Chacham's Journal: M2 feedback/ and quickie of what slashdot folk do.

Interesting he lsited what they do. And he liked the m2 idea. Anyone else think meta-moderation feedback would be nice or important?

Here's the text (minus a few "words").

M2 Feedback I just don't know what information would be helpful. Maybe some general stats.... like 14,000 comments pending M2? Thing is that M2 uses 5-7 'votes' on each M1, so "Done" takes awhile ;)

Journal Ratings the problem with "Higher Karma" voting higher is that Karma is highly gamable. The more you work with it, the more you learn to understand what it means. Bad karma means an untrustworthy user, but high karma doesn't necessarily mean that the user is good. Some of the most obnoxious trolls on Slashdot have good karma.

I'd rather make such an indicator more transparent. Perhaps a factor of reads, posts, moderation, and karma. We'd likely still have some thin level of editor approval for cool journals to be approved by authors, and also, accepted journals would also become uneditable by the author. We have to be careful to not allow someone to get their journal accepted, and then replace the text with <SNIP> ;)

As for what we're busy with, Krow is busy with slash functionality specific to other OSDN sites besides Slashdot. Pudge is working on anti robot measures, Cowboyneal has a few bugs to fix, Jamie is working on all sorts of subscriber related functions. You can usually get a good idea of what we're working on by checking out the SourceForge project page. Anything with a high priority assigned to someone is usually being worked on. We always have "Secret" stuff that you guys can't see (like stuff related to denial of service attacks, robots, trolling, security etc etc) but you can often see with a quick glance of the 'Bugs' page and the 'Features' page what stuff is on the TODO list.
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Pants are still optional, but recommended for you.

I was tempted to foe him after reading the comment, but it was somewhat in context.

In all, I am amazed at his quick responses and pretty thoroughness. I never though he was like that.

Update: To my request about his normal day he responded

As for what I do, I delete submissions, read email, keep track of who's doing what, manage bugs in teh source forge project page, delete more submissions, read our anti robot reports, moderate, decide policy, and hopefully when all of that is done, try to design new functionality for the site, keep track of scheduling to make sure someone is always on the site. I'm a manager you see- a PHB. Truth be told there's very little time for that. I spent 2 full work days posting comments, and replying to email realted to the TMF plum. Thank god we don't do that every week.

I've ben thinking about my own days. It's a strange feeling.

Taco's thoroughness

[AntiFreeze]

[Disclaimer: I'm dead tired and hopefully getting to sleep soon, I hope this makes sense. If it doesn't, let me know what needs clarifying and I'll take care of it in the morning.]

I've spoken with Rob in person, and exchanged emails with him a few times.

He's always been pretty thorough and quick to respond. The slashdot team is actually pretty good that way. When I was having zoo problems, a quick email to krow got my problems solved within _three_ minutes.

It seems to me that the slashdot team is a bunch of competent guys, who have a few problems. The first is the rap they have for poor editing. The second is their dealings with trolls (however they decide to deal, it always looks bad). The third is the piss-poor quality and design flaws of the original slashcode. And most recently, the fourth, is their asking for help with development of a product they get paid for but you won't.

I think these four things make their jobs pretty difficult and make most people respond to their situation in a negative way. But those reasons which give people such a bad impression of the slashdot "authors" don't make said authors bad people or incompetent coders or uninterested in user feedback. Unfortunately, I don't think the slashdot authors have learned how to be political when dealing with their users. If users are hostile towards you, and you direct that hostility back at them, then others will see hostility from you whether or not it was there originally. That is a big part of the problem the slashdot editors have been facing. If they could just be a little calmer in their responses, I think a lot of the hostility would die down. But that's my opinion.

So basically, what I'm trying to say is that there are a lot of misconceptions about the slashdot team, and maybe I need some sleep. I think I got very offtopic (or, very ontopic with respect to your last sentence), but whatever. I should really avoid posting when I'm exhausted.

Re:Taco's thoroughness

[Chacham]

Interesting.

So basically, what I'm trying to say is that there are a lot of misconceptions about the slashdot team,

Actually, what tends to bother me most is that Taco's journal is pretty closed, and his decision seem to just be orders from on high, rather than a discussion. That makes me *want* to see everything he does as bad so I can villify him personally, and feel good about myself. Talking to him removes most of that, and the thoroughness makes me realzie that he isn't just some(one like an) ESTJ with no pre-thinking or care of ohers before decisions.

and maybe I need some sleep

Sweet dreams.