The moderation changes forum is getting cluttered, so I thought I'd move this idea into its own thread.
There has been some concern about the deletion of bad comments eliminating evidence. I think this is a valid concern, but on the other hand, I believe we'd all like to see a cleaner comments index, one without "DAT ASS" and "HNNNGH" repeating ad nauseum.
It has been suggested that a history of comments be kept, which I think would solve the problem. Bad comments can be deleted and eliminated from sight while they are logged in a history table (that might only be visible to mods etc) for future reference.
I've actually just finished going through the current log of flagged comments, deleting some stuff (mostly accidental duplicate comments, but also some stuff bumping old posts, the occasional 'lol', etc etc) -- providing their disappearance wouldn't leave holes in conversations.
I have seen very few 'DAT ASS' comments in the moderation queue, meaning that more need to be flagged and consequently purged. My personal level of tolerance is also wearing thin for 'HNNNGH'-type comments, which may result in me taking action against them too.
Back to the point, consensus agrees that the current comment moderation system is unworkable with. Having a permanent archive which higher-level users can access could be a way of having our proverbial cake and eating it too. (Am I even making sense? I should go to sleep.)
Edit: Call it a hasty decision, but I did a search query on comments containing 'DAT ASS' (turned up four pages), flagged about 80% of them, and deleted pretty much all of the pure 'DAT ASS' ones (reducing to two pages).
Since we're at it, another meme I'm starting to find annoying is 'OVER 9000'... Unfortunately, it's a bit harder to prune out, because it gets modified so much.
Lalaca said: Since we're at it, another meme I'm starting to find annoying is 'OVER 9000'... Unfortunately, it's a bit harder to prune out, because it gets modified so much.
Just for the record, there was a very specific reason for my use of this phrase in the comments on post #556069.
Regarding current moderation efforts, I'm not deleting anything. Any excessive (*chan) meme mouthbreathing in comments should be dealt with via negative records. The same goes for weeaboo-level emoticomments that also add little to nothing to conversations. For what it's worth, overall comment quality seems to have improved somewhat since we began policing them months back.
Back to the suggestion: +1. We'd like to see garbage straight up eliminated from the comments, but don't want to eliminate evidence of anyone's stupidity, either. Keeping a log of deleted comments would also prevent users from possibly deleting their own offending comments in an attempt to deflect accusations in, say, a negative record. Any especially bad comments should always be pointed out in such records, but another form of proof wouldn't hurt.
Also agreeing on the logging of all comment moderation, with access to said log given to Contributors and above. Anyone that's at least a Contributor should have enough sense to moderate comments correctly, but this should be put in place to identify and curb any abuse.
Lalaca said: Edit: Call it a hasty decision, but I did a search query on comments containing 'DAT ASS' (turned up four pages), flagged about 80% of them, and deleted pretty much all of the pure 'DAT ASS' ones (reducing to two pages).
ARGH, why the hell did you do that? Right in the goddamn thread discussing how bad comments need to be logged to preserve evidence? That's one of the reasons I was opposed to expanding the mod crew; it's impossible to have so many decision-makers without someone jumping the gun and doing stupid things.
If the discussion is about ways to ensure that evidence is maintained, such that we can then go on that useless comment deletion spree, please wait until there's some sort of system like that in place before doing a lot of deleting. When I see someone leave a neg for bad comments, the first thing I do is look at the negged person's comment history. Now if they left 8 useless "Dat ass" comments, those are all gone, and I'll come away from the comment history thinking the person might not be so bad.
My suggestion would be that the comment history in user profiles shows all comments, both active and deleted. But the table row for a deleted comment would be shaded red or gray or something. Shouldn't even need a separate comment history, I think. There's the question of if self-deletions should be handled differently, but someone could delete their own dumb comments (rather than just deleting something they posted by accident, or a double post, or something they changed their mind on) so I don't know if we could exclude those...
To my thinking, a user should have the good sense not to make stupid posts in the first place. However, if they have the good grace to delete bad comments once informed about the bad quality of such, then they should be given some leeway; it may imply that the user has learned, and will not be repeating the mistake.
I've taken to dmailing particularly bad commenters, rather than just leaving a neg rep outright, and met with some decent results that way. I haven't checked to see whether or not these users have deleted their bad comments, though.
I feel that moderating comments is a losing battle. They're more common than bad posts and are less visible. Maybe a Youtube-style voting system is better.
albert said: Maybe a Youtube-style voting system is better.
It certainly sounds feasible and allows for particularly bad comments to be hidden as long as the user wishes.
Soljashy said: and "HNNNGH" repeating ad nauseum.
May I edit howto:comment and add this to things not to post? I'm sorry, but I feel that "HNNNNGH! *dead*" is less useful than the equivalent "This is so cute, I could die".
Personally, I think any kind of roleplaying in the comments, including *emoting in asterisks* (or any equivalent enclosing marks) is totally inappropriate use of the comment function.
I don't think I'm alone in feeling quite irked by such things.
sgcdonmai said: I've taken to dmailing particularly bad commenters, rather than just leaving a neg rep outright, and met with some decent results that way. I haven't checked to see whether or not these users have deleted their bad comments, though.
I've done the same to a couple of users spamming "DAT ASS" in the comments. Surprisingly, every one them had stopped and some even deleted the offending remarks.
Dmails have also gotten me decent results. The only exception was brutalbrut16, where he completely missed the main point of my explanation on why he got -10 negs on his record.
albert said: Maybe a Youtube-style voting system is better.
I think it's worth a shot. Granola had a similar idea in a past thread. Like with posts, the voting should be restricted to Priv+ accounts.
Such a voting system could make use of something like a tweaked version of the current comment mod queue. Instead of just displaying flagged posts, it would show comments that have reached a certain amount of negatives. For example:
Comments with a score of -2 or lower simply show up in the mod queue. This serves as the base threshold.
Particularly bad comments scoring at -5 or lower will display the comment with a red background (like the post mod queue), to express priority.
I think such a system should have three functions: Hide, Downvote, and Upvote. Sometimes a user might not particularly dislike someone's comment enough to downvote it, but they don't want to see it, either - for example, excessively long walls of text. A 'hide comment' function would help with that.
If not, I would suggest pushing the threshold for pushing a comment into the mod queue down to something like -10.
Apollyon said: I think it's worth a shot. Granola had a similar idea in a past thread. Like with posts, the voting should be restricted to Priv+ accounts.
I don't think voting should be restricted to Priv+, at least initially. It's likely that some members will misuse the feature, but I'd prefer to wait and see how it works out first. Of course, the system will have take steps to prevent people from spamming votes like they could with the post voting system.
Such a voting system could make use of something like a tweaked version of the current comment mod queue. Instead of just displaying flagged posts, it would show comments that have reached a certain amount of negatives.
I was thinking the system would just hide comments that are downvoted past a certain threshold. Automatically hiding bad comments would remove the need for a mod queue entirely.
Another idea: the site could keep track of users' average comment scores. The user index could be orderable by average comment score, making it easier to find and deal with habitually bad commenters.
The site could also automatically penalize users with low average scores. The system could reduce the number of comments per hour bad commenters could make, or it could give their new comments lower initial scores.
How about removing deleted comments from the image where they were posted, but keeping them in the list of every comment that user has made, the same way thumbnails of all your deleted images can be seen from your user page?
Xabid said: How about removing deleted comments from the image where they were posted, but keeping them in the list of every comment that user has made, the same way thumbnails of all your deleted images can be seen from your user page?
That seems logical to me.
If this is easily workable, it seems like a great solution.
albert said: I feel that moderating comments is a losing battle. They're more common than bad posts and are less visible. Maybe a Youtube-style voting system is better.
It's a battle I'm willing to fight if we get better tools. The primary reason I haven't deleted any comments in years is because it does more harm than good without logging.
evazion said: I was thinking the system would just hide comments that are downvoted past a certain threshold. Automatically hiding bad comments would remove the need for a mod queue entirely.
This is in fact how it used to work long, long time ago, when danbooru was still new and way before deadbooru.
