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Posted Nov 29, 2014 19:51 UTC (Sat) by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
In reply to: Previous time by cesarb
Parent article: The "Devuan" Debian fork

Another nice feature you could add for subscribers ...

!Invite! subscribers of the top rank to be troll-watchers. They then get the ability to rank posts on a troll-ranking of 1 to 5. (By default, posts are ranked 0.)

Not quite sure how to actually do the next bit, but basically you take the number of posts a member has, and work out the average troll-ranking of those posts. With a bit of jiggery-pokery, this will give the troll-ranking of the member.

Allow everybody to block trolls of the 4th or 5th rank, and subscribers can block trolls of any rank. Maybe "professional hacker" and above can also see the troll ranking of posters/posts.

So the result would be a bit like the "British Board of Film Censors". You're happy in that the only people who can "mod" posts up or down are people *you* have chosen. They then assign a ranking to posts and posters. And finally it's up to your (paid) readership to decide whether or not they want to take advantage of that ranking.

(And of course, if when you're reading it always displays the troll-ranking of all posts and posters, you can see instantly how well the system is working, and tweak it as required. Maybe adjust the jiggery-pokery, or add or remove troll-watchers).

Myabe ask PJ for some tips :-) I know Groklaw needed a LOT of moderation, but then they had paid troll armies attacking :-(

Cheers,
Wol

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Posted Nov 30, 2014 2:49 UTC (Sun) by b7j0c (guest, #27559) [Link] (2 responses)

no thank you. i don't want lwn turning into reddit. inevitably, one of these "mods" will inevitably start downgrading comments they merely disagree with. please don't say it won't happen, because everywhere i go where this power is bequeathed to a select few, it inevitably turns into a process of squelching dissent

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Posted Dec 2, 2014 11:25 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

It's not invariably true, but you need a *very* strong sense of community, almost of family, before it won't. The mods need to feel like they're betraying friends, because they are.

LWN doesn't have a sense of community that strong (and I can't imagine it ever growing one). Not even the TeX community is that strong.

Previous time

Posted Dec 2, 2014 18:31 UTC (Tue) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

But if they're a hand-picked bunch of people Jon feels he can trust ...

Groklaw succeeded in doing that, because PJ ran a tight ship. I think lwn could achieve the same.

Cheers,
Wol