Where moderation steps in
Where moderation steps in
Posted Oct 1, 2025 14:36 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341)In reply to: Where moderation steps in by hkario
Parent article: NixOS moderation team resigns
I'm not sure what you're advocating for, that the LWN mods then start to "constructively criticise" people in the thread? That may well just make things worse - it will make LWN worse. LWN is not mired in the US-culture-war caustic shite that other parts of the media/net are, to any significant extent. LWN commenters seem largely sensible and able to take hints to shut-down chains that have stopped being useful. Advocating for moderation solutions here that assume it is may be counter-productive, and cause it to MOVE TOWARDS that undesirable state of toxicity, as much as anything else.
Or ??
Posted Oct 1, 2025 18:05 UTC (Wed)
by madscientist (subscriber, #16861)
[Link] (2 responses)
I don't believe that this is how the LWN mods intend for it to be perceived: they are talking about the entirety of the thread not specifically about the post they're replying to.
I suppose the people concerned about this perception would prefer that the LWN mods should back-track the thread to find the post that appeared to be primarily accountable for the problematic digression, and reply to that rather than the "latest post".
I'm not sure how feasible that is; it is assigning blame much more directly and thus, could cause more arguments than it prevents. Is it enough for us all to understand that the reply is not intended to indict the direct parent post? Or maybe there needs to be some standard disclaimer language in moderation comments?
Posted Oct 3, 2025 9:55 UTC (Fri)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
OTOH, it's a fairly small and long-standing community here in the LWN comment threads. I suspect the vast majority of us are well aware of what a "Gentlemen, ladies, time to stop." style LWN-mod-comment means and does not mean.
And the breadth of injury that may result from a few misunderstanding appears to be very very limited and not worrying about.
Finally, LWN's resources are very limited - however much we may think there is some better system of moderation that LWN could apply, there is also the question of whether working towards that is in any way worth the effort and cost. And the marginal benefits may be tiny compared to the high cost in precious LWN editor time.
The system currently largely works. If the LWN editors see easy ways to improve it, sure, great. However, I see no great pressure for them to spend any significant amount of their precious time on that either. I'd rather see them doing the stuff we value them for - producing the excellent content of the site.
Posted Oct 3, 2025 22:56 UTC (Fri)
by bauermann (subscriber, #37575)
[Link]
If this is the issue, perhaps it can be improved with a UI change? E.g.:
Instead of the moderation comment being a regular comment in the thread that went into the weeds, the UI could instead collapse that thread, and display the moderation comment on top. The user could still be able to click through the overlay and expand the thread to see it.
Of course, a reasonable argument can be made that there are better things to do with the limited resources available to develop the website UI.
Where moderation steps in
Where moderation steps in
Where moderation steps in