Slashdot is affiliated with Sourceforge, and its “Terms of Use” link points to the Sourceforge “Terms of Use” site. The rules that the user abides by, according to the Sourceforge terms, are basically that the user must (1) provide true and current information for registration, (2) be responsible for his or her own content used in Slashdot, (3) not post illegal content, (4) “not sell, resell, or offer for any commercial purposes” any portion of Slashdot, and (5) not “abuse site resources or attempt to gain unauthorized entry to the site or site resources.” http://web.sourceforge.com/terms-use
Because the Sourceforge “Terms of Use” does not specifically explain the rules that Slashdot members must follow, I extracted rules (actually social norms) from the Slashdot FAQ in the “Help and Preferences” section. Because Slashdot strives to provide quality content (comments) by filtering out “bad comments,” the implied rules are to (1) not invoke flaming, (2) not be a troll (the troll definition as posted by Slashdot is in Example 3), and (3) stay on-topic. Most of the information on filtering out “bad comments” and trolls are in the “Comments and Moderation” FAQ. I found a few implied rules in the “Accounts” FAQ which are to (1) post under a false identity, (2) not flood the forums with offtopic, flamebait, or troll comments, and (3) not use programs that attempt to disrupt Slashdot servers. http://slashdot.org/faq
2. Three Examples of Broken Rules
Example 1:
For this first example, I extracted the implied rule of not posting under a false identity from the Slashdot Accounts FAQ. http://slashdot.org/faq/accounts.shtml#ac600
Someone is posting under a false identity, or an account designed to look like someone elseI performed a search for users using the keywords “commander taco” which resulted in a list of 90 users. I performed another user search using the keywords “cmdrtaco” which again resulted in a list of 90 users. (90 might actually be the maximum number of results returned from the search routine used by Slashdot) Many of the users that seemed to have malicious purposes did not post anything to their account, submit stories, or post comments. They may have been caught by moderation as described in the above excerpt from the Slashdot FAQ. Possibly because of the Slashdot moderation system, I was not able to find any instances of comments made by imposters to troll a thread of comments.
There are many accounts in the system that were created for malicious purposes. There are dozens of variations on names like 'CmdrTaco' and 'Hemos' as well as heads of many corporations, writers, etc. We don't tamper with existing accounts though, so there's nothing we can do about it. Over the last few years, numerous restrictions have been placed on accounts to make this difficult (for example the system won't let you create an account named 'CmdrTaco' because there already is one listed) but that doesn't prevent any of the hundreds of existing ninnies from doing what ninnies do. In most cases, these folks are caught by moderation, and they eventually get karma that is low enough to make it obvious that they are impostors.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/19/00
False CmdrTaco identity found from "commander taco" search. No activity on account.
False CmdrTaco identity found from "cmdrtaco" search. No activity on account.
Example 2:
The example 2 implied rule of not posting bad comments to invoke flame wars or enrage other members was extracted from the “Comments and Moderation” FAQ. http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm1600
What is a good comment? A bad comment?One of the goals of Slashdot is to “Promote quality, discourage crap” as indicated in the “Comments and Moderation” FAQ. One method that Slashdot uses to filter out bad or off-topic comments as described in the above excerpt is to allow moderators to score comments. The scores are based on a scale of -1 to 5 with 5 being the most positive. Slashdot readers can set a threshold, which allows them to view comments that have a certain score level.
A good comment says something interesting or insightful. It has a link to a relevant piece of information that will add something to the discussion. It might not be Shakespeare, but it's not Beavis and Butthead. It's not off topic or flamey. It doesn't call someone names. It doesn't personally attack someone because of a disagreement of opinion.
Some of my favorite "bad" or off-topic comments are things like "Slashdot sucks!" and "This isn't news for nerds!" and "Moderate this XXX!" Any of these may be true, but they're probably off topic!
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/12/00
Read Slashdot at a threshold of 3 and behold the quality of the comments you read. Certainly you aren't reading a wild and freewheeling discussion anymore, but you are reading many valid points from many intelligent people. I am actually pretty amazed.The forum for the “Intel CPU Privilege Escalation Exploit” story had 3 groups of bad comments that went off-topic. They were in reference to the appearance of Joanna Rutkowska, a security specialist who developed Blue Pill. The parent comments for the three groups are
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 6/26/00
- But more importantly... (Score:5, Funny)
- wow (Score:1, Offtopic)
- Joanna Rutkowska (Score:1, Offtopic)
The “Joanna Rutkowska” group. All comments have a score of 2 and under.Example 3:
The implied rule for example 3, which is to not post offtopic, flamebait, or troll comments was extracted from the “Comments and Moderation” FAQ.
What sorts of anti-troll filters exist?
A handful of filters have been put into place to try to make sure that people don't abuse the system. The most important is that the same person can't post more than once every 120 seconds. Also, if a single user is moderated down several times in a short time frame, a temporary ban will be imposed on that user... a cooling off period if you will. It lasts for 72 hours, or more for users who have posted a ton.
The vast majority of you will never encounter any of these troll filters. If you do encounter one unfairly, let us know so we can fix it. This stuff is fairly beta code, so there are bound to be problems.
Answered by: CmdrTaco
Last Modified: 1/27/02
Moderation Labels for Comments
Offtopic -- A comment which has nothing to do with the story it's linked to (song lyrics, obscene ascii art, comments about another topic entirely) is Offtopic.
Flamebait -- Flamebait refers to comments whose sole purpose is to insult and enrage. If someone is not-so-subtly picking a fight (racial insults are a dead giveaway), it's Flamebait.
Troll -- A Troll is similar to Flamebait, but slightly more refined. This is a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses. A Troll might mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality, to make other readers react with helpful "corrections." Trolling is the online equivalent of intentionally dialing wrong numbers just to waste other people's time.
Answered by: timothy
Last Modified: 2/17/03
As mentioned in the second example, Slashdot strives to “Promote quality, discourage crap.” This includes filtering out trolls and comments that are meant to “insult and enrage” other members. Comments that are meant to “insult and enrage” or “confuse” readers, are specifically labeled “offtopic,” “flamebait,” or “troll” as defined in the Comments and Moderation FAQ. These labels are used to inform other readers of users who are potential trolls or troublemakers. However, many comments labeled as “troll” are posted anonymously as “Anonymous Coward.”
Users may also filter out comments made by trolls or troublemakers by setting their threshold to 3 or 4. Offtopic, flamebait, and troll comments are usually given scores of -1.
I found two instances of “troll” comments in the “Plethora of New User Space Filesystems For Mac OS X” and “Decent DVD-Ripping Solution for Linux” stories. In the Mac OS X Filesystems discussion, the “troll” comment was meant to insult Macintosh users. The “troll” comment in the Linux discussion was meant to insult Linux users by mentioning the faults of using Linux. The “Anonymous Coward” is probably a Macintosh user as suggested by the comment “Be serious and get a Mac.” This post is interesting because it appears that the user intends to provoke Linux users to post defensive comments to his or her insults. Actually, one member at the risk of obtaining a “-1, Offtopic” rating replied to the “troll” comment.
Troll comment from “Plethora of New User Space Filesystems For Mac OS X”
Troll comment from “Decent DVD-Ripping Solution for Linux”
3. Responses by Site Admins and Other Users
For all three examples, I believe that using moderators to help identify trolls and troublemakers is very effective. Using the scoring and threshold systems to filter out distracting and bothersome comments helps to promote quality content. Using moderators allows the site administrators to not have to be concerned with having to remove accounts created by trolls and troublemakers. Trolls and troublemakers are ignored by using the threshold system to filter their comments. Because they are not acknowledged, they tend to not add content after an initial post.
By having site administrators remove false identity accounts and bad content, the offenders may overrun the site, causing it to shutdown. Forums might be over-flooded with bad content. Keeping false identity accounts and bad content allows moderators to identify and filter out offenders and bad content for other members.
4. Relate Examples to Session 7 Readings
According to the Cosely et. al. article, Slashdot is a member-maintained community that uses oversight (using members to review contributions) to moderate posts or comments. As mentioned in the article, members read stories (actually, story submissions by other members) posted by editors and post comments on them. Any Slashdot member may obtain moderator access according to the rules posted in the “Slashdot Moderation” document to score comments. These scores are used to filter out “bad comments.” There is also a Metamoderation system that allows other moderators to moderate moderations. According to Cosely et. al. Slashdot’s distributed moderation scheme hides “low-quality contributions,” allowing quality contributions to “float to the top.” Oversight appears to improve the quality of the viewable content, but I have found groups of off-topic posts that were visible to members with a threshold of 4. However, I’m not certain of reducing antisocial behavior. I believe that many members contribute to Slashdot because they are allowed to post anonymously more than using oversight mechanisms. Being made aware of oversight as in the Slashdot “Comments and Moderation” FAQ, does seem to discourage bad contributions. These bad contributions are ignored and offenders don’t seem to make additional contributions.
Relating the Slashdot community to the Kollock and Smith article, the overall individual goal and overall group goal of the Slashdot member is to filter out bad comments. I believe that despite not having a set of well defined rules, Slashdot is able to successfully filter out bad comments because it uses members as moderators to score comments and identify bad comments and trolls. This allows Slashdot to set the same goal for the individual and group to encourage cooperation to achieve the goal of promoting quality content.
The Gazan – Rogue User article characterizes an online community rogue user. The Slashdot community appears to have identified rogue users as trolls, and has developed a moderation system to identify rogue users and filter out their comments. Flooding was mentioned in the Accounts FAQ, where site administrators will ban a user from Slashdot if he or she floods the forums. Moderators will score comments with abusive language negatively and flag them as flamebait or troll to help Slashdot members to filter these comments. As mentioned in Example 1, members who create “sock puppets” usually have malicious intentions. In addition to the rogue user characteristics mentioned in the Gazan article, I found that a group of rogue users challenged the authority of the site administrators with name-calling and derogatory statements. These members did not post anonymously indicating that they wanted the “rewards of recognition.”
Good post, tomjenni! I find it interesting that although Slashdot allows anonymous (i.e. unregistered) users to post comments on its website, the community there still seems to be in order. However, I believe that given that there are thousands of people visiting that website everyday, if there are only a select few who are moderators and no one else gets a chance to moderate, or even worse, if no one is looking out for everyone else (unlike the person who responded to the troll comment in the “Decent DVD-Ripping Solution for Linux” post), Slashdot may eventually be overwhelmed and taken over by trolls, flamers, or other people who have malicious intentions, and then the community there would no longer be a source of knowledgeable information but rather a cesspool of inappropriate, irrelevant content; and without the filtering system, this issue becomes exacerbated to the point that there is no longer a sense of community on Slashdot. Perhaps CouchSurfing should take the idea of giving everyone a chance to moderate its forums because there are hardly any moderators on them, besides those who created the groups in which the forums reside; also, because the point of CouchSurfing is to build trust between its users, another way of doing so would be to see how well a person keeps inappropriate behavior at bay.
ReplyDeleteWhen a community is allowed to police itself, doesn't it make it more powerful? Even in an online community, there's a way to exert one's values and sense of trust. It seems to me that online communities because they have a sense of anonymity are able to vocalize their concerns to authority or even call each other on rogue behavior. I wonder if in cases where people can meet each other like the MomsLikeMe or CouchSurfing SNS that they feel as free to moderate each others' behavior or language choice. Certainly there's more at risk there if I tell a mom who lives in Ewa Beach to please watch how her children behave. I can see it now....
ReplyDeleteOnline, though, there are so many ways we can be more bold. We can be bold in our misbehavior or our instinct to stop rogue behavior. I suppose I am more likely to tell someone to please behave online than I am to do that in person. In Answerbag, I actually got scoldings for being so uptight about grammar. I didn't mean any harm by my comments, but I discovered quickly that people will tell you what they think of you if you have a misstep. Don't know if that would quite happen in person. The rules of engagement in real life are different.
Slashdot is such a tricky site to be objective about, especially in context of rules. What is flamebait? Where is the line between flamebait and someone who is trying to generate conversation, or has a strong opinion about something? Is there a difference between a democratic user vote or a god-like admin decision? Both are subjective in their own way, but do you trust the masses or the few?
ReplyDeleteAlthough you could easily say that whatever Slashdot is doing, it's working. The community seems to be thriving, and the points filter is a great method (although exploitable) of deciding what you want to see. It's definitely a large community by any measurement, so I think that having more power given to the community and the moderators has really helped the site succeed. Aside from the filtering, all the ignore options available can really discourage griefers, knowing their efforts will probably be wasted or ignored.
karhai > I think the difference between what's flamebait and what's not is tone. If the guy in the Linux thread had expressed himself as "I can't believe there hasn't been a good ripper for Linux by now. Are there any real advantages of using Linux over a Mac?" instead of just ordering everyone to use a Mac he might have had a slightly different response.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting that slashdot, instead of trying to ban or appease the troublemakers, just attempts to filter out the noise. It's not a perfect system, but it seems to work well - even though I've never perused slashdot very much, the verb "to slashdot" has been around for years.
I think the Joanna Rutkowska comment getting by with a positive rating was a fluke. I keep wanting to get into gender studies here, but there are a lot of "male spaces" on the web like Something Awful, 4chan and to a much lesser extent Slashdot where that sort of thing gets praised. I think Slashdot in theory wants to filter that sort of thing out but due to its the majority of its audience being techy males - it doesn't always.
I want to throw this out there and see what people think. Is it easier for a community to self-moderate if their connections are merely online? It seems like for a site such as Facebook, people tend to ignore or not confront content that is posted that doesn't conform to the norms. Could that be because they know that "that's just how XX is" and that this type of behavior is typical of that individual. If the connections are all online, does that make it more likely that users of a forum will self-moderate and inform and enforce the norms of the group? Just curious what people thought.
ReplyDeleteI used to visit slashdot a lot but no longer doing that. I felt like they never changed over the years. Everyday, maybe around 20 new topics are selected by a few priviledged editors. Most of them are old news by the time they are selected. It is not truly moderated by the community because majority of the moderators can't participate in the selection process. The current moderation model maybe working for the original core audience but I think, give it a few more years, it will be hard for the to keep up with younger generation of geeks who grew up with digg, reddit, hacker news, twitter etc.
ReplyDeleteAs I remember from a previous post, Slashdot posts are reviewed by the administration before being posted and the site has a rating system of sorts for use by members. Perhaps, in this very restricted environment, more detailed rules are not needed because ultimately the users do not completely have an influence on what appears on the site. The admin themselves most likely have a detailed code by which to abide-- although that should be public as well. With this in mind it is surprising that there would be content on the site that breaks the rules. Granted, the false identity rule is difficult to impose because it is difficult to prove unless it is something terribly obvious like Hulk Hogan, etc.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if the site has made itself more vulnerable to future legal troubles by not having a more detailed code in place.
Response to BJ Peter DeLaCruz:
ReplyDeleteThanks ☺ Slashdot seems to be doing a pretty good job of keeping the trolls at bay. However, there are a few story submissions that are riddled with off-topic comments. As mentioned in the Coments and Moderation FAQ, the moderation system “is essentially an experiment in trying to solve the problems inherent in mass communication, one would expect its success to be variable, and indeed, this is the case. Some days it works great, and some days it doesn't.” http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm500 I like the idea of allowing the user to set a threshold to filter out as much of the “bad stuff” as they want. I’m sure that you are correct in that only a select few are moderators even though Slashdot claims that anyone can be a moderator.
Response to j_mastin:
Having anonymity does seem to make people bolder in their actions and even communication styles. I guess that’s why most superheroes wear masks. I think that a person tends to not be as bold in real-life because there is a social implication to their boldness. If someone displays the type of rogue behavior observed on SNS’s in real-life, onlookers will immediately identify that person and take direct actions against the offender. If there are no controls to minimize the noise created by trolls, the troll would most likely overwhelm the site because of the difficulty in identifying and banning the troll.
Response to karhai and manda:
The filtering system does seem to be effective in minimizing the noise created by trolls. As manda mentioned, it is not perfect because there are some stories that have numerous off-topic comments even with a threshold set to 4 (5 is the maximum). I think that manda is correct in that tone is the key to defining “flamebait.” I view “flamebait” as a comment that directly intends to invoke an argument. A “troll” comment seems to be one that intends to confuse and enrage. Although, I think that Slashdot uses “offtopic,” “flamebait,” and “troll” to simply flag the troublemakers in general.
Response to lisjennifer:
I think that people do tend to self-moderate in an online setting. As mentioned in the j_mastin post, people tend be more bold online.
Response to DNI:
I too believe that not everyone has an equal chance to moderate as mentioned in the FAQ. I’ve read a few articles indicating that Digg is becoming more popular than Slashdot. I like to browse Slashdot because they post stories that I find interesting. I read the comments just to see what others think about the articles. I should spend sometime browsing the article posted on Digg.
Response to GT:
Slashdot stories are reviewed by the admins before they are posted to the site. Anyone may post comments to the stories, and according to the Slasdot FAQ, comments are not deleted on the basis of content.” http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm200
Great post. I've never heard of slashdot before, but I got a chuckle out of the screen names. Commander Taco, hahaha, too funny. I poked around the site a bit, but I'm not a techie so most of the topics were beyond me. I can see how there would be a lot of bad comments and off topic posts. It seems like they have a good system to filter out as many trolls and rule breakers as possible.
ReplyDelete