request for moderation [LWN.net]

request for moderation

Posted Feb 13, 2015 20:53 UTC (Fri) by marinaz (guest, #72670)
Parent article: OPW becomes Outreachy

Hi LWN folks,

We really appreciate the great content on your site and the coverage of Outreach Program/Outreachy news. We would like to voice our support for the requests for moderation on the site that were posted in this thread and sent to you via e-mail.

The first and fourth comments in the thread are degrading to trans people. They are clear cut examples of comments that do not add to the discussion and create a hateful environment. We'd like to encourage you to help make free software a welcoming space for more people by having some standards for communicating on the site and enforcing them.

We note that this is not an easy problem, but it's one that some of the most venerated news institutions struggle with. Many of the top news sites have undertaken ways to address it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/some-news-s...

Thanks,
Marina, Karen, Sarah
Outreachy organizers

to post comments

request for moderation

Posted Feb 13, 2015 21:42 UTC (Fri) by josh (subscriber, #17465) [Link] (5 responses)

Seconding (or fourthing) the request for more active moderation. I like LWN for the high quality of its reporting *and* for the formerly high quality of the discussions in its comments. However, the average LWN comment section has gone seriously downhill in the last year or two. I'd hate to see LWN comments start to look like Slashdot.

request for moderation

Posted Feb 13, 2015 22:58 UTC (Fri) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] (4 responses)

+1 for more active moderation.

Apart from the issue of objectionable single comments in a longer thread, I would also welcome editorial intervention in threads or subthreads that have derailed entirely. A simple statement by the editor that "This thread is now closed" followed by doing exactly that.

request for moderation

Posted Feb 13, 2015 23:03 UTC (Fri) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] (2 responses)

corbet does, in fact, intervene in sufficiently severe derails and politely ask people to stop. Generally speaking, when he does so, they do.

request for moderation

Posted Feb 13, 2015 23:32 UTC (Fri) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] (1 responses)

Well yes, but I suggest that the threshold for intervention should be set lower than it currently is. For instance right over there ==> you can find yet another thread with ever-decreasing information content that ping-pongs back and forth between drastically different perceptions of the security implications of kernel commit messages. 265 comments and counting are enough to demonstrate non-convergence of opinion. Any relevance to the original topic "fresh kernels" has long since gone stale. Declare it dead and seal the grave to prevent zombies from re-emerging next month or next year.

Request to use topic-specific discussions for policy-decisions

Posted Feb 14, 2015 1:29 UTC (Sat) by Limdi (guest, #100500) [Link]

I hate some democratic process cause I sometimes can't see which threads get used as a source of public opinion. @admins please make a call for discussion in case you want all people's opinions to hear.

I ask this cause humans are bound to their mind, sometimes seeing some position more vigorously being taken with no contra, one might seem that these loudest people are what everyone wants. But sometimes it might be seeing the idea as nonsense, which might stop a lot of people from even starting going in contra.

I for one wrote some stupid ideas just last week and I suppose no one answered cause cause they saw it as nonsense, what it really was.

AIUI some projects do votes on issues where a lot of people might be affected to prevent a speaking minority from being the only source of public opinion.

I suppose it depends on you to decide wether this would be a better, meaning more diverse source of opinions to decide upon.

request for moderation

Posted Feb 14, 2015 16:03 UTC (Sat) by fuhchee (guest, #40059) [Link]

I for one hope our dear editor resists being drafted into a political-officer position.