some of these people are dog-kickers. the blogging is just a virtual kick to boot.

and span, glad you noticed the Brash stuff too. was it just me, or did the sycophancy rise to new levels on that one?

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/05/2006 01:23:00 PM

I used to post on DPF, but it was a bit like shouting into the wind, so I tired of it.

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/05/2006 02:21:00 PM

Since every left wing person is slowly getting death threats at DPF, I doubt that there will be anyone for rightwing loonies to yell at soon, so there won't be any problem.

I will only comment on largely non-partisan issues now.

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/05/2006 03:42:00 PM

It has got like listening to a dog bark. By driving away the dissenting voices they will have no-one to bark at. Maybe they'll just get bored stroking each other after a while.

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/05/2006 04:26:00 PM

Of that, they will never bore. These types are relentless in their need to continually validate themselves; or they will meet the real person inside themselves, the little afraid one, who is afraid to live and therefore must diminish all other lives, (ref, Mandala..."it is our light that frightens us...").
I think the old fashioned term was, Patriarchy.

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/05/2006 05:03:00 PM

I think it'll be diffcult to fix by moderation, although it'll be a step forward if personal abuse is stopped. The thing that's making it unreadable is the ditto-head factor. There's relatively little actual discussion, and a lot of shouting of the odds and tenuous accusations about "the left".

Among silliest things has been the people who genuinely seem to believe that sonic is being paid by the Labour Party. What he's actually doing is offering a contrary view, knowing it'll wind people up.

If I post something now I usually don't come back to the thread. It's easier than getting drawn into a pointless slanging match.

I like DPF - I lunched with him last week - but he does throw raw meat to the gallery and then stand back.

 Posted by Russell Brown : 10/05/2006 05:57:00 PM

Golly. What's the tipping age where you go from "had lunch" to "lunched?"

 Posted by Sanctuary : 10/05/2006 06:04:00 PM

Show some respect for your elders matey. Us old codgers who bought our copies of "Never Mind the Bollocks" new on vinyl can lunch with whomever we please.

Re DPF's moderation experiment, surely the people who'd volunteer would be the last you'd want moderating comments on your blog? I'm not surprised his regulars aren't keen either - DPF's comments threads are a freak show, it's fun to drop in there now and then for some nude jelly wrestling with the gimps, but there are plenty of other places if you'd like a reasoned debate.

 Posted by Psycho Milt : 10/05/2006 07:47:00 PM

Last week must have been a good one for meeting people. I met up with I/S in Palmy (yes, Virginia, there is culture in the Manawatu) and enjoyed a wide-ranging discussion. Learnt a few things you'll never read on a blog too.

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/05/2006 10:25:00 PM

I left some comments for DPF at the bottom of the post you linked to. I doubt he'll ever see them. On the whole I think some moderation would be better than none and I suspect he's well capable of picking moderators who aren't partisan assholes. If he picked partisans everyone on the "other side" would just leave. The man isn't stupid, just misguided. Actually I'll give him a bit more credit and say that he's misguiding rather than misguided.

So I think it's mainly the ad-hominem weenies and one-issue nutters (and their deluded fans) who will suffer, and everyone else will be pleasantly surprised at the improvement. If the moderation team is slightly biased in how they censor the weenies it doesn't much matter just so long as they leave the people who have a clue alone. If a moderator targets someone clueful for ideological reasons, that's when DPF will have to step in and exercise veto power. If he doesn't, *that's* when the moderation system should be called a failure. IMNSHO.

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/08/2006 04:25:00 PM

Why have a flaming provocative blog if you can't have your attack Dobermans doing your dirty work for you?

DPF is a player and his blog is part of the game. Sadly, it has back fired, you just can't be that paranoid about the Left all the time and expect serious people to take you seriously, even some of the time.

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/08/2006 07:08:00 PM

Just how many ROI inhabitants are there here, anyway?

FWIW, I also found DPF nicer in person than you might expect from watching his blog. Less of the provocation and a little more discussion.

TCA

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/08/2006 09:21:00 PM

DPF is a decent bloke and a hell of a hard worker behind-the-scenes for the Internet (and particularly Usenet, back in the days when it was a viable medium for debate). That doesn't stop him being wrong about things, but being wrong about things isn't exactly a crime.

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/08/2006 09:48:00 PM

I'm not sure how many of the Realmian diaspora look in here. I do from time to time, but I try not to get involved in comments - I tend to take commenting a bit seriously and spend too much time writing when I should be working. Wasted far too much time in the comments section of TimB's blog prior to the election, learnt my lesson then...but I figured I set it up for him I should try and defend him from the nutters, because he was sorta busy running a campaign at the time. Shoulda come up with a coherent moderation policy for him rather than simply making fun of the trolls, but their comments were clearly doing more harm than good for the anti-Tim forces, and I was temporarily playing a partisan role, so I just ripped into them.

BTW Tim say's he'll get back to blogging again, every time I see him, but I think he wants to have a chat with me about it first and I've not been chasing him up because I'm just crazybusy. But once I *finally* launch this project of mine I'll get back to him on that, so, no more than a few weeks. Could be a popular comments forum if run well. Might even enable trackbacks, don't see a lot of that in the nz poliblogsphere so far. There'd have to be a smidgen of moderation to keep the nutters away, because Tim *will* occaisionally blog about "rainbow" issues and thats like a red rag to a bull for some of those nutters. The homophobes appear to be universally hated in our local sphere tho - it's funny to see them get torn into by the right wing on DPF's blog.

I had to think quite hard about whether to set up my own blog, but in the end I decided to stick to issues that were interesting to me but not particularly topical, which means I don't expect to get a lot of comments. However I'll prob get a bit more traffic once I advertise on my old lj, and then a bucketload once we're actually in public beta. My new company will be launching some products soon that will be useful to bloggers so its important for me to at least have a presence, but I'm definitely gonna lay off the hotbutton political issues.

I've heard DPF is a decent bloke, yeah. On social issues he's pretty close to where I stand (which puts him a fair distance from many National MPs), it's just on the economic spectrum where we have different opinions. I look forward to having a chat with him in person some day.

 Posted by Anonymous : 10/09/2006 12:59:00 AM

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