Mattcrampy
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On any forum, not just the DROD forum, there's bound to be arguments. Even here, we have feature requests and the architecture board and so on and so forth. So there's certainly potential for people to have ideas others don't like.

However, it's not fair game to use the mod system against them because they had an idea you don't like. An idea that doesn't fit or has been suggested umpteen times before, like a ray-gun for Beethro, or grape shot, which hurts the pirates more but doesn't do as much damage to the boat, mod as you see fit, but make sure you explain yourself. Stuff you just don't like, because you don't think it's fun, well that's not really fair.

Part of freedom of speech is freedom for all speech, not just the stuff you like. Similarly, here on DROD we'd rather you not waste your mod points marking posts down only because you don't agree with the poster. (Mostly because the mods will come along and mark them right back up again.) We'd far prefer to mod people down for being redundant.

As with everything, if you think a post has been unfairly modded mail moderators@caravelgames.com and we'll look into it.

Matt

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Schik
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grape shot?

Anyways. Yeah, I agree that discussion is better than simply modding down things you disagree with. Why do you disagree? Modding down doesn't tell us why, but making a post discussing it does. Moderating is not intended to replace discussion - it's supposed to reward intelligent, thoughtful posts.

Worst case scenario, we can implement meta-moderating, but I don't want to have to get into that if possible. It would be easier perhaps to make modding down cost more to discourage it.


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Drizzo
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Y'know, if it weren't already at +2, I would have been tempted to moderate the original post down... just because I disagree with it, and for smart-alec factor... because, really, what does rank mean anyway? I'm glad my name is in green right now, but that doesn't make my day... to tell the truth I'd be happy not to hit 30, because then I go back to neutral colors... but the way moderation is now, at least you can use it to judge popularity... on the other hand it's a shame to see people who are trying to make a positive impact get modded down just because they can't write well, some folks I've seen consistently dropping in mod points yet they haven't intentionally been trolling or anything.

I don't really know what I'm saying... I think I just think modding posts is kind of a way to say "I enjoyed what you said" or "I thought your post lacked any value whatsoever" and for an admin to mod back up, disrespects the modder's opinion as much as the modder disrespected the poster... regardless, I don't much care, I doubt I'd ever mod anyone down (haven't yet), because the only things I would do it for, would probably cause administative action, like flame wars and such, or a post talking about why jews suck (aside from circumcision) so I'll save my mod points for people who make me laugh, and people who have enhanced my DROD experience with sweet holds, and for other useful or entertaining things that are provided to me. I encourage other people to save their points for the same... lame posts get their just desserts by being ignored... as this one probably will

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Koro
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I agree with Drizzo. Hmm... does that mean I should give him another point? Intuitively, and what I believed the system to be based on: yes, but as the corallary to not down-modding based on disagreement, I can't up-mod on agreement, so: no.

A paradox, a paradox, a most ingenious paradox, a ha ha ha ha ha ha ha this paradox!

Courtesy of Gilbert and Sullivan.

P.S. I'm gonna give Drizzo a point anyway. Because he was also very funny, and it will bring him closer to that drab, unescapeable Delver gray! Bwahahaahahahahaaaa!

[Edited by Koro on 03-12-2004 at 06:08 AM GMT: I felt like fixing just one of the many typos.]

Due to stupidity on my part (using the back button instead of returning to the thread via links), I gave Drizzo two more points, instead of one more. Enjoy them, they were expensive.

[Edited by Koro on 03-12-2004 at 06:18 AM GMT]

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Mattcrampy
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Let me explain, Drizzo and Koro.

The mods would only correct negative mods if we feel they're unwarranted. For example, if I modded your post down because you disagreed with me, that's the sort of thing that the other mods would fix. (I'd probably also be restrained.)

Of course, if you see someone who you think is trying to do the best they can, but has trouble spelling, by all means mod them up.

I think I just think modding posts is kind of a way to say "I enjoyed what you said" or "I thought your post lacked any value whatsoever" and for an admin to mod back up, disrespects the modder's opinion as much as the modder disrespected the poster...

Well, it is a method to voice your approval or disapproval of a post. Of course, modding something that's already modded is basically a way of agreeing or disagreeing with the other modder, which is basically what mods do. But we won't get personal, and part of our job is to ensure that others don't either.

Matt

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eytanz
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I'm uncomfortable with the idea of moderators coming in and "correcting" mods they feel are unwarrented. That undermines the whole system - if you don't let people mod stuff in ways you disagree with, you might as well not give them mod abilities in the first place.

While I agree that modding someone down because you disagree with them is rather poor behavior (and there's a big difference between modding someone down and failing to mod them up), I think that a moderator should never mod a post up (or down) just because they don't like it's score. They should only mod a post up or down if they feel they would have done that anyway.

In other words, if I were a mod, and there was a post I'd consider unoffensive but unremarkable and unworthy of an upmod, and someone modded it down because they disagreed with the original poster, I shouldn't mod it up. If I saw a post I thought was good and deserving of a mod point, and someone modded it down, I need to give it one point, not too.

Otherwise, I don't see why this system is here in the first place.

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Schik
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I don't think anyone's suggesting changing every moderation that we disagree with. Personally, I'm just talking about blatantly incorrect moderations - i.e. if someone modded your post down, I'd probably leave it. If someone gave good hints to someone asking for help with a room and was modded down, I'd probably change it.

That pretty much fits in with your "only mod a post up or down if they feel they would have done that anyway".

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eytanz
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Schik wrote:
I don't think anyone's suggesting changing every moderation that we disagree with. Personally, I'm just talking about blatantly incorrect moderations - i.e. if someone modded your post down, I'd probably leave it. If someone gave good hints to someone asking for help with a room and was modded down, I'd probably change it.

That pretty much fits in with your "only mod a post up or down if they feel they would have done that anyway".

True, but the difference is in how much you post to correct - if you just add a point that cancels the original point, that's fine and appropriate. If you then go on to mod the post up again, that's not so good.

Of course, there's a line that modders can cross when moderator intervention may become necessary - if, say, someone starts targetting specific people and just modding them down out of spite, or something. This isn't much of a risk in this system, but it's possible. But Matt (Cramp)'s original post specifically says that moderators will correct posts which were modded down because of disagreement with the contents of that post (and not, say, because of a personal feud with the poster) - and that, I'm arguing, is inappropriate moderator behavior.

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DiMono
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I think it partly comes down to "can I figure out why my post was modded down?" I also tend to not mod posts down, I might have done one somewhere but I can't remember (could "posts you've modded" be added somewhere?), because I want to use mod points to encourage new posters to continue posting. It actually doesn't feel right to me to mod down a post, unless the content is racist, encourages cheating, insults my mother, etc.

On the other hand, I've seen a handful of well written posts with neutral content be modded down, and when I look at the post I cannot justify that particular modding. Personally, I feel modding down instead of posting a reply is a cop-out, communicating "I don't agree with your post, but instead of saying why I'll just anonymously mod it down, because it's easier."

Presumably, we're all here because we love DROD, and want to share communication with other people who love DROD. So let's all do this, and recognize that modding is just a tool to be used, not a replacement for intelligent discussion.

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Schik
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eytanz wrote:
But Matt (Cramp)'s original post specifically says that moderators will correct posts which were modded down because of disagreement with the contents of that post (and not, say, because of a personal feud with the poster) - and that, I'm arguing, is inappropriate moderator behavior.

Hmm. Well, I think that it will be hard to know the exact motivation behind each moderation. I think I will probably keep my "corrections" to to posts that are obviously moderated down out of malice. I've only negated existing moderation on one post, and I discussed it with another moderator before doing so.

Looking at all moderated posts, we've got over a 10:1 ratio of positives to negatives. If it were much lower, I'd feel compelled to try to change the system in some way to discourage negative mods, but I think we're doing okay so far.

DiMono wrote:
(could "posts you've modded" be added somewhere?)

I don't save each moderation, just the results of the mods - i.e. modder has less mod points, modded gets mod & rank points, post mod count is changed. I'm not too horribly inclined to change that.

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Mattcrampy
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Well, there's always the lethargy factor.

Or, in other words, letting borderline cases and cases that just don't seem... well, wrong... slide.

Of course, how would you, in our position, differentiate with people modding the posts of someone who, say, holds differing political views, or likes a feature request you don't, and a fair mod?

Although, the amount of people upset here suggests that maybe I should rethink this. How would you propose we deal with people that mod others down because you disagree with them? How shall we deal with people that mod particular forum users down becuase they just don't like them? Is there any case where undoing a mod is desirable?

Or should I just use only my own discretion in order to stave off the eventual complaints that I'm breaking whatever guidelines people think?

Edit: You snooze, you lose. While I grapple with the exact wording of what I'm trying to say, everyone else posted. For the most part, I'm with Schik here - we'd only go around undoing moderations if it's clear that it's not right.

Matt

[Edited by Mattcrampy on 03-12-2004 at 03:56 PM GMT]

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Schik
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Mattcrampy wrote:
Of course, how would you, in our position, differentiate with people modding the posts of someone who, say, holds differing political views, or likes a feature request you don't, and a fair mod?

I'd say if I can't tell at a glance, then I wouldn't change it. If I look at a post and think "Wow, he was very helpful with that post. Why the heck did he get modded down?" then I'd mod it up. As eytanz mentioned, that's cool because if it was that helpful, I would have modded it up anyways.

If I look at a negatively modded post and just think "Hmm.. I wouldn't have modded that down, but nor would I have modded it up", I don't think I'd change it.

How would you propose we deal with people that mod others down because you disagree with them? How shall we deal with people that mod particular forum users down becuase they just don't like them?

I think we need to err on the side of caution, and just let this little social experiment run it's course. If we start to see one person get bombarded with negatives, we might need to look into it. Right now, we have 20 posts that are negatively modded. Not a big deal in my book.

Or should I just use only my own discretion in order to stave off the eventual complaints that I'm breaking whatever guidelines people think?

I don't want to have a handbook of moderating guidelines - if it were that formulaic, then we'd probably just have our core group of moderators and not let other users moderate.

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eytanz
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Mattcrampy wrote:
Of course, how would you, in our position, differentiate with people modding the posts of someone who, say, holds differing political views, or likes a feature request you don't, and a fair mod?

Well, the point is - they're all fair mods. Even the nasty, pointless ones. Mods are also a form of speech, and also protected by freedom of speech.

If someone in particular is being targetted, you'll know it because they'll consistently make good posts that are modded down. Then, that's a special case and should be dealt with. If someone is being ineffectively targetted - someone else keeps modding them down but doesn't have enough mod points to do any real damage, you won't be able to catch it - but in that case, you won't need to catch it.

Although, the amount of people upset here suggests that maybe I should rethink this. How would you propose we deal with people that mod others down because you disagree with them? How shall we deal with people that mod particular forum users down becuase they just don't like them? Is there any case where undoing a mod is desirable?

Or should I just use only my own discretion in order to stave off the eventual complaints that I'm breaking whatever guidelines people think?

The point is that the system is supposed to be self-regulating. Mods need to seed points by rewarding good posts, but I think "correcting" mods goes way beyond the scope of this system. If someone wants to mod me down for saying something they didn't agree with, that's they're right. If they do this constantly, they'll run out of mod points, and stop being a problem.

The whole point is - if you're giving people the power to rank other people's posts, you should let them do it in any way that they see fit. Otherwise, there's no point in this system at all.

The only time mods should directly intervene is when it's clear that something is *WAY* off-base. So off-base that non-moderators bring it up.

Of course, mods are still supposed to mod based on their own preferrences - but there's a major difference between "I think this post deserves a point, so I'll give it one. Hmm, it was -1 so now it's 0", and "I think this post deserves a point, but it's -1, so I'll give it 2 to get it to +1". The first action means that you're giving a point based on your judgement, the second means that you're overriding someone else's judgement. I'm just not sure from your posts what you meant to do, and it seemed to me you were more leaning towards the second. That, I think, is an abuse of the system rather than good moderator behavior.

If you actually meant 1, then we both agree, and all is well and I'm sorry for arguing pointlessly. If we disagree and you decide to go around correcting moderations, I'll stop modding posts, because I don't want to be part of such a system.

Eytan

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Mattcrampy
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No, I meant option 1, except in the limited cases where I go, hang on, why is that -1? There's nothing wrong with it, let's find out the deal here. I'm expecting that not much of that sort will go on, as Schik said.

In any case, by 'correcting moderations' I certainly don't mean bump posts that were negative to positive.

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RoboBob3000
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Here's a suggestion:

Since this modding down business has people somewhat irked, why don't you just tweak the system to allow only positive mods, and throw a whole lot more points into the system? I'm talking about like 10 times as many. If everybody has more points with which to mod posts up, and no way to mod posts down, the rank points will then almost act as a measure of post count (seeing as the people who spend more time on the board are more likely to get more positive mods) and as a measure of post quality. People who don't deserve mod points won't be receiving them, the people who do will, and your ranking system still works. Also, since there will be more points with which to mod, people can make stronger judgement calls on how much they want to mod a post instead of just +1.

To do that all though, you'd need to tweak the ranking system and perhaps create a system where people could spend more than one mod point at a time on a single post.

Or you could go back to post count. Am I the only one who liked that? It's simple, and it requires no investment by anybody. After all, what happens when people get bored with modding? Then nobody's count is going up. I know I've hardly been modding anyone, but maybe that's just me.

If you want to make this post ironic, I suggest that you mod it strongly.

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ErikH2000
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I wish people would not take the rank points so seriously. If somebody mods down a post, even unfairly, it's not such a big deal. In the long run, if you make good posts, you'll make it back.

-Erik

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The_Red_Hawk
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The problem there is that there is no way to discourage people from making really bad or unneccesary posts.

Did you notice that the number of posts per day on this forum has gone down a lot? Before this system, I could wait a few hours, come back, and there would be several pages of posts made. Now, only half a page.

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Scott
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The_Red_Hawk wrote:
Did you notice that the number of posts per day on this forum has gone down a lot? Before this system, I could wait a few hours, come back, and there would be several pages of posts made. Now, only half a page.

I haven't actually been looking that closely. However if thats the case then good because I hate seeing an unread thread loading it up only to see a totally pointless message added. Clutter on a message board is just as untidy as clutter in the real world.

swann_88
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on modding down
I doubt I would ever feel strongly enough to mod down a post
and yet not strongly enough to comment

if someone is targeting a particular person down
they will run out of points fairly quickly
most people who would do this kind of thing will not be the
type of people racking up lots of points themselves
as their posts will probably not be that positive either
and since it is stated above that the system is not saving who
moderated which posts you would find it very difficult to catch
anyone doing this or prove it if you did

also there is a central focus to most of the posts here (DROD)
rather than people creating posts which may or may not relate
to anything which allows the system a much better chance of
succeeding than it would have at most other forums I have been a member of
all in all I would bet that 10:1 ratio will go not