After weeks of hard work, I would like to introduce you to version 1.0 of the “OSAlert Style Guide: Rules and Guidelines for Publishing and Participating on OSAlert” [.pdf]. Read on for some small notes on what this actually means.The Style Guide was created because we noticed we rarely, if ever, received contributed articles in the proper format, let alone with the correct html code. We did have article guidelines, but apparantly, they were not clear enough, or not located easily enough.
This guide deprecates these article guidelines, and our commenting rules have been updated as well; they badly needed fixing as they have remained unchanged for more than five years. They did not take into account more recent developments such as our moderation system, the killing of the forum, and so on. The online version of our rules has been updated to reflect the changes.
Also in this guide are the rules of our moderation system, as in, when to vote a comment up, when to vote it down, that sort of thing. Also included is a section on recommendations: what do they mean? What consequence does a recommendation have? All these questions, and more, are answered in the Style Guide.
This guide covers both OSAlert editors as well as news submitters and third party authors. If you adhere to the Style Guide while writing your article or while submitting your news, chanches are increased they are accepted without a hitch.
If you look at the bottom right of the front page of the style guide, you will notice it says “v1.0, January 2007, OSNv3 edition” – the Style Guide is the first step in a complete overhaul of OSAlert, which goes far beyond just this guide. OSAlert is in the process of a complete rewrite; something we call ‘OSAlert v4’. Where v3 was a massive overhaul on the OSAlert backend (moderation, reccomendations, registration, etc.), v4 will be a complete rewrite of the frontend, with lots of new features, detailed in Adam’s blog. The screenshot to the left shows a current snapshot of version 4 on the development site.
To enable other websites or publications to use this style guide as a base to write their own, the document is licensed under the Creative Commons ‘Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5‘ license. This means you are free to redistribute and/or alter this document, provided you credit the original author, and keep the original license in tact. Commercial use is allowed. If you want an editable copy of this document (.doc or .docx), please email me or the OSAlert-crew list.
If you encounter any errors in the guide, such as spelling or grammar mistakes, feel free to post them in the comments section.
“v1.0, January 2006, OSNv3 edition”
But it’s… 2007 already!
Hahah that slipped my mind completely. Thanks, fixed.
Too bad recommendation system cannot be used to improve the quality of articles appearing on OSAlert. It better be. And there also should be a way to vote the article down. Editors will get instant feedback, and there’s really no need to showcase it, just to use it for quality’s sake.
I’m not against this. Is this something other readers would like to see?
Edit: I also agree with Eugenia below. People do often get polarized and vote by agreement vs. quality.
Edited 2007-02-12 22:07
I provided commentary and suggestions about such a system (Good/Bad Journalism) but the rest of the team didn’t provide any feedback on the ideas).
“Recommendations are ambiguous; What part of this am I recommending? The article, the linked article, the idea or event? And who am I recommending to? Why can I not-recommend something? A better way of doing this would be to express in the shortest way possible something to say about the article, that’s not self-centric. I think articles should have links for “Journalism? Good or Bad”. Thus we can state simply if we feel that an article is misinformed, trolling, or of poor quality; but importantly, it’s asking us to rate the quality of the news, and not just whether I like something or not – because as we’ve seen on digg, poor quality articles get on the front page because of the abiguity of ‘Digging’ something.”
I don’t think re-organising the order of articles based on user response is the right thing to do, but the ‘recommend’ system is very weak and pointless atm.
I agree. With current system, I might think that an article is well written and worth reading but disagree with the sentiment of the writer. I might want everyone to read to such an article so that they will debate the issue in the comments section. However, given such an article, I might be reluctant to ‘recommend’ the article and to endorse it by associating my name with it.
Perhaps a rating system with more than one field is the answer?
Also, when the system was introduced, I never bothered with it as I assumed that ‘recommending’ the article would mean emailing my recommendation to someone. Perhaps ‘vote’ would be a better term than ‘recommend’.
This was the original take, look here for example:
http://osnews.com/story.php/13241/Interview-with-Synfigs-Robert-Qua…
It didn’t work well. People were only “Voting” for the articles they served their own zealotry purposes for.
This is why we removed the “voting” thing, and we introduced the “Recommend” thing. This is not going to change back.
People do often get polarized and vote by agreement vs. quality.
It has crossed my mind a few times that the “Score:” part of a post should be split into
“Agree:” and “Quality:” (or suitable names).
They will not honor this. If for example if an article is anti-apple the Apple fans they will vote “no” and 1/10. This will be the case for 90% of the time. Humans are like that…
Maybe. But I was thinking about comments rather than articles though.
I don’t personally agree with this. Besides, the articles will be out in the open via RSS, so even if locally an article is modded down, people will still have it in their RSS readers.
It will also be abused depending if a person is anti-apple or pro-apple (for example). Modding articles is a bad idea. OSAlert is not digg.
Edited 2007-02-12 22:06
I agree, I would rather be the judge of what I think is worth reading rather than my peers deciding for me. If it’s news it’s news, besides Thom’s PDF clearly states that the goal of OSAlert is not to be biased so no reason to open the doors for it and we all know deep down someone is going to mod down stuff other folks think is interesting and worth a read.
’nuff said.
Digg has this problem because people who aren’t trusted can start voting things willy-nilly. This encourages wide-spread abuse. Here, it would go south immediately; especially since the the OS debate is such a polarized argument.
Exactly! Well said!
Modding articles is a bad idea. OSAlert is not digg.
I completely agree. Digg is good at what it does, OSAlert should keep doing its own thing.
I personally think the recommendation feature should stay as it is.
No .odf?
I miss the forum. It didn’t seem that busy but it was still interesting to read. Just being able to comment on stories lacks a certain sense of “community”.
It had a number of security holes, so we took it down IIRC. This is why we don’t use third party source code anymore, neither we share ours. Better safe than sorry.
Edited 2007-02-12 22:12
OSAlert Editor In Open Source Is Insecure Dev Model Scandal.
Stay tuned. I promise you’ll like one of the features I already built into v4.
V4 is looking good. You might want to password protect the dev site tho, or do some better blurring of the screenies on your site, unless you want the public to view it
Will v4 continue to proactively hide OSAlert features from browsers like Links that would work perfectly fine were they not being explicitly singled out by the current OSAlert code?
There’s nothing more frustrating than having to hack my browser in order to get the site to work properly. If you folks would leave it alone, it would just WORK.
Such as….??
A comment that contains an unpopular opinion should not be voted down, but rather, should warrant a response. The "vote down‟ function should be used sparingly to demote comments that do not add to the conversion and/or contain offensive or personal attacks.
How will this problem be solved this time?
A comment that contains an unpopular opinion should not be voted down, but rather, should warrant a response….
[i]How will this problem be solved this time?[i]
It won’t. It’s a losing battle to fight moderation abuse on websites. But we will be implmenting better rules and eventually, metamoderation/peer moderation review.
You know Adam, you could add an icon that shows who moderated a post.
I disagree. Voting should be anonymous. Besides, if an admin will vote -5 for a bad comment, it is 100% certain that the user will start spouting ugly stuff against that editor/admin, trying to make the admin look bad or biased or whatever.
Edited 2007-02-12 22:35
That comment would most probably be deleted.
Not that I disagree with you about anonymous voting, but if you’re worried about someone calling you an asshat because you nuked their post to -5 just because you disagree, well maybe you shouldn’t be doing that.
No way. That encourages people to retaliate. I can’t think of any site that allows you to see who modded you.
But feel free to try to convince me… I’ll be open minded.
No way. That encourages people to retaliate. I can’t think of any site that allows you to see who modded you.
I don’t see the connection towards “retaliating.”
IMO it would encourage less emotional moderating. Which is the problem. People operate on thinking that being anonymous they can do whatever they FEEL like. It would also cut the number of pre-school comment.
Just look at OSAlert as it is today, ronaldst. There are a lot of “Why was my comment modded?” kind of posts, including ones from you. This sort of thing will only INCREASE if you allow people to see who modded them.
This will NOT be a feature on OSAlert as long as I am around. As simple as that. I’m fairly flexible on new features, but this is a 100% no-go.
Thom, transparency is usually a good thing. There are people here who vote comments up and down but pretend that they did not vote your comment. Being transparent gives you a sense of responsibility because people see what you do.
I think the modding system should be transparent and show who is modding you up/down.
That is true. I browse OSAlert at -1, so I see a lot of those questions, and usually they are non-constructive, annoying and more likely than not, the cause of a flamewar. I would almost make it a seperate reason to mod question down, but usually it is covered by offtopic.
I DO notice that I find it very hard to consequently moderate OSAlert, even though I have plenty of mod-points. It is a chore that demands a lot more concentration than just filtering as I read.
A lot of reactions aren’t wrong per se, it is just that they are slightly polarizing or don’t have much news to offer compared to other posts in the thread, and not even slashdot, with years of metamod experience has completely fixed that, even though their signal to noise ratio is bearable these days.
I am goofing off, ranting now, but I have thought a bit about moderating systems, on forums, and within games and it is tough material.
Maybe posts shouldn’t have a score displayed, but just a colour that ranges from red to green. Moderators just get the option to moderate up or down once, and metamoderation of samples would have to judge if a person tends to judge from a standpoint of agreement or a standpoint of quality (or sense of humor, that is important too sometimes).
People who have high quality posts and votes will flip the scales more easily, while people will retain a sense of democracy. I will try to write up a bit more in the train if you like.
No, the problem is that VERY rarely do people post something they believe should be modded down, and therefore, when it is, they will check who modded them and remember the name as an enemy.
Call me cynical. That’s how I see it.
Anyway, I gave you my suggestion. It’s your site. It’s your decision. I believe that it would put a dent in the flamebaiting problem. And help clean up OSAlert from the Slashdot crowd that has moved in.
Print the person’s home address and photo too. That way the retaliation might spill over into real life. A real life flame war killing incident would put the OSAlert’ traffic stats through the roof!
Seeing who modded what is utterly pointless and will only create a whole slur of posts about “why did you mod me?” and more of that nonsense. There is absolutelty NOTHING to gain from seeing who modded who.
I agree, but perhaps there is something to gain from the system checking who is modding whom. For example, there have been occasions where I replied to a comment in disagreement, this was interpreted (presumably by the person to whom I replied) as a personal attack, and the post was modded down. I don’t have a problem with this. But then this person (presumably) went through the rest of the comment section and modded down my other posts, even though they didn’t have anything to do with him, and they had been modded up by other readers.
Some suggestions for reasonably simple to implement moderation rules, to be applied on a per-story basis:
1) You may not mod the comments of a user who replied to you
2) You may not mod a comment to which you replied
3) You may not reply to a comment which you modded
Rule 1 directly addresses the situation described above. It eliminates the ability to retaliate against a known user via anonymous modding.
Rules 2 and 3 have to go together, since the lack of one provides a loophole for the other. The idea comes from Slashdot. Basically there are two ways to respond to a comment, either by replying or by modding, but not both.
I think that these rules, especially Rule 1, will significantly decrease the abuse of the mod system.
It won’t. It’s a losing battle to fight moderation abuse on websites. But we will be implmenting better rules and eventually, metamoderation/peer moderation review.
I agree, meta-moderation *would* be a welcome feature.
Why do we need comment moderation at all? This feature is so abused that I always browse at -5 just because I’d easily miss a comment that was voted down due to opinion. There is no spam here, and the few trolls don’t care about their score anyway.
I’m glad you’re happy browsing at -5. But most users don’t. So you can ignore moderation and be happy, and the users that use their threshold to filter out noise can use it and be happy.
Where’s the problem?
“I’m glad you’re happy browsing at -5. But most users don’t.”
Really? That’s actually kind of suprising. I would expect most people to browse at -5 by default just so they don’t “miss anything.” That’s why I do it. Got any numbers? I’d be interested in knowing when a comment will generally stop being seen.
> SELECT AVG(threshold) from `users`
———————-
| AVG(threshold)
———————-
| -1.1832
———————-
> SELECT threshold, COUNT(threshold) FROM `users` GROUP BY threshold
———————————-
| threshold | COUNT(threshold)
———————————-
| -5 | 597
———————————-
| -4 | 18
———————————-
| -3 | 56
———————————-
| -2 | 112
———————————-
| -1 | 10263
———————————-
| -0 | 166
———————————-
| 1 | 66
———————————-
| 2 | 25
———————————-
| 3 | 31
———————————-
| 4 | 6
———————————-
| 5 | 10
———————————-
There you have it – just over 5% use -5 as a threshold, a very far cry from “most people.”
So the answer to your question is: at -2, only about 7% of readers will see your comment. Which is about what I’d expect. Most people want crap filtered out, and that is WHY we added a mod system.
(You’ll need to view the source if you want a pretty version of the query results, I can’t do pre tags in the comment.)
I’d say that the majority of people who bothered to adjust their threshold (597>490) chose -5 — like me
.
I’m glad you’re happy browsing at -5. But most users don’t. So you can ignore moderation and be happy, and the users that use their threshold to filter out noise can use it and be happy.
Where’s the problem?
Here’s the problem.
The problem is in your assumption that browsing at a higher score filters out noise. It doesn’t necessarily work well. Like a spam filter it often contains false positives, simply because people often moderate emotionally. Important posts that give coherence to a thread (but happen to be unpopular viewpoints) are filtered out.
How is this a problem? OK, so there is abuse, but on the whole, the system works well.
I did a quick review of your comments. Only a few of your comments were modded down, and in most of them, you are complaining about being previously modded down. As the Style Guide mentions, this is not useful, or interesting to read. So is calling people OSS Fundies, or Fanatics.
I don’t see that you CAN have a review system without some abuse, the osnews system is pretty good, IMHO.
I just wish that it started at 5 out of 10. This would mean that people could mod you down because they disagree with you.
As it stands, the system is non-symmetrical in that you can mod up for agreement but you can’t mod down for disagreement. This leads to misuse. I often see comments that have been modded down even though they break non of the rules. I’m sick of seeing posts modded down simply because they are critical of Linux or RMS, for example.
I agree 100%.
I’ve read threads about Linux DEs where there the tone of the posts were at KDE vs GNOME posts charging at each other and yet every poster had a score of 5.
Edited, for being an off-topic rant caused by mis-reading the original commenter.
Edited 2007-02-12 23:59
I often see comments that have been modded down even though they break non of the rules. I’m sick of seeing posts modded down simply because they are critical of Linux or RMS, for example.
So mod them back up. I routinely do this for posts I think have been modded down unfairly and I don’t think I’m the only one doing this.
As it stands, the system is non-symmetrical in that you can mod up for agreement but you can’t mod down for disagreement. This leads to misuse.
Here I somewhat agree. Misuse is a bit too strong of a word, but perhaps OSAlert could use a “-1 overrated”-option (maybe only available for modding down to a score of 1.) Could make for more balanced scores.
When it’s good, don’t change it. I like OSAlert look and feel. I don’t think it will be better if you change it.
Consider one such rule. Unbiased and balanced presentation of news is stated as a central goal, and yet Rule 11 prohibits criticism of editorial policy in comments. Assuming the editors are sincere, I suspect they underestimate the elusiveness of that goal.
Limiting criticism to emails via Rule 11 ensures that OSAlert will not approach the goal for two reasons. First, a comment reminds readers that the goal is indeed important. Second, and more importantly, a comment distributes the burden of media criticism. The biases and imbalances that have already occurred on OSAlert have been spotted by too few readers, and there are so many reasons why more readers should learn by example about how to read critically that the editors come to their senses and get rid of Rule 11 pronto. Short of this, OSAlert will continue to be seen with suspicion.
Edited 2007-02-12 23:03
Consider one such rule. Unbiased and balanced presentation of news is stated as a central goal, and yet Rule 11 prohibits criticism of editorial policy in comments.
Criticism of editorial policy is usually off topic. Hence, it is not allowed.
The biases and imbalances that have already occurred on OSAlert have been spotted by too few readers
Or, OSAlert is simply very unbiased and balanced, and there is little to spot.
Edited 2007-02-12 23:00
Criticism of editorial policy is usually off topic. Hence, it is not allowed.
If it directly involves the news story commented upon, it is on-topic.
Or, OSAlert is simply very unbiased and balanced, and there is little to spot.
Or, somewhere in between. The asymmetry of power in the media will keep me skeptical.
Here’s the secret link: http://v3.osnews.com/
Please keep it secret.
This was never a secret link.
What about this one? http://v4.osnews.com/
This was just an early test by a third party AFAIK. This is NOT the site that Adam is working on. It shares no code or looks with what is going to go live in the coming months.
Edited 2007-02-12 23:03
Old and very outdated. Irrelevant. Not even close.
Keep trying though.
That is not the link to the v4 code. That was a non-functional mockup.
The v4 code is near complete. I am using it full time and writing in it right now.
Do you need any beta testers? I’d gladly volunteer my time.
Great, innit. ‘tho I would really like some inline JS-AJAX style comment adding, or is that still to come? That would be really cool, so that you could read the thread that you were replying to.
Also, how do I customize my avatar?
Ste
Good job on the updated Style Guide. Also, I can’t wait for the new site to be online (call me cheesy, but I’m looking forward to having a little picture icon next to my name…
It serves no real purpose, it just provides intellectual masturbation for the insecure who need sycophants to agree with their agenda (e.g. “Microsoft is shit. Everything they do is shit. Linux does everything perfectly”, “Apple rules and invented everything, which is then shamelessly copied by everyone else”, “Linux is crap. Open source is communism.”, etc. etc.)
Conversely, those who don’t support the prevailing agenda in a thread get unfairly modded down, whether their post is balanced and respectful or otherwise.
OSAlert was so much better before modding. People should be able to ignore the flamebait without needing a nanny-system to hide it from them.
…And you can. Set your threshold to -5 and moderation is gone.
…And you can. Set your threshold to -5 and moderation is gone.
…but it isn’t. It doesn’t stop the endless (sometimes justified) posters whinging about abuse of the modding system. Removing this system will prevent people from playing ‘the modding game’ and provide one-less distraction from addressing the content of the article.
I’d never come across moderation on a forum before OSAlert – quite frankly, the point of it eludes me. I certainly wouldn’t miss it. I also don’t see why people are encouraged not to mod someone down for merely disagreeing with them, yet they can freely mod someone up for merely agreeing with them.
I have my moderation set at -5, because often a thread will simply not make sense if the modded-down posts aren’t visible.
The moderation system is no substitute for active and conscientious administrators keeping people’s flaming and trolling in check.
I just modded you up simply because I agreed with you
I’d never come across moderation on a forum before OSAlert
I guess you’d never been to Slashdot before…moderation is used in quite a few popular site…I think people are making too big a deal out of this.
The moderation system is no substitute for active and conscientious administrators keeping people’s flaming and trolling in check.
As the editors have stated before (even in this thread, I believe), they simply did not have time to go through all threads to weed out the flamebait and trolling, which was much more pervasive when there was no moderation…
It seems moderation has worked, because there is a lot less flamebaiting now. That alone is reason enough to keep it, IMHO.
It seems moderation has worked, because there is a lot less flamebaiting now. That alone is reason enough to keep it, IMHO.
Yeah, the flamebaiting has just been replaced/augmented by people winging about how they have been unfairly modded down or someone else was unfairly modded up.
Yeah, the flamebaiting has just been replaced/augmented by people winging about how they have been unfairly modded down or someone else was unfairly modded up.
That’s already a lot better…and since complaining about moderation is off-topic (except in threads like this one), it gets moderated down as well. In other words, the system works!
I don’t agree about the “doing away with the modding system” but I agree 100% on this:
“I also don’t see why people are encouraged not to mod someone down for merely disagreeing with them, yet they can freely mod someone up for merely agreeing with them.”
I understand that the purpose is to encourage discussion and I follow the “don’t mod down just because you disagree” rule but seriously, there are posts that are not worth responding to (flamebaits), yet by being on-topic and “polite” they can’t (in theory at least) be modded down by ‘valid’ reasons, even if they should. Yet they can be modded up with no second thoughts.
there are posts that are not worth responding to (flamebaits)
That what I’ve been missing at the downmod options, the simple “flamebait” option as they’re often not personal attacks or contain offensive language.
Sometimes I’d like to mod a flaming post down, but the current 4 options just don’t work as I’d be lying about the reason why I mod down.
That’s true, but fortunately flamebaits are often off-topic. Not always, though. A “flamebait” option would indeed be appreciated, however there is a risk of abuse. I think “flamebait” can only work with meta-moderation.
There is another potential for abuse, and that’s sockpuppet accounts. I don’t know what you can do about those, however. Ultimately, it’s impossible to completely stamp out abuse of *any* comment system, nor is it possible to completely get rid of flamebaiting or trolling…however, you can always improve on things and I think OSAlert has made some noticeable progress in that regard.
It’s really simple. The moderation system has two large benefits:
I) There is now less trolling on OSAlert than before. Comment quality has risen. It’s obviously not perfect, but it IS better than without the moderation system.
II) Having a peer moderation system means we editors do not have to spend hours on end each day on moderating comments. OSAlert is a voluntary effort, and hence we do not wish to do tedious tasks like this. Other than that, editorial moderation opens up a whole Pandora’s Box worth of problems in itself (accusations of censorship, etc.).
Taking I and II in consideration, there is absolutely NO chance we will EVER discard of peer moderation in favour of editorial moderation. This discussion concerning discarding it is absolutely POINTLESS.
Taking I and II in consideration, there is absolutely NO chance we will EVER discard of peer moderation in favour of editorial moderation. This discussion concerning discarding it is absolutely POINTLESS.
I don’t agree with (i), but I do sympathize with (ii). Since you made your point so elegantly, I WILL CEASE THIS POINTLESS DISCUSSION
(It’s funny, though, I never thought that the OSAlert staff had ceased their editorial moderation (just reduced it), so the discussion was never really about choosing one over the other).
Edited 2007-02-13 18:26
Oh, look I see your points there, but what I still have trouble with is voting people above 1 – I agree that offensive, malicious, off-topic or trollish comments should able to be voted down if editorial moderation is not feasible – the case for that has been made quite thoroughly, but I don’t think people should be able to vote things above the default level. I don’t see what purpose voting people above 1 actually serves, other than to indicate the apparent popularity of various posts.
OSAlert was so much better before modding. People should be able to ignore the flamebait without needing a nanny-system to hide it from them.
I disagree…comment quality has gone up since the moderation system has been introduced, and trolls are much less common. Sure, sometimes people get moderated for no good reason, but the posts are usually moderated back up by other, more reasonable mods.
I’ve been here for quite a while now, and let me tell you it was much worse before moderation was introduced.
I disagree…comment quality has gone up since the moderation system has been introduced, and trolls are much less common. Sure, sometimes people get moderated for no good reason, but the posts are usually moderated back up by other, more reasonable mods.
I’ve been here for quite a while now, and let me tell you it was much worse before moderation was introduced.
Well I’ve been here quite some time now too and I disagree with you.
How about you mod me down? !-)
Well I’ve been here quite some time now too and I disagree with you.
You’re welcome to disagree…although I *was* here before you (and in fact some time before we could create user acccounts), and in my recollection there was much more trolling back then.
How about you mod me down? !-)
Why would I do that? You haven’t been abusive, offensive or off-topic, so I have no reason to moderate you. You’re welcome to disagree with me…after all, it you want to be wrong about this, you’re free to do so.
You’re welcome to disagree…although I *was* here before you (and in fact some time before we could create user acccounts), and in my recollection there was much more trolling back then.
I’m not sure you can know who was here first, only who created an account first (and I was a passive reader long before that), but honestly, I don’t care. It’s irrelevant. I don’t think the moderating works because:
1) It’s abused. Frequently.
2) The same flamebait posts occur, but now they are accompanied by “boo hoo I was modded down” posts and smug “I’m gonna mod you up/down for that” posts.
I recently read a thread that consisted of many posts, mostly people responding to NotParker who really did litle more than defend Windows on a number of points and was responded to with down-modding and (hollow) threats of violence to his person. The modding was not in his favor at all, but taking the entire thread holistically, he held the moral highground and maintained mostly-cogent arguments whilst his detractors descended into personal insults and complaining. In my view, the modding system, just gave a group of zealots the opportunity to browbeat someone they didn’t agree with.
The fact that I now can’t recall even the subject of the thread (in order to link to it), says a lot about how distracting this system is.
Edited 2007-02-13 17:42
1) It’s abused. Frequently.
2) The same flamebait posts occur, but now they are accompanied by “boo hoo I was modded down” posts and smug “I’m gonna mod you up/down for that” posts.
1) I disagree. I think abuses are rare, and could easily be handled with meta-moderation, which is possibly in the works, if I understand correctly
2) Most people seem to agree that there is less flamebait, therefore it has a positive effect, and off-topic posts about moderation are themselves moderated (unless they are in an appropriate thread, such as this one), which all goes to show that the system works
I recently read a thread that consisted of many posts, mostly people responding to NotParker who really did litle more than defend Windows on a number of points and was responded to with down-modding and (hollow) threats of violence to his person. The modding was not in his favor at all, but taking the entire thread holistically, he held the moral highground and maintained mostly-cogent arguments whilst his detractors descended into personal insults and complaining.
Well, I can see why you don’t like the moderation system if you think NotParker held the moral high ground. While he *sometimes* posted reasonable messages (I’ve even modded him up a couple of times), the vast majority of his posts were either a) personal attacks (he would basically accuse anyone that did not agree with him of being cultists) or b) off-topic (where he would try to sidetrack the debate to create flamewars).
Also, the “threats of violence” against him were blown *way* out of proportion…that you would even mention them suggests to me that you were biased towards him, perhaps because you both shared the same views about Windows. Even if you *did* share the same views, that is not a reason to condone his trolls, flamebaits and personal attacks.
The geist of your criticism seems to rely on the assumption that pro-Windows posters get unfairly modded down because of their views, not because they abuse the OSAlert rules of conduct. This, however, can easily be disproven. Look a some dedicated pro-Windows posters, such as n4cer or MollyC. Despite the fact that they consistently post pro-Windows news, they do so in a respectful and (mostly) non-controversial manner. As a result, not only are their posts not modded down much, they are often modded up, giving them above-2 trust ratings.
If what you were implying was true, then these two posters (among others) should have low (or even negative) trust ratings, like NotParker had.
I’m sorry to say that using NotParker as a poster child will only reinforce the notion that the moderation system actually works!
P.S. The NotParker thread can’t have been that recent, since he was banned quite some time ago.
Edited 2007-02-14 03:02
I’ve been hanging around for about 4 years, and have been a member since 2005, and I have to say, it’s alot better than it used to be
Edited 2007-02-13 17:20
You are one of the biggest Linux fanboy so no wonder you are happy with the comment quality because it is 90% of the time pro-Linux.
I believe the current modding system supresses the voice of minority.
Edited 2007-02-13 04:23
Tsk tsk. Again with personal attacks…
This is why you often get modded down, CrazyDude0 (and they after that you go whining about it). If you stopped attacking those who disagree with you, and offer counter-arguments instead of insults, then perhaps you’d see that your posts would be rated up instead of down.
I believe the current modding system supresses the voice of minority.
Not at all. Every one is free to express him/herself. Even your ad hominem attacks are not deleted, people can still easily read them. (As an aside, it’s kind of funny to see a pro-Windows user complain about being the “voice of minority”…)
As I said, stop insulting people, or posting off-topic rants, and you’ll see the modding system works quite well.
“Conversely, those who don’t support the prevailing agenda in a thread get unfairly modded down, whether their post is balanced and respectful or otherwise.”
I agree.
A clear example of what can happen was this thread:
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=17223
Some users were expressing concern that Ubuntu might be overwhelming every other Linux distribution. At first they were modded up, clearly their concern was being shared by others.
But then the horde of Ubuntu zealots descended and the situation was reversed. That was particularly obvious with the opinions of user melkor, who went from +5 to -1
So once again, you are modded up or down because of your opinions.
Could you add some clarification on the following issues?
The expected style of section headings and sub headings.
More detail about the expected quoting style. Is the quoting style for teasers the expected quoting style for the main article body?
One tiny correction:
“original license in tact” – in the final license declaration.
The expected style of section headings and sub headings.
They can be seen in the article example; main titles are put in bold, minor titles can be italicised or underlined. hX tags are not allowed (hence, they are not in the “allowed” box in the guide).
More detail about the expected quoting style. Is the quoting style for teasers the expected quoting style for the main article body?
Yes.
One tiny correction:
“original license in tact” – in the final license declaration.
I don’t see the error…?
original license in tact vs. original license intact
<…>article or while submitting your news, canches are increased they are accepted without a hitch.
A twelve page style guide for OSAlert? I see that a few pages are dedicated to comments. Isn’t this a little excessive? I don’t have the time to read all this.
Only half of the pages are dedicated to the style for article writing, and it’s easy to fly by fast.
I must admit that I was surprised that the bulk of the document was about comment writing style. It could be slimmed down and made more concise. I felt honor bound to read the entire thing before commenting on the document but as it stands, the comment rules section is too long to expect everyone to read.
~4,500 words isn’t bad for a comprehensive website content policy. The 12-pages thing is really made up of:
1 Title page
1 Comment Page
9 Contents pages @ ~14point text
1 Summary/License page.
The text is well written, you can skim-read most of it.
I’m curious, at a quick glance I notice that the new layout seems somewhat more flashy than the old…will it still degrade gracefully on clients like a sidekick or other platforms where javascript/css support can be a bit more limited?
Hi Rene (how is it going? haven’t seen you around lately),
the new site will work with *mobile/text/embedded* browsers and will look like the mobile site we currently serve to such browsers (we use autodetection).
BUT, for legacy desktop browsers, like from NeXT, BeOS, Dillo, IE3, Amiga, Atari, Netscape 3/4, MacOS 8/9 the new site will NOT work well. We are dropping good support for these legacy browsers.
To use the new site fully (apart from simply reading the articles), you will need JS and CSS support on your browser.
Edited 2007-02-13 01:18
Ah… So OSAlert is a site about non-mainstream OSes and such, but you have to use one of a small list of mainstream browsers in order to participate.
What ever happened to the use of HTML 4.01 Transitional (which is supported by the universe)?
Why all of this CSS crap? OSAlert is a TEXT DISCUSSION site!
Edited 2007-02-13 14:50
Ah… So OSAlert is a site about non-mainstream OSes and such, but you have to use one of a small list of mainstream browsers in order to participate.
This comment just goes to show you can never make anyone happy, and no matter what we choose, there is always someone upset or angry with the choice.
The new site will degrade well enough on older browsers to use for browsing the site well enough; someone features will not be present, such as moderation. Then there is always the mobile site, which will allow non-full browsers to use the site as well.
It seems to, the layout is pretty much basic CSS-oriented HTML, and I’m writing this in v4, in FF2 with Javascript turned off.
There are separate handheld and print stylesheets, and it degrades as well as anything with CSS turned off.
Seems to be pretty solid WRT compatibility.
As I said, to *fully* use the site, you will need JS and CSS. For example, you can’t moderate a comment if JS is not ON.
Oh yeah. I’m not an expert obviously.
But that (non-JS modding) is something that is easy to add, no? Just with some (A)links that turn into SPANs, or with JS event canceling? I appreciate that all these back-hacks are a major PITA to implement tho.
Hi,
I’m just writing a new article for osnews, so your rules just came out at the right time :-).
1. Please when you recieve an article, just a short mail, to the author knows that the article has been recieved and will be published or will be rejected because of …
2. Please enable the mailing list for the contribtors, it did not work, last time I checked
3. Keep up the good work
Anton
Edited 2007-02-13 01:50
1. Yes, Thom should be doing this immediately after he receives an article submission, including giving an estimation as to when the article is going to go live. Let me know if this is not the case.
2. We removed the contributors mailing list, not much was going on there.
what version of the English do you speak ?
Changes for rules.php
Under “2. The moderation system”
3x OSAlert” -> OSAlert’s
author”s, editor”s -> author’s, editor’s
No biting sarcasm ? Yeah, that’ll work.
Mike, get hold of yourself. All these ” there are because of my automatic translation from DOC to TXT to remove the smart quotes and use normal quotes (because some OSes don’t support smart quotes). It is not how Thom wrote it, so yeah, sarcasm won’t work over here. Do your bug report without the sarcasm.
Sorry for trying to help, but your “automatic translation from DOC to TXT” excuse doesn’t hold water. Either it would work or fail, not both. Don’t attack me pointing it out. Don’t blame me because whoever posted it didn’t double-check it before it went live.
I did global search-replace, so it did work, but the replace did not produce 100% the best result it should have.
>Don’t attack me pointing it out. Don’t blame me
My problem is your ATTITUDE, not your bug report. Re-read your FIRST comment and see how you came out as a sarcastic jerk. So, don’t be pissed off if my reply was not to your liking, because you initiated it. If your comment was normal, nothing of all this would have happened.
Edited 2007-02-13 04:14
My first comment wasn’t supposed to be taken as harshly as you took it, but hey, misunderstandings happen.
I was too harsh again on my second post, so I’ll try to be less so.
You really should have double-checked your post, that way you would have caught the mistakes caused by Microsoft Word’s smart quote feature.
OSAlert’ still should be OSAlert’s. OSAlert’ makes it seem there is more than one OSAlert. OSAlert in the possessive is pronounce OSAlertes and therefore should be typed as OSAlert’s. I cite http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/tools_and_services/specials/style_… the TimesOnline, the apostrophes section.
I’m not perfect at English myself. I respect the hard work you do here, even if sometimes it doesn’t seem like it.
Jesus Christ Mike. I speak 3 languages fluently, and can understand 3 more. You can OR make a normal complaint, OR shut up. You can come back to me in your tone if YOU speak fluent Dutch, English, and German, and have basic understanding of French, Spanish, Greek, and Latin.
OSAlert is a plural word, and hence I chose the genetive for plurals. English has no set of official rules, and hence it allows for variations like this. This will stay the way it is.
OSAlert’ still should be OSAlert’s.
Most English professors will tell you that the possessive form of a word that ends in “s” is that same word with an apostrophe. In other words, if I have three sisters and they have a car, it’s “my sisters’ car.”
So in this case, OSAlert’ is probably perfectly acceptable.
I didn’t say I was better than you or speak more languages than you. I tried to be more civil in my third post, and I would appreciate it if you responded in kind.
OSAlert is most definitely not a plural word. It’s the proper name of a website. I was trying to help readability.
Give it up Mike. I have nothing personal to do with this site, and even I was offended by the overt agressiveness of your comments.
If you’re looking to cause trouble, go and edit this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedantic
They’ve even spelled it with a diphthong.
Why not go to the /. system where you cannot moderate a thread you participate in? Would cut down moderation due solely to disagreement.
Apostrophes are difficult for non-native speakers in English (like loose and lose, and like prepositions).
its junk = junk belonging to it
it’s junk = it is, as in ‘it’s just a lot of junk’
It’s confusing because it is the leading exception to the rule that the apostrophe is used for possession.
OSAlert articles = articles on the OSAlert site. I think OSAlert here is probably an adjective?
OSAlert’ articles = articles belonging to OSAlert itself – eg commissioned articles, editorials perhaps. OSAlert must be a proper noun here.
From Wikipedia:
my sister’s friend’s investments (I have one sister and she has one friend.)
my sisters’ friends’ investments (I have many sisters and they have many friends.)
my sisters’ friend’s investments (I have many sisters and they have one friend.)
my sister’s friends’ investments (I have one sister and she has many friends.)
Kingsley Amis, on being challenged to produce a sentence whose meaning depended on a possessive apostrophe, came up with:
“Those things over there are my husbands.”
Which, if an apostrophe were added, would read “Those things over there are my husband’s [items].”
Edited 2007-02-13 08:13
Why not go to the /. system where you cannot moderate a thread you participate in? Would cut down moderation due solely to disagreement.
That’s a good idea, however I imagine it’s a bit harder to manage…if you moderate comments and then participate in the thread, you have to remove all previous moderations you made in the thread.
Still, that does prevent some abuse, and should be considered.
Looks great! Really helpful! Honestly, I have no complaints about the document itself!
Still, a couple of suggestions for the website that would make things that much better and effective:
1) Let users preview submissions before sending news. This would undoubtedly prevent all of that “bad HTML” code you guys were talking about.
2) Put a link to an HTML version of the Style Guide on the front page along the left side, or perhaps on the Submit News Page. Anyway, I think HTML is a must if you want people to read this thing for real and not just file it away somewhere.
To be honest I have no idea how long I have been reading OSAlert. A long time now I guess, at least 4 years or so before moderation started.
In the early days it was great, a friendly site with active discussion. But over time it got more popular and with it came those with more polarized views. Eventually it got to the point where without moderation the discussion at OSAlert was close to unreadable, even with Eugenia tirelessly and endlessly burying comments.
Even with moderation there have been some rough points in the path, but it is getting better again. Not as nice as the friendly bickering way back when, but good. It seems some of the silliest stuff possible gets moderated up though and since the rules are clearly delineated as to when to mod down they stay high.
Perhaps the ability to vote something down due to disagreement, but have this reduce to a minimum of 1. Right now moderation is a popularity contest, but an upwards only one. So play to the popular views and you get modded up. Write a well thought out counter argument and you might get modded up. Disagree with the mainstay and say hello to burial quite often.
That said I browse at -1 and like it that way, it does filter out trash. Not perfect but it makes for more pleasant overall reading. So thanks and keep up the good work.