Thanks to you for sparking this discussion. Here are my thoughts, in semi-digested bullet form. :-)

• We're talking about how to handle nodes which are deemed by consensus to be "bad", content-wise.
• The concern is primarily about "protecting" newbs from that content.
• Actually modifying (e.g. redacting) node contents, like is done with reaped nodes, is not a good idea.
• The solution, whatever it is, should be targeted primarily, if not solely, at Anonymous Monk, because that affects how the site's contents get indexed by search engines, as well as what casual visitors see.
• The consensus should be determined by the node's actual rep, compared against some threshold. I'd propose that that threshold be a simple hard-coded number like -10.
• Such nodes could be "hidden" in some way. The model I think is close is the one we use for hiding nodes "below your chosen depth" in comment threads. (The "Replies text depth" in User Settings.)
• A human user, including Anonymous Monk, should be able to reveal the node by clicking a button/link. The way we do this should thwart robots from doing the same.
• Logged-in users should be able to use CSS to implement their solution of choice.

Seems close to perfect to me. The hard-coded number should have a ratio consideration still though. A node with 100, or even just 40, upvotes and 10 downvotes is likely valuable/important, just contentious for whatever reason. So I’d propose 4:1 ratio only checked when -10 is reached. Even 3:1 might be fine, for a simple super-majority.

I'm talking about actual rep. So a node with 40 upvotes and 10 downvotes has a rep of +30.

I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.

FWIW: I concur.

---

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Examine what is said, not who speaks -- Silence betokens consent -- Love the truth but pardon error.

"Science is about questioning the status quo. Questioning authority". The enemy of (IT) success is complexity.

In the absence of evidence, opinion is indistinguishable from prejudice. Suck that fhit

I approve!

PS we want to make a poll about?

L*

There are no rules, there are no thumbs..
Reinvent the wheel, then learn The Wheel; may be one day you reinvent one of THE WHEELS.

Hi jdporter, this solution sounds ideal. Thanks for taking the time to put this together.

Not having read the whole thread (and sorry about the late response), but here my thoughts anyway.

• The idea is to put even more weight behind the votes, without working on the vote quality? Hm.
• So a decision was made, that preference is given to information folding instead of presentation choices ((de-)emphasis, etc.)?
• A community building effort? Consensus building effort? Rose-tinted glasses for the outside view? Consensus building can be good or it can be bad. Community building can be good or it can be bad. (Walled-garden aspect and so on).
• Slowly but surely, in little baby-steps, the Anonymonk seems to get marginalised. There's a certain monk who has advocated for outright removal of the Anonymonk. I wonder if he gets what he wants, in the end?
• Hm. Could it be that the certain monk is a manufactured entity, the arch-enemy figure for the community cinematic experience? Like paco was the content seed? *inhales smoke*
• In a discussion long ago, I outlined my take on this matter: flexible node depth in the thread view. What else does one need? Although cutting off the 1st level replies en masse would be dismissive and obscure, so better keep them individually as
  -> a reply by Foo
• Having a fixed "browsing threshold" that does not account for the size of the thread is like slashdot and IMO terrible.
• As an aside, I had this 1apr idea about replying to nodes with considered (grand)parent: anyone who wants to respond has to play an automated game of rock-paper-scissors, winning 2 out of 3. Except on Tuesdays. Then you have to lose on purpose.
• But really, why would you want to hide content from search engines? Shame?
• And finally, why focus or obsess with the negative? Why not emphasize the good stuff instead so that the negative would not even need caveats attached?

ps. I seem to have lots of sentences ending with a question mark, isn't that so?

Why not emphasize the good stuff instead so that the negative would not even need caveats attached?

That's essentially where I'm trying to go with RFC: Better Best Answers, which was inspired by an earlier post of yours.

I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.

AFAIK there is no requirement on the number of downvotes for autoreaping. Autoreaping will happen when a consideration-vote is cast, if the reputation is negative (can be -1 with a single vote) and there are at least 5 consideration-votes, most of which are "Reap" (the condition is more complex than that, the number of Reap votes required depends on the number of Keep votes). Someone mentionned -$NORM, which might be a better idea (yes, a -10 reputation is hard to reach, but I like the overall culture of forgiveness of perlmonks and its reputation system).

Discipulus is the one I've seen mention the reduced font solution the most, maybe the one who proposed it in the first place. But unless you can force the font size on some content, the user could just redefine the font size to ignore the one applied globally to the node. Adding a warning at the top of the message might work. I also like reap-like replacement message where the node is replaced by a message stating that it is below some threshold reputation. It could be the default when viewed as Anonymonk, are require activation for other users.

I have been thinking about something similar, but perhaps not as drastic. It was inspired by a post somewhere here, but I don't remember where, so I can't give credit at the moment. Basically, for a certain "sufficiently low" reputation (or downvote-to-upvote ratio, with a minimum number of votes required), just reduce the font size*, perhaps in two steps. That would give readers a visual clue as to which nodes have a "sufficiently low" reputation without going so far as to hiding them or publicly displaying the vote count.

* Update: Through the various counterarguments in this thread I have been sufficiently convinced that reducing the font size is probably not the best way to go, so for now I'm going with my other idea of an indicator message at the top of the node.

I recall that plan and thought it was a good one (and still do). However, it has no effect on search engines. marto's suggestion means that the content would not be indexed in the context of the thread which would be even better. Reducing the font size also has no effect on readers with character-cell browsers (lynx/elinks/etc) or screen readers (so there's a WAI concern).

Perhaps we could do both? Below one threshold (-3? -4?) start progressively reducing the font size and then below a second threshold (-8? -10?) hide the content entirely.

Those are good points in regards to only changing the font size. See my other post for some more thoughts.

As for the threshold, since such a change would affect all older content as well, and AFAIK the vote counts were higher in the past (e.g. Selected Best Nodes), I suspect the threshold would have to be dynamic based on the number of votes cast. I don't think it's necessary to start at something like -3 or -4, since there are always some threads with simple disagreements in which hiding content might not be warranted. But then there are certainly nodes where the downvotes are overwhelming.

I'm just putting my two cents out there, I don't yet have a clear idea on what the best way to go about something like this might be.

Thanks for your input. Users have the ability to have custom CSS which may override any cosmetic changes, and then there are the associated accessability issues associated with such things. Perhaps some people need fonts to be a certain size in order to be able to read them at all. Having to change some setting/zoom to be able to see the content in question would, at least to me, be more annoying than reading the warning and clicking a link. Hiding such posts, displaying a warning and presenting an option to see the post content in the same way one can view reaped content seems like an extension of the method used here for a long time, to cater for a different use case. How do you feel about all users being able to see vote count/spread?

Hmm, I don't think I've fully made up my mind yet about the vote counts... it seems that traditionally there isn't such an emphasis placed on them (only people who vote on nodes get to see the reputation, plus Best Nodes and Worst Nodes, I don't think they're displayed elsewhere?), so suddenly showing them might be considered too drastic. Hence my idea of using some other indicator. I'm just brainstorming here, but perhaps just a note at the top of the node where the vote count usually is saying that a certain threshold has been passed.

As for CSS and settings for showing/hiding stuff, I think that it's very important what new visitors see (as Anonymous Monk), so there'd have to be a useful default.

G'day marto,

I agree with the general idea of what you've put forward, but not all the details.

I think the "trigger" should be more along the lines of Reputation <= -N, rather than Downvotes >= N. I visit "Selected Best Nodes" every so often and see nodes with numbers like Rep: 185 (+200 -15): I wouldn't want those automatically hidden. I've noticed others have discussed this point and -10 has been mentioned a few times: that would seem to be a reasonable figure to me.

I'm not sure about displaying the vote count on the node. If I haven't voted on the node yet, would I see both the current votes (as I currently do after voting) and the radio buttons to allow voting (as I currently do before voting): it could be somewhat confusing; especially to someone fairly new to the Monastery. There's also the issue of implementing such a change and how much work that might entail (I've no idea on that). As an alternative, can I suggest simply adding a link to "Worst Nodes" as part of your posted message (i.e. "This node was taken out ..."): that stands a good chance of having a current, or at least a fairly recent, vote count; it would also highlight repeat offenders.

Hi Ken, I think jdporter has a better proposal than my initial suggestion.

Bad idea. Nodes are sometimes downvoted for good cause, and other times for bad cause, e.g. antipathy towards the poster.

Leave the system as is. If anyone believes the node should not be displayed they can can consider it. Then the community will decide.

However, I would support showing the vote count for especially high- or low-ranked posts to all readers. Maybe a formula based on overall rep, up- vs. down-votes percentage, and number of up- or down-votes compared to all votes cast for posts authored on that day ? Not easy to calculate, I guess, but it would be an improvement to reveal that a node is viewed very negatively. Just no automated reaping or hiding -- make someone take the action of considering.

Also, under NO circumstances should the font size be reduced. That just punishes readers whose eyesight is dimming.

Thanks for the input. I agree, leave the font size alone.

"If anyone believes the node should not be displayed they can can consider it. Then the community will decide."

How do I use the power of consideration responsibly? states (among other things)

"Poor reasons to consider a node include:

• To correct factual errors. Instead, post a response or send a message to the original author."

It's often not pratcical in terms of time and effort to take someone to task, especially when time and time again the same nonsense gets regurgitated. Especially were there are some cases where, regardless how many times a user is corrected, the same nonsense is reposted. In some cases the content is so bad it could be harmful to a computer system, or ones career/sanity. Bad/dangerous advice on an electronics forum can see your post nuked completly.

Update: To expand on this, How do I use the power of consideration responsibly? there is nothing I can see applicable under "Good reasons to consider a node" which would allow removal of a node for the reasons under discussion.

Look, let's be frank here. When you say "when time and time again the same nonsense gets regurgitated" you're obviously talking about sundialsvc4. I agree with the overwhelming majority of Monks that the overwhelming majority of his posts are worthless at best. But I do not believe that they always, or even most of the time, cross into the realm of downvotes or reapage.

Mostly the fellow offers vague advice gleaned from a career in IT consulting that peaked about 30 years ago, and is thus often stale, as well as vague and possibly irrelevant. But that's different from offering specific answers that are wrong. He does this as well, on occasion, of course, and such posts should be countered with a reply correcting the misstatement. But what is the danger, really, of leaving intact his barely-related waffling? (In fact, a large portion of the time the advice is quite sound, albeit in a far too generalized sense to be of use to the thread's OP.)

I tend to think that seekers of Perl wisdom should be developing the ability to determine for themselves whether or not a particular piece of writing or answer is valuable. If such a seeker, presented with half a dozen concise, code-demonstrating answers to their question, and then a wordy, over-formatted, vague diatribe containing only advice of the most general nature, cannot distinguish between the two classes of reply, well, then I consider that the seeker deserves their fate.

All that said, however, I do believe, as I stated elsewhere, that vote totals should be displayed to all readers, when the vote total is high or low enough (based on some as yet unwritten and complicated formula). This -- along with a good deal of retarding use of the downvote on the part of some of those quick to turn to it -- would assist in what I think is our obligation vis-a-vis worthless posts by sundial or by anyone: to warn the unsuspecting reader when there is a real danger of being misled. Being bored or even baffled by the content does not rise to that level, IMO.



The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

I now agree on the font size issue. I just wanted to pick up on one other thing:

Nodes are sometimes downvoted ... for bad cause

IMO the issue of why nodes get downvoted would be best for another discussion in another thread. In my view the central issue at hand is that we've got nodes with a significant negative reputation, i.e. the community has already spoken, but we don't have a way to inform newcomers and casual visitors of that fact. (And of course adding a CSS class for such nodes would also allow registered users to hide or format such nodes to their liking.)

Update: Fixed typo.

I do not intend that the reasons for down-voting should be debated here. However, in my view it *is* pertinent to consider the fact that nodes can be down-voted both in accordance with and not in accordance with the guidelines that are published. Unfortunately, those are not always followed and some posts accrue a slew of downvotes based on something else, such as, as mentioned earlier, antipathy towards the poster.

Therefore I am opposed to any automated system that would determine, in the absence of consideration by a human Monk, whether a post should or should not be displayed to viewers and/or search engines, based solely on down-votes cast.

update: added clarification



The way forward always starts with a minimal test.

• In thread view
• In Recently Active Threads
• In newest nodes

And in case of root nodes

• In their category listing like SOPW
• In the monastery gates

Discipulus suggestion about font size is here and I further elaborated about the already available CSS classes like .nnt-line-minusminus for RAT

The IMHO easiest implementation might be adding one (or several) more CSS class reflecting "worstness".

The actual default behavior - at least for anonymous visitors - could be left to the default style and any logged in user could choose to override it in his stylesheet settings.

possible changes could effect

• visibility / display
• font size / color / ...
• background color / image° ...
• a blur filter on top

Would this fit your requirements?

EDIT

see also Re: Blocking users for a proof of concept

UPDATE

Plus: A voluntary revealing could be easily implemented in JS

Minus: search engines would still see the content.

Summary: Not a replacement for Reaping, just a more flexible parallel mechanism which doesn't cause interference with consideration.

°) here a pic I might choose in my settings ;-)

Using CSS to allow users to implement their own "hiding" solutions is easy, and practically a no-brainer. However, it only helps logged-in monks. That's why I'm not focusing on this branch of the total solution. It's easy, and monks are smart enough to do whatever. It's the anonymous monks I'm concerned about. CSS is not part of any solution there.

I reckon we are the only monastery ever to have a dungeon stuffed with 16,000 zombies.

Minus: search engines would still see the content.

Thats only if the default anonymous view is the same as the view for search engines -- no technical reason for this to be the case

I think adding additional CSS classes is far easier in the context of this framework than special cases for bots.

And I don't see a reason to "auto-hide" posts from bots, that's what consideration is for.

Cheers Rolf
_{(addicted to the Perl Programming Language and ☆☆☆☆ :)
Je suis Charlie!}