Would Boing Boing ever implement a “commenter entry fee”?

[anon75430791]

@tinoesroho

HAVE YOU SEEN SLASHDOT COMMENTS?

This. —/\

It does make me wonder what YC news does right, though. Excellent informative comments, with bad actors being shut down very effectively. It basically is what /. could be / may have once been.

[anon75430791]

@Headache

Any moderation system can only act on the comments that are there. It’s like Facebook having some of the most talented software developers on the planet, yet they are making something many of us think is bad.

Facebook’s problem is the one of the “Never ending September”, scaled up to billions of global users instead of thousands rather more regionally.

[cheem]

@orenwolf

I almost feel like we could instead solve the drive-by problem by forcing moderation on all TL0 users, and giving TL4 (or perhaps TL3+) permission to approve first posts only , thereby unsilencing a TL0. That solves the funding issue, and spreads the new-user-approval workload onto the community as a whole.

You mean like the greys in Kinja? I don’t know if that’s going to work… getting out of the greys in Kinja is both easy and hard… if you’re a normal schlub making a first time comment, you’re not gonna get noticed. OTOH, there are probably enough people at TL3 on this BBS that you have one or two believers in freeze peaches that’ll let derails through. Kinda like how trollish assholes and their sock puppets always seem to get out of the greys in Kinja…

[gracchus]

@cheem

You mean like the greys in Kinja?

What’s being proposed is a little different. Unlike Kinja, it would be only the first comment (or the first comment in a couple of years) of a TL0 user and it wouldn’t be visible at all except to TL3+ members. Once they’re past their first comment there aren’t any more greys, just working up through TLs as currently happens.

@cheem

OTOH, there are probably enough people at TL3 on this BBS that you have one or two believers in freeze peaches that’ll let derails through.

There are definitely a few freeze peachers and champions of so-called “unpopular” or “politically incorrect” (e.g. racist dog-whistling, JAQ-off apologism for fascists, disinformation, etc.) opinions at that trust level.* A simple voting mechanism might be in order to offset them. Say it takes 3/3 or 2/3 TL3+ members approving or denying the post to render a decision.

Voting mechanism or not, the main goal would be to reduce the incidence of first-comment drive-bys and hobbyhorse-riders/fanbois and spammers, which are only going to increase during election season.

[* discuss here if you must]

[Skeptic]

@Headache

For example, Jason’s dog recently died and it feels bad clicking on a “like this post” button. A more Boing Boingish button might be a hug button.

I’d love more reaction buttons. A hug button would be a good one, though having extra reaction buttons would actually be bringing Discourse more in line with Facebook

[DonatellaNobody]

45 posts in and they’re not all:

no

no

no

?

[codinghorror]

I’d take a WAG that… 75%? of flags are either drive-by trollies, or spammers. That means 75% of the community time flagging is spent on this issue

Yeah reducing 75% of the flag burden is appealing.

@orenwolf

This second issue - derailing - would indeed be solved by some sort of TL0 approval queue (since their posts wouldn’t be seen), but with the added cost that 1) the community would be approving first-time posts instead of flagging them, and 2) there’d obviously be a delay before first time users’ posts would appear (since they’d need to be approved).

Yeah logistically the $5 commenter fee would be kind of a pain, no doubt about it.

Who would be approving TL0 new user posts though?

The old Civil Comments model (RIP) was for the TL0 users to approve each others’ posts collectively (3 random new users would have to vet each new user post), and that surprisingly does work well. It also puts all the labor on the people who are creating the work in the first place.

That’s not currently possible in Discourse but I’ve always found the idea intriguing.

[gracchus]

@codinghorror

Who would be approving TL0 new user posts though?

If I’m reading him right about community involvement, TL3 and TL4 users would be doing that.
If it’s not a major pain to implement, you could make it a simple process where any (let’s say) three TL3+ people (first-come, first-served basis) could choose to “Approve” or “Deny” or “Hold and Refer to Official Mod” (with text field for explanation). 2-3 Approves and it’s made public (this would be the case with, say, all the new and long-dormant users expressing condolences to Jason about his dog). Anything else and it remains unpublished. The reason for the vote is discussed above.

This would easily get rid of most of that 75%, leaving relatively few borderline cases for the mods to render judgment on. I’m sure you and @orenwolf can refine or improve on this suggestion if you go in that direction.

The Civil Comments model is interesting, but since the main goal is to eliminate all those drive-bys I don’t know if it’s going to work so well – spammers approving other spammers, that sort of thing. Better to work with Trusted members already active and invested in the site and its rules.

[orenwolf]

@codinghorror

Who would be approving TL0 new user posts though?

Yeah, I tend to think TL3+ is probably the right number of people versus the number of new folks joining. Maybe opt everyone in by default but let them opt out of notifications of items in the queue to review?

I don’t know if the quantity of new users is so high that we need to ratelimit users to approving them. not to mention I’m guessing that’d be a whole new thing to code for, versus a new TL0 approval queue tied to trust level is probably a good fit for the new queue model in general?

[anon62577920]

I don’t want us to be Something Awful and worry a fee would. I think a patreon would be a better idea. Maybe set up a forwarding email - patreon folks can get an @bb.net or something addy