News Post Comments Need Moderation


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As Neowin's popularity seems to grow, I've been noticing the comments on the news posts are getting quite poor in quality (i.e. "this is old", "this software sucks","MS sucks","Linux sucks", mainly a lot of complaints and then complaints about the complaints). Unfortunately I realize that this is simply a consequence of Neowin's growth (which has been quite large), and I also realize that this post is itself a complaint (sort of). However, my suggestion is to implement some type of user moderation system and allow the users to configure how the comments are displayed (a very complex example of this is used on slashdot.org). I understand that this may not be the most trivial system to implement, so I would be willing to offer my programming skills (PHP/SQL and others if necessary) to help out.

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The news posts need moderation? Definately. Theres way too much flaming in them. You can go in a thread about the new foobar and you'll see all this rubbish about other players. You can go in the thread about the doom 3 benches and you'll see chaos like anything.

So once more, I would love moderation in the News Posts. :yes: (Y)

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not to be argumentative but i personally feel that its a positive thing. as neowin have shown in the last month they are trying to increase their news content and the overall professionalism of the site, this cant be acheived if neowin is living in last weeks news.

If you have a problem with the comments made then just ignore them as its easier to do that then to make some elaborate program to block out the ones you dont like. Even though you may not like it it cant be argued that if theres a problem with an aspect of the site it has to be addressed and at the moment one such problem is neowins news being every other sites news... last week.

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Neowin is a news relay site, as far as the front page goes. We can't have the news before it's out there.

Trolling is definitely an issue in news comments, though. I'm glad someone else brought it up.

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I have no problem with people being allowed to say what they want (whether I agree with it or not), as long as I able to filter out the less productive comments, simply ignoring these comments doesn't help as I have to first read them to realize that I didn't want to. My proposed system would allow any normal user to rate each comment (within boundaries of course). Each user will also be allowed to set a threshhold for themselves of the lowest rated comment that they would want to read so that the less productive comments aren't displayed by default, but could easily be shown by the users' own decision. This is opposed to the moderator method where only special moderators are able to remove content which other users may never view.

There are some minor problems with this system of course, one being users abusing their moderator privelage in which case you simply implement a meta-moderation system. I would start out very simple though and avoid the extra features until they seem necessary.

Even the simplest implementation of this system is not very easy, which is why I am more than willing to help out (if it is decided that this would be a worth while system).

I would like all the users to be able to decide when a good comment is good and when a bad one is bad, and still allow them to read the bad if they prefer.

Anyways, just trying to make this a more enjoyable community. :)

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I'm adding moderators now as they request it :)

Never heard you say that before :p

Anyways, we could use the Newsposters to moderate the news page. Makes sense to me, unless they are busy. If so, then hire some new people.

dL

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Never heard you say that before :p

Anyways, we could use the Newsposters to moderate the news page. Makes sense to me, unless they are busy. If so, then hire some new people.

dL

He means those staffers volunteering for the extra coverage.

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Unfortunately I think my point was slightly missed (however, the effort is much appreciated). I don't think that traditional moderation methods is the greatest solution here as the few moderators opinions will censor what the readers can see based on a subjective decision. This is not meant to bash the moderators at all, they work hard and its appreciated (by me anyways), this is simply how that type of moderation works... for better or worse...

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Well opinions and personal attacks are quite different. We moderate both, but allow only one. It's not subjective if you think about it.

That is true, and that type of moderation is much appreciated. However, posts like "This news is old and sucks" is quite opinionated. Now if this proposed system were in place users may be allowed to rate this as a bad post and thus get filtered out of most of the other users' viewing...

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Anyways, we could use the Newsposters to moderate the news page. Makes sense to me, unless they are busy. If so, then hire some new people.

I'll be keeping an eye on comments in the news that I and other Newsposters make. If actions needs taken, I'll take it or if it's something really questionable, I'll call an Admin or fellow Mod in. There are now several Mods capable of moderating the news comments as well as the Newsposters.

The bottom line is to keep the comments in the news as clean as the forums. (Y)

I appreciate this thread being created and your opinions voiced.

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That is true, and that type of moderation is much appreciated. However, posts like "This news is old and sucks" is quite opinionated. Now if this proposed system were in place users may be allowed to rate this as a bad post and thus get filtered out of most of the other users' viewing...

Some members are wrong about their comment on the age of the news, I've seen people say the news is 2 weeks old when it was just a day old (from the source) thats nothing more than trolling and would only devalue the news if we were to allow people to 'rate' the news.

We may have to include such a system for subscribers seeing as they are actually paying for our services however.

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I was just thinking about this the other day, and was wondering, since I have seen a few other sites with a setup like this: You have the news posted on the front page. Then a comments link, also showing the amount of comments. But, there in, when you click that comments link, it takes you to a news subforum that has the story, and everything, but can be moderated by normal mods.

Just a thought.

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