I've made some changes to the user moderation system, based on user feedback and further thoughts regarding how I want the system to work.
First, thumbs down are gone. In their place, you can flag items as rules violations, but you can't flag something down just because you think it is lame.
Second, thumbs and flags are totally separate; flags will no longer reduce the thumbs up count, and thumbs up will not offset flags.
Posts which are flagged as rules violations by enough users will still be collapsed, like now, but you will still have the option to turn off this filtering. Because thumbs up no longer offset flags, I'm not sure yet what threshold we'll use to collapse messages - I'll be tweaking it over the coming days.
While you can still see the thumbs count, the flags count is secret. This is intended to make it harder for people to "gang up" against a post people will have no idea whether a post has garnered flags, and so can't "pile on." This also should reduce hurt feelings unless a post receives enough flags to hide it, you'll never know it was flagged.
When you flag something as a rules violation, you must choose an option to explain which rule you believe is being violated. This will also be secret, but if I see evidence of individual users flagging posts for trivial reasons, they will lose the ability to moderate forums.
I have removed the lame clause, but in exchange, I have a serious favor to ask: if your post is flagged by enough people to hide it, do not complain about this. In particular, do not try to argue about whether you really violated a rule. Consider such a complaint to be in itself a rules violation, subject to being flagged.
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Posted Fri Mar 16, 2007 2:15 am
