Interesting way to deal with a large community and degrading discussions.

Do you think it will work, letting "high karma users" make decisions on the validity of posts?

I don't.

http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/22/hacker-news-pending-comments/

Scott

 

Well Tweakers.net also as a system in place where users can up or down vote comments it works good but they have a system in place that looks if people are not trying to manipulate they system if you do you get a penalty in doing so. Also they have power-mods people that can set high points so when the system is being manipulated they can adjust it.

 

I agree with "auto-moderation", where all users can vote negatively on posts as well as positively (like with likes) and where enough negative votes cause the post to maybe disappear or at least raise a moderation flag. It is another way of reporting bad behavior and also controlling it.

However, sticking all posts in moderation first, waiting for some of the "heavies" take a look and validate posts, is just a terrible way to go about keeping a forum orderly. It is basically giving people who are actually your best posters an extra chore, because they are good posters? What kind of crap reward is that?

"Oh yeah. BTW, because you are so good at posting great content, we want to you to also validate all our other user's content too." Isn't that just great. I wonder if the heavies were even asked. That would be a real zinger, if they didn't even ask them to be "semi-moderators".

Scott

 

The problem with Hacker News is it's run by Y Combinator, which directly benefits from having their opinions dominant in the community. They have the ability to sway the public opinion of technologies, products and technology companies.

Crowd-sourcing moderation is one thing, but giving the power to the elite only is what enables the corruption. Anyone seen the recent Community episode making fun of this very thing?

 

We use similar systems on my site, and much of the new content and news users are put into a moderation queue. While we do not use community moderation in moderation queues (only through reputation ratings and automatic promotions/bans), its clear that making content moderated it greatly suppresses user engagement and also instills doubt in users in regards to expected content. However, in some cases its better to have less activity and nip all trouble in the bud. Its not an optimal solution though. Community activity needs to be flowing in real time. Limitations like moderation queues should only be put on content that scripts deem likely to be problematic.

 

@Adrian Schneider - I didn't even think about the political spectrum of the decision (good or bad), as I wasn't too familiar with Y Combinator or its goals. If that is the case, holy cow that is incredible.

Scott

 

Absolutely. Proper writing discipline in discussions can't be controlled. It must be fostered by controlling the behavior of users as best possible.

Scott