A possible solution to the trolling problem on this news group

On Thu, 21 May 2009 18:06:12 +0100, "mileburner"
wrote:


"Adam Funk" wrote in message
news
On 2009-05-21, Ian Jackson wrote:

Would someone who is familiar with the process like to start it up?

Yes. I'm in discussions with Control and the Committee. I should be
able to post either a draft of an RFD (just here), or a full formal
RFD (to uk.net.news.config and .announce), very shortly.

Looking forward to it; thanks.

Yay! So am I.

But I betcha there are those who are not :-)

Well surely that would be YOU, wouldn't it? Or are you hoping for a
different style of moderation, one that includes dumping posts
because they dont fawn over cycling at all costs? I hope it IS like
that - its credibility will quickly sink lower than even this group

In article ,
RudiL wrote:
On 21 May, 17:28, Alistair Gunn wrote:
Is it possible to have a system whereby there's more than one moderator,
and approval is required from more than one but less than all of the
panel?

That would be possible in principle (almost anything is possible) but
not really practical. Typically there's a shortage of moderation
effort so multiplying the work doesn't make sense.

The usual arrangement is to have a panel of moderators and have them
each see the same queue of pending posts; the first one to get to a
post decides on it. I would suggest that this is the right approach
for us too, with perhaps an appeal to the full panel for disputed
decisons.

Electing the panel (and any future replacements for it) is likely to be a
"fun" experience too! =A0:-(

There is no need for the moderation panel to be elected and I wouldn't
propose that it should be. The vote is likely to be a straight yes/no
on whatever proposal we come up with.

So what's really needed is for the proposal to be reasonable-looking
for outsiders, have good strong support from the cycling community
(including those already driven away), and not give ammunition to
to-be-expected wingnut no campaign.

I don't know what the normal procedure for a moderated group is

Normally the group creation process (in uk.* RFD and if necessary the
vote) specifies the initial (list of) moderator(s); after that the
moderator(s) appoint their successor(s).

The details hare he
http://www.usenet.org.uk/guidelines.html

I hope that we can assemble a good-sized moderation panel.

--
Ian Jackson personal email:
These opinions are my own. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/
PGP2 key 1024R/0x23f5addb, fingerprint 5906F687 BD03ACAD 0D8E602E FCF37657

On Thu, 21 May 2009 16:23:20 +0100, Keith T wrote:

Judith Smith wrote:
On Thu, 21 May 2009 10:33:49 +0100, Keith T wrote:

Judith Smith wrote:

I am all in favour of fair/moderated news groups; they cut out a hell
of a lot of crap.



?????? from someone who appears to have hijacked several threads by just
copy and paste you would have to blacklist yurself.


Sorry - "just copy and paste" - I do not understand; can you expand.



cnrtl c and cnrtl v - HTH

Well many thanks - I didn't know that one could do that - you live
and learn.

Perhaps you could now explain how I " hijacked several threads by just
copy and paste"
--

Posts from IP Address: 80.254.146.36

to URC over 6 years = 7

Guy Chapman : 5
Lou Knee: 2

Coincidence or nym shift?

On Thu, 21 May 2009 16:28:33 +0000 (UTC), Alistair Gunn
wrote:

Ian Jackson twisted the electrons to say:
We need to think about who we should have as moderators. My
preference would be to have a large moderation panel, say at least six
people.

Is it possible to have a system whereby there's more than one moderator,
and approval is required from more than one but less than all of the
panel?

Electing the panel (and any future replacements for it) is likely to be a
"fun" experience too! :-(


If you want to take a week to "moderate" posts - then go for multiple
approvals.

I would suggest that you need about 6 people (max) who you could trust
to be fair and balanced as moderators acting on their own.


As you suggest that will be very difficult to find 6 balanced members
of urc.

And of course - there will be some (well - at least one) who will want
to do it so that he can add it to his "cv".


--

Posts from IP Address: 80.254.146.36

to URC over 6 years = 7

Guy Chapman : 5
Lou Knee: 2

Coincidence or nym shift?

Ian Jackson twisted the electrons to say:
In article ,
RudiL wrote:
On 21 May, 17:28, Alistair Gunn wrote:
Is it possible to have a system whereby there's more than one moderator,
and approval is required from more than one but less than all of the
panel?
That would be possible in principle (almost anything is possible) but
not really practical. Typically there's a shortage of moderation
effort so multiplying the work doesn't make sense.

I was merely thinking that this way we could avoid the obvious moans of
bias from certain obvious sources by ensuring it wasn't the decision of
one person ... OTOH, given how resilient they've been to logic and
simple explanations in other areas that's probably a vain hope! :-)

The usual arrangement is to have a panel of moderators and have them
each see the same queue of pending posts; the first one to get to a
post decides on it. I would suggest that this is the right approach
for us too, with perhaps an appeal to the full panel for disputed
decisons.

The thought occurs that this would still allow a certain element of what
I was thinking of with this system. Since the moderators would have the
options of approve, disapprove or leave for someone else, with posts in
the last category presumably timing out if they can't find a moderator
who likes the colour of it's jib!

Electing the panel (and any future replacements for it) is likely
to be a "fun" experience too! =A0:-(
There is no need for the moderation panel to be elected and I wouldn't
propose that it should be. The vote is likely to be a straight yes/no
on whatever proposal we come up with.

There is however, IMHO, a need for said moderation panel to consist of
people the good people of urc would actually want moderating a newsgroup!
--
These opinions might not even be mine ...
Let alone connected with my employer ...

On Thu, 21 May 2009 19:39:53 +0100, Judith M Smith
wrote:

Coincidence or nym shift?

Easy. You nym-shifted. Again.

HTH

Guy
--
http://www.chapmancentral.co.uk/urc | http://www.nohelmetlaw.org.uk/

"To every complex problem there is a solution which is
simple, neat and wrong" - HL Mencken

Newsgroup may contain nuts.

In article ,
Alistair Gunn wrote:
I was merely thinking that this way we could avoid the obvious moans of
bias from certain obvious sources by ensuring it wasn't the decision of
one person ... OTOH, given how resilient they've been to logic and
simple explanations in other areas that's probably a vain hope! :-)

Indeed. I think the point to be made in this context is that it's not
a bug if a cycling newsgroup is biased in favour of cycling.

No-one complains that uk.legal.moderated is biased in favour of law as
a solution to problems - that's the whole point. If you want to argue
against that idea you can use uk.legal, uk.politics.*, or whatever.
If the petrolheads wanted a moderated uk.rec.driving.moderated because
their interesting conversations about tied and soldered piston gaskets
were being swamped by hordes of nazi cyclist eco-trolls, that would be
fine too.

Ian Jackson twisted the electrons to say:
The usual arrangement is to have a panel of moderators ...

The thought occurs that this would still allow a certain element of what
I was thinking of with this system. Since the moderators would have the
options of approve, disapprove or leave for someone else, with posts in
the last category presumably timing out if they can't find a moderator
who likes the colour of it's jib!

No, it wouldn't be sensible for it to time posts out. And if they
don't time out they'd just sit there annoying the moderators - so the
moderators would be inclined to deal with them there and then. In
practice undue delay is really annoying - the moderation delay is the
biggest downside of a moderated group - and you wouldn't want to
increase it by having posts sit in the moderation queue for ages.

The normal approach is that a moderator logs on when they feel like
it, deals with the queue of posts (or part of it, if there are lots
and they get bored), and then leaves another moderator to deal with
the next batch. This encourages moderators to be active: first come,
first served, in the decisionmaking stakes.

Also it means that if a post doesn't appear but other later ones do,
the person whose post has gone missing knows when to chase it up with
moderators. (Moderation systems are complex and not always perfect
even if the moderators are infallible, which of course they aren't.)

There is however, IMHO, a need for said moderation panel to consist of
people the good people of urc would actually want moderating a newsgroup!

Yes. I'm hoping to post a formal or semi-formal RFD very shortly, and
at that point I'll solicit suggestions and volunteers. My aim will be
for us to select an initial panel which urc's sane posters are all
happy with. I think that should be possible.

--
Ian Jackson personal email:
These opinions are my own. http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~ijackson/
PGP2 key 1024R/0x23f5addb, fingerprint 5906F687 BD03ACAD 0D8E602E FCF37657

On 21 May 2009 20:38:59 +0100 (BST), Ian Jackson
wrote:

In article ,
Alistair Gunn wrote:
I was merely thinking that this way we could avoid the obvious moans of
bias from certain obvious sources by ensuring it wasn't the decision of
one person ... OTOH, given how resilient they've been to logic and
simple explanations in other areas that's probably a vain hope! :-)

Indeed. I think the point to be made in this context is that it's not
a bug if a cycling newsgroup is biased in favour of cycling.

No-one complains that uk.legal.moderated is biased in favour of law as
a solution to problems - that's the whole point. If you want to argue
against that idea you can use uk.legal, uk.politics.*, or whatever.
If the petrolheads wanted a moderated uk.rec.driving.moderated because
their interesting conversations about tied and soldered piston gaskets
were being swamped by hordes of nazi cyclist eco-trolls, that would be
fine too.

Ian Jackson twisted the electrons to say:
The usual arrangement is to have a panel of moderators ...

The thought occurs that this would still allow a certain element of what
I was thinking of with this system. Since the moderators would have the
options of approve, disapprove or leave for someone else, with posts in
the last category presumably timing out if they can't find a moderator
who likes the colour of it's jib!

No, it wouldn't be sensible for it to time posts out. And if they
don't time out they'd just sit there annoying the moderators - so the
moderators would be inclined to deal with them there and then. In
practice undue delay is really annoying - the moderation delay is the
biggest downside of a moderated group - and you wouldn't want to
increase it by having posts sit in the moderation queue for ages.

The normal approach is that a moderator logs on when they feel like
it, deals with the queue of posts (or part of it, if there are lots
and they get bored), and then leaves another moderator to deal with
the next batch. This encourages moderators to be active: first come,
first served, in the decisionmaking stakes.

Also it means that if a post doesn't appear but other later ones do,
the person whose post has gone missing knows when to chase it up with
moderators. (Moderation systems are complex and not always perfect
even if the moderators are infallible, which of course they aren't.)

There is however, IMHO, a need for said moderation panel to consist of
people the good people of urc would actually want moderating a newsgroup!

Yes. I'm hoping to post a formal or semi-formal RFD very shortly, and
at that point I'll solicit suggestions and volunteers. My aim will be
for us to select an initial panel which urc's sane posters are all
happy with. I think that should be possible.

What I find fascinating here isn't that the psycholists want to hide
the bad mans rebuttal of their lunacy, because that's pretty much
taken for granted. The good bit is that they're happily posting here
about how equitable and sensible their process is going to be. "We'll
pick someone the sane posters are happy with" above.

Ian Jackson wrote:
In article
,
RudiL wrote:
On 21 May, 17:28, Alistair Gunn wrote:
Is it possible to have a system whereby there's more than one
moderator, and approval is required from more than one but less
than all of the panel?

That would be possible in principle (almost anything is possible) but
not really practical. Typically there's a shortage of moderation
effort so multiplying the work doesn't make sense.

The usual arrangement is to have a panel of moderators and have them
each see the same queue of pending posts; the first one to get to a
post decides on it. I would suggest that this is the right approach
for us too, with perhaps an appeal to the full panel for disputed
decisons.

Ian's plans are fine by me. I look forward to seeing a formal proposition.

I won't get too hung up on the moderation panel because if its reasonably
sane it will solve the problems of off-topic threads and stupid "your feet
smell/you have a fat nose" arguments.


One thought; do "whitelists" still work for Usenet moderation? Or are they
too easily abused ? A moderator could promote someone to the whitelist as
they had been a person of good standing. Thereafter postings from that
person go through automatically without requiring the moderator to act.
Obviously there is a risk that the "approved" person steps out of line, but
that just means the moderators have to remove the "approved" status after
the event and revert to moderating postings from that individual.


If years served is anything to go by, I've probably been around the group
far longer than most (over 20 years on usenet). In the case of u.r.c, I
reluctantly see moderation as the last chance of saving it before it goes
the way of the recumbent newsgroup in the alt heirarchy.


- Nigel


--
Nigel Cliffe,
Webmaster at http://www.2mm.org.uk/

On 21 May 2009 15:33:56 +0100 (BST), Ian Jackson
wrote:

In article ,
Adam Funk wrote:
Would someone who is familiar with the process like to start it up?

Yes. I'm in discussions with Control and the Committee. I should be
able to post either a draft of an RFD (just here), or a full formal
RFD (to uk.net.news.config and .announce), very shortly.

We need to think about who we should have as moderators. My
preference would be to have a large moderation panel, say at least six
people.

Also we should organise a hosting setup. If no-one has a better plan,
I would be happy to run an installation of Stump[1] on my server.
[1] http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/stump/

I am all in favour of this. Keep us posted.

--
(\__/) M.
(='.'=) Owing to the amount of spam posted via googlegroups and
(")_(") their inaction to the problem. I am blocking most articles
posted from there. If you wish your postings to be seen by
everyone you will need use a different method of posting.