RFC: Proposed comment policy change

Posted Nov 19, 2004 23:33 UTC (Fri) by moore (subscriber, #17466) [Link]

Disclamer: I am allready a subscriber

I think this is a good idea. It creates a econmic dissensinitave to troling. One othere soultion would be to leav it up to the readers where people with accounts could set weathere thay want to see non subscriber comments or not.

-Jonathan

Posted Nov 19, 2004 23:35 UTC (Fri) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Hi

I hope you reconsider this. I would like non subscribers like me to post comments. Perhaps you can have moderation and/or a seperate thread which can be disabled by subscribers to reduce the signal to noise ratio?

regards
Rahul Sundaram

Posted Nov 19, 2004 23:57 UTC (Fri) by philips (guest, #937) [Link]

I can only propose a feature for comment posting: allow registered people to post. If post happens to be abusive, put a counter on him. If person's behaviour is truly abusive - disallow posting comments for some time.

Hm. It seems that I have just repeated rules of FIDOnet about posting into news groups...

In my experience people who post flames are most of the time the most motivated people. Excluding them doesn't solve problem in long- term.

Obviously there are people who like to troll and flame, but still education is better than expelling them from community. Recall net-etiquette - all this wisdom is there for many years. Just read it.

P.S. What you mean by "subscriber"? is it the guy who has payed money for reading premium content week before I can do?

Posted Nov 19, 2004 23:59 UTC (Fri) by davidm (subscriber, #35) [Link]

I am a subscriber so that may color my view but I'm fine with the concept. If you allow anyone to post to the letters to the editor non subscribers can vent there.

Go for it.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 0:13 UTC (Sat) by oseemann (subscriber, #6687) [Link]

i don't feel disturbed by some occasional ill-mannered comments.
the overall comment quality is pretty high.
the amount of trolls and offending posts is too low to justify any change to the system, in my opinion.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 0:18 UTC (Sat) by jeffg (guest, #20473) [Link]

hmh, i thought that that was already the policy, that one had to be a member to post comments. it was one of the minor reasons that i subscribed. i don't think it's an unreasonable requirement, and i'll presume that some notable postings must have lead you-all to this decision, so i would view this as sensible maneuver.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 0:23 UTC (Sat) by dang (subscriber, #310) [Link]

Go for it. The cost would be that a non-subscriber might have a great contribution to contribute ( especially in the case of an unusually informed source ), but in that case they can easily email y'all. In the best of cases you can milk that into a full blown article.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 0:26 UTC (Sat) by jimi (subscriber, #6655) [Link]

I also subscribe. While i haven't encountered the posts you describe, I would support a decision to limit comments to subscribers if your research regarding posting is correct. The filtering out non-subscribers idea is also a good one (though if what would be filtered out is really crap then why allow it to be posted in the first place? back to subscribers-only).

I think lwn has a well-deserved reputation for *not* being a gossip/flame site, both in its reporting as well as its comments. That is why I subscribe. If non-subscribers are posting things that seriously detract from the value of lwn then perhaps such a ban is justified.

I think groklaw suffers from a posting problem. They have excellent reporting and integrity. Surely there are comments posted that are valuable and contribute to the site. But these days it is getting hard to find those amidst all the noise. In that sense, I feel that groklaw has lost a little value: it seems that only hooligans follow the site based on a reading of many of the comments. Fortunately, PJ is completely honest in her reporting and this keeps the value of the site very high. lwn is likewise honest.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 0:27 UTC (Sat) by DaleQ (subscriber, #4004) [Link]

I too am a subscriber.

I think that only allowing subscribers to post comments is a good idea. I think it would improve the quality of feedback and boost subscriptions.

Dale

Posted Nov 20, 2004 0:38 UTC (Sat) by bluefoxicy (subscriber, #25366) [Link]

I somehow got a subscription via a gift, which will soon expire; in reality, I have no money to fund an LWN subscription at this time, and thus am facing this idea with dread. I like being able to post comments, and this proposal is in most basic terms threatening to take that privilege away from me. There are two points here that should be considered.

1. I do not have a God-given "right" to post comments. It is your site, and you are supplying the service to me. Until I enter into a contractual agreement with you supplying me with a negotiated right to post comments-- such as a subscription-- it is entirely up to you whether to restrict this feature from me or not.

2. It has been stated in the article that the decision to restrict comments to subscribers is first supported by the poor actions of some non-subscribers, and only looked on semi-favorably as an afterthought as a way of encouraging more people to subscribe. I do not believe it is fair-- although the world is not nor meant to be fair-- for me to lose this privilege due to the abhorant actions of others.

A more proper solution may be to allow users to complain about specific comments (and private messages). This would bring attention first to the message itself, then to the user leaving the comment (which in turn brings attention to other comments by the user). Users abusing complaints or abusing the comment system will have their rights to said system revoked explicitly. Users determined to be evading the system (i.e. same user, same e-mail, same IP, different username) may have their accounts shut down and appropriate action (deny new accounts to X username, deny access by X IP, contact with ISP abuse center, or legal action) taken to prevent future evasion.

I believe that if the primary concern lies in preventing antisocial behavior, then the solution should primarily focus on antisocial individuals. If the libpng exploit were dangerous to your network, you would implement a filtering firewall to remove detected malformed PNG images, rather than filter out all PNG images indescriminantly. The PNG images are analogous to your users, the malformed ones are analogous to antisocial users, and the actual payload is analogous to the abhorant comments.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 0:40 UTC (Sat) by potiere (subscriber, #9747) [Link]

Subscription charges depend so much on where you live (5$ is not the same in India, Nigeria, Canada or Switzerland)! As long as we don't have a mechanism taking that into account, we should not use bying power as a criteria. Unless we like to shut the mounths from many countries.

Imagine to talk about free software in India without allowing indians to give feedbacks, except if they live in rich countries. Isn't free software a solution for all? Isn't the net the way to share with alls?

I second the idea of trying to remind the netiquette from time to time and when abused.

I am a subscriber, from one of the rich countries.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 0:43 UTC (Sat) by ccyoung (subscriber, #16340) [Link]

Can you tell me roughly
- what percent of responses are by members/non-members?
- about what percent of non-member responses are abusive?
- have you given thought to alternative measures?

Posted Nov 20, 2004 0:44 UTC (Sat) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

I am a subscriber, and also do not see a problem with limiting it. This site is really useful, and people should support it. Being able to post is just a benefit for doing so.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 0:48 UTC (Sat) by SteveKnodle (subscriber, #7853) [Link]

Could you explain the problem more clearly?
What was the nature of the comment that angered so many people?
What if that comment had been made by a subscriber?

Perhaps non-subscribers could be asked to provide a one-line summary
which would be displayed initially, and in a different color
(perhaps along with a RUDEnessAssassin score ;-)
A "moderator" could of course promote it to a "full" comment.

This site is so useful for me, that I don't want to see it's operation
perturbed, or see it's staff's time diverted to administrivia.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 1:00 UTC (Sat) by robla (subscriber, #424) [Link]

I'm a longtime subscriber, and like the idea of providing others further motivation to subscribe. But I like the idea of *some* non-subscribers being able to post.

How's this for an option: As a perk of being a subscriber, you get the benefit of giving up to three non-subscribers posting access, where "three" is an arbitrarily small number so that subscribers are careful about choosing their friends. That way, if there's some VIP or friend that a subscriber would like to encourage to be part of the conversation, they can do that.

In thinking about it a bit, I'm not sure that a limit is entirely necessary, since subscribers have little motivation to pig up the place. Perhaps if the sponsor is displayed by the guest username, that would provide an incentive for the subscriber to censor their "friend".

Rob

Posted Nov 20, 2004 1:11 UTC (Sat) by Webexcess (subscriber, #197) [Link]

I am a subscriber and I also support this proposal.

Some valid concerns have been raised, however. lwn.net shouldn't lose the good contributions from non-subscribers.

How about letting subscribers "sponsor" comments from non-subscribers? Either on a user-by-user or comment-by-comment basis.. ie. comments from non-subscribers would not appear unless someone has "sponsored" that comment or all comments from that user.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 1:22 UTC (Sat) by frasc (subscriber, #4839) [Link]

The LWN editors are making a terrific job bringing to us, readers, a very remarkable source of information.

As indicated in the RFC the amount of `noise' coming from subscribers is very small.

Having subscribed when LWN was about to shut down, I can realize the amount of work and difficulties our editors are going through. Even though they managed to pull through the worst situation, they haven't achieved (yet :-) to be in total comfort.

If limiting the noise can diminish the amount of janitorial work they have to do, I am all in favor of restrictng post of comments to subscribers only.

That just sounds fair to our editors.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 1:25 UTC (Sat) by ikm (subscriber, #493) [Link]

That is, you would like to drop some useful signal in favor of the people who would like to live in the cozy non-inflammatory all-conforming world? I would just say that these people won't gain such a world anyway -- they should start attending to their psychological problems instead, but any lost signal is always lost, with no way to tell if it was worthy or not. Oh well.

If you just need to raise funds, I wouldn't mind disabling the thing.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 1:39 UTC (Sat) by josh_stern (guest, #4868) [Link]

I'm a subscriber. I haven't noticed any general problem with bad comments. I would like to suggest that the "scrolling mechanism" by which articles scroll down in chronological order and eventually drop off the front page be adjusted to reflect the number of recent comments and not just the time the article first appeared. Sometimes active and interesting discussions are dropped just from being a day old.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 2:06 UTC (Sat) by mepr (guest, #4819) [Link]

If the money is needed and it is going to help LWN financially, I want the editors of LWN to do well, as I do value this service. However, I think that S/N is already high and always has been. If anything, it's better now than before subscriptions started. I usually go months between seeing a troll, and am guessing restricting comments will be a net negative on value. However, if LWN needs to do it, then that is OK.
If S/N is already high, maybe a more practical numbers might be Non-Subscriber S / Non-Subscriber N (the NSN ratio), and the "it bothers JC (Jonathan Corbet)" / "editing becomes a drag for JC" or bJC/ebadJC ratio.
Thanks for such an excellent publication. I am subscribed and have been reading the Kernel, development and front page weekly, often before 12am wednesday, for 5+ yrs.

Mark

Posted Nov 20, 2004 2:50 UTC (Sat) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

I think it might be best to allow non-subscribers to post, mark posts by non-subscribers, and allow users to filter out posts by non-subscribers,
but have any post with a visible reply be visible, and allow subscribers to cause particular posts to appear to all users, and note the existance of suppressed posts on pages which would have them.

I think this handles the issues with filtering of posts that other people can see: each thread you see entirely or not at all; before posting, you can see if there are suppressed posts which say what you want to say, and you can make them visible to others (if you're a subscriber).

Ideally, this would create a disincentive to responding to trolls, because that makes the troll visible to people who would rather not see it (assuming that the people who could respond have the manners not to want to annoy others).

This is essentially the same as a (usenet- or mailing-list-like) moderated forum with trusted posters, where any trusted poster can be a moderator or not at their own option. (Also, untrusted but logged-in readers could choose to use or ignore the moderation)

Of course, this may all be hard to implement, in which case it probably shouldn't be a high priority.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 2:58 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (subscriber, #10767) [Link]

> Our current thinking is motivated by a recent comment which annoyed a fair number of people. A bit of research revealed that a large majority of comments are currently posted by subscribers - but that the ones people complain about almost never are. So restricting comments to subscribers looks like a relatively easy way to raise the signal-to-noise ratio without affecting all that many people.

My perception was that the comment annoyed a *few* people who were vocal about it. I am a subscriber and I am strongly opposed to making this a "pay to be heard" site. And it does not matter whether it is pay to post or pay to filter, it all amounts to the same thing.

The signal to noise ratio here has always been pretty good. Of course, there is always going to be the occasional troll or "overly enthusiastic" post, but why can't people just ignore posts that they don't like? Has the volume of posting here increased to the point that such filtering is really necessary?

Posted Nov 20, 2004 3:02 UTC (Sat) by mmarsh (subscriber, #17029) [Link]

LWN was useful before there were comments. When LWN started to offer subscriptions, I refrained from commenting because I hadn't yet subscribed. The first time I wanted to comment on an article, I paid up. That only seemed fair, since I'd enjoyed this site's contents for awhile and was now availing myself of a new feature. Of course, I can afford it, so it was not exactly a hardship (and was something I felt a little guilty about not having done sooner).

Without knowing what fraction of useful comments (however you might define "useful") come from non-subscribers, if it's greater than zero (as I am certain it is), then it would be a shame to lose those comments. If trolls are really getting out of hand, then something would seem to need to be done. If non-subscribers can no longer post, I would hope that there would be some alternate method for them to make observations or corrections, possibly by sending mail to the editor of the relevant section. I see these as different than letters to the editor, in that the comments could be incorporated into the comments thread for the article. Individuals who proved themselves to be conscientious with something tangible to contribute might even be granted free "comments only" accounts, similar to what non-subscribers currently have to have in order to post comments.

I have no idea what kind of burden this would place on the staff of LWN. I would hope that it's minimal -- it would certainly reduce trolling (at least that any of us readers would see). If non-subscriber commenting has to be disabled, my vote would be to at least try the above system. Either it works or it doesn't. If the latter, disabling it should be simple.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 3:28 UTC (Sat) by mattdm (subscriber, #18) [Link]

I'm in favor of letting anyone comment -- but not showing those comments publically at all. We don't need another slashdot -- and in fact, there's already a million various little linux discussion forums all over the web.

I come to LWN for intelligent Linux journalism. (In fact, I *subscribe* to LWN for that purpose.) Feedback and comments are valuable for corrections, but I don't want to have to wade through a bunch of chatter to get to the important parts.

Community commentary can be valuable, but: if it's not urgent, write a letter to the editor or submit an article. And if it *is* urgent, the article in question should be updated/corrected by the LWN staff.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 3:35 UTC (Sat) by biciunas (subscriber, #4398) [Link]

If it's up for a vote, I'll cast mine into the "let 'em all post" pile. As others have have mentioned, the S/N is good. My opinion is that those who don't want to subscribe won't be motivated by this loss; what I'd hate to lose are those who can't afford to pay. BTW, I'm a subscriber.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 3:38 UTC (Sat) by barbara (subscriber, #3014) [Link]

Note: non-subscribers must wait a week to post abusive comments to
subscription-only articles. Because these are the most interesting
articles on LWN, as a subscriber I don't see the problem with the current
system.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 3:52 UTC (Sat) by kh (subscriber, #19413) [Link]

Count me for subscriber only posting. The issue I have with a more frequent "letter to the editor" section is that without a tie in to the articles that posting has, I think I would miss anything there outside of the current weekly format.

As long as we are speaking of changes, maybe setting up an invite a friend link where subscibers could email "subsciber only content" to friends which would include a link to start a subscription along with that article's content.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 4:08 UTC (Sat) by bluefoxicy (subscriber, #25366) [Link]

An interesting thought, is there a difference betwen S/N and S/STFU? That is, are we worried about "noise" that people don't care about?

It seems to me that the occasional partially-off-topic or slightly-excessive post would be for the most part ignored. Nobody cares, it's not hate mongering, it's not links or (attempts to include) pornography or deformations that execute malware locally, and it's not mixed in at such a level where people actually take more than a very brief notice in a very select few discussions.

What becomes significant is when the content becomes either massive enough or offensive enough that conversations begin to include a progression of requests beginning with "please stay on topic," and then moving to "Can you find another forum?" before reaching the point where four-letter "STFU" posts begin appearing with no other content.

My point is that significantly low levels of noise tend to be filtered out in a given system. For example, a lot of hardware has a high-voltage signal which overcomes low-voltage noise; excessive amounts of noise produce noticable degredation, while rare or even occasional spikes create a disturbance which quickly corrects itself and allows normal operation to continue unencumbered.

I do not believe we've reached the point where excessive noise is beginning to harm the signal here. Occasional massive spikes (i.e. racist remarks or offtopic political banter) are quickly squelched and corrected for, so in reality we are simply looking at a real-world example of the principles of any system that carries a signal.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 4:19 UTC (Sat) by lm (guest, #6402) [Link]

You might take a look at what craigslist does. For those not in the know,
they have a model where anyone can flag bad content and the editors look
at it and toss the stuff which is obviously bad.

I subscribe, it's not that much money and it's nice to support you folks.
But I also think that the bottom line is getting eyeballs on your content.
Anything which reduces the number of people involved is bad.

In fact, I might argue that the whole premium content/early access model
is flawed. It reduces the number of people in the discussions. If there
were some way to give the paying people an edge, maybe make them moderators
or make their comments show up immediately and the other ones delayed by 24
hours (that's sure to shut down 99% of the trollers, they just want to see
the flame fallout), whatever.

The bottom line is that more people is better. Think about that.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 5:32 UTC (Sat) by JohnBell (subscriber, #12625) [Link]

Nothing to disclaim here, just plain fact - I am a subscriber and proud of it. I love LWN, have always used it as a great source for Linux news, and *had* planned to do so in the future until this baloney bubbled to the surface.

I was also one of the early participants in the comment section which caused this proposal to be brought forward. Now, you want to talk about signal to noise... I have never seen so much NOISE kicked up from a couple of posts on this site since I started clicking through. Much ado about nothing, in my opinion. For whatever reason, however, "some people" (I'm talking to you "foo", whoever you are) decided to step in and play Comment Critic and whine and complain about the Glory Days of LWN Past vs. the steaming cesspool (*snort*) that the comments sections have become today.

It never ceases to amaze me when I observe the level of effort that PSUEDO-INTELLECTUAL ELITIST SNOBS will go to in their quest to shut down statements and opinions that they find offensive. The bottom line is, it doesn't *matter* if the post in question was productive/trolling/offensive/abusive/paid-for/whatever. What matters is FREE DISCOURSE, something which is rapidly becoming extinct nowadays. People need to come to grips with the real world and face the fact that not everything in life is apropos, productive, pure, and peachy-keen. Be prepared to have to put up with jerks and neer-do-wells over the course of the day - that's the way it is and always will be. In fact, be prepared to carry the label of "jerk" from time to time - you don't agree with everyone, and not everyone agrees with you. Deal.

The absolute LAST thing I want to see LWN become is yet another bastion for CENSORSHIP hiding behind PC gibberish. Let's face it, that's what we're kicking around the table here - do we CENSOR people or not, and if so how do we go about doing it? Do only the "wealthy landowners" (subscribers) get to post? Do they get to invite their drinking buddies, chums, and hangers-on into the mix, while people with no connections and no money are left with no way to participate? Just who decides what is or is not worthy of viewing, anyway? What criteria will be used? Will everyone *agree* with that criteria?

Oh well, who am I kidding. This site will go the way of all the others that have thrown out the baby with the bathwater. More whining about being offended, more "MOD PARENT UP!", more useless time wasting BS. If you plan on doing that to LWN then cancel my subscription and pay back the remainder of my deposit - I'll have no part of it.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 6:16 UTC (Sat) by jvotaw (subscriber, #3678) [Link]

I'm a subscriber and I favor allowing posting only by subscribers, especially if there is another venue (such as a letters-to-the-editor page) for non-subscribers to post.

If that doesn't fly, here are a few alternatives that are less severe (not my original ideas):

1. When a non-subscriber posts, there is a delay of 12 or 24 hours before their message appears. This lessens the emotional reward of seeing your troll in print.

2. Allow comments by non-subscribers only after 12 or 24 hours have passed. Subscriber comments will thus tend to be earlier in the comments section.

3. Allow non-subscribers to post if they can find a subscriber sponsor. Not sure of the details.

No solution is perfect. I think your proposal is the best compromise I've heard of.

-Joel

Posted Nov 20, 2004 6:23 UTC (Sat) by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688) [Link]

If you're not going to allow non-subscribers to post, then also shut off their ability to see the comments. Make it so that you have to be a subscriber to both read and post comments. A private, subscriber only forum if you will.

It's very annoying to see a comment somewhere that you could add to, or correct if it had incorrect information, yet not be able to reply without paying. The fee to subscribe can be a deterrent. While the fee many be modest in places such as the USA, it may be prohibitably expensive in other countries.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 6:58 UTC (Sat) by dank (subscriber, #1865) [Link]

Subscribing to LWN is dirt cheap. If somebody wants
to comment, let them subscribe.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 8:53 UTC (Sat) by chel (guest, #11544) [Link]

Problem: "As of this writing, LWN.net holds 33,600 reader-posted comments; a few dozen of those, at most, have been abusive. Even so, something unpleasant occasionally gets posted, and some readers complain."

I am not convinced the proposed solution will permanently solve this (minor) problem. Abusive posts are best recognised by complaints. So a "Complaint" facility besides the "Post reply" facility might be a better way to solve this problem. If a complaint counter is added, this will act as a troll allert until the complaint treshold is reached and the posting is removed. It also gives a way to object against trolls without feeding the trolls.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 8:59 UTC (Sat) by hppnq (guest, #14462) [Link]

To me, the quality of the site matters most, so I would vote in favour of some mechanism that optimizes the S/N ratio. But I also like the idea that anyone can participate in the discussions, and I think one has to accept the fact that there will be a certain (low) amount of abuse of the comment system.

Currently I don't think there's a real need to change anything, but I fear the Groklaw effect, so LWN would do good to have some sort of remedy ready for that.

I am a subscriber, by the way, if that matters. I think anyone who reads LWN regularly and who can afford it should subscribe. But those who can't should not be shut out from the discussions if it can be prevented.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 9:04 UTC (Sat) by chant (guest, #20286) [Link]

Is there been any history of 'offensive posts' having been written by subscribers? If this occurs, what will happen? Since $2.50 is such a trivial amount, perhaps it is a low barrier for trollers as well.

Regardless, my vote is that non-subscribers be able to post comments. For the handful of abuses, its not worth losing a single one of the comments that I come here to enjoy.

I have just put my money where my mouth is and subscribed, albeit at the cheap rate, in the hopes that you'll leave the system open.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 9:57 UTC (Sat) by theraphim (subscriber, #25955) [Link]

Someone with enough capabilities to pay subscription price just don't have to have 100% rational personality without weak spots. Thing that can prevent them to post "obscene" comments can be a rule which can allow you to void their subscription in this case (or a fine from FCC :))).
These $5 is just a 3 rides on a local bus in L.A., but as much as 5% of average salary somewhere where I live.
Anyway it's your site. Feel free to do as you wish. I can find another place to comment :)

Posted Nov 20, 2004 10:10 UTC (Sat) by philips (guest, #937) [Link]

The place I come from - Belarus, last dictatorship of Europe - can be an example of place where paying $5/month can be an obstacle.

At local scale, for most people $5 is the money person needs to live for one week. For example, after paying rent my mother (who already retired) has about $25-35 on hands. And that's money for living one month.

If you need to pay international bill - you will have to use local currency. Exchange rate is controlled by government. That means, in fact, one will have to pay about $10 per month. That's already much, and for most people (especially youth, students, Universities' workers) is unsaid luxury. And I'm not talking about the fact that most of the forms of international payments are just illegal here, thou still widely used. (E.g. citizen of Belarus has no right to have bank account abroad - that's civil crime here).

Generally as sort of a rule, people here are immediately turned down when they see words like "subscription", "fee" on Internet. Almost every installation of M$ Windoz is unlicensed - and Linux (along with *BSD) are only truly licensed installed OSs here.

P.S. If one is employed by offshore software development house - Belarus is destination for out-sourcing too - price then might be Okay. But not everyone that lucky.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 10:53 UTC (Sat) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]

OK, subscriber here.

First, it's my opinion that the value of LWN almost doubled when comments
were added. Within reason, a number of choice comments by those informed
on the issues or having a personal experience with them adds a great deal
of value to a story, and I see a lot of that here at LWN, with little
"comment just to comment" noise let alone direct trolling. Ideally, that
would continue, but of course the natural tendency will be toward a
gradual degradation of quality. What can be done to avoid this?

First step, I'd suggest a simple subscriber post marker. No filtering or
other fancy stuff (yet, anyway), just a subscriber marker. This will
accomplish several things. First, it will allow users to actually see
whether the posts they value (or not) come from subscribers or not. Thus,
it'd give us users some data on which to form an option for going further,
and allow a followup RFC in two to six months, if desired. Second, it's
data you already have available, and would be intermediate test step
anyway, even if something further was to be implemented. Third, it'd
provide a bit of motivation to subscribe if only for the now visible
legitimacy factor, while not preventing those who can't/won't subscribe
for whatever reason from having their comments displayed.

Second, I like the non-subscriber delay idea. After implementing the
above as a first step, put into effect the 24-hour to 1-week delay for
non-subscribers that others have suggested. Again, this provides
motivation to subscribe while lowering the instant feedback and therefore
gratification potential of trolls presumably not so likely to subscribe
(tho it's possible). I'd suggest perhaps 48 hours as a delay factor.
It's not a whole week old, but should be sufficient systemic resistance to
the feedback loop so vital to trolls. While they may get a single post
in, which may draw some response, a 48-hour delay for each generation of
troll response will quickly put an end to any mounting feedback loop.
Ideally, subscribers will be mature enough to mute their responses as
well, meaning most response would be from other non-subscribers with their
own 48-hour posting delay, making a round-trip post and reply delay of 4
days, again, still short enough so real vital comments get thru, while
being a SERIOUS discouragement to escalating feedback loops. Note that
the proposed non-subscriber posting exception could apply to the the
non-subscriber delay as well, such that exempted non-subscriber posters
(as the subjects of an article or whatever) would see immediate posting
results.

I do NOT favor the removal of non-subscriber posting privs entirely, even
with an open comments page. The time may come for that, and it's possible
I'd change my mind if subscriber post marking is implemented as in the
first suggestion, so I could SEE who's responding as a subscriber and who
not, but I do NOT believe the time is now.

Duncan

Posted Nov 20, 2004 12:36 UTC (Sat) by zotz (guest, #26117) [Link]

I am not a subscriber.

I am not normally this dense, but sometimes I surprise myself: for some reason (slaps head) I was under the impression that only subscribers could post until this last dust up. I would have been posting more if I had known.

If others suffer from this misconception, it could account some for the lack of non-subscriber postings.

I have been a reader for many years.

The best idea I saw in the thread that prompted all this is that it should take one subscriber to approve a non-subscriber's post before it goes live. I just saw one in this thread that might be even better. Non-subscriber's posts go live when a subscriber replies to it. Then subscribers will just have to not respond to foolish posts.

Perhaps a refinement:

A non-subscriber get's one post a day to start, if their post is approved (or replied to) then they get posting privaleges for the rest of the day. Or some refinement on this.

I think that might be: needs specific approval (not reply approval) by one subscriber and that subscribers identity is shown alongside of the original post.

I think you may lose a lot by going strictly subscriber. I know sites lose out when they do not allow anon postings. I always try and make useful and decent postings, but sometimes I am not going to say things under my own name. There are many valid reasons for doing this.

I hope this turns out well for you in any event.

all the best,

drew

Posted Nov 20, 2004 13:04 UTC (Sat) by NESAC (guest, #3813) [Link]

I don't object to a plan that only allows subscribers to post, however, I don't see the need. The number of troll - like posts is already quite low, and I am not bothered by them.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 14:26 UTC (Sat) by vaxcluster (guest, #21475) [Link]

Disclaimer: I am NOT a subscriber.

I for one would not be unduly concerned by restricting comments to subscribers, but that is mainly because I currently cannot tell which comments are from subscribers, and which are not.

Before smashing that small nut with a sledgehammer, perhaps you could colour code the comments to show which are which. We would then be in a better position to give you our opinion.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 14:56 UTC (Sat) by angelortega (subscriber, #1306) [Link]

Disclaimer: I am a subscriber.

I agree with restricting comments to subscribers. Didn't knew trolls were
a problem here; signal-to-noise ratio has always been fine, as far as I
recall.

I don't think stuff like moderation nor filtering are worth the pain; I
prefer LWN editors dedicating their LWN time to things like interesting
articles (as they use to) and not hunting for stupid, offensive or spam
comments.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 16:02 UTC (Sat) by dwheeler (subscriber, #1216) [Link]

I pay real money for my subscription; why shouldn't I get benefits from paying? This policy change certainly isn't censorship; anyone can pay, and anyone can set up their own website to declare whatever they wish.

The reason I pay money is to obtain high-quality commentary and analysis on current events related to OSS/FS. LWN provides that, in real time, so it's worth paying for.

Non-subscribers can continue to be able to send 'letters to the editor', so there's always that approach.

Perhaps there should be a mechanism for non-subscribers to submit a comment on individual articles to LWN, who can moderate them and decide which of those can get posted. That would allow important comments through, while still giving a benefit for subscription.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 16:15 UTC (Sat) by tjc (subscriber, #137) [Link]

Pardon me if this has already been discussed. I didn't have time to read the previous 75 comments, but I tried to browse them.

What is the suscriber comments to non-suscriber comments ratio?

What percentage of non-suscriber comments are top-level? Perhaps disallowing non-suscribers from starting top-level threads would be enough to improve the S/N ratio for a while.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 17:01 UTC (Sat) by ruin8tr (subscriber, #16593) [Link]

how about if subscribers can rate non-subscriber comments up or down?

Posted Nov 20, 2004 17:09 UTC (Sat) by erwbgy (subscriber, #4104) [Link]

I think there are two issues here: increasing the signal-to-noise ratio,
and encouraging more people to subscribe to LWN.

I'm not convinced that there is a problem with the signal-to-noise ratio.
There are very few messages that I would consider noise, and they tend to
be on isolated topics that people feel strongly about. Then again, I
don't think that subscriber-only posts is censorship if they have
somewhere else to post. But, I think subscribers get enough value from
non-subscriber posts that this currently outweighs any possible irritation
from non-subscriber trolls.

Which leads me to a suggestion that may help with the second issue.
Identify non-subscriber posts, using an icon or different coloured title
bar (as suggested elsewhere) perhaps, and then provide a means for a
subscriber to sponsor this person. I would happily sponsor a
non-subscriber who I thought consistently posted useful comments, but was
not able to afford a subscription for whatever reason. I'm sure many
others would too, but we need some way of identifying such individuals.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 17:20 UTC (Sat) by copsewood (subscriber, #199) [Link]

I enjoy the comments facility, think it greatly improves LWN and that it works very well. I would therefore be reluctant (unless you are convinced this will improve revenue) to change significantly something that works well. I think the ability to make a complaint about an inappropriate post should not be made easier than sending an email to an address listed somewhere on the site (e.g. comment-complaints at lwn d0t whatever ). I think having an HTML check box makes complaining far too easy and will lead to trivial and inapproprate use.

I would also be very happy for the LWN editor to have the authority to remove a message or thread which detracts from the general quality of the site. The ability to post complaints letters when this is done and reasons for doing so would make this action accountable enough as far as I am concerned. If there have been so few inappropriate postings amongst so many, why leave these as part of the long-term archival history which lwn.net publishes ? I also think the human judgement of the editors is likely to work much better here than any numerical feedback algorithm from readers. This human judgement is what subscribers such as myself are willing to pay for.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 17:30 UTC (Sat) by vmole (subscriber, #111) [Link]

I'm a subscriber.

I don't think the problem of inapropriate posts is bad enough to warrant eliminating non-subscriber postings. I presume that at present, if I see a comment that is, let us say, un-civil, I can send a note to the editors for evaluation. At the rate of a few bad posts for several thousand good ones, that seems sufficient.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 17:34 UTC (Sat) by foo (guest, #1117) [Link]

I agree with some previous posters that a good first step would
be to simply mark the subscriber status of each poster. That
way we could all get a sense of where the information-free
posts are coming from. I do ask that it be textual and not
just a different color, for the benefit of those with substandard
browsers/terminals/eyeballs.

As for the censorship concerns, I feel that the danger of the
comments area becoming a Slashdot-style cheering section are
much greater than the danger of them drying up due to regulation.

I agree that the issue of international readers who really would
be hurt by the subscription price is a serious problem.

Posted Nov 20, 2004 17:40 UTC (Sat) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]

As a subscriber I'd prefer to leave the system open as now;
there really are so few 'bad' posts that it's trivially easy
to ignore them. If things ever got so that it took time to
hunt through the bad posts for the good ones then it would be
worth doing something about, but not otherwise.

However, I'd like to put in a vote for the idea of marking
non-subscribers' posts, it seems mostly harmless, possibly
revenue generating, and would put us in a better position to
judge should the need to reconsider come up in a few months.

Ewan

Posted Nov 20, 2004 17:47 UTC (Sat) by X-Nc (guest, #1661) [Link]

I had been against comments from the beginning. It seems to me that using the letters page is more efficient. Limiting comments to subscribers would probably be a good thing. It might even get a few more subscriptions.

Po