In the course of discussing how to handle the recent uptick in trollish comments, one observation from a number of BMGers is that comment ratings would help. Ratings allow you to express approval or disapproval quickly, but avoid the kind of engagement that trolls feed on. And ratings have other salutary features, as has been discussed here previously.
We’d like to have ratings back; so would you. Our current plan is to build something like the system on Daily Kos, where users can, once logged in, up-rate or down-rate comments. Maybe we would give special attention to comments with a lot of up-ratings, like a recommended list for comments; maybe comments with multiple down-ratings would be hidden; there are lots of possibilities.
In order to implement something like this, we’ll have to build it. ”How can I help,” I hear you cry! Glad you asked. You can subscribe to BMG. In addition to getting a handsome gold-rimmed badge next to your name wherever it appears on the site, you’ll also be served up an ad-free experience, and you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing that you are helping to make BMG better.
We only need a handful of new subscribers to have raised the necessary funds to ask our developer to get to work on this project. I hope you’ll consider helping out.
Thank you, and thanks as always for your participation at BMG.
UPDATE: By popular request, here’s a “Donate” button in case anyone would like to send a few bucks directly to the cause of building a comment rating system. (Donations to BMG are not tax-deductible, it hardly needs to be said.)
FURTHER UPDATE: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Enough of you have subscribed or chipped in extra bucks that we are now in a position to move forward on this. I have given our developer the green light, and I hope and expect that we’ll have comment ratings up and running fairly soon. I will keep you posted.
Discuss
23 Comments . Leave a comment below.Right now, I have a pipeline full of possible sales, closing the deals and turning them into an income stream is my next trick!
Terrific idea.
you can always just send us money!
The account is blue at bluemassgroup dot com.
I’m eager to do just this, it was my first thought (I’m already a subscriber).
I almost never use paypal, so I’m completely unfamiliar with nits like which radio button to select for “My payment is for…”.
It would be awesome if you could set up a button somewhere easy to find (for subscribers and non-subscribers) that I click, enter my credit card information, and presto-chango send you a contribution.
Check out the updated post – it should work. Email me with any questions.
I’m glad to contribute a little bit more.
Thank you
happy to help.
There are about a half dozen in the queue as I write this.
I was going to post the same thing!
Seems like they are posting at 5 past the hour, every hour! Yikes!
to implement a diary-per-day limit to stop this sort of spammer (and also, troll diaries). It’s only going to get worse.
the next fundraiser.
needed a REAL CMS.
~~~
‘Course, I’m one to talk…still trying to dev mine. Now that I have a “real” job, that’ll probably be another five years…
Not just diaries, but comments as well.
One of the ways that the first- and second-generation wikis protected themselves from trolls was to build in semi-automatic “governors” that limited the number of comments a participant could post in a given period of time (per day, sometimes per hour).
It isn’t too hard (at least on wikis) to give the admins the ability to both add “rules” that govern this behavior (so that the limits can be imposed automatically) as well as the ability to explicitly add and remove participants from the “governed” list.
Think of it as a “credit line” on your account — participants with more credit can post more in a given day than participants with less. Newcomers start with a conservative “credit line”, and build more as they participate more.
One of our relative newcomers here posted ten comments today, in the space of a few hours. That would have probably tripped the governors on the wiki’s I’m talking about.
it doesn’t speed up the process, because we delete them as soon as we come online and see them. They rarely stay on the site for more than a few hours.
I’ll be happy to subscribe at a higher rate then what you’re asking if I get control of my contributions back. I don’t mind subscribing to a site, I don’t mind giving content away for free, but doing both at the same time feels a lot like paying to work.
I’ve updated our terms of use – take a look.
Happy to subscribe.
I’ve been complaining about this for years, but sabutai says something once and *poof* it’s changed? Wow.
Thank you, sabutai!
I’m not only the Hair Club President, I’m a BMG member.
you might want to look at something that will auto-quarantine spam posts. As I look at the site right now, all of the Recent User Posts are bogus. For people who can only look in once or twice a day, that’s a big problem.
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