RE#346 posted by Nelson.C , March 28, 2008 11:44 AM
"That's rather a moot point, isn't it, considering that Teresa's identity is already out? To achieve the (doubtfully needful) moderator anonymity you require would mean getting rid of this one... or, as you prophesy, for the whole system to break down again to be replaced later."

Not really Nelson considering the mnemonic half life of a largish internet posting board is overall something like a week ( in my opinion and experience). All that it would take is for Teresa to stop posting the fact that she is the moderator here every week or so and for her to put the tord out to some of her more vocal fans to please stop commenting on comments regarding moderation - or at least stop naming her . Voila - in two months you'll have essentially what I described.

"Regardless, you're not going to get what you want in this incarnation."

But sometimes you get what you need, Baby, sometimes you get what you need.

#342 posted by Terry Karney , March 28, 2008 11:18 AM

You bring up many excellent points. They give me reason to think which is why I am here now instead of doing work that I have to do . And btw - comparing the relative sizes of Teresa's Blog and boingboing is not snarking but rather a reasonable question asking of Teresa's moderation style is "scalable" on a system that is two orders of magnitude greater (in terms of readership) than the one on which she devised the system.

But let me ask you a couple of question Terry (and to anyone else who would like to comment of course):

1. Why do you feel it is essential for a moderator's name to be known ?

2. Do you honestly feel that registering a complaint with the site owners regarding a perceived moderation error is any more effective if a name is attached ?

3. Do you feel (as I do) that with great power comes great responsibility . And that , to avoid even the appearance of impropriety , that a moderator who takes on such powers should not be allowed to comment in the thread that they are moderating?

Looks like the rent isn't getting paid next month either :)

Look , EvilRooster by and large I appreciate your comments and do realize that a lot gets lost via email - emotional misconceptions ensue. But I must say that I find it a bit condescending for you to assume that I feel "piled up on".

I do not.
I feel justified somewhat actually.

It becomes clearer to me that it is possible that Teresa has cultivated a cult of personality on her own boards and , apparently, last August, brought several who drank that brand of Koolaid here when she assumed moderation duties . I could guess at three in this thread so far, yourself, Greg and poor angry Xopher.

And what is happenning is that all three of you (you to the least extent) are misplacing my comments regarding moderation style to be comments directed at someone that you admire on another board.

But you see , I'm currently into the BoingBoing cult of personality (Ok , so I;m not but I do love the site and the writing by it's authors) and I don't read Teresa's blog nor do I particularly care do now after being harangued by some of it's more (ahem) vocal disciples.

Which brings me , once again to my point:
That silent anonymous moderation by an individual who can neither be thanked nor chastised for a decision is infinitely preferable to a vocal, highly opinionated moderator with a "following".

Of course that's just my opinion but the reactions of Xopher and Greg are exactly why I have seen this before.

And i know what will happen and I know what will follow.

I Like boingboing and the people who write for it . I hate hipsters . It's a dichotomy but I'm a complex person.

And I have a secret fricking affinity towards Unicorns and that damn idiot Steampunk that I will only admit because I am anonymous (hah!)

So I don't want to see Boing Boing collapse nor do I think that it will.

I believe one of two things will now happen:
1. Teresa will decide to tone it down here.
2. The catch phrase "The masses are revolting" will take on new meaning here and the comment system will collapse - to be replaced by another probably better attempt. If #2 occurrs it will do so in a 3-4 month time frame.

Either way it's all good and I can assure anyone who choses to attempt demean and belittle me for what I believe or who I chose to critique that I've been called far worse than anything you can possibly imagine in my time (and my time has been long) and I'm hard as nails because of it.

Just use a dictionary and get the definitions right. That's all I ask.

RE: #337 posted by GregLondon

"I appreciate the entertainment value you are bringing to this otherwise quite long and slighty depressing thread. However, if your form of comedy is misuse of terms, then you should know that you'll need to escalate quickly to more and more"

From the Oxford English Dictionary, look it up yourself at :

http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/rape_1?view=uk

rape

• verb 1 (of a man) force (another person) to have sexual intercourse with him against their will. 2 spoil or destroy (a place).

To spoil or destroy a place.
If you have a problem with that - take it up with Oxford, Webster and who all.

Let's use it in a sentence:
Some people think that Teresa is raping the comment-pool of BoingBoing by being over zealous in her moderation.

Your problem is not with me.
Your problem appears to be with the dictionary .
You should write them email.
You know, try to get it changed more to your liking.

RE: #325 posted by GregLondon Author Profile Page, March 28, 2008 10:07 AM

"OMG, did someone seriously compare disemvoweling to rape? "

No they did not.
Someone who apparently
1. owns a dictionary
2. Believes that proper use of language overrides bogus "political correctness" concern trolls
3. Does not start his sentences with "OMG"

used the word in a correct context as in "to pillage"

One could say, quite properly if arguably, that Teresa is raping the comment pool by altering the structure of selected comments.

Look it up and get off that horse.

#314 posted by Xopher
"vilrooster was responding to a post by Capn Barcode, where s/he basically said if her name wasn't Nielson Hayden, he'd throw up his hands."

No he was not.
If you actually go back and read post number #303 you will find out that evil Roster was replying to a post by Capn Barcode whereupon the Capn is resoinding to a post by Teresa that says:

"@216: 'I just wish he'd figure out that my last name isn't Hayden.'

And once again we are responding to a post by Teresa rather then talking about moderation concepts and the issue is obfuscated.

No is it the coffee kicking in along with my paranoia or am I sensing a disturbance in the Boing? Are we being infiltrated by fanboys from Teresa's blog defending the perceived Queen? More likely my paranoia... however ....

Still if we had no idea who was doing the fraking moderation we couldn't complain about him/her or defend him/her could we?

Not that Teresa is a him/her I 'm just being gender neutral... and with that I have posted FAR too much here already about one of my favorite subjects. So I am off to do some real life work in the real life world. SOMEONE'S got to pay the rent for this crappy apartment.

RE #313 posted by evilrooster

"These positive moderation activities work best with personal engagement with the community, and cannot be done silently."

Slashdot
Fark
Digg
Newshounds.us
huffingtonpost.com
www.crooksandliars.com

All work just fine and without the need for "personal engagement"

RE: #305 posted by evilrooster

"I am all but devastated to inform you that the surname in question is not Nielson Hayden, but rather Nielsen Hayden, a slight but perceptible difference from an otherwise well-reasoned and considered guess."

The context of the post tto which you replied referred to this statement by Ms. Hayden (?)

'I just wish he'd figure out that my last name isn't Hayden.'

It had nothing to do with her first name (which I apologize for spelling incorrectly in an earlier post BTW)

What IS you last name anyway Teresa? Because I am honestly confused as well.

One more comment - having an outspoken moderator leads to fanboy/flamebait arguments about how someones first or last name is spelled and such stuff.

Technogirl doesn;t give a fig about how you spell her name "techn0girl" Techknowgirl or Technogoul are all fine with me . because none of them are really me.

I am Anonymous.

It's not important how you spell my pen name, it's important that you understand what I say. Not agree with it - just understand it.

RE : #302 posted by heresiarch

"Most people have been making analogies to Fark, Digg, or Slashdot, and other large forums. But that's inaccurate--Boing Boing isn't a forum. It's a blog. "

Yes I suppose that you have a point there. Boing-Boing is a place where a select number of people make posts (or have posts recommended )about interesting things that they have found on the internet or in the news . And then the community that reads the article and throws their two cents in. .

Opps! I meant Slashdot and Fark rather than BB.
My Bad. sorry.

RE:297 posted by heresiarch514
"You want a black-box system, which is wonderful in abstract but, practically speaking, impossible."

Slashdot.

No single moderator to single out.

The process just gets done.

The user has the choice to see the offending posts or not - or what level of foolishness she is willing to tolerate

No one person can be held to blame - or more ** importantly **to cheer. This no cult of personality can exist - or presumed to exist.

Of course there are problems with that system. It's just one example out of many. But it does work in it's way.
I have no idea who is moderating what and I don't care and I don;t want to know. All that I need to know is that if I set my "moderation level" to +3 I really enjoy what I consider to be the interesting opinions there without being bothered by all the noise.

RE:297 posted by heresiarch514
"So why do you think that the best way to keep humans from abusing their authority and indulging their personality quirks is to keep them in the shadows? When has that ever worked? The lesson I get from reading history is that if you want accountable authority figures, you have to subject them to as much public scrutiny as possible."

Excellent point and I was unclear and rambling somewhat in my message (more coffee please!)

The point that I was trying to make was not to in providing accountability for moderation (because there is no accountability here - let's be real) but rather to point out what I thought were effective vs. ineffective means of moderation.

I believe that having an outspoken , vocal moderator involved in the discussion and who is also actively engaging trolls by "pointing them out" or passively by disemvoweling them is a potential time bomb because:

1. There are more trolls than moderators. Many, many more.

2. Any given troll is more likely to have more time trolling than a moderator has engaging him.

3. It takes focus away from the actual discussion at hand and refocuses it upon the moderation methodology or the moderator herself.

So my point that moderation should be low-key, behind the scenes and anonymous had nothing to do with accountability but rather of doing something that just works instead of doing something that provokes more meta-discussion regarding the process (yes I know that's a redundant phrase but I just don't care until I have my coffee!)

I snarked myself into oblivion - and was helped by the fact the this board discards everything between the angle brackets (which I should have known) ....

My key paragraph should have read

"Well I'm simply not going to do that because as soon as point out even the most obvious example of such a thing {**cough**cough**slashdot**cough**} then this argument devolves from a transfer if ideas concerning moderation and the role of the moderator into a tit for tat of whether a given example lives up to those ideas. So I'm just not going to go there at all."

Damn you Gods of Snarkiness and your arbitrary ways!

RE: #289 posted by evilrooster

"I'd be very interested in seeing a good example of such a community in action."

You want me to show you a community where :

-moderation is handled anonymously

- no personality issues from a single moderator what so ever intrude upon the process e.g.. no demagogues

-no destruction of the original message occurs and no "emasculation" of the messenger is committed .

- the community of free to pick and choose whether or not to view the message

Well I'm simply not going to do that because as soon as point out even the most obvious example of such a thing then this argument devolves from a ransfer if ideas concerning moderation and the role of the moderator into a tit for tat of whether a given example lives up to those ideas. So I'm just not going to go there at all.

"There's a fair argument that the previous iteration of open commenting in BoingBoing was a community, one that melted down from lack of moderation."

Of this I do not doubt - it's the implementation that I am concerned with not the usefulness of the idea..

I have seen too many cases where a community dissolved from the effects of an over zealous moderator. Where,what should be a simple social policing action turned personal.

The requirements to be a moderator should be much like those for a politician, if you really love the job then you are probably ill suited for it.

-

R: #283 Trs Nlsn Hydn
"Tksh: N, thy dn't tk kckbcks."

N nt kckbcks f crs bt ... wll hr's n xmpl ...
Vrzn s stll th scm f th rth whn t cms t cstmr srvc, thr hrrd FS mplmnttn nd ,h ys, tht lttl phn tppng n ch nd vry mrcn dl thy hv gng n wth th C/NS ths dys

Nw thr sts r brngng ts t ppl's ttntn nd Bng Bng sd t b prtty hrd n th ld "V" tslf n tms pst... bt nw tht Vrzn s spnsr f BBTV wht d w s n BB?:

Mrch 14, 2008
"Vrzn tmng p wth P2P cmpns, Yl, t mk fl-shrng fstr"

Lk th BB tm ds GRT jb nd dsrvs lttl csh t spprt thr ffrts bt pls Thrs d nt dld yrslf r rslvs nt blvng tht th cnmcs f spnsrshp nvr ntrds nt dtrl dcsns.

Gv s crdt fr ndrstndng hw th rl wrld wrks.

To Post #277 evilrooster

Several points:
1. I am absolutely not going to engage in a snark-fest with you regardless of how much I like the word that I just made up.

2. Your argument which says essentially that if I can not provide you with a real life implementation of my opinions renders my opinion invalid - is a straw man argument and I will not do in that direction either.

3. My opinion is that Teresa's ideas may well work fine on her own small blog are not scalable to a larger community.

4. As I mentioned earlier, Kuro5hin is a fine example of where the site moderator became overwhelmed by trollishness . He implemented a highly visible and severe moderation policy which only served to engage in further troll wars and drive the community away. Both regulars and the site owner became discouraged and the community that had developed there is no more.

5. It should not be surprising to point out that arguments regarding

a. The tendency of human beings to abuse their authority (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? )

b. The proper role of the soldier, police-person whatever in such a situation

c. The roles and responsibilities of a person exercising free speech in a free society precede Teresa's blog and even (heavens!) the internet itself.

(OK, I did delve into snarkdom there for a minute?)

My opinions are based largely , though not exclusively on many of Plato's concepts of the soldier (read moderator) entrusted with guarding the security his society

I refer you to Plato’s Politeia in which he expresses his ideas of the "citizen soldier" as well as well as some interesting counter point from Aristotle in hos ideas about the republic and the role of the guardian in it.

Lastly, the more I think of the idea behind "disemvoweling" the less I like it and the more it seems as a thinly disguised way of someone very visibly exercising their authority over those with whom they want to make a point.

Do not misunderstand me - I absolutely loathe trolls and uncivil behavior. But the more that I think about it the mroe that I feel that the correct manner of dealing with it is silently, behind the scenes and without fanfare and adulation.

Moderation can NEVER be a war of personalities, something that will inevitable occur if the personality of the moderator is allowed to intrude onto the process; hence my stated desire for anonymous moderation.

Moderation can never be a war of personalities because the trolls will always, ALWAYS win that war for the following reasons.

a. Trolls have more time then you do. That's why they are trolls. If they had a life outside of trolldom then they would not be trolls they would be at baseball games, movies, having a beer with their friends or getting laid.

If you have two hours to wage war against a troll , the troll will have eight. If you have eight the troll will have twelve. If you have twelve the troll will take all day if necessary. You can ALWAYS give up your entire live and devote it to the war. Become just like the troll and then - the troll wins. Game over.

b. The more attention that you draw to the troll (like disemvoweling) the more the troll likes it. You've heard the saying "Never get into a fight with a pig, you just get dirty and the pig likes it.". It's SO appropos. when you disemvowel a troll you do NOT emasculate his message - you create a martyr (well in the trolls eyes you do anyway).
And you also open Pandora's other box regarding free speech issues - a box that an enormous amount of your participants will look into regardless of whether they understand the issue or not - and most won't.

See the number of comments in this thread? Right.

c. You can not win a war of personalities with a troll because you have many aspects of your personality and can see many sides of an issue. A troll does not. A troll sees only one side of an issue - HIS side. And the purity and the clarity and the focus of his thought process is as strong as any religious extremist who as ever strapped a bomb onto a twelve year old and sent him out into a crowded shopping center.

Personality must, in my opinion never enter into the moderation process. (and no, damn it , I will NOT provide you with a "workable example")

Just get rid of the message - don't take the time to "emasculate" the messenger.

Just do it. Don't take thirty paragraphs to talk about how you are going to go about it.

Don't glamorize the troll. Fatal Mistake

c.

"Nuclear detonators sent to Taiwan were from 1962"

I not nearly concerned about the nuclear detonators as I am about the alleged use of time travel to obtain them. This Bush administration will stop at NOTHING to subvert those that it disagrees with..

What next? Shipping Dick Clark from 1958 to Venezuela perhaps ! ?

RE post #216 by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Teresa,
I do not object to the moderation policy at all but I can not help but notice the absolute zeal with which you are going about it. The manner by which you respond back to quite a few trolls with such enthusiasm and perhaps even glee.

Which makes me question if the real point of this exercise for you personally is not to make this place a better one but rather to expand your visibility and to essentially make the "Respect Ma Authoratai !" statement.

The need for moderation is unquestioned but I have grave concerns about the manner in which you have chosen to go about it. In my opinion, the very best societal police go about their work quietly and without personal aggrandizement (i.e. anonymously).

I have always had and will always have grave concerns (but not trollish concerns) for those who go about their policing duties with too much enthusiasm. In my opinion, moderation should be a thankless, behind the scenes job. - the kind that, you know you're always trying to pass off onto the intern or something. In my experience, moderators who make themselves "Superstars" shortly thereafter become oppressive dictators shortly before the community that they were moderating dissolves (see Kuro5hin).

I'm not saying this will happen to you Teresa, nor am I implying that this is your intent (I believe quite the opposite) - but I have never experienced any other outcome. Timef rame for this has always been 2-6 months mins and max.

pchi says
>A little greasemonkey should make it possible to reemvowel >all comments. Here's a site that will do it for you manually:
>http://www.disemvowelment.com/reemvowel.html

As predicted.
I hope that I am wrong on the final prediction though.

I agree with the moderation policy in general although I must side with some of the other posers who more or less seem to feel that moderation should be done a bit more quietly.

The best moderation comes silently ,anonymously and without fanfare, in my opinion. Having a largish front page article on this by th moderator leads, or could lead, to a dangerous "cult of personality" situation where the now (in)famous moderator is attacked by trolls and the conflict escalates and the now well known moderator starts taking it personally and ... well it goes downhill from there. Quickly

Disemvoweling is an interesting idea - when done discretely and without further comment. Done so openly it , well it kind of becomes like DRM - a challenge for one to defeat. How difficult would it be to create a web page that reimvowled all comments? How difficult to make a Firefox plug-in?

Anonymity and discretion (as in acting discretely) are, in my opinion, the foundation upon which good moderation exists. I do agree with your ideas and ideals Theresa, but by front-paging this you have set yourself up as a challenge and for a huge war with the trolls and other miscreants that infest places like these.

I predict this will end badly.
I hope that I am yet again wrong .

The "Wizardess" of Speed and Tme ?

"No one ever got rich overestimating the intelligence of the American public.” - P. T. Barnum.

Aside from the disturbing falsetto coming from the young girl on the right - these are exactly how I picture Bush or McCain supporters to be.

If it's not satire then it's sad.

Because two years from now, when they are homeless, lost their homes ,jobs and health care ,people (portrayed?) like this will STILL scratch their empty heads, wondering what happened and chalk it all up to "those libruls in Congress"

We're really only just beginning to understand (barely) the mechanics and parameters behind massive GRBs . I wonder how much GRBs should factor into the Drake equation - which is an unsettling question to ask. It may be that Galaxies are actually hostile to the formation of life (at least the long term evolution) and intelligence.

So who wants to bet that if you go through this creeps DVD collection you're gonna find Goodfellas?

I call shenanigans..
Occam's Razor says that there is somebody offstage typing in a response to s simple MS speech synth..

The whole setup seems fishy to me - difficulty putting my finger on it exactly but something in the "demo" stank. Something in it reeked of just too much showmanship, Something too "set-up" about it. And the young CEO-type demoing the product seemed more like a con-man than a geek with a new idea.

Every year a new startup does something like this to get money out of naive investors and/or the defense industry. Remember the laser that was supposed to carry a taser-like charge through it's beam a la Star Trek? And of course the 30 year olld con that keeps on giving - the Moeller flyiig car - they got a lot of defense money on that one.

This just doesn't pass my BS detector.

The TSA corrupt?
Unthinkable!

My amazement knows no bounds and other expressions of sarcastic stuff and such.

Seriously, with a Congress who has given carte blanche to internal CIA and FBI spying on all citizens, does anyone really think that they are going to stop a little graft on the side from one of their hired thugs? And BTW, care to bet that this will NOT make the front page of any US major newspapers.

Just how F@#ked are we in the U.S. right now? Pretty damn screwed. We write to Congress but they just shrug it off. All our major newspapers and media outlets have been pravdaized.

Cory, I feel powerless these days. What effective action can a US citizen take these days - who can we support that can really do anything? Seriously, what can one do? I'd really like to do something - but what?

Nice Picture - Soooo ... is that an X-Wing fighter you're wearing or are you just glad to see me ?

Normally, I avoid MySpace at all costs. The inevitably crappy music on each page was the deal breaker for me. This time I took a peek and wasn't disappointed

Here's what I find sad: When people post their "Top 5 Friends" as being the likes of Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse and Celine Dion, do they really believe that such people would really give the time of day to them in real life OR the internet?

How can people really delude themselves into believing that a "click-on" viral marketing campaign is some sort of personal contact that one can be proud enough to "brag" about on their crappy MySpace page?

The British and the Japanese seem to get along just fine with handgun ownership illegal. And their per capita death rate for shootings is drastically lower (big surprise there).

Whereas in America any idiot wannabe hairdresser who works out of a house can apparently own a gun. There should be some sort of a psychological assessment and/or a three month training class before anyone can go out there and buy a gun. And the penalty for losing a gun ,even getting one stolen, ( think gun safe) should be never to be allowed to purchase one again. The whole process of obtaining ownership should be time consuming and expensive, in my opinion - for everyone.

And for those right to bear arms freaks out there, just join the National Guard already and bear all the arms that you want. With the government owning tanks and artillary, I don't think there's anything at Sam's Club I can buy that's going to protect me from that (think Waco, please) .

We should be a Nation of laws, not a Nation of guns.

The guy was a musical genius in his time and his album,Thriller, still stands strong. I really really have to wonder what his family life must have been like to make him end up as creepy as he did. One day that story will come out and I'm sure it will explain much.

I wonder, in a case like that - is it acceptable not to leave a tip ?

Just when you think that the world is nothing but crap, gloom and doom - along comes something like this to remind you that there's still a bit of playfulness and wonderfulness out there still.

Ahh by Chocolatey Shatner, you misunderstand me. It was not so much the appearance of the little guy that I found "bad" but rather the performance. I've seen some strikingly unattractive drag queens put out some of the most enagaging song and dance around town. But this performance? Strikingly bad. Intentionally so? Perhaps, probably even and since I'm unaware of the cultural cues that might make this particularly funny to someone in a central or south American culture, I find little redeeming about it. Anyone could have done it - heck I could have done it and I am an amazingly untalented performer. And you know what ? I could have done it worse!

It was fascinating, to me at least in the way that a carnival geek is fascinating - you know it's wrong and you shouldn't watch but you just can't help yourself. It lacked the viral meme quality that the Starwars Kid, or the Angry german kid had somehow.

Actually I wish I knew more about this. What's the little guy saying during the dance? Was he intending it to be intentionally campily bad or (ouch!) trying for a real performance. Anyone know? I'm kind of curious

#18, error404, said " It strikes me, being a Scot in the UK, .... I think whether or not they'd popped the old John Hancock to some flap doodle document would be the least of anyone's worries."

Ok, this is what I don't get. Why do they use the "old John Hancock" as a figure of speech to represent a signature. Wouldn't they use something more British or Scottish like "the old King John" or "the old Scrooge McDuck" instead? ;)

Thank heavens for Jerry Brown. A bit more conservative these days but still my hero after all these years.

Keep travelling to that beat of a different drummer, Jerry :)

Andrew - put an MP3 player in that steampunk unicorn robot head and I'm yours. :)

I take that back.

Actually a steampunked Unicorn who makes DRM dissappear would definitely make up for most anything I suppose.

My bad.

This only reinforces my opinion that there is nothing, nothing at all, worse than bad drag.

And even a steampunked Unicorn who magicaly makes DRM dissappear by waving Cory's next book in the air wouldn't make up for this one.

Magic, schmagick,
We just made Teller's web site disappear!
And that's no Bullsh*t!

>I know it's not funny if you have to explain it...

>But, Awesome Show is actually a pretty clever satire of
>"normal" television. Most of the jokes come from
>perverting established norms. In this example, Dr. Steve
>Brule is a play on the bullshit "lifestyle advice" segments
>on local news shows.

Yah. I got that. Also got that he's some kind of stoner or a
drunk. This would have been hilarious to me when I was 15, maybe 16.

At 51, not so much.

Wonderful :)
And the best part is that I was there! When I was six years old or so my father took me to see that fair. I took that helicopter ride and rode around New York! And went into the Chrysler (?) or GM building in a big car that went around the building and into a tube! Great stuff for a six year old :)

Better times in the 60's than now. Perhaps there will be better times still.

Two faced , schmoo faced.... I won't be impressed until you can make it a Bonzai Two-Faced Kitten® !