Please help improve quality of story comments

[kde185]

Is there any chance Michael or any of the moderators (are there any?) could take a more proactive approach to weeding out the trolls and tiresome flamewars? There's really not much reason to even read the comments anymore. I find myself lurking Google+ or developer blogs if I'm wanting to learn more about something since they rarely come by here.

Sometimes developers would make a comment that was interesting enough to be posted on the frontpage of Phoronix. That *rarely* happens anymore. Comments now are mostly empty or 10+ pages of flamefest.

I'm not sure exactly what the solution is, simply swinging the banhammer at anyone that prefers software $x over $y probably is a bit too heavy handed. But something needs to be done before the conversation here becomes worse than Slashdot.

And in case anyone wants to bring up the "ignore" feature, that doesn't work if someone derails an entire thread. Ignoring also doesn't fix the problem of having a dozen crappy people drive away all the developers that might otherwise post here.

[alazar]

Phoronix needs a karma system for the forum, that way less productive comments would be hidden and more important ones would be highlighted.

[dh04000]

Phoronix needs a karma system for the forum, that way less productive comments would be hidden and more important ones would be highlighted.

You know that people wouldn't use it to reward productive comments, but as another way to attack people because their opinion doesn't match theirs.....

[kde185]

Not a karma system please

I agree with dh04000. With a karma system there isn't much of a discussion anyway. It's just a bunch of comments that are hidden and only a handful of meme posts and people parroting popular opinion that gets any visibility. Aside from the news stories, the predominately informative discussions was a major reason I enjoy this site.

I knew a forum that had a pretty heavy handed approach to dealing with trolls or dumb people. Moderators would ban a person the first time they trolled. People that responded to the troll would also receive a shorter ban. Both the original troll post and every response would then be removed from the thread and put in a special "garbage" thread that people are free to browse if they ever want a brain hemorrhage.

They were pretty damn heavy handed with this approach. They basically restricted all discussion to only being between the experts. If a more lenient threshold for trolls and flamewars were used it could work well. The main thing is that it stops a discussion from getting derailed. It also avoids the problem of censorship because people can still read every idiotic statement by checking out the "garbage" thread.

[curaga]

Another echo for no karma. It's a horrible system that only encourages groupthink and hides posts the majority disagree with, no matter if they are completely civil and well argumented. Do not turn this place into reddit or slashdot.

[dh04000]

I agree with dh04000. With a karma system there isn't much of a discussion anyway. It's just a bunch of comments that are hidden and only a handful of meme posts and people parroting popular opinion that gets any visibility. Aside from the news stories, the predominately informative discussions was a major reason I enjoy this site.

I knew a forum that had a pretty heavy handed approach to dealing with trolls or dumb people. Moderators would ban a person the first time they trolled. People that responded to the troll would also receive a shorter ban. Both the original troll post and every response would then be removed from the thread and put in a special "garbage" thread that people are free to browse if they ever want a brain hemorrhage.

They were pretty damn heavy handed with this approach. They basically restricted all discussion to only being between the experts. If a more lenient threshold for trolls and flamewars were used it could work well. The main thing is that it stops a discussion from getting derailed. It also avoids the problem of censorship because people can still read every idiotic statement by checking out the "garbage" thread.

I feel the heavy moderation with clean and well defined rules and a garbage pile could work well. The only thing is, that type of system is easily abused by moderators, and thus becomes a system where, you agree with the moderators or your posts get trashed. The most important part would be making moderators follow the rules, not emotion, and then I believe it could work.

[curaga]

Humans will always be corrupted by power. Always. See Stanford Prison Experiment.

[torsionbar28]

You know that people wouldn't use it to reward productive comments, but as another way to attack people because their opinion doesn't match theirs.....

This is how forum karma always ends up working. Vote down those whom you disagree with (no matter how valid or honest they may be).

[kde185]

Perfect example

So here's a perfect example of what I'm talking about:

http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?92695-KDBUS-amp-Systemd-Now-Yields-A-Working-System

At what point are the moderators going to do something about this? There's even some guy in there bragging about being able to derail threads.

There might be some genuine questions in that thread but god knows they won't get answered. Why would anyone who actually knows anything wade into what is clearly a cesspool of stupid?

[endman]

I think the problem can be problem can be linked directly to these people:

-zester
-BeardedGNUFreak
-Brad0
-Sergio
-Vim_User
-intellivision

With zester and BreadedGNUFreak being the hot shot of the day.