Re: New rating scheme at K5

If we're going to coin new phrases like "the Slashdot trap," then we need to 
discuss the reason why Slashdot has such a trolling problem in the first 
place. A troller isn't all that different from a grade school bully, they're 
just looking for attention. Slashdot's reactionary, knee-jerk approach to 
dealing with new types of troll attacks just encourages the trollers to find 
new ways to abuse the system. In this respect, K5's new rating system has 
already begun to wreck the signal-to-noise ratio.

Meanwhile, take a look at the hidden comments section. There is not a single 
piece of worthless spam to be found and very, very few comments that are so 
offensive that they should be censored from an adult discussion site. I 
suppose Rusty has silenced the handful of vocal censoristas that peck at his 
in-box for the moment, but he's done so at great cost to the journalistic 
integrity of his site. Unpopular opinions should not be censored, and Rusty 
knew that and made it a top goal of K5 when he created the site, otherwise 
he wouldn't have made the 0 rating so powerless to begin with.

The only saving grace of the new changes, and the only reason why I still 
use K5 as my primary online discussion site, was the added ability to ignore 
ratings entirely. The minimum vote quota has already made the ratings system 
mostly useless anyway. The idea that you can change people's human behavior 
and make them vote more often simply because otherwise the voting system 
will be broke is incredibly silly.

I don't see the problem with rewarding users with meaningless karma and mojo 
rewards. Motivated users make better discussions and the really smart ones 
aren't really going to be jockeying for points anyway.

If I were in the driver's seat, I'd return to the points based system, but 
take it in the other direction. Give all trusted users the option of laying 
down a six, but only one a day. Not so much power that trollers will be 
building up extra accounts, but just enough motivation for people to 
concentrate and save their daily point for a really, shining comment that 
deserves to rise above the fray. As it is now, there isn't much rising above 
the fray, because enough people have to be motivated enough to sort through 
the cruft and all spontaneously decide to pick one comment enough times to 
make it's rating show.

If people are still whining about comments they disagree with, give them the 
option of SETTING THEIR OWN CENSORSHIP THRESHOLD. Default this to an 
insanely low number (like the old mod system's < 1), since the number one 
threat to an open, online discussion is the threat of censorship. If you're 
still worried about troller cabals rating up zero'd comments, this should 
solve the problem, since the trollers in question will have no idea how hard 
they should work to annoy the reactionary, sensitive types that whine about 
this sort of stuff.

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