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On comment abuse

On comment abuse

Posted Nov 20, 2003 10:38 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544)
Parent article: On comment abuse

Newsforge was a fairly okay forum until they recently introduced slashdot style moderation. Now discussion is impossible because threads just end up disjointed etc. So it's important not to accidentally spoil LWN in the same way.

In the last two weeks, the problem of trolls has decreased to a very acceptable level, probably due to your firewalling. With this, I'd say it's okay to wait a while to see if other action is still really neccessary.

If we do need a better solution, maybe a 7 day delay before non-subscriber accounts can post comments would be good. It would prevent trolls from signing up for new accounts every time people realise they are trolls. Also, a "troll button" at the subject of each comment could allow people to flag a troll. Could a system be set up to mail the LWN editors every time a comment is flagged more than, say, 10 times, and that comment could be hidden? (not removed, just replaced with a link to see the full comment, and the word "troll" beside it).


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Scaling Problems

Posted Nov 22, 2003 6:22 UTC (Sat) by GreyWizard (guest, #1026) [Link]

Also, a "troll button" at the subject of each comment could allow people to flag a troll. Could a system be set up to mail the LWN editors every time a comment is flagged more than, say, 10 times, and that comment could be hidden?

A troll button that could be pressed by trolls would be pressed by trolls. LWN editors would be flooded with mail and many innocent comments would be hidden. Limiting the troll button to subscribers would improve the situation quite a lot but still suffers from scaling problems. An effective long-term solution must be relatively autonomous, at least from the perspective of the LWN editors. After all, they are a scarce resource.

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