MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
Order today at Barnes & Noble / Amazon / Books-A-Million / Bookshop
|
|
|
From the Readers
- barefooted 8 months ago
- PeraclesPlease 9 months ago
- PeraclesPlease 10 months ago
- PeraclesPlease 11 months ago
- PeraclesPlease 11 months ago
- PeraclesPlease 1 year ago
- artappraiser 1 year ago
- PeraclesPlease 1 year ago
- PeraclesPlease 1 year ago
- artappraiser 1 year ago
Creative corner
- PeraclesPlease 10 months ago
- PeraclesPlease 11 months ago
- PeraclesPlease 1 year ago
- artappraiser 1 year ago
- artappraiser 1 year ago
From the Dagbloggers
- Michael Wolraich 10 months 3 weeks ago
- Danny Cardwell 3 years 1 month ago
- Doctor Cleveland 3 years 10 months ago
- PeraclesPlease 4 years 2 weeks ago
- PeraclesPlease 4 years 2 weeks ago
- William K. Wolfrum 4 years 2 weeks ago
- William K. Wolfrum 4 years 2 weeks ago
- Doctor Cleveland 4 years 1 month ago
- Doctor Cleveland 4 years 1 month ago
- William K. Wolfrum 4 years 1 month ago
"On my new moderation duties" (by Markos Moulitsas, founder and publisher of Daily Kos)
By artappraiser on Wed, 09/14/2011 - 10:20pm |By Kos, Daily Kos, September 7, 2011
Alternative title: "Introducing the Great Purge of 2011".
....I have deep patience for dickishness. I don't mind a bit of rough and tumble. Politics is a contact sport....
So being a dick is sometimes okay, within reason, which is why I've never concerned myself with it. But of course, the year-long Obama-rox/Obama-sux flamewar has now dragged me into community moderation, and my patience has run dry. I'm now itching the ban the fuck out of the biggest dicks on the site.
I'm already at about a dozen, with ratings pulled from several more. I'm not done. If you accuse someone of being racist just because they criticize Obama? Zap! If you actually say something that is even borderline racist? Zap! If you advocate for third party? Zap! This is a Democratic site. Advocating primaries is okay. Advocating third party is not.....
My note: Hat tip to rmdr0000, whose comment on another thread here made me interested enough to look the origin of this story up. Posted it because I thought perhaps others might have interest as well. Note that there are 1,175 comments.
URL:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/07/1014275/-On-my-new-moderation-duties?via=sidebyuserrec
- Add new comment
- 2374 reads
Comments
Words cannot express how little I care about anything the Markos Moulitsas and the ding-a-lings who frequent his site do or say.
by cmaukonen on Thu, 09/15/2011 - 12:09am
Ha. I enjoyed it. His rant mirrors my own foul mood a month or so ago.
But it's disappointing that he's prohibiting third-party agitation, which does not seem to fall under the rubric of the dickishness that he protests.
by Michael Wolraich on Thu, 09/15/2011 - 3:55pm
by trkingmomoe on Thu, 09/15/2011 - 10:03pm
He added two later posts saying he is going to experiment with moving away from the Scoop "trusted user" model of community policing:
On TU and the future of community moderation
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/09/1015121/-On-TU-and-the-future-o...
Participating in someone else's diary
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/09/14/1016965/-Participating-in-someo...
I know you guys hate meta, but I've always been interested in forum software precisely because of the attempts at community policing or community editing. Sort of along the lines that if a community of people interested in politics or news can't manage to accomplish the same on the internet as in a cafe, clubhouse or town hall meeting, then there's little hope for the future. If someone could invent Robert's rules of order and have it work most of the time over hundreds of years, then someone should be able to invent something for the internet that works as well. My interest in meta is mostly sociological, and I saw in using Scoop as a moderator at a much smaller site how it has social engineering aspects to it, and even some brilliant insights on that front in its design.
The problem for me is that like cmaukonen, but perhaps for different reasons, I basically have always pretty much disliked both Kos and the DKos site. Hah! It's hard to explain. It's in the concept and the slant, what they find interesting and how they write/talk about it (cmaukonen's ding-a-ling is close but not exact.
) And that's interesting in itself, how one personality can basically be reflected in a huge community.
But hey, I've got to give credit to Kos on this front: he got top notch people to help him with software from nearly day one and the software always seems to work with incredible efficiency for a very large audience, (even if it's not working out on the moderation front to his satisfaction. ) I remember thinking about it when Josh Marshall dropped Scoop on TPMCafe years ago (it was the first system he used,) giving the reason that it was impossible to customize and wouldn't work with the future internet, and I was puzzled by that, thinking, well Kos doesn't seem to have a problem changing it with the times at all, i.e., whoever he's got doing his software customizing and maintenance, how come you can't get same?
by artappraiser on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 3:24am
My take is that a good system helps, but bad people can overcome a good system and good people can overcome a bad system.
by Donal on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 12:05pm
Comes immediately to mind that that's a common argument about the public schools (vs. private schools, which can chose students and/or more easily fire teachers.)
Then there's the example of some parliaments having a long history of following the rules with few exceptions, and others that have a regular propensity of reaching the point of breaking out into physical brawls ...
by artappraiser on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 12:49pm
I think it's just as true of private schools.
by Donal on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 3:46pm
Thanks for the links, AA. From a moderation point of view, there are two important differences between Kos and dag (other than the fact that they have a lot more ding-a-lings). One, Kos has a much larger community. Two, Kos has a budget.
With relation to two, Kos built his site from scratch, so he can customize it however he likes. Dagblog is built on drupal, and I don't have time to do much customization work on it. That said, there is probably some comment flagging drupal module that I can plug in.
I'm concerned, however, that because the community is small, it could produce a lot of "Who flagged my comment?" fights and flag-wars between antagonists. Does that happen on Kos?
Nonetheless, it might be worth experimenting with if we have more problems in the future, though I feel good about how people have been engaging lately.
PS For the record, we don't dislike meta per se. Discussing how a blog should work is really interesting. It's the recriminations and finger-wagging meta that we can't stand.
by Michael Wolraich on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 1:20pm
Actually, I wouldn't even think of comparing dagblog because you have moderation by the owners here, which is possible when the community is small enough. (And just like with meatspace police, that doesn't require catching everything or always enforcing, all it requires is that people know you are there and do it sometimes.) You really don't need community moderation with that unless you're interested in trying it or you can't tolerate the amount (or type) of work involved anymore.
I have seen examples where moderation seems to really bum you out and you get into explaining yourself a lot. I admit that in posting the original I did think you in particular might be interested for that reason. (Especially because he's just doing the dictator thing here--something which owners are totally entitled to do, no need for splainin'.)
But the main reason I posted it is because its news in politics--DKos is a big influential site and I think changes there are important blogosphere news if you're into blogosphere meta. And on that front, as you yourself pointed out, the "no more third party talk" thing is kind of shocking. I never thought of it as a exclusively Democratic party site, if that was his intention all along, I think he sure didn't control the mission or get it across that well.
by artappraiser on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 2:56pm
Oh and something comes to mind might interest you on the geek stuff. When TPMCafe dumped Scoop, they went to Drupal. Everyone complained in mass quantities, they liked Scoop a lot were happy with the system, few complaints. Andrew Golis' first job was to handle that, lots of meta threads. People wanting the ratings back and the mojo system. TPM ended up customizing Drupal anyways, to be more like Scoop, to get some of those features back. But it didn't have the hidden comments system, which I think is a really crucial part of the Scoop system, just ratings and mojo. Having mojo in the TPM-customized-Drupal entitled you to "zero" things but the comment just stayed there. It just caused more ratings wars activity in mho. The hidden comments system of Scoop allowed for the police to police each others' policing activities as well.
It's also interesting what Kos did with Scoop on ratings long ago, they took away the 5-point ratings and just let people put a "plus one" or "minus one" (with too many of the latter causing hiding from the public.) And the community came up with "tip jar" on their own, which also altered the system. Both of those things eventually became sort of part of blogosphere language everywhere, but they came from Kos.
by artappraiser on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 3:20pm
Until I saw this link I'd never read DKOS, never been to the site or anything. But I have to say at least they are doing something. My one time favorite place Salon.com has allowed offensive posters and trolls take over the place, I'd been reading and participating there since 1997, and it has literally gone to hell.
I don't know that this would make me read KOS, but I still think it is a good move.
by tmccarthy0 on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 1:05pm
My belief is that even when there is a community policing system, every now and then a dictator still has to step in and check out how things are working, and clean things up if they are getting out of control and "going all Tobacco road," like they used to say in the 50's. I dunno what that says for democracy....but I always liked Betty Boothroyd in the temporary dictator role in the House of Commons.
Then there's that little example of the Supreme Court and the executive branch of the U.S.A. having to step in to integrate the schools in the south.....
P.S. I am surprised you never visited DKos. Despite what I said above about not thinking of it as an exclusively Democratic site, there has always been a ton of grass roots Democratic party organizing there, lots of posts on local races, with people trying to get help in local races from across the country by posting there.
by artappraiser on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 3:29pm
I'd never heard of DKos being exclusively a democratic site, until I read your link. I was a long time Salon reader, almost from its beginning. In fact when I joined Salon in 1997 you had to pay 25.00 a year to read the articles. And I've just been there for so long. It really was my favorite place, but after a while every place seems to deteriorate, I call it the UsenetWars Legacy Sickness, and it happens by neglect.
So I applaud him for trying to get whatever problems they were having under control. And from the couple of things I've read there lately, it seems to be not that bad, although it is one very large online community, it is kind of intimidating it is so large!
by tmccarthy0 on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 5:00pm
I've only been to DKos a few times.
by Donal on Sat, 09/17/2011 - 5:17pm