livejournal to emulate mefi flagging system?

June 9, 2007 4:48 PM

As a follow up to this post about livejournal's recent suspension of several hundred user accounts, in his latest update on the situation SixApart CEO Barak Berkowitz name checked metafilter citing us as a good example of community policing.

We know we can learn a lot from other communities that use a combination of reputation software and human judgment to gauge community opinion, and we are now actively exploring how we can let the community "vote" on what is acceptable content in order to create greater consistency.

posted by nerdcore to MetaFilter-related at 4:48 PM (26 comments total)

I would be interested to see how something like what we use here could play out over such a large sprawling network of micro-communities. It seems like it works best for metafilter because we are all reading the same content, but livejournal seems to be filled with niche groups of people with similar interests. Any thoughts on how livejournal could make a mefi like system work for them?
posted by nerdcore at 4:50 PM on June 9, 2007

"Metafilter, Craigslist, Flickr, Wikipedia, and many, many other sites effectively use these types of systems to make the jobs of their support teams easier and to reflect the standards of the community."

That's the money quote. One of those things is not like the other...
posted by smackfu at 4:53 PM on June 9, 2007

To be fair, I think the flagging thing pretty much comes directly form Craigsist, though we definitely implement it differently.
posted by jessamyn at 4:55 PM on June 9, 2007

See, if those microcommunities were actual microcommunities - you know, managing their own websites and policies, rather than being just a piece of a much larger commercial entity, then it might be possible. Your post indicates that they're still talking about the community, rather than the lots of microcommunities you describe. The only standard they're going to be able to discover for that diverse group of communities is the lowest-common-denominator legal one.

I don't know. But I imagine that if they implement "voting" on appropriate content, you'll have a load of people having lots of fun "flagging" the twisted furry-slashfic folk. If I was a member of Livejournal, I'd probably join in for the lolz.
posted by Jimbob at 4:57 PM on June 9, 2007

Has SixApart/LiveJournal ever explained why they were "under the gun" and what the urgency was? I asked Anil three times (1, 2, 3), but he refused to answer.
posted by fandango_matt at 4:57 PM on June 9, 2007

What, no mention fark or SA?
posted by chuckdarwin at 4:57 PM on June 9, 2007

Or 4chan? I think we can all learn a lot from what goes on at 4chan.
posted by Jimbob at 5:08 PM on June 9, 2007

Does anyone understand what goes on at 4chan?
posted by who squared at 5:17 PM on June 9, 2007

Not even God knows what goes on at 4chan.
posted by quin at 5:27 PM on June 9, 2007

Drinks all around!

Does anyone understand what goes on at 4chan?

All too well.

BRB FBI
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 5:28 PM on June 9, 2007

Does anyone understand what goes on at 4chan?

This guy does.
posted by puke & cry at 5:32 PM on June 9, 2007 [1 favorite]

they haven't even learned enough from this site to understand it ... we don't "vote" ... we merely send suggestions and the admins either follow them or blow them off, according to their judgement ... we post the hell whatever we want to until someone in power says they don't like it and snuffs it

god forbid we ever actually have votes on posts and comments ... because it'll be abused
posted by pyramid termite at 5:54 PM on June 9, 2007

Slashdot. 'nuff said.
posted by Jimbob at 5:57 PM on June 9, 2007

for any type of voting to work under their system they need to either make things a lot more centralized and hire a bunch more mods, or fragment everything even more holding specific blog runners responsible for illegal activity, but nothing else. A metafilter type system is not going to work at all with their set up.
posted by edgeways at 6:10 PM on June 9, 2007

I think he meant the flagging system, which could help them really chase down crazy pedophile types, but otherwise leave their fan fiction communities doing fine.
posted by mathowie at 6:46 PM on June 9, 2007

True MetaFilter Confessions: I just turned down Wilco on the radio so I could listen to puke & cry's link. Damn, I love that song.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 6:47 PM on June 9, 2007

Damn you puke & cry, damn you. I've played and replayed that, and just can't stop. It's a hair and fashion train wreck... Oh, the horrors of pale denim.

I think he meant the flagging system, which could help them really chase down crazy pedophile types

I feel sorry for the person who's going to have to sort through all the [flagged as pedophile]s, separating the ones of genuine concern from the ones resulting from crazy internet fights.

Out of curiosity, what would you put the ratio or percentage of genuine/innocently-misguided and 'abused'/'misused' MeFi and AskMe flags at?
posted by CKmtl at 7:16 PM on June 9, 2007

I would imagine the biggest problem with flags is deciding what the threshold is going to be before doing something about that which is being flagged. Craigslist* is an example where flagging is a bit weak, and could be backed up with some heuristics to automatically weed out some complaints.

*For example, lists of keywords in ads are against posting policy on CL, but idiots post ads all the time with keyword spam, (like anyone looking for item a will suddenly decide to buy completely different item b because it shows up in the search results). However, there is not a specific flag for keyword spam, which would be pretty easy to pattern match. Result, increasingly useless search results, as the flag threshold seems very high.
posted by maxwelton at 9:08 PM on June 9, 2007

This guy does.

I did not expect that voice from that dude.

---

Anyway, I agree with those who say that flagging wouldn't work as well on LJ as it would here on Metafilter, since it's so fragmented.
posted by delmoi at 9:18 PM on June 9, 2007

I did not expect that voice from that dude.

Funny you should say that. At the time, lots of people thought that Rick's voice was actually Kylie Minogue's played at 33rpm.
posted by davehat at 5:48 AM on June 10, 2007

Out of curiosity, what would you put the ratio or percentage of genuine/innocently-misguided and 'abused'/'misused' MeFi and AskMe flags at?

In three and a half months I've seen very little ironic/bizarre flagging. Every now and then someone will flag something as a pun ('noise' on music commentary, etc); and I've noticed a couple examples of hair-trigger flags for this or that high-profile user, but that's really about it. Functionally speaking, people seem to flag things with a straight face, which is nice.

I imagine that's partly because (a) the scope of the site is small enough that there isn't a sense of completely distance between the flagger and the staff, as it were—most people here who are going to flag something also know that it's just a few people, who they know, who are looking at the flags—and (b) there's no positive feedback for gaming the system, since flags aren't visible and don't trigger any automatic systems. All a griefer has to look forward to is an angry mod (and in some hypothetical bizarre case a timeout for their trouble).
posted by cortex at 7:16 AM on June 10, 2007

what would you put the ratio or percentage of genuine/innocently-misguided and 'abused'/'misused' MeFi and AskMe flags at?

Cortex has it, almost no one abuses the system, it's borderline amazing. There are a few checks in place on our end [you can't flag something 16 times for example] and there are the rare times when I'll email someone and say "hey you don't have to flag every comment in a thread, once we see three or four flags there we'll hop on over to investigate" but really, the system works really well from our perspective at the risk, I guess, of a lack of transparency to the rest of the community.
posted by jessamyn at 7:19 AM on June 10, 2007

from the comments at puke & cry's YouTube post:

There is not a single part of this video that is not completely goddamn perfect.
posted by Kwantsar at 12:30 PM on June 10, 2007

davehat, that's uncanny. But it makes so much sense!

Wait. So does that mean that the guy from Thompson Twins was really Danni in drag?
posted by bonehead at 8:49 PM on June 10, 2007

It seems like it works best for metafilter because we are all reading the same content, but livejournal seems to be filled with niche groups of people with similar interests. Any thoughts on how livejournal could make a mefi like system work for them?

Um, not at all? I'm on LJ, just...just, and really only as a means of keeping vaguely in touch with one particular circle of friends.

As far as I can tell, most people use LJ in a similar manner: set up your circle of howevermany friends & read about what they ate for breakfast. If you're into some kind of sport or hobby or interest, then you might find a related community where somebody will post something every other month, but overall, it's little more than a fancy email distribution list. No sense of community that I've noticed in two years or so using it.

The dynamics here are very different. I feel that MetaFilter is the kind of place that attracts & retains certain kinds of people who value the content & dialogue, and want to be a part of it, and that the "policing" lies more in the self-imposed desire of members to contribute posts & snarks of worth, and to set the bar as high as they can - with the best YouTube posts available - than in any kind of heavy-handed voting or moderation.

LJ, on the other hand, is a place where any old crap goes, with no member of the cabal calling you out with a "shit FPP" comment or a MeTa callout. Hell, even the concept of a LJ callout is ridiculous: the response would be "hey, asswipe, I was telling my friends what I ate for breakfast! What the hell is it to you?". No standards; no community other than people who already mostly know each other in meatspace. /2c
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:16 AM on June 11, 2007

This guy does.

Is this MetaFilter's first Rickroll? If so, and even if not, thanks p&c: I got good mileage out of this today.
posted by kosem at 1:01 PM on June 11, 2007