Indeed, good point, I updated the graph with the proper attribution link.
2 Likes
Well that was the point I was making, flat discussion is not very good in my opinion (too little offtopic, confusing, hard to follow a single person train of thought). On the other hand the threading model of slashdot is not that much better either (too much offtopic). I was hoping for something better when I first heard of Discourse. Quoting works for blogs because you can easily follow the full train of thought of a single person (the blogger).
Although I have to say that Discourse implementation of quoting is superb, you can open the full post for each quote which is an exceptional feature that any discussion with quoting should have. But if you plan to go ahead with it you should allow recursive quoting like I tried to do here (and failed).
When I first head of Discourse I was hoping something new, something better. What I see is a very good implementation of classic forum-like discussion boards.
Also I suggest you make your own icons, I am tired of seeing font-awesome everywhere (said by someone who uses font-awesome extensively in his own projects). Do it or go fa fa-home.
It seems to me to be fairly clearly implied throughout your post, but I think I misunderstood the particular sentence I quoted about “pesky words.” I thought you were referring to “poor” comments being “so many pesky words,” but now I realize that may have just been a humorous way to transition to the little “esteem for humanity” graph.
I still think, however, that you are unfairly downplaying (or perhaps merely underestimating) the negative aspects of abusive comments. For instance, in what might be considered your thesis paragraph, you say:
The emphasis, of course, is mine. “Noise” is the only negative aspect of comments that you explicitly acknowledge. I generally dislike the term “privilege” (and the related phrase “check your privilege”) in this sort of context, but I can’t shake the feeling that your stance on the “don’t read the comments” issue is inextricably tied to your privileged position of being fortunate enough not to have to deal with the same level of vitriol that some other writers face.
I don’t think I’m being disrespectful by pointing this out, so I’m not sure why you’re referring me to the guidelines page.
I’m a little surprised that this Discourse instance, associated with Jeff’s own site, isn’t connected to the username registry. I’ve noticed that it hasn’t been used for many installations, but assumed that Jeff’s installation would want to show off that capability.
No, I am not. What I “said” was these guidelines:
http://discourse.codinghorror.com/faq
Which are documented here.
This is what is built into Discourse. That’s the goal. That’s what I said, that is what is documented.
Is there any reason a theoretical community of transgender people could not adopt this proposed set of guidelines – and the tools to make enforcement of said guidelines easy and automatic and crowdsourced in Discourse?
codinghorror said:
Downvotes have no place in systems of discussion based on opinion. They should be *flagged*, sure.Rammstein said:
get them downvotes
That’s some great inside the box thinking. Downvotes are for the quality/politeness of the post, not disagreeing with the opinion.
2 Likes
Huh? I distinctly remember that being what they get used for. It doesn’t matter what the instructions say: given the design of the software, people use downvotes for disagreement.
Discourse’s flags have options for dealing with the politeness and quality of the post: Inappropriate, and Notify User.
And if you disagree, write a reply. As I’m doing right now.
2 Likes
Why not the on same page though? This feels a bit more like commenting about a blog on Hacker News/ reddit for example rather than directly to the blog itself.
There are no links that encourage the user to make a comment or reply to another comment. Just the vague “continue the discussion” link.
For me there’s also one disadvantage: one needs to host discourse engine and usually the small hosting that can power WP cannot power Discourse. Disqus has obvious advantage here: you can get it for free and hosted somewhere else. All depends how much traffic you have I think…
1 Like
Both directions can be harmful on different levels.
Strong moderation protects the community from bad behaviours, and makes people who agree to the rules stronger together.
On the other hand, the stronger and more strict you impose rules and moderate, the more you aim your community to the “self-centered jerks who kick outsiders between the legs”. So you have a risk of closing the community on itself and losing in popularity for the external world.
Examples that come to mind : posting a topic for the first time on a random phpbb, and getting a set of the following:
- ‘you didn’t say hi/please’
- ‘new users should post in the new user topic to present themselves’
- and any other collection of hoops to jump through before you can actually say what you want to say
Other example: superuser.com
It went from the wild west at the beginning for the lack of moderation (lack of enough appointed moderators and early community not having access to the tools yet)… to, well, this:
Super User is for computer enthusiasts and power users. If you have a question about …
- computer hardware,
- computer software, or
- personal and home computer networking
and it is not about …
- programming and software development,
- video games or consoles,
- websites or web services like Facebook, Twitter, and WordPress,
- electronic devices, media players, cell phones or smart phones, except insofar as they interface with your computer,
- issues specific to corporate IT support and networks,
- asking for a shopping or product recommendation,
… then you’re in the right place to ask your question!
In short, you can ask whatever computer question you want, except, well, all that. (Oh, and don’t you DARE asking a question someone asked two years ago, even if you would get updated answers.)
Don’t get me wrong, I love the SE sites. But while it’s nice to have kept them from becoming wild west yahoos, it would have been nicer if people on some of them didn’t become so stingy about what newcomers can or can’t do.
Because if a newcomer gets the door slammed on his face the first time he shows up, he probably won’t bother coming back. (Well, except scientists)
4 Likes
I find that a little rich given this from your post:
There’s no end of websites recreating the glorious “no stupid rules” libertarian paradise documented in the Lord of the Flies …
Maybe you meant to write “anarchic paradise” instead? And the lifeguard cartoon – libertarians are, as a group, fine with shirking their duties and allowing people to die? I don’t think you understand libertarianism.
Are both fine because they’re not part of the comments?
The vision for Discourse sounds awesome but I find the UI a bit confusing at the moment.
- I don’t like leaving the blog post page to see the replies to comments, I did this a few times and ended up with lots of tabs open
- I’m not sure where I’m meant to click to add to the top level discussion around this blog post. I’m confused because under “I find the Don’t Read The Comments movement kind of sad” on Please Read The Comments it says “1 Reply”, which when clicked on shows a overview of links to other blog posts instead of a reply. So now I’ve clicked the “Reply” button to the right of “1 Reply” I’m confused as to what will happen. Lets see…
EDIT - now I see the bottom of the page - I never reached the “+ Reply” button at the bottom because I didn’t know where the infinite scroll would end and gave up, of course I’ve sinced noticed the up and down buttons on the counter widget to take me there.
1 Like
Regarding the cartoon, do you think the slogan also applies to programmers? as in “Libertarians make bad programmers”? I don’t want to start a flame war or anything. I’m just curious about the general opinion of letting users do whatever they want with a program. I guess this must be in another place/post
I’d say it doesn’t fully apply. Libertarians in real life make sense, since the framework to act in already exists and has its own rules and limitations (physics laws and such). As a programmer, you actually create the environment (God self-designation of the day: check). If you don’t define the rules, you don’t actually have an environment for people to meddle with. Being libertarian with users would be the equivalent of handing them the dev tools and let them do their own stuff.
I’m responding to your blog post, though, which, although in a sense it “includes” these guidelines by linking to them, is a separate text and presents a separate thesis. I think the goals of Discourse are admirable, and I’m even partly inclined to agree, to some extent, with your criticism of the absolutist “don’t read the comments” mantra. My point is simply that your post, as written, implies that the biggest problem with poorly moderated or unmoderated online communities is the signal-to-noise ratio. I don’t think you actually believe this, but comments like “If your website is full of assholes, it’s your fault” seem more harmful than helpful.
I don’t know. Certainly that will require some thick-skinned moderators, whether or not the task of moderation is partly automated and/or crowdsourced. I hope Discourse and similar efforts do ultimately help such communities. Until then, though, I find it hard to blame people for avoiding reading comments.
Well, that’s funny, because I always explain Stack Exchange as a system of science, data and facts:
So you want to turn away people from SE who aren’t willing to do science in the small.
See more in my talk, Learning vs. Discussion:
https://www.brighttalk.com/webcast/43/100507
That is good! Because I do not!
I would rank the biggest problems in online communities as:
- hate (and its close cousin, persistent negativity)
- trolls
- spam
In that order. Discourse aims to provide communities with a) a default “bill of rights” that says this kind of stuff isn’t tolerated and b) tools that let the community participate in pushing out hate, trolls, and spam. Even if the moderators go on permanent vacation! Or never show up in the first place. Make sense?
Me too, that is absolutely the goal!
However, you will note that this works both ways: I got (correctly) criticized in the comments of this blog post for using stormfront as a partial example. Racism is dumb and offensive, but it is not illegal. And as it turns out, even dumb, offensive racists have standards of conduct and civility among themselves… that is their “safe space”.
1 Like
I was kind of surprised why I couldn’t use my Discourse identity here as well. Mind explaining, @codinghorror?
Any chances of making the “Show replies to a post” button working on the main site? It’s like you’re hanging a “Wanna see more? Join now!” kind of sign into your window after you have been glazing for a few minutes.
@robconery, your article on UnitOfWork and repositories was excellent. You were able to say something I’ve been trying to put into words for awhile now. Thank you.
I can’t speak to the Salon example (I don’t read Salon), but this behavior of stating a controversial opinion and then playing the victim is pretty common. One well known example of this is “Feminist Frequency” on “Tropes VS Women in Video Games”. Say something controversial and then express shock/outrage at the negative reaction by those you’ve insulted - who would have thought. There are tons of examples of this.
Have a policy. Have identity (so you can ban/filter), but moderate only those comments that violate the policy. Anything else is just a pointless echo chamber.
2 Likes