Thanks for asking and congratulations on BBS’s meta-caek day. Your willingness to listen to the site’s users is one of the many things that makes this forum the only one I comment in on non-business matters. The other thing I particularly appreciate about the system is how well it supports excellent and thoughtful moderators like @orenwolf and his former colleagues like @falcor. As far as I’m concerned everything is working and the only suggestions I can offer go to the kaizen process made evident by your requests.
The main improvements I would like to see (triviality level of implementation aside) are those that give the mods more fine-tuned analytics and feedback tools to do their jobs (esp. the one Orenwolf describes above to combat the problem you describe here), specifically:
Item 1: That the Ignore User feature you are implementing tie back to the mods’ admin and analytics dashboard and be tied to threshold/alert settings to allow the mods to see when various users of various trust levels are ignoring (and thus refusing to engage with) a particular user, making it easier for the mod to zero in on a potential problem user and perhaps solicit more feedback on why the user is seen that way before taking action.
In order to prevent abuse of such a feature and to encourage open discourse I would further suggest that the number of ignored users per user be capped at various levels based on trust level. I doubt anyone would find this to be a hardship. For example, I currently use the Tampermonkey/Greasmonkey Muting script mentioned here, but the quality of discourse on the BBS is such (thanks to the mods and the system) that at any time I’ve muted fewer than 7 obnoxious and no-value-added users (sometimes including suspected duplicate accounts). On a site of this quality you could cap it at 10 ignored users per TL3 user at any given time with no issue.
On a similar note,
Item 2: A special new flag called “Bad-Faith Argument” would be welcome fine-tuning. This flag option would have a required text element (similar to the current “Something Else”) where the flagger would be required to explain why she believes a particular comment is being made in bad faith. This flag (as I hope others already are) would be tied to the mods’ admin and analytics dashboard so that the mods could determine the validity of the complaint and begin to track patterns of commenters who are acting in a consistently trollish nature on specific topics or across the BBS. If possible such a flag would not autodelete a comment that exceeds the threshold of bad-faith flags but rather put it temporarily on-hold pending a judgment by the mod of the consistency and validity of the flag(s).
In order to prevent abuse of such flag, I would suggest that a limited number of them be handed out each month to users based on Trust Level and that the text element require a minimum number of characters (perhaps the average length of a sentence) to cut down the number of flag cases the mods have to review and provide them with site-policy-based cause to ban anyone who abuses them through other means.
An argument might be made that “Something Else” already does this job, but given the uptick we’ve seen in bad-faith, fallacious, and truth-challenged arguments in larger society I believe that a separate and more specific flag might be useful.
Finally, a bit outside the scope of the discussion and (understandably) most controversially…
Item 3: I would suggest that the tech, moderation, and business management explore the possibility of implementing a very modest annual or perhaps one-time non-refundable fee to give a user the ability to comment at any trust level. Based on other sites I’ve seen that use this system it seems that USD$5-12/year is the standard.
Acknowledging that even a nominal fee may be a hardship for and barrier to entry to many users I would further suggest that any such system must include a sponsorship mechanism so that another paid member might be allowed to cover the costs for a limited number of people (between 1 and 3) who can’t afford it. This might be done through direct requests to individual user or through contributions to a general pool to be distributed by site management on a vetted-request basis.
Based on the other places I’ve seen this working, I believe such a policy and mechanism would immediately eliminate the large number of “drive-by” and casual trolls we’ve seen invading the site in the past year or so via various avenues (troll farms, astroturfers, hobbyhorse searches via FB and Google news alerts, etc.), creating less work for the mods and less needless and tiresome turmoil on the BBS. It would likely reduce the number of duplicate and sockpuppet and ban-evasion accounts on BBS. Finally, it would help fund moderation and development of what most of us agree is a high-quality BBS.
To be clear, I don’t see any of these suggestions silencing those voicing “unpopular” or “politically incorrect” or “edgy” opinions, just ones propounded in bad faith and/or in a consistently disrespectful manner (all too often those doing the latter here defend themselves by claiming they’re being flagged due to one of the former – a bad-faith defense of a bad-faith comment).
Thanks again for five great years. Looking forward to a year 6 of similar quality d/Discourse.
