There has recently been a great deal of discussion here about how best to ensure civility and constructive debate on this site, while not interfering with the vigorous exchange of ideas that we all want. We have reviewed everyone’s comments with care, and we have spent a lot of time discussing the matter amongst ourselves and reviewing practices at other sites. This is an evolving issue, and policies will no doubt change over time in response to conditions.
Policy
The purpose of Blue Mass. Group is to develop ideas that will invigorate progressive leadership in Massachusetts and the nation. Robust debate is an important means to that end. We welcome bold, constructive observations. To us, this means commentary typical of thoughtful discussion between acquaintances who may hold differing views on important issues, but who debate those issues in a respectful manner. Insults, personal attacks, rudeness, and blanket unsupported statements reduce the level of discourse, interfere with our basic objective, and are not permitted.
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Penalties
Users who consistently violate our policies will receive a warning. Users who fail to heed our warning may be banned from the site.
Anonymity
We have found that commentators who disclose their real names are in general more likely to be constructive than those who are anonymous. We encourage users to add their real name, profession, age, the jurisdiction where they vote, and conflicts of interest to their profile. Anonymous commentators are allowed, but we encourage such users to provide as much of this information as they can manage. Impersonation of real people is not allowed and user accounts that do this will be deleted as soon as we become aware of any such practice. Of course, because we allow anonymous commentators, it is not permitted to publicly identify such commentators without their consent, unless they have already made their identities known on BMG.
There is one exception to the “anonymity is OK” principle: if you write a post, or leave a comment, about a candidate (or someone who is running against a candidate) with whom you have either a financial or a personal relationship, please disclose it. It won’t detract from the point you’re making – arguments on the merits stand or fall on their merits, not on the basis of those kinds of relationships. And it will be a positive step in the direction of establishing the internet as a credible source of information on politics and candidates. That benefits all of us. If we determine that you have failed to disclose a financial relationship of this kind, we may disclose it for you. Disclosure of financial relationships applies to issues as well as candidates.
Limitations on posting
Please see this post regarding (hopefully) temporary measures designed to restrict spam posting. Posting commercial links on Blue Mass Group is forbidden and will result in the immediate deletion of your account without warning.
— Bob, Charley, and David
I notice that comments previously rated 4 are still 4, even though that now means “needs work”. How about scaling the new ratings to match the old somewhat, perhaps making them -3 to 6 for example? Or mass-updating existing ratings to match a subset of the new scale (a 4 might become a 6 or 7, for example, and a 3 might be a 5).
Unfortunately, the system doesn’t allow for ratings less than zero – we tried, but it’s not an option. And I don’t think there’s a way to mass-update existing ratings. So, unfortunately, past ratings will not reflect their actual value in the system. We can take some comfort in the fact that ratings just weren’t used very much in the past, and hope that the greatly expanded future use of ratings that we’re hoping for will quickly take care of it.
The back-end here is a SQL database, isn’t it? Someone with commandline access to the database could easily do that sort of mass-update to the ratings. The ratings must be stored in a table somewhere, and I bet they even have dates attached to them. I don’t know the schema, but something like this:
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UPDATE ratings SET rating=6 where rating=4 and date < (today)
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You’d have to think about the order of the updates carefully, so as not to push the same ratings twice (for example, if you made all 2’s into 4’s and then all 4’s into 6’s, all the 2’s which just became 4’s would become 6’s, so you’d need to do that in the other order). But aside from that, it should be simple.
database. Therefore, command-line access, or the very nicely turned out gui that came with my MySQL installation should work fine.
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I don’t know how they built the DB for scoop, but if it were my design, there’d be a table of nothing but CommentID’s and RatingID’s…2 columns only because this table could get very deep.
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The easiest thing to do might be to copy the table to another machine, perform the UPDATEs as above and then substitute the whole thing.
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The site might goes down only long enough to put in the new copy.
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Piece of cake.
I’ve noticed that when I rate just one comment and then hit the “Rate All” button, I lose all of my “*[new]” tags, so when I come back, I can no longer tell at a glance which ones I’ve not read. Even if I read them all first, and then go back to rate them one at a time, it is still harder to find the ones I’ve not rated.
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The solution, I’ve discovered, is to rate them all [duh] before hitting one of the “Rate All” boxes. This is probably obvious to most people, but I post this note hoping to save a few dopes like me some grief. No, that’s okay, don’t thank me, ’cause then you’d have to admit you’re as stupid as I.
Now it seems to call the server in the background and not refresh the page. Better living through programming.
Congarts on your hard work on this all. And in the spirit of less anonymity, I’ve included a link in my profile to the other big site where I blog, Jspot.org (I’ve already linked to my personal blog at various times). And I use my name there! Now I’ll have to stop revealing my plans for workld domination on BMG.
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A few questions on the new rating system:
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1. When I opened the drop-down menu, there didn’t seem to be any 2 or 7 in the ratings system. Is that supposed to be that way? Any particular reason why?
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2. I noticed that in this thread, Cos’ original comments, as well as MFW’s later comment, can both be rated. But there’s not ratings menu there for the two replies to Cos’ comment. Is that because they’re replies? Again, is that intentional?
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3. What’s the threshold for low ratings to be hidden?
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4. On a somewhat tangential note, is there any way for me to change my password? I somehow was logged out (perhaps when you implemented this new system), and I didn’t know my password–had to get it mailed to me. No crisis, but I wondered.
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5. Why am I blogging on a beautiful day when I should either be enjoying myself or working?
Oops. Now it seems that my comment #2 above is not accurate. I could sswear that it was before, really!
1. Would it be possible to add a feature in the users’ config file so that he can choose if he wants to autohide low rated comments or see them? Some of us like to sweep the muck under the rug, but others like to read it anyway.
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You might even default to “sweep” and force the user to choose to see the muck.
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2. Is it appropriate to rate comments in a thread in which you’re participating? It begs for people to pad their own comments, or at the very least, sandbag folks with whom they are actively disagreeing, thereby hoping to artificially use numbers to persuade others.
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There are a number of sites where you can post a comment or rate comments, but not on the same thread. Slashdot.org , a pioneer in threaded commentary and ratings comes to mind.
I participate in most of the threads I read.
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I do sometimes give high ratings to comments I disagree with. It’s about whether I think they’ve contributed something valuable to the discussion, not about how right I think they are.
then you’re not part of the problem. I think that’s how it goes.
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If all posters were as skilled as you were, we wouldn’t rate in the first place. That’s not to say that I think that everything you write is gold; none of it, however, is useless tripe.
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In general, I think its bad form to rate on the same thread you’ve posted. However, there may not be enough traffic to get sufficient quantites of both. Still, I’ll do one or the other, since it stinks of problems…
I think focusing on the comments via the rating system is a good idea. Hopefully we will all use it so we can quickly hide those comments that are moronic and useless but that ultimately hijack a post because we all jump on them! I think you guys have handled this in an entirely fair and reasonable manner. From what I saw of Charley at the Crashing the Gate event I know this site is in entire good, and well moderated hands!
Personally, I think that having too many numbers in the ratings system is not helpful. All you really need is Good/Bad/Troll. anything else and you start getting into silly ratings fights: “You only rated me good? why not super-good or excellent!? What did I do wrong?”
that my preferred approach (as well as the preference of others) to a well-regulated posting community is getting some attention. The ratings system, while not perfect, does what it is supposed to do when it is used properly.
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I’m still struggling, however, with the anonymity aspect. For ten years I posted under my own name at NPR and other sites, but now, as a public high school teacher, I am much more cautious about the exposure. Although I am wholeheartedly behind the notion of putting your name where your comments are, I have to think it through a little bit more in my own case.
I thought Cos said it well “Sometimes I give high ratings to comments I disagree with.”
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Many BMG-ers don’t do that. They read comments simply as “with me” or “against me”, and then rate accordingly.
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Which makes me ask – what’s the point of the ratings?
What happens if I press “rate all”? I pressed it because I thought it would let me see ratings. What happened when I pressed it?
Danny
Where is the link to change it?