Augment the Moderation System to be More Refined?

[Chris Anderson]

@Charles Fischer

On 2/15/2021 at 6:35 PM, Charles Fischer said:

I need a moderation system that can accommodate my needs for this forum as Disqus did for a blog.  Is this something that can be added?  (Soon?)  

In order for anything new to be seriously be considered one needs to take ones own individual's needs and sell it to the community. If a significant amount of customers clamor for its inclusion and it is something that can readily turned off by those that find no "need" for it or there are ways of tweaking the settings to meet their needs then it might seriously get considered by IPS for inclusion in an upcoming release. I'm afraid you haven't sold your need, at least not yet to me and based on some of the other commenters I'm not sure if you have won them sufficiently over as of yet. You have covered the why fairly well but not the how as of yet. What exactly is the programming logic you are looking for that would meet your needs and could readily accommodate others with varying moderation needs? How would that programming logic be implemented in a moderation user interface and requisite ACP settings? Does IPS have to rip out the moderation system currently in place and start from scratch or can it readily be updated? What exactly would need to be removed, changed, or added? Without a clear picture of what you want and how it might be implemented I'm not sure how this conversation will get you from here to there...  Just my thoughts, I do want you to have every chance of getting your needs seriously considered by the community and IPS.

 

[Charles Fischer]

Hello Chris,

I think I've spent significant amount of time writing what I am requesting, and then getting belittled for it.   Please read the 20+ posts prior to this.  I am not asking for a complete change, but simply an option be available.  The interest is not there, thus I bow out.

My thanks,

Charles

P.S. It is easier to read when you give us a paragraph break every five sentences...

[Chris Anderson]

7 minutes ago, Charles Fischer said:

The interest is not there

Not all of the community members visit this site on a regular basis.  As such, a very small subset of them read your posts and even fewer commented on it.  IPS and community members have been known to downplay ideas initially but eventually come around to embracing them in the end.  That's where being more specific with how an idea can be implemented can be important in swaying opinions. 

So I take exception to your statement "The interest is not there".  In the grand scheme of things that might be how things might play out but it's too early to tell in my experience witnessing other attempts at advocacy here.

Other folks might drop by in the coming days or weeks who might in fact be inspired to join in with you in advocating that your "needs" be met as it just happens to mirror their "needs". In time I might be one of those advocates.  

It's your choice if you bow out or engage with any other folks that might drop by and want to engage in a conversation with you. I've been known to get on a soap box on occasion in an effort to effect change, sometimes my efforts go nowhere and sometimes my advocacy changes minds and my suggestions get implemented. 

I've yet to see a "need" be readily embraced by others in the span of a few days. Unfortunately it usually takes weeks or months before any idea gets fully fleshed out and embraced by the community and IPS takes real notice.

Cheers...

[christopher-w]

On 2/16/2021 at 10:50 PM, Charles Fischer said:

That is not a practical solution in my view, for those who wish to post.  They want to see their post up immediately, and not later whether two minutes or 20 when the mods get to it.  Requiring all posts to be approved would discourage people from posting, an inhibitor to posting and would damage the forum environment.  (I speak from experience after being on forums posting for over 20 years)

If you want to ensure a post is policy compliant and not have the poster wait for it to be approved - 20 mins or whatever, then most likely some form of automated positive vetting (APV from here on in) will be needed.

To this end I have previously suggested Invision add an interface to Google's Natural Language API (and also put out an unanswered custom dev request for same) which would allow all posts to be run by Google's sentiment analysis tool in near real time. Along with scoring sentiment negative through positive, it also extracts entities, which can be matched locally against categories and keywords.

As well as providing moderation capability, this tool could also be used on the front end too, with a sentiment score being added to topic descriptions, comments and.... users. You may not want to publicly show User X as having accrued a negative sentiment score over time, but having this visible to mods would I think be very useful. It would also of course allow you to automate the totting up procedure, whereby a user may not have had any any posts removed, but has for example exceeded an upper or lower control limit, which in turn might automatically put them in the cooler, or alert mods for manual intervention.

Google's Natural Language API is not perfect - I believe it performs at the same or similar levels of efficacy to spam filters. It cost money too, but I am hopeful that this, or something similar, perhaps an open source alternative , can be added to the suite quite soon.

 

For the record @Charles Fischer, here's Google's view of your balanced opening post:

[Mark Round]

I think Paul touched on this earlier in this topic or at least somewhere and I think this is spot on.

“The ability to moderate content from wherever we can see it “

This would be a welcome addition , especially in areas such as post feed or activity stream . The is a legitimate request in my opinion . The programming logic required to complete this is another story and I would say far from simple.That’s all I have to say on it really.

[bfarber]

6 hours ago, Chris Anderson said:

IPS ... have been known to downplay ideas initially but eventually come around to embracing them in the end.

Just to be clear, we don't generally take an approach of downplaying ideas here. We simply have an internal roadmap and existing ideas we intend to explore and a finite amount of resources to do so with, so every thought has to be gauged and "ranked" (for lack of a better term) against our existing plans and other things we'd like to explore.

Over time, an idea may gain more traction or prove more necessary, which is where it might seem we "embrace them in the end".

[CoffeeCake]

8 hours ago, Charles Fischer said:

Ah yes, the double standard.  If I come in asking for an addition, the response would be ..."who are you to suggest such preposterousness?"

I've not seen a pattern here where someone's ideas were cast aside because of what organization or community a person was from. I am not discounting your ideas simply because your community is in its infancy.

It may serve you well to find value in the input of others even when that input is contrary to what you might like to hear. Maybe you're appealing to probability, or using kettle logic, or falling prey to a false dilemmas or dichotomies. I don't think things are quite as black and white as you perceive them to be, and I think your abrasive approach is creating unnecessary friction. That's the nerve you've hit.

I've taken a look at your community. You have published over 50 individually numbered rules/edicts for your membership. That's more ten more rules than the number of posts your community members posted yesterday. Who knows how many of those rules I've broken in this reply. You're applying these rules which we'll all assume serve your community well to the replies we offer here, where you find yourself in the presence of peers who are all responsible for managing communities large and small, and who all have their own philosophies and thoughts on community management.

This is not about others having not thought of the idea, and therefore finding value in yours. You've failed to read the room. Rule number 4 on your community is "do not assert a position of authority." I really want to help you craft your idea into something that works for you and might work for others, and will regularly and ferociously champion the good ideas of others. There are nuggets of value in your proposition, yet you'll need to do some work to denigrate less, listen more, and be a bit more respectful in your approach if you want to be heard.

[Charles Fischer]

Paul...you spend a ton of time defending the group and throwing shade at me, when I began polite in this thread, and only responded in a like way to when impolite activity was directed at me.  I make a suggestion, get belittled in the process, respond to it and yet the problem is with me?  You denigrate me further by reporting posts on a new forum during the slowest time of the year for college football as a means of placing value on my suggestions?  Geez....I guess you have to take a cheap shot wherever you can.

Everything in those rules are things people have done, and some have materialized in this thread, when all I want both there and here is discussion and debate where we stay on topic and do not get personal.  That should not be such a difficult goal, but it is here.

2 hours ago, Paul E. said:

denigrate less, listen more, and be a bit more respectful in your approach if you want to be heard.

Look who is talking...whew!

9 hours ago, christopher-w said:

Google's Natural Language API is not perfect - I believe it performs at the same or similar levels of efficacy to spam filters. It cost money too, but I am hopeful that this, or something similar, perhaps an open source alternative , can be added to the suite quite soon.

That is quite fascinating Christopher, and I thank you for the introduction to the concept.

Edited February 18, 2021 by Charles Fischer

[Charles]

I fear you may be violating the very rules you are trying to get your own members to follow.