Flag It and Move On March 25, 2006 1:46 PM Subscribe
What part of "flag it and move on" are people having trouble understanding? I'm willing to hold an extra help session for our slower learners.
I think people prefer self-policing to black-box secret policing. Which is understandable.
posted by Space Coyote at 1:56 PM on March 25, 2006
posted by Space Coyote at 1:56 PM on March 25, 2006
'Round and 'round the cobbler's bench, the monkey chased the weasel...
posted by crunchland at 2:00 PM on March 25, 2006
posted by crunchland at 2:00 PM on March 25, 2006
Flagged as "noise"; moving on.
posted by timeistight at 2:41 PM on March 25, 2006
posted by timeistight at 2:41 PM on March 25, 2006
I'm having trouble with the word "on."
posted by Astro Zombie at 3:02 PM on March 25, 2006
posted by Astro Zombie at 3:02 PM on March 25, 2006
Yeah that seemed a little over the top. When the only tag you give your post is "politics"... It's a good NYT article but probably needs to be introduced with a little less hyperbole on MeFi.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:14 PM on March 25, 2006
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 3:14 PM on March 25, 2006
Move on? Aren't they commies who hijacked the radical left wing of something or other? THIS PLACE IS TURNING INTO DAILYKOS!
posted by nevercalm at 4:38 PM on March 25, 2006
posted by nevercalm at 4:38 PM on March 25, 2006
I think people prefer self-policing to black-box secret policing. Which is understandable.
Precisely. I still don't understand how Matt came to the conclusion that feedbackless flagging could be a good idea. It doesn't make any sense to me, and fosters unintended changes in the culture, almost none of which are positive. In fact, I think it's corrosive, actually, to the foundations of trust and accountability. This is in part why I suggested the 'fantastic page' a while back. I suspect flagging might not have been thought through entirely. Matt is touted as someone who 'knows online community', but I find myself wondering sometimes how much is plan and how much is spontaneous reaction to demands and complaints and problems.
'Round and 'round the cobbler's bench, the monkey chased the weasel...
Again, precisely.
But it seems pretty clear that MeTa has failed or is failing in its mission, because it has become common knowledge that it's about 'the callout' and bloodlust, or this is, at least, how consensus-seeking has come to be perceived (through sheer brute repetition from people who don't get it), which amounts to the same thing.
And the flagging is invisible and secret-police-ey, and creepy as hell in my opinion, and I feel dirty the few times I use it, usually for "SHITCOKC!1!" type stuff.
So what are we left with? A dysfunctional community-navigation system at best, with two non-integrated and failing feedback loops, and no ideas from the captain or first mate about how to integrate and fix it, apparently.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:14 PM on March 25, 2006
Precisely. I still don't understand how Matt came to the conclusion that feedbackless flagging could be a good idea. It doesn't make any sense to me, and fosters unintended changes in the culture, almost none of which are positive. In fact, I think it's corrosive, actually, to the foundations of trust and accountability. This is in part why I suggested the 'fantastic page' a while back. I suspect flagging might not have been thought through entirely. Matt is touted as someone who 'knows online community', but I find myself wondering sometimes how much is plan and how much is spontaneous reaction to demands and complaints and problems.
'Round and 'round the cobbler's bench, the monkey chased the weasel...
Again, precisely.
But it seems pretty clear that MeTa has failed or is failing in its mission, because it has become common knowledge that it's about 'the callout' and bloodlust, or this is, at least, how consensus-seeking has come to be perceived (through sheer brute repetition from people who don't get it), which amounts to the same thing.
And the flagging is invisible and secret-police-ey, and creepy as hell in my opinion, and I feel dirty the few times I use it, usually for "SHITCOKC!1!" type stuff.
So what are we left with? A dysfunctional community-navigation system at best, with two non-integrated and failing feedback loops, and no ideas from the captain or first mate about how to integrate and fix it, apparently.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 6:14 PM on March 25, 2006
stavrosthewonderchicken : "I still don't understand how Matt came to the conclusion that feedbackless flagging could be a good idea."
I dunno if it's right or wrong, but I do understand how he came to that conclusion. The idea was: we've got people bitching up storms about some comments / posts. In some of those cases, there is a lot of disagreement about whether said comment/post is good or bad. Flagging isn't meant to address those issues. However, there is a lot of bitching about something which everyone (or, "every single person except the one solitary person who made the actual comment") agrees. In those cases, there isn't really anything to "discuss", the bitching is just a huge pileon. Matt's idea was that flags could be used to obviate the second type of bitching. There's no need to discuss every double, every borked link, every completely obvious and uncontested derail or comment posted in the wrong thread. By flagging them, hopefully, we avoid MeTa scrolling so darn fast, we avoid a pileon (defining "pileon" as "everyone being in complete agreement and just getting their licks in" as opposed to the often-used definition of "pileon" as being "many people, but not everyone, getting their licks in"), etc.
Anyway, that's the goal. Hopefully, now you understand how Matt came to the conclusion. (Sorry, that sounded condescending, but I promise it wasn't meant to). You may disagree, or think he's overlooking other important factors, or the like, but at least (I hope), the "how" of him coming to that conclusion is clear.
posted by Bugbread at 6:39 PM on March 25, 2006
I dunno if it's right or wrong, but I do understand how he came to that conclusion. The idea was: we've got people bitching up storms about some comments / posts. In some of those cases, there is a lot of disagreement about whether said comment/post is good or bad. Flagging isn't meant to address those issues. However, there is a lot of bitching about something which everyone (or, "every single person except the one solitary person who made the actual comment") agrees. In those cases, there isn't really anything to "discuss", the bitching is just a huge pileon. Matt's idea was that flags could be used to obviate the second type of bitching. There's no need to discuss every double, every borked link, every completely obvious and uncontested derail or comment posted in the wrong thread. By flagging them, hopefully, we avoid MeTa scrolling so darn fast, we avoid a pileon (defining "pileon" as "everyone being in complete agreement and just getting their licks in" as opposed to the often-used definition of "pileon" as being "many people, but not everyone, getting their licks in"), etc.
Anyway, that's the goal. Hopefully, now you understand how Matt came to the conclusion. (Sorry, that sounded condescending, but I promise it wasn't meant to). You may disagree, or think he's overlooking other important factors, or the like, but at least (I hope), the "how" of him coming to that conclusion is clear.
posted by Bugbread at 6:39 PM on March 25, 2006
The irony here is, of course, that you could have just flagged said comments and moved on. I love it.
posted by antifuse at 6:53 PM on March 25, 2006
posted by antifuse at 6:53 PM on March 25, 2006
Sorry, bugbread, you've almost completely missed my point. It's trivially obvious what flagging is for, and you've managed to explain the trivially obvious to me in great detail. Of course that's what the flagging mechanism is supposed to do.
But in your enthusiam to explain what I would imagine everyone here understands, you've missed that the key word in what I was saying is 'feedbackless', you see, not 'flagging'. Perhaps that's my fault for assuming that people understood that I'm not entirely thick.
I'm rapidly tiring of this, but I'll give it a go, the old school try one more time: if there is no feedback to flagging something as either good or bad, no feedback to either the user whose post/comment is flagged, nor to the user who does the flagging, it is, in my humble, the equivalent of dobbing in your neighbour to the secret police. (Now that's hyperbole, but it's the easiest apt simile, so don't people get all fucking twisted about my choice of words, please.)
There is no feedback mechanism, to anyone.
What happens? Users get frustrated because they don't see anything happen when they flag. They take it to Metatalk, already getting hot under the collar, and what might have been a thread to try and have a discussion about a point of etiquette becomes another acrimonious bullshit 'callout'.
What happens? Threads and comments are disappeared, with no visible feedback to us (most importantly, including new users) why that might have happened, or even if it has. Nobody learns jack shit about what is currently good practice, and there is no feedback mechanism to people honestly trying to figure out the community's standards.
What happens? Matt and Jessamyn get perceived to be Authority figures, because the black box mechanism gives us moderation ex machina, and that sucks, and creates, as I mentioned, a climate that undermines trust (of other users and mods) and accountability (both for users who post, users who flag and for the mods).
What happens? Metatalk gets more vicious, and the feedback mechanism to discuss and (never) reach a consensus (but the process s/b the focus, not the output, as I've explained before), at least air concerns and let people get a handle on what most people think fails. Flagging is opaque and cryptic, and gives no feedback to anyone (including Matt and Jessamyn, because they have no way to provide feedback to us about the actionable results of flagging other than delete (with no visible footprint), nor do we have any way to give feedback about the process of deletions from our perspective except endless bitching, because there is no transparency). Both feedback loops rupture, and contribute to deteriorating the efficiency of one another.
What happens? All sorts of unintended consequences.
Hopefully, now you understand how what I'm talking about, and how condescending your response sounded, even if that was not the way it was intended. My concerns about three steps ahead of the 'see jack run' Flagging Primer you offer, in good faith, but a bit insultingly. Flagging without any feedback, in any direction, breaks a whole shitload of online community foundation concepts and transaction.
What I don't understand is not why Matt added flagging (I was here, and took part in the discussions that led to it, and again, it's elementary, my dear bugbread), but why he's left it half-built and corrosive as it is, by not building any kind of user- or even mod-oriented feedback into it.
Clear now?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:26 PM on March 25, 2006 [1 favorite]
But in your enthusiam to explain what I would imagine everyone here understands, you've missed that the key word in what I was saying is 'feedbackless', you see, not 'flagging'. Perhaps that's my fault for assuming that people understood that I'm not entirely thick.
I'm rapidly tiring of this, but I'll give it a go, the old school try one more time: if there is no feedback to flagging something as either good or bad, no feedback to either the user whose post/comment is flagged, nor to the user who does the flagging, it is, in my humble, the equivalent of dobbing in your neighbour to the secret police. (Now that's hyperbole, but it's the easiest apt simile, so don't people get all fucking twisted about my choice of words, please.)
There is no feedback mechanism, to anyone.
What happens? Users get frustrated because they don't see anything happen when they flag. They take it to Metatalk, already getting hot under the collar, and what might have been a thread to try and have a discussion about a point of etiquette becomes another acrimonious bullshit 'callout'.
What happens? Threads and comments are disappeared, with no visible feedback to us (most importantly, including new users) why that might have happened, or even if it has. Nobody learns jack shit about what is currently good practice, and there is no feedback mechanism to people honestly trying to figure out the community's standards.
What happens? Matt and Jessamyn get perceived to be Authority figures, because the black box mechanism gives us moderation ex machina, and that sucks, and creates, as I mentioned, a climate that undermines trust (of other users and mods) and accountability (both for users who post, users who flag and for the mods).
What happens? Metatalk gets more vicious, and the feedback mechanism to discuss and (never) reach a consensus (but the process s/b the focus, not the output, as I've explained before), at least air concerns and let people get a handle on what most people think fails. Flagging is opaque and cryptic, and gives no feedback to anyone (including Matt and Jessamyn, because they have no way to provide feedback to us about the actionable results of flagging other than delete (with no visible footprint), nor do we have any way to give feedback about the process of deletions from our perspective except endless bitching, because there is no transparency). Both feedback loops rupture, and contribute to deteriorating the efficiency of one another.
What happens? All sorts of unintended consequences.
Hopefully, now you understand how what I'm talking about, and how condescending your response sounded, even if that was not the way it was intended. My concerns about three steps ahead of the 'see jack run' Flagging Primer you offer, in good faith, but a bit insultingly. Flagging without any feedback, in any direction, breaks a whole shitload of online community foundation concepts and transaction.
What I don't understand is not why Matt added flagging (I was here, and took part in the discussions that led to it, and again, it's elementary, my dear bugbread), but why he's left it half-built and corrosive as it is, by not building any kind of user- or even mod-oriented feedback into it.
Clear now?
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:26 PM on March 25, 2006 [1 favorite]
"Who needs a blog when you've got mefi?"
"I thought that one of the purposes of this site was to prompt discussion."
A reason why I flagged and didn't move on was to contradict those statements. As I watch the drift from the original intent of Metafilter I don't see those comments as helping this community grow. So I explained my reasoning.
To me that can be more helpful than the secret "we don't like this, but we won't tell you why" votes.
Why not take it to meta? Most of those types of meta threads seem to merely be groups of enemies bitching at each other. I can't track even who hates who anymore.
posted by ?! at 9:26 PM on March 25, 2006
"I thought that one of the purposes of this site was to prompt discussion."
A reason why I flagged and didn't move on was to contradict those statements. As I watch the drift from the original intent of Metafilter I don't see those comments as helping this community grow. So I explained my reasoning.
To me that can be more helpful than the secret "we don't like this, but we won't tell you why" votes.
Why not take it to meta? Most of those types of meta threads seem to merely be groups of enemies bitching at each other. I can't track even who hates who anymore.
posted by ?! at 9:26 PM on March 25, 2006
stavrosthewonderchicken : "Sorry, bugbread, you've almost completely missed my point."
Sorry.
stavrosthewonderchicken : "Perhaps that's my fault for assuming that people understood that I'm not entirely thick."
No, I know you're not thick, but I don't remember who was involved in what threads, so I didn't know if you were here when the initial flagging discussion happened and Matt gave his reasons. I was a little surprised that you said you didn't understand Matt's motivations, and you're a right guy, so I figured I'd explain it, in case you were away when the whole discussion of "why" happened. I was wrong, and misread you. I apologize.
posted by Bugbread at 9:31 PM on March 25, 2006
Sorry.
stavrosthewonderchicken : "Perhaps that's my fault for assuming that people understood that I'm not entirely thick."
No, I know you're not thick, but I don't remember who was involved in what threads, so I didn't know if you were here when the initial flagging discussion happened and Matt gave his reasons. I was a little surprised that you said you didn't understand Matt's motivations, and you're a right guy, so I figured I'd explain it, in case you were away when the whole discussion of "why" happened. I was wrong, and misread you. I apologize.
posted by Bugbread at 9:31 PM on March 25, 2006
No worries. I was just browbeating you, and trying to explain allowed me to clarify my concerns (which mathowie will probably ignore, as he usually does), and that was a good thing, for me at least. I also apologize if my sarcasm was a little excessive.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:35 PM on March 25, 2006
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 9:35 PM on March 25, 2006
From what've seen, most people flag it and move on (to MetaTalk). Where's the problem?
posted by blue_beetle at 10:10 PM on March 25, 2006
posted by blue_beetle at 10:10 PM on March 25, 2006
knave : "Who cares?"
Scroll up and check. We can't do your homework for you, that's against AskMe rules.
posted by Bugbread at 10:39 PM on March 25, 2006
Scroll up and check. We can't do your homework for you, that's against AskMe rules.
posted by Bugbread at 10:39 PM on March 25, 2006
stavros, I have to disagree. When something's obviously in violation of the guidelines, I think the flags are a useful way for lots of people to notify mathowie and jessamyn without turning into a big meta-discussion. It's also very fast. I often flag stuff and then don't bother to check whether it's actually been deleted or not--I figure if enough people flag it, it'll get deleted, and if not, so be it.
posted by russilwvong at 11:33 PM on March 25, 2006
posted by russilwvong at 11:33 PM on March 25, 2006
I flag it and then comment. I figure it's like a ... well, like a red flag. (Or yellow or green or blue or whatever, depending on what I pick in the drop-down.)
I generally don't expect anything to happen, it's more like a "you might want to look at this at some point." There probably should be more input into the process, but I don't have enough time to care, and someone's gotta make the decision to delete or not (or whatever.) May as well give them a fast way to get a heads-up on what people think.
So, basically, I agree with stavros, but I don't care enough to want to change anything. I can't think of a better system anyway.
posted by blacklite at 12:05 AM on March 26, 2006
I generally don't expect anything to happen, it's more like a "you might want to look at this at some point." There probably should be more input into the process, but I don't have enough time to care, and someone's gotta make the decision to delete or not (or whatever.) May as well give them a fast way to get a heads-up on what people think.
So, basically, I agree with stavros, but I don't care enough to want to change anything. I can't think of a better system anyway.
posted by blacklite at 12:05 AM on March 26, 2006
flagged as beedogs.
posted by StrasbourgSecaucus at 12:45 AM on March 26, 2006
posted by StrasbourgSecaucus at 12:45 AM on March 26, 2006
stavros, I have to disagree.
Disagree with what? I'm not saying flagging per se is bad, I'm saying the implementation is bad.
Oh, the hell with it. I've got some Oblivion to play.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:08 AM on March 26, 2006
Disagree with what? I'm not saying flagging per se is bad, I'm saying the implementation is bad.
Oh, the hell with it. I've got some Oblivion to play.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 2:08 AM on March 26, 2006
stavrosthewonderchicken : "Oh, the hell with it. I've got some Oblivion to play."
D'oh!!
posted by Bugbread at 2:49 AM on March 26, 2006
D'oh!!
posted by Bugbread at 2:49 AM on March 26, 2006
"I still don't understand how Matt came to the conclusion that feedbackless flagging could be a good idea."
Stavros, first off -- flags have been pretty successful behind the scenes and I'm glad I did it, but I will concede that it may seem like an empty gesture to users and it does go against the whole we're in it together ethos I've tried to engender from the start.
Here's the thing -- metatalk, my email, and interactions I had with other users were worse off IMO pre-flagging, because people were enraged that I condoned a few people being assholes and getting in fights on the site. And they assumed I condoned these actions because the comments stayed. When I would say "I didn't even see that" they would be puzzled as to why I wasn't reading all 30 posts and ~1,500 comments per day.
As the site has grown, I realized I was seeing maybe 10% of the site, tops, and that's still reading a few hours per day. Once in a while someone would email to say there was a flare-up here or someone told be to fuck off there, but I would have to go back and check their story out because sometimes I found one user saying that only after they had done something equally bad.
Policing the site was getting out of control. If you need an analogy, my land/city/space here grew by leaps and bounds, but it was being patrolled by one cop (me) while the townspeople complained about me not being everywhere at once. So the next step was to get more people to help, and long story short, jessamyn has been extraordinary with that but at the start adding one single set of eyes to admin duties was quite problematic. Going forward, I couldn't see having a dozen more admins.
So what then? I looked around and saw places like craigslist doing flagging and realized that was the way to have all eyes on all threads, with an easy way to report that back to me directly. So I could still go on reading 1/10 of the site and thanks to flagging, anything abnormal would pop up and I could instantly see if multiple people agreed that something was bad or good.
What I do here doesn't scale. This whole site doesn't scale. Communties are notoriously bad at scaling. But flagging -- while maybe feeling less than fulfilling by throwing your vote into the abyss (it can be like yelling into a pillow when normally people complain loudly) -- gives me something very valuable: metrics.
So jessamyn and I have this page with the last x flags listed, but more importantly, I have a special list of hotspots (both good and bad). I have a list of the most flagged items in the past 24 hours, and the reasons for it. This has made my admin life enormously easier to deal with. When I first did it, you'd rarely see more than 3 or 4 flags at the top. It would still require some review before deciding on any action, but at least things were being pointed out. Now, it seems a bad post will garner 40-50 flags in a matter of an hour, and I can jump on that and kill the post and fix the issue quickly. It's an enormously powerful tool.
I agree that it doesn't have the same umph of seeing "this post sucks dood" in giant letters on a thread and seeing that thread get deleted in moments. Instead, you flag something and at some point in the future if I review it or a bunch of people also flag it, it might go away hours later. I understand that's not immediate and there is no feedback loop there. But flagging has made my job (I think jessamyn's too) much easier and made me a sane person again (recall, as admin of this place there are many, many nights in the last seven years where I didn't sleep because of crazy comment flare ups and the worry they caused).
So yeah, flagging is great on my private admin end, but sucks on the public user side. I need to communicate better post-flag what happens to help give some sort of feedback. I don't want to expose the feedback system (too much gaming would go on), but I should let people know they are (however small) really helping the place by flagging, and that something does come of flagging eventually. I'll think of ways to make that clearer, and I'll definitely promote the favorites system as a "this is good" feature to highlight the best aspects of the site (I should have done that before flags I think).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:06 AM on March 26, 2006
Stavros, first off -- flags have been pretty successful behind the scenes and I'm glad I did it, but I will concede that it may seem like an empty gesture to users and it does go against the whole we're in it together ethos I've tried to engender from the start.
Here's the thing -- metatalk, my email, and interactions I had with other users were worse off IMO pre-flagging, because people were enraged that I condoned a few people being assholes and getting in fights on the site. And they assumed I condoned these actions because the comments stayed. When I would say "I didn't even see that" they would be puzzled as to why I wasn't reading all 30 posts and ~1,500 comments per day.
As the site has grown, I realized I was seeing maybe 10% of the site, tops, and that's still reading a few hours per day. Once in a while someone would email to say there was a flare-up here or someone told be to fuck off there, but I would have to go back and check their story out because sometimes I found one user saying that only after they had done something equally bad.
Policing the site was getting out of control. If you need an analogy, my land/city/space here grew by leaps and bounds, but it was being patrolled by one cop (me) while the townspeople complained about me not being everywhere at once. So the next step was to get more people to help, and long story short, jessamyn has been extraordinary with that but at the start adding one single set of eyes to admin duties was quite problematic. Going forward, I couldn't see having a dozen more admins.
So what then? I looked around and saw places like craigslist doing flagging and realized that was the way to have all eyes on all threads, with an easy way to report that back to me directly. So I could still go on reading 1/10 of the site and thanks to flagging, anything abnormal would pop up and I could instantly see if multiple people agreed that something was bad or good.
What I do here doesn't scale. This whole site doesn't scale. Communties are notoriously bad at scaling. But flagging -- while maybe feeling less than fulfilling by throwing your vote into the abyss (it can be like yelling into a pillow when normally people complain loudly) -- gives me something very valuable: metrics.
So jessamyn and I have this page with the last x flags listed, but more importantly, I have a special list of hotspots (both good and bad). I have a list of the most flagged items in the past 24 hours, and the reasons for it. This has made my admin life enormously easier to deal with. When I first did it, you'd rarely see more than 3 or 4 flags at the top. It would still require some review before deciding on any action, but at least things were being pointed out. Now, it seems a bad post will garner 40-50 flags in a matter of an hour, and I can jump on that and kill the post and fix the issue quickly. It's an enormously powerful tool.
I agree that it doesn't have the same umph of seeing "this post sucks dood" in giant letters on a thread and seeing that thread get deleted in moments. Instead, you flag something and at some point in the future if I review it or a bunch of people also flag it, it might go away hours later. I understand that's not immediate and there is no feedback loop there. But flagging has made my job (I think jessamyn's too) much easier and made me a sane person again (recall, as admin of this place there are many, many nights in the last seven years where I didn't sleep because of crazy comment flare ups and the worry they caused).
So yeah, flagging is great on my private admin end, but sucks on the public user side. I need to communicate better post-flag what happens to help give some sort of feedback. I don't want to expose the feedback system (too much gaming would go on), but I should let people know they are (however small) really helping the place by flagging, and that something does come of flagging eventually. I'll think of ways to make that clearer, and I'll definitely promote the favorites system as a "this is good" feature to highlight the best aspects of the site (I should have done that before flags I think).
posted by mathowie (staff) at 5:06 AM on March 26, 2006
mathowie: There are usually no real consequences to just trolling on the front page. I don't see anyone learning anything from deleted threads. What if posters knew that if a thread was deleted (for something other than double post) they wouldn't be able post for a month? Or to make a stronger consequence they would not be able to comment either for that month.
I think that would make posters hesitant to post crap for the sake of starting an argument.
Or what about a simple metric on the post that shows how many times a thread has been flagged both as [this is good] and [this is bad]. Would that help the poster and others learn what kind of posts work well here?
I gather you can tell who flags what so a person wouldn't just flag everything to game the system.
posted by ?! at 8:15 AM on March 26, 2006
I think that would make posters hesitant to post crap for the sake of starting an argument.
Or what about a simple metric on the post that shows how many times a thread has been flagged both as [this is good] and [this is bad]. Would that help the poster and others learn what kind of posts work well here?
I gather you can tell who flags what so a person wouldn't just flag everything to game the system.
posted by ?! at 8:15 AM on March 26, 2006
I somehow dropped my comment on this: "So yeah, flagging is great on my private admin end, but sucks on the public user side."
It's actually helpful to hear that it works well for you. I had imagined it being the equivalent of hundreds of emails saying "[THIS IS BAD]."
posted by ?! at 8:17 AM on March 26, 2006
It's actually helpful to hear that it works well for you. I had imagined it being the equivalent of hundreds of emails saying "[THIS IS BAD]."
posted by ?! at 8:17 AM on March 26, 2006
When's the last time someone got a timeout as a result of flags alone?
posted by scarabic at 9:28 AM on March 26, 2006
posted by scarabic at 9:28 AM on March 26, 2006
Would it be possible for regular, logged in users to see a tally of the flags on a post/comment? That might actually encourage people to use the flagging system instead of bitching in the thread because they would have a tangible "vote". Black box flagging is really discouraging if in the end no action is taken.
I suppose it may encourage people to "over-flag" but I prefer that to shitting on threads.
posted by sic at 10:23 AM on March 26, 2006
I suppose it may encourage people to "over-flag" but I prefer that to shitting on threads.
posted by sic at 10:23 AM on March 26, 2006
That's interesting, about how Craig's list inspired you to implement flagging. I've flagged a few posts on that site, and I have no more feedback that I've flagged a post there than I do here. Yet, here, it doesn't seem enough. And why is that?
I think it's because Metatalk is right here, waiting for me to publically gripe. Or maybe because I don't have a hundredth of myself invested over on Craig's List.
posted by crunchland at 10:35 AM on March 26, 2006
I think it's because Metatalk is right here, waiting for me to publically gripe. Or maybe because I don't have a hundredth of myself invested over on Craig's List.
posted by crunchland at 10:35 AM on March 26, 2006
That's interesting, about how Craig's list inspired you to implement flagging. I've flagged a few posts on that site, and I have no more feedback that I've flagged a post there than I do here. Yet, here, it doesn't seem enough. And why is that?
It's because if enough people flag something on Craigslist, it gets deleted automatically, without waiting around for an admin to review it. This has its own set of problems, obviously, but it means that obvious crap gets removed in minutes.
posted by kindall at 12:50 PM on March 26, 2006
It's because if enough people flag something on Craigslist, it gets deleted automatically, without waiting around for an admin to review it. This has its own set of problems, obviously, but it means that obvious crap gets removed in minutes.
posted by kindall at 12:50 PM on March 26, 2006
When's the last time someone got a timeout as a result of flags alone?
Last week, when some twit wanted to use ask mefi for psychology research or some shit. There were a bazillion flags on it it, no mention on metatalk, and the user was banned.
Are you saying that only people that whine in metatalk get banned?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:54 PM on March 26, 2006
Last week, when some twit wanted to use ask mefi for psychology research or some shit. There were a bazillion flags on it it, no mention on metatalk, and the user was banned.
Are you saying that only people that whine in metatalk get banned?
posted by mathowie (staff) at 12:54 PM on March 26, 2006
Would it be possible for regular, logged in users to see a tally of the flags on a post/comment? That might actually encourage people to use the flagging system instead of bitching in the thread because they would have a tangible "vote".
I think that would just encourage mob rule. There are a lot of flags I ignore. I don't do anything for about 75% of flags because all the same little political and personal hangups people have carry over into flagging. Sometimes anything dios says is flagged as off-topic derail (then I read it and it clearly is not). Sometimes a bush sucks thread is flagged a bunch of times but it's actually some noteworthy news. People joining the mob doesn't really help. Three flags on a comment is just as worthwhile as 30 if the vote was public.
Black box flagging is really discouraging if in the end no action is taken.
Half of the problem is that flags show up on stuff that shouldn't be removed, the other half is that nothing is immediate. Stuff gets dropped, but it may take a few hours. If it was all exposed, metatalk would be argument after argument about why I didn't delete something with 58 flags that everyone ganged up on. I'm using my judgement to be the benevolent dictator here and making any and all flags transparent would likely be chaos and turn this site into even more of an echo chamber.
It's because if enough people flag something on Craigslist, it gets deleted automatically, without waiting around for an admin to review it. This has its own set of problems, obviously, but it means that obvious crap gets removed in minutes.
There was a dude on ask mefi that said a former tenant at his building signed up six craigslist accounts so he can ban any posting by the super within seconds. Apparently he's never had a listing up for more than 30 seconds.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:01 PM on March 26, 2006
I think that would just encourage mob rule. There are a lot of flags I ignore. I don't do anything for about 75% of flags because all the same little political and personal hangups people have carry over into flagging. Sometimes anything dios says is flagged as off-topic derail (then I read it and it clearly is not). Sometimes a bush sucks thread is flagged a bunch of times but it's actually some noteworthy news. People joining the mob doesn't really help. Three flags on a comment is just as worthwhile as 30 if the vote was public.
Black box flagging is really discouraging if in the end no action is taken.
Half of the problem is that flags show up on stuff that shouldn't be removed, the other half is that nothing is immediate. Stuff gets dropped, but it may take a few hours. If it was all exposed, metatalk would be argument after argument about why I didn't delete something with 58 flags that everyone ganged up on. I'm using my judgement to be the benevolent dictator here and making any and all flags transparent would likely be chaos and turn this site into even more of an echo chamber.
It's because if enough people flag something on Craigslist, it gets deleted automatically, without waiting around for an admin to review it. This has its own set of problems, obviously, but it means that obvious crap gets removed in minutes.
There was a dude on ask mefi that said a former tenant at his building signed up six craigslist accounts so he can ban any posting by the super within seconds. Apparently he's never had a listing up for more than 30 seconds.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:01 PM on March 26, 2006
Thanks for responding, Matt. I'll read more carefully when I get to work (it's coffee time, and I'm behind the 8-ball).
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:26 PM on March 26, 2006
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:26 PM on March 26, 2006
So yeah, flagging is great on my private admin end, but sucks on the public user side. I need to communicate better post-flag what happens to help give some sort of feedback. I don't want to expose the feedback system (too much gaming would go on), but I should let people know they are (however small) really helping the place by flagging, and that something does come of flagging eventually. I'll think of ways to make that clearer, and I'll definitely promote the favorites system as a "this is good" feature to highlight the best aspects of the site (I should have done that before flags I think).
Well, good. I'm happy to hear that you find the user-facing side as lacking as I do, and that you're planning to dial it in a bit better.
I'm not sure that there aren't ways to establish a feedback loop that don't encourage gaming -- and I'm pretty sure it can be done without sacrifing the ethos of the site. I look forward to more discussion about it, when you start to zero in on some implementation details. I understand that it's been useful for you and jessamyn, but I think there are probably ways to make the mechanism both more useful for you and for us.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:56 PM on March 26, 2006
Well, good. I'm happy to hear that you find the user-facing side as lacking as I do, and that you're planning to dial it in a bit better.
I'm not sure that there aren't ways to establish a feedback loop that don't encourage gaming -- and I'm pretty sure it can be done without sacrifing the ethos of the site. I look forward to more discussion about it, when you start to zero in on some implementation details. I understand that it's been useful for you and jessamyn, but I think there are probably ways to make the mechanism both more useful for you and for us.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 3:56 PM on March 26, 2006
mathowie: "Are you saying that only people that whine in metatalk get banned?"
That's the impression I get, but, like you, I don't read the whole site.
Do people ever get "time-outs" for posting a thread you choose to delete?
posted by ?! at 4:05 PM on March 26, 2006
That's the impression I get, but, like you, I don't read the whole site.
Do people ever get "time-outs" for posting a thread you choose to delete?
posted by ?! at 4:05 PM on March 26, 2006
When's the last time someone got a timeout as a result of flags alone?
This happens with self-linkers fairly frequently, either that or an email to one of us plus the flag queue. A few good things that I think have happened as the result of the flagging system
- almost no "double post" threads in MetaTalk and double posts tend to be removed quickly
- self-linker posts get removed more speedily and become less witch-hunty (this can be argued to not be an advantage, but I think it reflects better on the site as a whole)
- it's quicker and easier to get FPP typos fixed and other broken HTML
I agree that the "flag it and move on" arguments do tend to replace the "this post sucks, yes or no" arguments and there should be some better way to get the results of the flagging system obvious to the people who use it. I think in AskMe use of the flag system is more likely to have quick and noticeable results because it's clearer what comments are noise, and people are more likely to flag, and flagged stuff is more likely to be removed [also added to the sidebar if it get a lot of fantastic post flags] which reinforces the "hey, the system works, also there IS a system" setup.
I'm not entirely against some sort of "comment deleted" indicator, or some way to tell if there are people who are getting a heavy amount of flags one way or the other, but I'm not sure what other ways would be good to give more feedback to the community while at the same time not being one more thing for people to mess with.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:20 PM on March 26, 2006
This happens with self-linkers fairly frequently, either that or an email to one of us plus the flag queue. A few good things that I think have happened as the result of the flagging system
- almost no "double post" threads in MetaTalk and double posts tend to be removed quickly
- self-linker posts get removed more speedily and become less witch-hunty (this can be argued to not be an advantage, but I think it reflects better on the site as a whole)
- it's quicker and easier to get FPP typos fixed and other broken HTML
I agree that the "flag it and move on" arguments do tend to replace the "this post sucks, yes or no" arguments and there should be some better way to get the results of the flagging system obvious to the people who use it. I think in AskMe use of the flag system is more likely to have quick and noticeable results because it's clearer what comments are noise, and people are more likely to flag, and flagged stuff is more likely to be removed [also added to the sidebar if it get a lot of fantastic post flags] which reinforces the "hey, the system works, also there IS a system" setup.
I'm not entirely against some sort of "comment deleted" indicator, or some way to tell if there are people who are getting a heavy amount of flags one way or the other, but I'm not sure what other ways would be good to give more feedback to the community while at the same time not being one more thing for people to mess with.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:20 PM on March 26, 2006
Providing feedback to a user about their own posts/comments has less potential for gaming than does making the information part of the public profile.
It would be interesting for me to see how my comments are getting flagged. I don't care if anyone else can see that, but it would be interesting for me to see it.
Similarly, it would be interesting to know if any of my comments get deleted. I know that the admins try to inform people when a FPP gets deleted, but I assume they don't do that when a comment gets deleted. I have no idea if any of my comments have ever been deleted.
Now, this information could also be misleading. If I post something political and twenty people on one side of the issue flag it as abusive, that doesn't tell me about the larger number of people who think its fine. So making flags visible to the flagee could be misleading. But making sure that people know when a comment gets deleted would not be misleading.
posted by alms at 8:15 AM on March 27, 2006
It would be interesting for me to see how my comments are getting flagged. I don't care if anyone else can see that, but it would be interesting for me to see it.
Similarly, it would be interesting to know if any of my comments get deleted. I know that the admins try to inform people when a FPP gets deleted, but I assume they don't do that when a comment gets deleted. I have no idea if any of my comments have ever been deleted.
Now, this information could also be misleading. If I post something political and twenty people on one side of the issue flag it as abusive, that doesn't tell me about the larger number of people who think its fine. So making flags visible to the flagee could be misleading. But making sure that people know when a comment gets deleted would not be misleading.
posted by alms at 8:15 AM on March 27, 2006
Maybe y'all people should go post on Cory's site, whoever s/he is? Y'all could discuss how badly Xenu sucks and/or how badly the guy who said "Xenu sucks!" sucks.
(For the record, I think Stavros has a point in this thread.)
posted by davy at 7:29 AM on March 28, 2006
(For the record, I think Stavros has a point in this thread.)
posted by davy at 7:29 AM on March 28, 2006
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I suggest that part of the difficulty in comprehending this is the blood lust that most MeFites seem to get taken with whenever someone steps even so far as an inch outside of what is considered acceptable here.
posted by Effigy2000 at 1:51 PM on March 25, 2006