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User Sponsorship and Managed Growth || kuro5hin.org

The Wayback Machine - https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org:80/story/2004/3/24/0502/96199

\\\* ANONYMIZED BY THE EVIL KUROFIVEHIN MILITARY JUNTA ***

  • YOU WIN IT! by gazbo, 03/25/2004 01:00:12 PM EST ( 2.00 / 7)

I'm not particularly familiar with the intricate workings of the kuro5hin gestalt; but every thread I've read on this subject makes the claim that the so-called "ringleaders" were not banned and still have accounts.

Let's assume for teh sake of argument that this is true. Wouldn't it be logical to assume that they are, now that the gates are open, strategising what proxies to line up to what new accounts and figuring out the chain of sponsorship?

MrFucky sponsors two new accounts, gets them up to sponsorable status (40 unrated comments is an trivial number, by the way, it's easily doable in a few hours -- less if you're detirmined) and then

through them, sponsors 4 more accunts (two through each of the 2ndary accounts he's made). And so on.

Not unlike the old "and I made two friends, and they made two friends.." shampoo commericals from way back.

Congratulations, let the games begin....

---

Thought of the week: There is no thought this week.

---

I don't like it, and I think it's a very bad idea, especially if you're going to hold sponsors ultimately responsible for the actions of the people they sponsor.

How do you expect totally new people, who do not know any current K5 members, to ever get sponsored? Why would I, or anyone else, risk losing my account to sponsor a stranger?

Instead of kicking sponsors off the site, which to be honest, I think is just plain stupid, why not just disallow them from sponsoring any more users for a period of time? Think about it... What if a new user just goes apeshit one day because he forgot to take his meds or something. Should the sponsor really be held ultimately accountable for that behavior?

Are you really going to make the poor business decision of banning paying members just because someone they sponsored wakes up one morning and decides to be an asshole?

I see sponsorship just one more nail in K5's coffin.

Yes, K5 seems to have attracted the ire of a huge number of assholes. Yes, this is a problem. I don't think the solution is restricting membership and making adults responsible for the actions of other adults. I think the solution is finding out what drew their attention and seeing if it's an actual problem that needs to be addressed.

I'd hazard a guess that a big part of it is all that money that was raised to keep K5 up, CMF, and the poor quality of service even though all that money was donated, etc.

----------

How can we fight Islamic Fundamentalism abroad if we do not fight Christian Fundamentalism at home?

Do it, ASAP. I like the idea and, being a user that works hard to tread the line between valued participant and idle provacateur, I would welcome exclusion of malicious, retarded cretins. There are plenty of other outlets for artless trolls.

------------------------------------------------

By replying to this or any other comment in this thread, you assign an equal share of all worldwide copyright in such reply to each of the other readers of this site.

  1. Orkut uses this sponsorship model you speak of. It is failing there right now in the most atrocious manner possible. AOL Keywords: Leonie Obermeier. Here's to hoping that you've done a better job.

  2. Without one hidden comment? I'm not going to name names, but I'm relatively sure that people here are going to work hard to ensure that one comment in every new user's first 40 hits zero. I assume you won't show the sponsorship tree, but even so it's not hard to figure out who's new.

Personally I think a hardened New Account generator is all that's needed, but good luck getting your system to work.

--

Warning: On Lawn is a documented liar.

I've long thought that the problem with democracy is all the crazy people running around who have no idea what's going on.

As for the comments thing, that should probably read 40-RATED comments, otherwise people gaming the system will have an easy enough time posting 40 comments in 40 minutes (assuming we're running at full speed) and game the system that way.

The warnings system is good, and I think you've provided for way more than you really have to in the form of 'fair warning', but that's a good thing because it will reduce the whining and the accidental bans.

Rusty, all in all this sounds like a very good social solution to a very complex social problem. I look forward to filling out a few comment boxes on a few particular users. (Assuming you haven't got them already....)

  • oops. by tiamat, 03/25/2004 10:58:07 AM EST ( 2.00 / 4)

with sponsorship there will be no new user and K5 turns into just another geek clique.

also, it's pretty easy to make sure nobody ever sponsors nyone. after all, current users have no idea if a potential new user is good or bad. all certain people have to do is pretend they're nice, get sponsored then fuck up and get the sponsor kicked out too. pretty soon nobody will be sponsoring anymore out of fear of getting banned themselves.

RIP K5, it was nice knowing you.

Important WARNING Dialog ( 2.60 / 15) ( #14)

by sllort on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 10:54:11 AM EST

The WARNING idea is great, but since you people will need a record to tell who's already been warned, I advise you to put the following label on warnings:

THIS WILL GO DOWN ON YOUR PERMANANT RECORD.

--

Warning: On Lawn is a documented liar.

No, this is not censorship. If anyone uses that word here today I would like to pre-emptively remind them that Rusty is not the government and this is not your soapbox.

This is a community and even the most peaceful communities need some kind of rules enforcement to deal with the idiots, mentally ill and other various miscreants.

a lot of new potentially "good users" who stumble on the site from google searches, blog links, etc are going to be locked out and frustrated, confused and probably come away thinking that this is some sort of elitist insular community that doesn't tolerate newbies.

However, it does seem that this idea will, at least change trolling as it exists on the site today. To that end, I predict that it will probably do a reasonable job.

But to all my friends, I declare this day to be a glorious victory for us trolls, for we have finally turned Kuro5hin into a site even more repressive than Slashdot. Truly, whatever happens after this, this sponsorship program will remain a testament to our hard work and dedication.

rusty laid down the pain on those who messed with his woman? damn!

I'm a bit turned on...but then again, I could never be his woman.

My name is LilDebbie and I have a garden.

- hugin -

  • Hmm. by zipper, 03/25/2004 11:09:04 AM EST ( 2.00 / 5)

    • Right by LilDebbie, 03/25/2004 11:17:44 AM EST ( 2.00 / 4)

More problems than solutions ( 2.95 / 22) ( #30)

by TheWake on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 11:05:47 AM EST

It feels elitist to me. The idea of sponsorship feels antithetical to the "everyone participates" attitude that abounds here.

If it will be implemented, there should be some higher standard where a user no longer requires sponsorship. This would be like getting your "green card" for the site, and the sponsor and the sponsored no longer need to be linked.

One last point. Has any thought gone into what would happen if a sponsor gets kicked out? What happens to the well behaving users when thier sponsor leaves? Will they be punished for someone else's bad behavior?

I know most people here feel the trolls cannot be combatted using software. However I feel that using software to encourage human collaborative filtering a lot could be achieved. My idea expands on an idea by cyberdruid.

Give every user the chance to rate other users. Something like "untrustworthy, neutral, trustworthy". Then you could activate an option saying "ignore all users who are found to be untrustworthy by X users who i find trustworthy". If the option were merely to say "ignore all users who are found to be untrustworthy by X users" that would allow users creating zillions of dupe accounts to ignore another user to death. By only looking at users you trust this problem is eliminated.

If course by ignoring some users there will be gaps in the comments, but rusty has already made it clear that he finds beating the trolls more important than keeping the gaps out...

The upside of all this is that the trolls are free to stick around if they want to, they'll simply be ignored by the regular users...

Certainly you're aware of how somethingawful forums handles things? Do you think anything there ($10 for an account, bannage abounding, an area set aside for the pure crap, strong and multiple moderators, the ability to buy shit titles for others) could be applied here?

Gotta say I don't like the sponsorship idea either. It's alittle too orkut for my tastes.

"You have *huge* brass balls. Tex would be jealous." --ti dave

if you consider kuro5hin to be more a social experiment than a site that promises to be something for someone, anything new seems a good idea. It could be good or it could be awful. Karma and mojo seemed both good in theory, but practice showed karma to be more robust (slashdot is starting to be readable again, if only at 3 with Funny scoring -2.) So I say keep it, and let's see what comes out of it. Some folks will keep it civilized, the trolls will still find a way to be annoying. If sponsorship turns out to be too bad, well, chuck it out and come up with something new and possibly better :) Remember that you'(we)re still exploring the design space.

I think one problem is that someone will be obstinate enough to create a chain of dupe accounts to get out of the sponsor-ban. Before you say trolls are only doing it because it's easy, look at NIWS going for more than half a year, and even harder cases to spot, like rmg and Tex Bigballs, which obviously can maintain a stream of coherent comments alongside the crapflooding.

I dunno: people keep bitching and bitching and bitching about k5, but they keep coming back, and folks keep posting interesting stuff. Seems good enough for me.

-- He took a duck in the face at two hundred and fifty knots.

I normally try to abstain from meta-stuff because I'm relatively new here.  But this seems like the kind of thing that's worth every serious user's two cents.

I've come to really enjoy K5, but I'm constantly stumped by the trolls.  I guess it makes me feel old to shake my fist at mouth-breathers with no better ideas than to harass more interesting people.  But when someone does have that much wastable time, and is willing to put all that effort into being an ass, it must make it a difficult problem to deal with.

That's why I'm in favor of the system, even though I really dislike the idea of sponsorship.  I think it should work fine, but I don't have any illusions that I wouldn't have bothered to get a sponsor when I started posting here.  I would have just left, or kept lurking without ever contributing anything.  It's hard to imagine that K5 will draw enough new users to remain vibrant if it adopts the apparently not-very-successful Orkut model.

But if that's the price of weeding out the artless trolls, well, it's worth a shot.  At least the sponsorship requirement could be lifted later if it looks like it's going to be unnecessarily stifling.  And it looks like the mods are willing to flexibly adopt new approaches when necessary.  Maybe require sponsorships for the first four to six months in a year, to wait out persistant trolls?  Or, as someone else said, just a more robust new accounts engine?

It's all worth a shot.  At least the mods are trying new approaches; that's a good thing.  Thanks.

  • Hey! by gzt, 03/25/2004 12:29:12 PM EST ( none / 1)

    • My bad by kmcrober, 03/25/2004 01:03:38 PM EST ( 2.50 / 4)

  • that should work. [nt] by tiamat, 03/25/2004 12:09:07 PM EST ( none / 1)

There once was a site called K5

On freedom and mercy it thrived

Then one sorry day

Rusty threw it away

I give it two months to survive

--

"My life was more improved by a single use of [ecstasy] than someone's life is made worse by becoming a heroin addict." -- aphrael

I'm not sure if I really like the idea of revoking the sponsoree's account when someone they sponsor acts up, because that would make me never sponsor anyone, ever. Maybe if it was "permanently revoke your ability to sponsor others" or "if multiple people you've sponsored have been banned" (or better yet, multiple people within the last x days/months/years.)

How long between the warning and the ban? If I sponsor someone, they get a warning, and then they get banned before the next time I even visit K5 am I going to be banned?

Also, requiring everyone to be sponsored is a good way to cut off new blood. Why not just make it so that someone only needs to be sponsored when it's likely that they're an abuser? (They're sharing an IP address with someone else, they're going through a proxy, there've been an unusual number of new signups in the last couple minutes, etc)

--

This space for rent.

Please follow senario:

1. Random internet user finds a link inot k5 from the net because a story looks interesting...(That's the way I ended up here once upon a time, a story title displayed on freshmeat looked interesting read the story and wanted to comment so I joined up)

2. With sponsorship the new user, if i understand correctly cannot interact with the board until they are sponsored.

3. How is the user going to get sponsored if they are some random person who has no real world connection to another k5 user?

Just my Random quick thought on the matter, I don't blame you for seeing this as a direction one must go in Rusty...

...however this seems to be turning things in the direction or Orkut...which is a gated community that not just anyone can join, unless they know someone on the inside...

Bill "Haplo Peart" Dunn

Administrator Epithna.com

http://www.epithna.com

Hey rusty, if you want to improve K5, why don't you actually do something productive like fix search? How about we start getting those fabled monthly updates again from someone other than Robotslave? How about you don't make K5 even more of an insular circlejerk where anyone who doesn't subscribe to the groupthink is branded a troll? How about you keep abusive editors in check so they don't go on a delete spree when mommy grounds them?

Well, I guess I should look on the bright side, at least it's an end to 3 months of neglect.

---

This account has been neutered by rusty and can no longer rate or post comments. Way to go fearless leader!

I'd like to use this opportunity to point out and ask users to make more use of comment moderation. If you read a comment and have an opinion about it - please moderate it!

It could even be helpful for the user who wrote the comment, to get some more feedback.

Thanks.

--

The only antidote to mental suffering is physical pain. -- Karl Marx

Some people have expressed an unwillingness to sponsor under the proposed system. It would be better if the policy guaranteed that a misbehaving user and his sponsor were always given at least one warning. That way a sponsor would have an opportunity to revoke his friends sponsorship before he gets kicked on account of his friend's behaviour. People would be more willing to vouch for others and you would receive fewer complaints in your inbox.

I don't yet know what I think about the social consequences of what you are proposing. I always liked K5 because of its combative rhetoric and irreverent tone. I wouldn't want it to become vapid.

  • It does by rusty, 03/25/2004 11:38:43 AM EST ( 3.00 / 6)

Your solution looks fairly well thought-out and I'm glad you decided to put it to discussion first -- whether or not you let the discussion influence you -- rather than simply implementing a massive change such as with ratings.

Here are a few things to think about:

Part I:

What about new people coming to the site? While this could certainly stop another SomethingAwful attack and your having to play Whack-A-Mole® with some crapflooders, it will also stop everyone else coming here and wanting to join after a link appears in El Reg or Wired or /. or Politechbot. Had ti dave's story made it to the FP, you can be sure you would've had a mass of new readers, some of whom would probably stick around, join and contribute, silly opinions or otherwise.

Part II:

Good idea. Make a rules page, make a boldfaced link and put that link under the K5 logo so that it can't be overlooked. Simple rules about what you cannot do should suffice.

Part III:

Also a good idea, but would only work if the system is implemented, and that's a bad idea. It would also require a lot more work by the administrators.

Part IV:

Again, good idea but open to abuse through multiple accounts and joint effort, which is exactly what you faced last weekend. Also very time-consuming unless you set some sort of threshold for number of complaints per comment or user.

What happens if Baldrson and a couple of his friends all complain about my comments in his diary or story? Isn't it off-topic and possibly abuse when I post "-1 Baldrson" to his story unless I sit there and cut-and-paste the entire explanation from the last time I wrote it as a comment? Is it abuse that it's more an Editorial comment but that I submit it as Topical to ensure more people see it? And how do you determine the difference? You need to answer that because you'll be dealing with 100 of those sorts of decisions a day.

I agree with you on the part about killfiles: groupthink. Wouldn't that be the result of restricting the site to those currently on it and people they're willing to vouch for?

woof.

"Eppur si muove." -- Galileo Galilei

"Nevertheless, it moves."

Unbalanced Subjective Power ( 2.56 / 16) ( #64)

by rustv on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 11:26:24 AM EST

Okay, so here we have a subjective power to warn/ban by "admins".  I assume that rusty is going to keep the current set of admins, and just leave it at that, but I think there's an inherent problem with the system.

If I understand the situation, rusty banned the account "Michael Jackson" because he wasn't funny and didn't add anything original to the site.  Would he still get banned using the new criteria you outlined?  Because I think that in his case, one admin might think he violated it, and give him a big warning, and another might disagree.  So, can one admin revoke the warning of another admin?

Another thing: when you have something subjective like a warning, I think it should be balanced by something more objective, like a timeout.  So, allow people 60-90 days after a warning before they can have another one.  rusty can still ban the people who abuse this rule, seeing as it's his site, but it's possible that people might mess up every now and then because people have ups and downs.

\\\__

"Don't tase me, bro." -- Andrew Meyer‮

Not that I would think that anyone would ask, but just to make it official: I will not sponsor anyone. Ever.

[ random rambling | kuro5hin diary ]

It's pretty bad what those users did ( 2.66 / 21) ( #71)

by nebbish on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 11:32:09 AM EST

And I don't condone it at all, but I think the answer here is monitoring the site and accepting that these things will happen sometimes.

I agree totally with the reporting thing, it will make your job easier and give us some responsibilities, but the sponsership idea will cut off new blood and destroy K5. It's using a nuke to sort out a weekend pub fight.

I can understand why you'd be upset by this, but you're forgetting that most of the time K5 works. Please don't kill it.

---------

Kicking someone in the head is like punching them in the foot - Bruce Lee

- Holding a sponsor just as accountable for a troublemaker as the troublemaker themselves is a bit harsh and will scare a lot of people off sponsoring. Certainly sponsors should be held responsible, but not to the point of an automatic ban. Remove their ability to sponsor for a while, certainly ban them if they then sponsor another troublemaker. More than one sponsored troublemaker per 5-10 sponsored 'good' users should be interpreted as deliberate, but less than that might well be an accident.

- With this system, I would never have got into the site. Prospective users can't write comments or do anything else that would give current users a reason to trust them. I know the aim is to spread by word-of-mouth, but there have been a lot of people who just stumble across the site, sign up and start using it responsibly, and it would be a shame to lose them.

My suggestion for getting round this is to say that after signing up and before finding a sponsor, you are allowed to write comments, which automatically start zero-rated; existing users could review them and rate up particularly good ones. This assumes that zero-rated comments are hidden by default, however, which is no longer the case.

Regardless, without some entry point like this, this kind of user is simply never going to get registered on the site.

I also think that some kind of incentive to sponsor good users would be beneficial, although that's always going to be vulnerable to people trying to game the system.

I like the proposed system in most respects. I just think there won't be any new users except the occasional friend or family member of an existing user. I may be wrong, or this may be precisely the point. I do think it would be a pity, though.

  • (oops) by minamikuni, 03/25/2004 11:39:08 AM EST ( none / 1)

  • What if... by SPYvSPY, 03/25/2004 06:43:17 PM EST ( none / 1)

    • Maybe by minamikuni, 03/26/2004 11:46:49 AM EST ( none / 1)

How do you get sponsered? I joined K5 so I could post a few comments here and there and eventually bought a paid account (expired a while back) to help the site out. I did all this based on the intellegent articles and comments I saw here.

If I showed up after this sponsership was activated I would never be able to post, as I didn't know anyone on the site and never would be able to since I wouldn't be able to post. Limiting K5 to "people current K5 members know already" really cuts out any new people who stumble across K5.

Ok, I've been quite for a while here, but I have still followed here anyways. As far as the trolls go, there was a time when someone would just comment to an admin on irc that account XXXXX was a troll, the admin checked it out and they'd be gone in short order. I can say with certainty that people felt freer to talk back in the early days knowing asswipes would just get banned. I've had my share of flames and blatant trolls here, and I'm ok with that, but a lot of other people who are less vocal just don't want to deal with it.

The accounts that got banned were long overdue, and their like drove a lot of formers k5er's away. K5 is like slashdot in that there are several times more people who read than ever post. It got so bad a while back that when asked in meat-space about k5 by a once reader my first response was to say that it had become a breeding ground for hate-speech. Intolerance and blatant trolling let the tyranny of the vocal minority reign, and chased away a lot of those who just wanted a place to chat about whatever.

As far as sponsorship goes, I have reservations. Many people dont know anyone here, and would have no way to join. This can only lead to a narrowing of opinions and ideas as most people have a nature to only invite those that tend to agree with them to a discussion site. Let's face it, most people want to be with people they perceive as like minded. Only greater intolerance can come from this.

This also puts a bind on the prospective member as they discover that if they say something their sponsor doesn't agree with they are at risk. This cant possible breed diversity, and K5 needs diversity. This also puts the sponsor in a tight spot if someone turns out to be an ass. I'm reminded of two times I referenced a friend over the years for a job where I worked and they turned out to be lousy employees. The stigma of that bad referral reflected quite poorly on me for behavior I couldn't control.

I dont like sponsorship for the stifling of diversity it would inevitably create. That being said, I do think a staggering time lock for new comments, diaries, and the like is a good idea. I concur that the Baldrsons and greenrds should be welcome, so long as the poster is sincere. Why not keep it simple and just ban the blatant trolls? I know this puts a burden on the admins, but something has to be done before only the trolls are left.

The moon is covered with the results of astronomical odds.

...Welcome our new insect overlords, and may point out that I can be intrumental in persuading other users to toil in their underground sugar mines.

Sponsorship is good. Warnings is good. Less tolerance of pure crapflooding is good. New Site News is good.

If this works even half as well as it might, I may just return to actually reading and contributing to K5 on a regular basis again (rather than just peeking in once every week or so, the way I do now).

I love the Republic, and I love democracy. I swear to you now I will lay down these powers once this crisis has been averted.

Thank you Dirty Sanchez and Jar-Jar Binks.

___

I am from a small, unknown country in the north called Ca-na-da. We are a simple, grease-loving people who enjoy le weekend de ski. Personally, I pref

First, on behalf of at least 95% of the users on this site, I was disgusted and angry by the picture in question, and I hope that your wife never saw it.

Now, w.r.t. user accounts and sponsorship, I'm willing to give it a shot, although the dynamics don't feel quite right from the description, perhaps it will work. It seems to be a way of delegating administrative authority, without adding more admins. I submit, however, that incidents such as the picture prove that you need some more admins in the european and australian timezones, not only for duplicity's sake, but also to assure prompt handling of this sort of thing in the future.

Also, there's clearly a bunch of multiple accounts out there which have never been used, or used only frequently for fun. Shall the rule apply to existing, but unused accounts? I think that it must, and the 60-day trial must begin from today, if the account has not the requisite number of comments already. I'd further like to suggest that new accounts which have a sponsor should not get to vote on stories until the trial period is over.

Finally, I'd like to make a special case for stories. Posting a story should count for some multiple number of days, and/or comments, if it gets voted up.

Anyhow, I'm glad to see something being done.

Two things.

One, the sponsorship is not a good idea. The problem at the moment is not a surplus of things. It's a stagnation of sorts. A lot of people have left. I'm not going into the reasons for this, because I don't know exactly what they are. However, I can tell what the effect is. The effect is a number of persons who were in the group positive contributors have "given up" for some reason, and zero people in the group who are just masturbating into their browser window "gave up", since they would be convinced of their own genius even if they were the only user on the site. The more constructive people became quiet, the more attention was left over for the masturbators, and the louder they became. This will only get better with new blood.

The sponsorship would do nothing but limit. It would turn away anyone truly new, and encourage cliquishness. Were you paying close attention during the whole 11-M thing? Something interesting happened: We had an influx of users, all Spanish. I don't know how they found this site, but they did, and most of them had very interesting things to say, even if they didn't know how to spell "Iraq". Perhaps some of them have stuck around. This was refreshing. This would not have happened with the sponsorship system. These people were all disconnected entirely from the site; if they came to the site wanting to discuss something of note, and saw just a note saying "if you want to comment here, you have to befriend someone who comments here already, and convince them to +v you, and if you don't know anyone oh well that's too bad", they would simply go "hm.." and go comment on fark or something. Most people just won't go to that amount of trouble. Meanwhile the K5 userbase would continue to shrink and harden.

Look at what metafilter has become. I really, really assure you. You do not want that.

Two, while there may be some valid ideas in what you have proposed above, they are all one fatal flaw. They all add complexity. They add rules. They add moving parts.

The more rules you have the more it begins to look like a game.

The crapflooders on this site love to game things, and they are very good at it. Look at what happened just with the moderation system back before it was simplified. This sponsorship system in PARTICULAR would lead to gaming, quadrupled. Like the feeling that when you read the diary section that 80% of the people you see are the same five people astroturfing with dupe accounts? No? Well expect it to get indescribably worse.

Some of the other rules are possibly worthwhile. However they come back to the same problem. The crapflooders on this site are mostly trying to provoke you into a response. Not the readers, even, usually. The admins specifically. Tex Bigballs, Turmeric, Rmg, NIWS (whther or not the last three are the same person) were all working on the exact same model: Figure out where the limits of the rules were, bang on it increasingly harder and harder until some sort of response is garnered, and then whine fucking endlessly with their nine dupe accounts. Then start again.

Adding these proposed rules would have one of two effects. If the rules are applied in a legalistic manner, this just enlarges the game. There are more corners and lines for the crapflooders to tiptoe back and forth across in hopes of making that magic post which garners a ban but which they can then whine "BUT I WASNT DOING ANYTHING WRONG". If the admins are given explicit discretionary power to ban anyone who seems to be "gaming the system", that solves the problem, but then in a sense "the crapflooders have already won", in that they have removed the sense of due process which has historically been part of this site's administrative policy. (The fact which the crapflooders have had by now to universally resort exclusively to personal attacks on site administrators to get their ban badges speaks well towards the idea that it is difficult to get a ban around here via legitimate use.) Saying "if it looks like abuse, it's abuse" is not the worst thing in the world but opens up the door to a possibility, however slim, of editors deleting stuff just because they feel like it, or feel like it isn't "constructive". This sets up for kind of disaster that happened to everything2. Whether you want this to happen, I dont know, and perhaps there are ways to put checks on it. I don't know.

My point being the problem I have just mentioned-- rules leading to gaming-- is not intractable. However it needs to be kept carefully in mind before adding any new rules or enforcement methods.

Dispite my comments above, and my firm belief the sponsorship idea can possibly create a positive net effect, I am unfortunately low on constructive suggestions. I have only one. However, I think it is an important one. It is one less of specific ideas than of tactics. I do not think the solution is trying to limit what we have. I think the solution is to invite persons in. Instead of trying to silence the crapflooders, drown them out. Somehow attract enough users to the site that the bad blood is flushed out with new blood. I do not know how to do this. However, how's that site ad thing going? Still got a lot of advertiser dead air? Maybe you could set up agreements with some randomly selected sites (dieselsweeties comes to mind for no reason) where you mutually agree to swap ad space. They get 10000 impressions on K5, you get 10000 impressions on their site. Either way: K5 needs an enema, not chemotherapy. Just a thought.

Perhaps one other small thing I should say is that the problem is probably worse from your (Rusty)'s perspective than it could be. You, I assume, feel obligated to look at the diary section. The thing is, the moderation system works. If you ignore diaries that look like crapflooding use "sort by highest-rated" in the story comments, and stop reading when you reach about 1.75, K5 is a very readable, interesting site. The crud is only apparent if you read everything. There's no real reason to very much try to significantly alter this unless something truly extreme happens. Unfortunately it would not be unreasonable to classify spamming with photoshop porn of the site administrator's wife as 'something extreme'.

I would appreciate comments from anyone on the above.

---

Aside from that, the absurd meta-wankery of k5er-quoting sigs probably takes the cake. Especially when the quote itself is about k5. -- tsubame

It's already been pointed out that someone you've sponsored might go insane and start crapflooding because he forgot his medication or maybe he's just pissed at you and trying to get you in trouble.  I realize this is what the warning is designed to accomplish, but it seems that at some point you shouldn't have to be responsible for the users you sponsor anymore, just like parents aren't responsible for their children anymore once they turn 18.

If 60 days and 40 positive comments is enough to let you bring someone else on to the site, why not set a slightly higher threshold to make a user independent (i.e., self-sponsored)?  If you can make it through 90 days and 60 positive comments (or maybe even the proposed 60/40 threshold for sponsorship), for instance, maybe it's that much more unlikely that you'll suddenly do something to get yourself banned, because it just isn't worth the effort.  And if a sponsor can get a new user to make positive contributions to the community for that long, maybe the sponsor should be rewarded for having done so by no longer being made responsible for that user's actions.

Commercial potential. . . ( 2.11 / 9) ( #89)

by Pop Top on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 11:41:36 AM EST

Offer a cash prize for the fellow (No chick would ever bother) who can successfully obtain the most sponsored accounts at the end of a given time period - - say one year.

To help pay for this, increase commercial sponsorship.

Call it the Kuro5hin Olympics. Or maybe the Kuro5hin Amway Olympics.

Scoop meets multi-level marketing.

The sponsor getting kicked too... ( 2.71 / 7) ( #91)

by Skywise on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 11:43:18 AM EST

Does that work in a chain?

So if I sponsor somebody who sponsors somebody else who gets whacked... Do we all get whacked?

In that way, we all get turned into Vampires.  Kill the head of the clan and you kill all the spawns...

How about this:

All trusted users get to vote to ban non-trusted users, with one caveat... the old accounts remain and can be reactivated by people voting them back up.

This puts some meat back on the trusted user status.  Those who spam quickly lose (or never gain) trusted user status and if they're really annoying, trusted users vote them off the island.

Why not have an early-90's style BBS validation system, composed of a series of QA:

Q: What does ACID stand for?

Q: What is TheDraw?

Q: What year did Captain Crunch get convicted?

Q: Who the fuck is Aleph One?

Q: Have you couriered any gamez?

Q: Which line on a phone system is the ring line? The red or the green?

Q: Explain the functioning of a blue box.

Q: Have you ever defeated call-back validation by simply humming the right tone into the phone?

Following that, the most elite of the user base will vote on acceptance. (No, we didn't fucking spell it '31337' in 1992. We TyPeD LiKE THiS. WiTH ANSI CoLoRS, BiTCH) If the account is rejected, we trace the number and go destroy his car with aluminum bats.

This system worked, and worked well. Let's reinstate it. K-rad, dude.

--------

Please direct SPAM to [email protected]

Step 1: add fun, new game features that make it even more like a game.

Seriously, there's nothing wrong with sock puppet accounts (such as this one), new personas inspire creative writing and showmanship. Who can forget the K5 ASCII Reenactment Players? Or the Cookie Monster posting about C? The problem is that some people here -- about 3 or 4 -- are assholes. Their sock puppets are assholes by extension. All this site needs is a consistent anti-Vlad/Eric/qpt policy to stem the tide.

The problem with sponsoring systems is that they don't work. Firstly, because K5 is likely to lose 50% of its accounts after its next major flamewar. As any news admin can attest to, "don't interfere unless it really, really, REALLY is spam" is a good abuse department policy. The more you pull plugs upon request, the more people will feel the need to report their grievances.

Secondly, because sponsorship systems reward insular behaviour. For an example of this, see the Red Meat Construction Set. First, Soren Ragsdale would let anyone post Red Meat format comic strips with his generator. Then, after too many people thought it was funny for Milkman Dan to say "omg rofl wtf", he instituted accounts. To get one, you had to mail Soren with some Red Meat jokes, and if he liked them he'd let you have an account. Now, it runs a full sponsorship system, where to get in you have to work out who would be "appropriate" to get you in, then mail them, and hope they don't openly blackball you on the mailing list. They don't like giving out accounts, as that cuts in to their rating time. Did mention their rating system? Strips get an average of zScores, where each poster rates from 1 to 10, and the resultant zScore is the standard deviation of that rating from the average of all their past ratings. Even then, all the good jokes are just OpenRMCS reposts.

The point is that closed systems are no better than open ones. The main problem for the closed system is stagnation and inevitable death, because of the deliberate barriers to entry keeping all fresh talent out of the loop. The problem with the open system is free riders. But that can be solved -- just open a few more tech/culture/politics blogs for Vlad to spew in, and play hardball with him on K5. He'll get the hint.

It is to reminiscent of groups like the Masons. The result, as you say, will be fewer users, and eventually a less diverse set of users. I would prefer some more registration standards - say no yahoo, hotmail, etc. accounts, maybe other types of identity checks on registration, along with maybe a less tolerant additude toward users that abuse the system.

i've been here since the beginning.

the only people who go away are dead throwaway accounts and all those bodies piling up in Inoshiro's basement.

--

A: Because it destroys the flow of conversation.

Q: Why is top posting dumb? --clover_kicker

Look, I'm sorry to hear about the people who behave like complete asses. But uh... if they can get their accounts nuked for not behaving, can I please, please, please get this one nuked for behaving? I've tried contacting you by email a few times with no responses.

If I could rate, I'd be complaining that a 3 isn't high enough. You gotta admit that's hilarious even if you are the butt of the joke.

--

"My life was more improved by a single use of [ecstasy] than someone's life is made worse by becoming a heroin addict." -- aphrael

What I would like to see is some kind of sponsorship system that would allow unsponsored users to join, but would only allow diary posting, comment rating and story voting privileges to sponsored users. However, I don't suppose that this would solve the problem.

How will rusty's proposed sponsorship system compare to Advogato's trust metric? Will it be as resistant to attack?

  • I agree by Emissary, 03/25/2004 05:59:51 PM EST ( 2.80 / 5)

First off, I'm glad that you're planning to do something serious about this site. Like CheeseburgerBrown, I may return to frequent reading status if this works. However, I have one nagging doubt about the sponsorship system. If the sponsorship system were in place when I got here, I wouldn't be here. It's tempting to sit back and say, well, I'm here, and they're not gonna ban my account, so who cares? Unfortunately, I think that people like me, who don't really have "friends" on the internet they can ask for site sponsorships, won't be able to get into the site under the proposed system.

As such, can there be a way for a prospective user that wants a sponsorship to try and get in? I'll admit that I haven't had any particularly good new ideas for how they might earn it (let them post a story? post x # of comments with an "I need a sponsorship" or "I'm a stupid newbie" tag? have their own section? I don't really like any of them), but I just can't get rid of the feeling that I wouldn't be here.

Peace.

rusty, I salute you, I think this is an absolutely great idea.   To be quite honest k5 has fallen off my regular web travels for a few months now.   The noise ratio was just too loud and I wasted too much time skimming through troll comments and not gaining any specific insight or wisdom.   (Yes, those of you new enough here, there was a time when sometimes the comments were even more informative then the original post).

I think sponsorship is a wonderfully interesting idea and I am fascinated by what that will mean to an online community like k5.   Bravo,  roll it out,  raw hide, etcetera.   I think you will see an increase in registered users who had otherwise abandoned k5 to the trolls.

Knee-jerk thoughts on sponsorship ( 2.00 / 8) ( #151)

by jabber on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 12:17:39 PM EST

  1. There need to be consequences for the sponsor, if the person(s) they sponsored turn out to be assholes. Know thy friends.

  2. Sponsorship will turn K5 into a den of elitist pricks. Oh wait... ;)

  3. The Orkut model is interesting, and I think it's worth trying out.

  4. Only paying members should be sponsors.

  5. People should be able to become full members either through sponsorship or subscription. Money talks.

[TINK5C] | "Is K5 my kapusta intellectual teddy bear?" | "Yes"

I respect your reasons, but I cannot see it working. In terms of cost/benefit, new accounts should be left permanently off.

First, I suspect we would have very few users here if it had been sponsorship from day one. And if I wanted a monoculture's groupthink, then I'd still be over on Slashdot. I may be wide of the mark here, but sponsorship may appear to be OK if you move in the same circles as the sort of people who administer sites such as this. Thing is, many users don't.

Second, there is no reason to ever sponsor someone for membership. The risks of a permanet ban are just too great (esp. as I have no way of contacting K5ers outside K5 itself. I'd never get back in). It also introduces the new, fun game of "con someone into sponsoring you so you can nuke their account with a single html link". And hey, if I de-sponsor them in time, there could be threats and so on. I'd like to support K5's expanding membership, but the costs are just too high.

Third, the trolls and their shit will be as nothing to the scathes of people attacking their sponsors, their sponsorees, the people who sponsored people they don't like etc. It will be a perfect breeding ground for animosity and petty bitterness that will poison what is left of the site at the present time.

I genuinely wish I could be more positive, but I'm just calling it as I see it. In terms of other solutions, I can see its a knotty problem. Frankly I have nothing against more admins with wider powers. Its your house, you can do what you like. I guess that includes putting in sponorship though..hmm.

the internet changes fast. ( 2.50 / 8) ( #166)

by noogie on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 12:30:17 PM EST

k5 is a new and exciting place of shouting and angriness and stupidity. i think we all have to accept that and learn to enjoy it the way it is. evolution has brought us to what k5 is today and there isnt any going back. no amount of cuckoo sponsorship or whatever is going to make them go away.

\\\* ANONYMIZED BY THE EVIL KUROFIVEHIN MILITARY JUNTA ***

Hopefully this will help return k5 to what it was.

One question: how are you going to deal with existing accounts. One danger is that there are an awful lot of duplicate accounts floating around there. What happens if "Emperor Rusty" sponsers someone who then goes apeshit? Are you going to try to track it back to the real user? (i.e. whatever the real account of the lamer who registered "Emperor Rusty" is.)

-----------------------

This is k5. We're all tools - duxup

  • it seems to me by tiamat, 03/25/2004 12:42:11 PM EST ( 2.83 / 6)

    • "fake" accounts by ucblockhead, 03/25/2004 01:12:13 PM EST ( none / 3)

      • That's ok by rusty, 03/25/2004 01:53:35 PM EST ( 2.80 / 5)

    • hmm... by Thirty Thousand, 03/25/2004 01:38:37 PM EST ( none / 2)

  • Yup by rusty, 03/25/2004 12:48:10 PM EST ( 3.00 / 5)

Some issues people are misunderstanding... ( 2.76 / 13) ( #168)

by tiamat on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 12:30:59 PM EST

As Rusty has pointed out, you're NOT expected to sponsor total strangers. This would be a BAD IDEA. You're supposed to bring people you know/trust (not that the two are necessarily the same thing) and sponsor them.

If [email protected] asks you to sponsor them - and you think about it for more than 10 seconds - you're on your own, and rightly so.

Most of the complaints I've seen seem to basically fall along the lines of "but I'll get in trouble if I sponsor an idiot onto the site". Well yes, you will, and that's a good thing. I think I speak for the majority of people when I say that there are too many dumb trolls on this site. I think Rusty has been way to nice in not kicking people off. I was thinking about closing registrations when the UIDs hit 25,000.

Look at metafilter, people queue up for months to get in there, and run mirror sites to have discussion in the meantime. K5 should be so lucky to have dedicated non-trolls waiting to get in. Right now (or two weeks ago) I'd be willing to bet that the dupe account sign-ups outnumbered the new users 8-1.

K5 isn't going to die from this, K5 was already as dead as it was going to get. Soon we'll be back down to the non-idiot core that makes this site work. (We may even get back the people who left, since most of the crap flooders will quickly die out.) Once that happens we'll be attracting real people with real interest in discussion. Right now I think we only attract /. trolls who aren't smart enough to avoid getting banned over there.

Things won't be the same now. We will be inviting a different type of person to join the site, instead of random people it'll be people known to current users - people who will be more likely to raise the level of debate, not lower it.

I've had an account on K5 for a little over 2 years (not necessarially this account though), and have probably been reading for longer than that. Not trying to say that my opinion counts for more, just trying to let ya'll know where I'm coming from.

I like the idea of sponsorship, but not the other things that it implies. I think that the stagnation point is a very good one. 2 years ago I would never have been able to post, simply because no one knew me. How were they supposed to know to take a chance on me or not (granted, maybe you don't think my content has value... whatever). But I digress, this has all been said.

I actually find the trolls amusing and only mildly anoying 99% of the time. I don't care one way or the other if they are gone or not. I have time to spend seperating the wheat from the shaft, and I don't need fancy systems or admins to do it for me.

  1. You shouldn't have to sponsor a user forever. After a year or so of activity, the connection should be broken, or at least become less significant. If the user can't stand on their own after this much time, then they never will.

  2. At first I was going to suggest that paying accounts should get automatic privelges, but thinking about it I'm not sure the trolls would really stay away for only $12 (or whatever the price is).

So here's my big suggestion: bring back the idea of hidden comments, but apply it more liberally and mix it with the sponsorship system. A new user can post all the diaries and comments they want, but they are hidden to all the other users either a) until the user becomes sponsored, or b) unless I choose (opt-in) to view comments/diaries from unsponsored accounts.

This way, those of us who don't care can still have K5 the way it's been. And for someone who is about to sponsor an account, they can review a person's hidden post/diary activity and decide if this person might make a contibution to the community. Otherwise, they really have no way of knowing anything about the person.

So yeah, there you have it. If you can overlook the spelling, maybe my post has merit, maybe not. But this is about all I have to say on the issue... good luck rusty.

I have been inactive on this site since last summer.  This is due mainly to flaky internet service, and a pretty busy outside life.  I seem to have missed quite a bit of "fun".  I do know that this is the first site I check when my internt connection and life conspire to give me some time.

I understand that trolls are always a problem when any number of people group together, and that in particular they are hard to deal with on the net, however this sponsorship idea gets my bad idea sense tingling. I think that more personal accountability is a good idea, but is sponsorship the way to go?

I was thinking more along the lines of some sort of probationary status.  I have no feasable suggestions as to how to implement it at the moment, but I will think about it at work for sure.  Perhaps even using the two ideas in tandem, for instance a new user forum, where people could get to prove that they are not trolls.  This forum could allow people to get to prove themselves sponsorable.

Or perhaps even allow them to comment on the stories, under a special category for the comments, like the edit comments.  This way people willing to sponsor new members could turn on the option to read these comments.  The trolls could have a playground, and anyone who is actually posting good copy could find a sponsor who has more than blind faith to go on.

Unfortunately now I have to go to work, but hopefully Ill have hashed this idea in my head better by the time I come home.

Give control of Kuro5hin to me for a month. When I ran my Scoop site we never had any of these problems, and it had nothing to do with the size of the community or how people found out about the site (for the record, 50% had followed links from Google or other sites, 50% had heard through their grapevines). It had to do with the fact that the users loved me. The users here question you and your caretaking of K5, Rusty, especially since the fundraiser.

In all its life Trollaxor.com only had one problem user (if you can guess who that was) and he was dealt with swiftly and severely. Other than that incident it was smooth sailing as far as user activity went. If you want more stats on the site please ask here or email me, I'd be glad to share them. The point is that T.C was successful because of the mutual respect from and for the users and admins. That hasn't been happening lately nn Kuro5hin as we can see with the rampant trolling and the mass exodus to HuSi.

Give Kuro5hin to me, Rusty, and you will see an improvement in the community.

Thank you.

Please implement ASAP.

No, I'm not being trollish or sarcastic.  This really is a good compromise.

Proud member of the Canadian Broadcorping Castration

I don't think sponsorship is a long-term viable solution, and many others have posted that too so I'm going to stop here.

But, I think a technical solution is possible (technical being in how the community maintains itself). Something like this:

  1. New accounts have an account balance of Zero, which means they cannot post.

  2. Accounts with a balance less than zero are deleted after some amount of time

  3. Account balances have negative interest rates based upon past participation (the account balance goes down at a faster rate as the account is inactive).

  4. Posting a story has a certain cost (initially, but could generate profit if enough there is enough response -- what is enough is another point), postign a followup has a certain cost moderating posts has a certain profit.

4a) Posting certain stories could be much more profitable than others, this is a way to "ask" for certian stories. People could use their account balances to "pay" for stories they want written.

  1. Moderation can add or subtract to your account. Trolling, for example, would be very costly.

What this does is it makes participation more of a requirement and it makes trolling much more difficult since there is much less motivation. Newly created accounts can't be used to troll with and maintaining a bank of "dummy" accounts would be hard since they would all require maintaince.

Right now, it's very easy to have a bank of accounts and use that power for evil. If you had to maintain those accounts you coulnd't have such a big bank.

-j

Personalized ratings ( 1.75 / 4) ( #186)

by p3d0 on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 12:50:10 PM EST

Chuck the one-moderation-value-per-post system and base the whole thing on a Slashdot-style friend/foe system. You don't mod posts, you mod users, and then users' posts automatically get a mod value based on the viewer's opinion of the author.

--

Patrick Doyle

My comments do not reflect the opinions of my employer.

I understand and tolerate the concept of trolling, but being malicious is different.

If somebody writes a long whiny diary about his 3117 OpenBSD box and gets the classic "*BSD is dying" troll, it's not a big deal. Trolls are expected and often welcome.

But, if somebody writes about his father's death, it is of very poor taste to write inappropriate things just to irritate him. I'd say it's even worse then crapflooding. Crapflooding is like graffiti - I understand the thrill people get from seeing their (disruptive) handiwork. But what's the deal with the nastiness? Would these people, IRL, walk over to somebody putting flowers on a grave and say nasty things?

What's more, I see people intentionally modding up these nasty comments just because they don't like the parent thread poster, or they're friends with the jerk making the inappropriate post. Would the same people, IRL, like to be known as supporters of a mean, spiteful person?

Yeah. Happens.

Sponsorships will take care of this asshole problem. If users can't give the minimal amount of respect to others, the admins have every right to delete them.

I have two questions about this system:

1. I read about K5 in Slashdot and joined in. I don't know anybody from K5 IRL. How does a sincere new user enter K5 without knowing anybody? By making this site "by invitation only" won't we be losing prospective good quality writers and content?

2. Without a steady stream of new users, how will K5 make enough money to sustain?

What happens if someone with a paid account sponsors someone who turns out to be a fuckhead? Let's say that said person had six months or something already paid for.

If sponsorship really must be done, I think that new users should be allowed to at least post comments before they find a sponsor. If a user is silent, how can he find a sponsor? Disabling diaries and stories until sponsored seems like a good idea though. Maybe just diaries because comments and stories can be moderated out of existance, although stories do take up room in the queue so I can see why disabling new stories can be justified. Disabling comments on new account is just plain stupid and will finally kill the site for good (not that it's really all that alive right now).

I think that, after a certain number of 'highly' rated comments are posted, a user should be disassociated from his sponsor. There is no reason to maintain the connection once a user has proved himself.

Rusty's Wife pr0n. (I R so funny, ha ha ha).

--

I am reading the making of the atomic bong - modern science

Moving in the right direction.

A few of things, though.

  1. Will I be able to see complaints about me on my user page? If the answer is no, can you please change the answer to yes?

  2. Would you consider banning me? (That is not a request.)

  3. Would you consider adding a rule wherein those who come back and reveal that they have previously been banned be re-banned?

But I'm worried about how to open a door to decent people that just don't happen to know anybody here. It may be the case that there is no goo solution to this problem, but maybe there is some kind of waiting list or something. . .

I do think there is a danger in the site's becoming too insular -- HuSi is boringly self-referential, and DaiyKos is 20,000 people violently agreeing with each other -- but with 30,000 users, or however many there are, I'm not too worried about it. And I'm not worried that we'll get rid of the amusing trolls. Because as Rusty says, he's proved that he has a pretty long fuse. Speaking for myself, I don't mind Tex Bigballs calling me a whore every chance he gets. But I do mind people who crapflood diaries with page-wideners and the like. K5 looses nothing by keeping that kind of fuck-head out of here.

yr frn,

jrs

Get your free download of prizewinning novels Acts of the Apostles and Che

A sponsors B sponsors C sponsors D. D posts photoshopped pr0n of rusty giving head to a donkey. D is booted. Are A and B booted along with C?

Even if only C is booted, I'm definitely against sponsorship. While it might be more manageable to have a smaller k5 community, I think we'd lose too many valuable new members because they couldn't find anyone to sponsor them. I certainly knew noone who posted here when I first came here. How would I contact someone? Most of the email addresses people post in their userinfos are fake or spamboxes anyway. Plus, "hi I'm a newbie please sponsor me" will start to read as "hi I'm a crapflooder please let me get you banned."

Hypothetical: Troll A hates Upstanding User B. A contacts B under a different name and convinces B to sponsor him (B thinking A is a stranger). A then posts comments designed to crash browsers. Result: A's throwaway garbage account is booted (who cares?), and B's real account is booted too.

I have a better idea than all of this, rusty. If you want to get involved in censorship, just take upon yourself the power to hide comments beyond any power of other users to unhide them with moderation. In most other regards, I think the moderation system works pretty well around here. Crapflooding diaries don't bother me because no one is forcing anyone else to read the diaries, and if you want to keep up on a friend's diary, all you have to do is bookmark their userinfo page.

I just don't understand what all the fuss is about, I guess. Though it's a bit creepy that someone got hold of a picture of your wife...

-Kasreyn

"Extenuating circumstance to be mentioned on Judgement Day:

We never asked to be born in the first place."

R.I.P. Kurt. You will be missed.

First of all, it's nice to know that rusty is still interested in maintaining the site.

I think that preventing any user from posting a diary more than once every 4 hours would help keep the diary section cleaner.

Sponsorship is really interesting, but I know that I wouldn't be willing to sponsor anyone I didn't personally know if that person could get me booted. If most people are like me, then a lot of outsiders will be effectively locked out, which would be unfortunate.

The fourth idea, where users can file complaints publicly, seems like a pretty good short-run solution. I think that the accusers should self-identify, sort of like how in US CJS, the accused has the right to face the accuser.

In fact, if possible, I would model the system as much as possible on a trial by jury of peers model rather than a secret tribunal held by the site editors.

Anyway, why don't we have any political science majors stepping up to the plate? This is all any of freaks study, isn't it?

--

Long-term consequences of Bush deficits

I've read the discussion on this, and I have to say I'm all for it.  It sucks that we're relegated to this, but I've run a free service on the net before and seen just how much free time trolls have.  It's pitiful that it's necessary, but it's an undeniable rule that, where there's a free internet forum or service, there will be people who will shit on it.

I'm glad you took a step, rusty.  I've seen you be community-oriented before, and it's a temptation to never act too authoritarian when you're running a site like this.  In this case, I think it's a positive thing that you've come down hard and drawn a line that will not be crossed.  More power to you.

That said, I have a minor idea.  It might be good, it might be bad, I haven't really thought it out yet.  I'm sure you'll see the complaint system gamed just a little bit, but I think you can prevent that by making complaints public.  If I decide that user Joe Schmoe is worth a complaint the text of the complaint should show up in my user info, and possibly in theirs as well.  It'll add a level of accountability to complaints, and it'll make it clear when someone isn't liked by a lot of people.

Then again, it could stifle criticism.  It could just be a shitty idea.

Thoughts?

--

Go be impersonally used as an organic semen collector!  ( porkchop_d_clown)

Please don't implement sponsorship ( 2.77 / 9) ( #224)

by jubal3 on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 01:31:50 PM EST

I would never have stayed around if I had to find someone to sponsor me before I could post comments, etc. I would have read the occasional post and then gone elsewhere.

Overall, I think I've contributed to some of the discussions here in a positive way. But that contribution would have been nil if I had been forced to find a sponsor. I just wouldn't have bothered.

I think the site will be much poorer with this requirement in the long-run, and perhaps most importantly, you'll kill dissenting opinions.

***Never attribute to malice that which can be easily attributed to incompetence. -HB Owen***

It would seem that with the sponsorship idea, the only new accounts would be dupe accounts.  A reasonable counter-point would be that this site has developed such a strange and insular culture that there are very few new users anyway.

In any case, I never would have gotten an account under the new system.  I don't remember how I found the site but I've never met another K5 user, as far as I know.

My suggestions are as follows.  First, perhaps only paid members get to vote accounts off.  I somehow doubt the troublemakers are inclined or capable of buying a substancial number of accounts.

My second idea might be called the K5 Brady bill.  A new user can only post a limited number of comments each day and can't submit stories or diaries.  A period of two weeks on this status should be helpful.

My third suggestion relies on the laziness of users.  Allow users to make as many accounts as they want with one email address.  This way when a user makes trouble with one account, you can kill all of them.  In any case, the one account per email address rule does little help the site.

I'm like Jesus, only better.

Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free grassroots news hour

It is hereby proposed that the merry band of kuro5hin administrator elves sit down and draw up some lists. One could consist of nouns; another could consist of verbs. There should be at least fifty entries on each list: the more, the merrier.

Entries for a nouns list should be along the lines of 'ostrich', 'noodle', 'copper sulphate precipitation'; likewise, a verbs list should consist of things like 'arcing', 'folding', 'seventh day pentecostalizing'. Go wild, have fun.

When anything is posted (comments, diaries and stories), the message should be parsed and all references to 'troll', 'trolls', 'trolling' (and any troll-derived verbiage) should be replaced arbitrarily with a randomly selected substitute glyph from one of the appropriate lists.

I would consider the signal to noise ration enhanced immeasurably if complaints such as: "He's just a tree surgeon, always was; can never stop horse massaging" and "You've always had it in for us teddy bears; if it wasn't for us lavatory paper manufacturers, you'd never have any content" became the normal form of complaint rather than any other.

Feel free to apply this methodology retrospectively to this post.

--

' My god...it's full of blogs.' - ktakki

--

Feedback on "Feedback from You" ( 2.77 / 9) ( #228)

by kellan on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 01:37:34 PM EST

This sponsorship system is very well thought out. I think at some point in the future you'll want open the flood gates to new users, perhaps just a trickle of them, but in the mean time allowing the community to regain its equilibrium makes a lot of sense.

It is probably an obvious concern, but the "Part IV. Feedback from You" did raise one small concern for me. People have an immense amount of energy and eloquence to expend on complaining, while operations running smoothly will register at most a passing comment from most people. So I think the following feature will require a light touch.

I'd like to provide a simple way for you to report if you think someone did something obnoxious enough to warrant a warning or to be shown the door.

I would set a *very* high threshold on this. Perhaps the system doesn't even notify the admins until 3-4 people have all suggested that someone be warned over a short window of time.

In the heat of the moment people are going to overreact, and it would be easy, as admin, to start getting bogged down by requested warnings, and take a "ban them all, the Devil will know his own" approach.

  • Yeah by rusty, 03/25/2004 01:46:10 PM EST ( 3.00 / 5)

What about the non-nark? ( 2.42 / 7) ( #233)

by Nigga on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 01:40:23 PM EST

Nark encouragement is fine and well,  but to some that goes against our very nature.  For example, I've had a few beefs here and there with characters like Kitten (who just likes to battle people as i'm sure you know)  and McGrew (I know he's from the midwest and all so I can accept that a "Nigga" account will catch some shit from the midwest...  but I can't just stand there take abuse and not bite back... it's just not in me)

I guess my point is, some of us are vigilante's and not narks.  I'm much more inclined to just beef with a fucker instead of complaining to admins.  I'm not one to start beefs, but if a cat wants to battle i'm usually game.  But I think i do it in an honorable way still.  Also, I hope you understand that a pro-nark attitude towards abuse will require admins to be responsive..  When I first joined up with this community i was immediately modbombed by guyjin.  I took the nark approach, and my complaints fell on deaf ears.  This experience taught me that if i want to defend myself I must take it into my own hands.

--------

The fuck happened to Nigga?

  • Jesus Christ. by Paulsweblog, 03/25/2004 07:46:31 PM EST ( none / 3)

I'm not fond of the sponsorship idea but its better than nothing. The downside is of course I'll have to become a very lukewarm poster to avoid a punative boot by the next partykidd, but theres always other places to have fun posting dumb stuff. If k5's time has come and gone, so be it. If sponsorship turns the tide and k5 is better for it then thats definitely cool too, heck I don't mind if the rules change, the one constant is change.

I would have rather had two other things change here, 1, get the moderation system in order. I don't know why scoop doesn't allow for good moderation (I do not want to look at code, as theres too much other broke stuff in scoop so I'm not really that interested), but obviously its a sensitive subject with scoop folks, especially with rusty, all he's ever offered was ridicule of whoever brings up the moderation subject (well, thats been my experience).

The second item is a bit more sensitive, and I know that I might get the boot for "being disrespectful", but its basically the fact that Rusty is a troll magnet. I don't really know much about what happened with Vlad, so I can't compare what Rusty did to what Vlad did, but the net effect is the same to a certain degree. Really, being a high profile "net personality" often can result from writing some particularily nice software, without having the benefits of a winning personality. I think some of what Rusty has done is pretty cool, but from reading what he writes, I think he'd be sort of a weasle to actually work with, he's not open to suggestions, he discounts other folks opinions, he bans interesting posters, and I think k5 is just too entangled with all of Rusty's spankousity to actually be an open discussion site like slash is.

I really like to compare slash to k5 and theres one more comparison to make, slash users seem to be a self contained hoard now, and are much more vicious moderators than I bet the admins would ever be, and these users can be like this and not give 1 seconds thought to who actually runs slashdot. K5 just can't seem to progress beyond a bullet point for Rusty's resume BUT THATS OK TOO. Theres no reason k5 shouldn't be a showpiece for Rusty's abilities, and I think that the invitation only thing is a good step in deemphasising scoops perpetual moderation problems and not be such a drag for Rusty. I wouldn't want to be as spanked as that on my own site either.

Anyways, hope the invitation thing works.

I read as many of the comments as I could to try to find duplicates of my points, but my eyes were about to melt.

Points I hope you take into consideration if you DO decide on sponsorship, which I hope you don't:

\* God help you if you forget your account password. How will you convince anyone you're you? I don't have email, IRC, or IM conversations with anyone from here more often than every 6 months or so. Why should I have to cultivate a closer interaction with k5ers just to maintain my user identity here?

\* How will "harassment" be defined? Osama Bin Fabulous used to zero every comment I posted. This went on for nearly a year. Other users persist in being disrespectful to me or attempting to subtly insult me every time we interact, but I'm not sure if that's harassment either. However, I don't want anyone banned for "harassing" me, with the exception of modstorms. I think it would be pretty babyish of me if I couldn't handle my own social problems.

\* How will sponsors ever find the time for both their own site use, AND keeping a close eye on their sponsoree's posts to be able to revoke and jump ship fast? No one will want to sponsor anyone, or at most one person, because of all the work involved keeping an eye on them.

\* What's to prevent a sponsor from making a certain kind of ideology or posting style a condition of sponsorship? Ie., "I'll sponsor you if you never post anything blasphemous against my religion. The minute I see anything atheist come out your mouth, you're revoked." This is just an example, but EVERYONE has things they'd be tempted to censor in the people they sponsor. I think this gives too much power to the sponsor, who can threaten revocation at the worst times.

\* What happens if you're revoked (not banned) while a story you submitted is in either queue?

\* Doesn't the 40 comment minimum just mean people will post quickie garbage posts to get to the limit? I would make this, 40 comments each rated a minimum of 2.1 after a minimum of 4 moderations. After all, we don't want to ENCOURAGE crapflooding after we go to such lengths to stop it!

\* All decisions are made by admins and are final, and you can be kicked out for any reason whatsoever. Ummm... why post the other rules then? :-P

\* "I think you're wrong, because numerous studies have shown that black people are less intelligent and more athletic than white people," is a dumb opinion, but does not inherently violate the site's rules. "You stupid nigger fag" does. I hope this won't outlaw discussions of the etymology of racial epithets, Twain's Huckleberry Finn, and British people asking for cigarettes? Please, please, PLEASE, rusty, don't implement some sort of fucking word-matching comment-deleting script. Nothing you could do to the site could be worse.

\* Reinstatement. There needs to be some sort of way a user can appeal their banning, promise to do better, or something.

\* As to "reporting" people: the way stories go up or down around here based on partisanship rather than discussion-worthiness makes it very clear that anyone who regularly espouses any radical belief that makes others uncomfortable will be regularly reported to the admins for "abuse". I'm not saying the admins are too dumb to not realize this, but this seems like a case of the boy who cried wolf too many times... if that user LATER does something that really is ban-worthy, the admins will have a long history of thinking "pfft, he's just pissing off the small minded again". On the other hand, maybe the admins will think "50 different users have reported him - he MUST be doing SOMEthing wrong! *ban*".

\* In any case, popularity will determine user identity survival. Hello, karma whoring.

My former post merely details why I am against sponsorship. This one describes the flaws I see. I hope you'll address them, rusty. If I can't convince you to drop the idea, maybe it can at least be better designed.

-Kasreyn

"Extenuating circumstance to be mentioned on Judgement Day:

We never asked to be born in the first place."

R.I.P. Kurt. You will be missed.

Does this mean you're running the site again? Jeez, if that's all it took, I would have brushed up on my Photoshop skills instead of wasting my time working on a search engine!

Just to reiterate:

K5 still isn't a community; therefore, if you expect it to behave like one, you will end up being disappointed.

As for that killfile rant you linked to, well, I have to agree with some of its points, and disagree with its tone and suppositions. Obviously a simple killfile approach is a bad idea, just as an inflexible 'community' site housing large groups of easily pissed-off people working at cross-purposes is a bad idea. Especially when a few of them have administrative powers.

But I'm all for 'individualism'; if we can all do something to keep ourselves less easily pissed-off, then it'll be much easier to get along. More importantly, if I'm having an interesting discussion with someone, or a group of people, and the 'community' decides that it is meritless, ... what do we care? Why should they be able to censor us, the minority that is actually participating? So it isn't just about individualism, it's about resolving disputes. It's about the fact that people don't all agree on the same things, and trying to force them to is ridiculous.

That's because there are some fundamental disagreements with my ideas, and those of the 'community'. I see nothing wrong with segmenting up a democracy based on interests, opinions, and preferences; in fact, I think it would encourage lively discussions and debates amongst those that wish to have them together. This stands in stark contrast to the flawed ideal of Communism-by-committee that K5 has now.

Now, I doubt that K5 will ever become the sort of flexible set of communities I describe when I talk about what I'd want in a discussion site. I guess in some sense that just proves my point. If you like the site the way it is, fine. Just don't be deluded into thinking that it's a 'community'. I don't think that trying to make it into a gated community will improve matters much either.

---

" See what the drooling, ravening, flesh-eating hordes^W^W^W^WKuro5hin.org readers have to say."

-- pwhysall

I have a better idea: ( 2.09 / 11) ( #249)

by V on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 01:55:06 PM EST

Ship all the thin skinned whinners to HuSi.

It's a fucking web-site, for fucks sake!

V.

---

What my fans are saying:

"That, and the fact that V is a total, utter scumbag." VZAMaZ.

"well look up little troll" cts.

"I think you're a worthless little cuntmonkey but you made me lol, so I sigged you." re

"goodness gracious you're an idiot" mariahkillschickens

If the sponser is going to be responsible for the content of the users posting, they should have the power to to approve the sponseree's posts. You could even have a special section of the site similar to the old review hidden comments, where old users could review new user's comments. Whoever approved the new users comments would be responsible if the users post was a crapflood, or something. There could be a special page to track the average rating of a sponsors user's postings to prevent abuse.

Once a new user gets a certain number of comments rated up, or gets a story posted they would then gain full priveledges. In the trial stage, they wouldn't be able to rate comments, or vote on stories. That way we could encourage a lower threshold for sponsorship, and allow those who don't know anyone on K5 to post.

We perfect it; Congress kills it; They make it; We Import it; It must be anti-Americanism

  • Wow by Michael Moore, 03/25/2004 01:57:38 PM EST ( 2.66 / 6)

Don't like it, here's another idea ( 2.91 / 12) ( #251)

by speek on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 01:57:28 PM EST

Rather than have sponsored membership, which will have a real chilling effect on new users, why not have sponsored trusted user status?

Trusted user status based on comment quality was useless and too easy to game.

Trusted user status based on sponsorship helps create a base of administrators who could have the following abilities:

  • Only trusted users can zero comments or diaries

  • Comments/diaries that go below 1 get removed from the system

A trusted user who gets a comment removed becomes untrusted, as does his sponsor.

This way, membership isn't so adversely affected, bad posts can be easily removed without manual intervention on your part (the most imporant aspect you need, IMO), and the ability to remove data is carefully delegated out.

Also: the fact that you've already coded your solution tells me your going to do it regardless of objections and that your main response against other ideas is "well, that'll take time to code". So, I expect to be duly ignored.

--

al queda is kicking themsleves for not knowing about the levees

Make rating easier ( 2.87 / 8) ( #255)

by wurp on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 02:01:01 PM EST

One thing that would make me rate drastically more comments is if rating was easier.  Provide an option in our User Info to display "javascript enabled" ratings, and display all of the ratings options side by side when that's enabled.  When I click a rating, immediately send a request to the server to rate the comment as I've specified, but don't make me reload the page.

When I rate now, every time I click "Rate All" I lose my location in the thread of conversation and I lose the ability to cick 'back' because I get a "this page was the result of a form submission" message.  It makes me not want to rate.  Also, since I tend to select several ratings before I click "Rate all" (because rate all is a pain in the ass), I tend to lose ratings I had queued up when I find an interesting sub-thread.  I am unwilling to rate all & then find the sub-thread link again, so I just follow the link.  Usually I never back my way to the original thread and submit the ratings I made.

You might also consider making a "why doesn't K5 do X" section in the FAQ.  I have commented lots of times that we need an ignore list, and had never seen you comment either way about it.  I don't consider it being obstinate to keep asking about something when I have never gotten an answer.  I personally disagree with your linked evaluation of killfiles, but at least now I understand your position well enough to stop bitching about it.

---

Buy my stuff

If I had to put up with that kind of crap, I'd consider doing the same things.

As a pretty infrequent poster (at least recently) my opinion may not carry a lot of weight. But I will say that there's no way I could have gotten an account under the proposed sponsorship system, since I didn't know anyone on the sight, and would not have been willing to beg a complete stranger to let me in.

I suggest you have a poll of the current membership. Find out how many people would not have accounts if your proposed system were in place at the time they joined. The number may be higher than you think.

I guess if you're OK with radically changing the membership-acquiring characteristics of the site, then do it. But understand that there will be a big change. It's too bad that a bunch of jackasses have put you in this position.

--

Stand up for your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Sponsored memberships are a mistake.

Some people comment very rarely on threads, and some people come to kuro5hin only when they hear something in their interests being discussed.  If you limit comments only to those who are already here, you will cease to have any new information brought onto the site.  Kuro5hin will become an echo chamber containing only the opinions of those who are already here and those who agree with their opinions.

As an example, I just recently started reading Metafilter.  There have been several threads there in which I would have liked to provide information.  Can't comment -- no new users permitted.  So I watch as Metafilter posts incorrect information, and I'm unable to give them any help.  Rather than mail the moderators and try to convince them of my good intentions, I may just stop reading the site.  Let them have their playground and their delusions.

If you go to a sponsorship format, I beg you to at least allow anonymous comments.  Have anonymous comments default to a large negative rating so they do not show up for most users, but allow newcomers to make some kind of input.  New readers will not continue to read a discussion site if they are not allowed to contribute to it.  If you shut new users out, it will be the first step towards kuro5hin's decline into irrelevancy.

...

Remus Shepherd [email protected]

Creator and holder of many Indefensible Positions.

So i used to read K5 a lot, (started before the great black-out of 2000) but i havent been here in the past year, mostly because of the trolls and the ever dimishing signal-to-noise ratio.

I'm not one to chime in to a discussion unless i have something really major to add, so i dont qualify to sponsor people, and probably never will.

I like this plan, and i think it will help a lot, I have spent the last year and a half at MeFi, which is a really strong comunity *because* it has had no new signups. (or very, very few) If someone is out there who really wants to contribute, but doesnt know anyone here, they can email rusty, and make their case, and he can "sponsor" them himself, as a temporary thing, (i'm not going to call for his banning if someone he cold-sponsored acts up)

It's clearly designed so that people can continue to do the OTHER kind of crapflooding... wherein they post UNBELIEVABLY boring diaries in hardly-readable trash that somewhat resembles English in appearance and hardly at all in mechanics.

There is no Technology or Culture anymore. People on this website that take it seriously have such hostile, polarized stances on everything that reasoned discussion is pretty nigh impossible. The "crapflooders" and "trolls" became the only interesting thing to read. Now they will be gone.

I put the "LOL" in phiLOLigcal leadership - vote for OMGHAX for CMF president!

...you want to stop people from graphically insulting your wife, page-widening and rooting the K5 servers?

And you think that insituting sponsorship, allowing admins to warn people and making better (read: more restrictive) rules will stop this?

With all due respect, rusty, I'd like a description of the logical chain of thought that brought you from the stimulus to this conclusion.

I bought this account on eBay

I'd like to know, for the sake of this comment, rate it a 1 if you were invited by a friend and a 2 if you arrived uninvited.

For every solution there's a trade off. Right now, we're banning all unknown users for the sake of a few. The analogy is close to a closed border with no incoming traffic, only users giving birth to more users. If Rusty could keep users from leaving, he'd be China.

This hostility to new users is unfortunate. Understandable, but unfortunate. I sympathize for you, Rusty, I really do, but you may be cutting off your nose to spite your face on this one. New users are your lifeblood and unsponsored users can help grow this site.

That's not to say that I don't like this idea. It has its merits, but the draconian nature is severe and should be mitigated. Just like a fraternity, we now have a problem with applicants who arrive without a referral. I suggest that, just like a fraternity, we allow people to rush. We're already elitist by embracing this plan, may as well go all the way.

To Rush, a user can designate a diary article as "Unsponsored Friendly", and these diaries would need to stand out in such a way as to inform and invite unsponsored user's attention. In these diaries (and only in these diaries) users who ordinarily would have no voice can demonstrate their involvement. If the diariest or anyone likes what they see and decide to take the risk, they can extend sponsorship, with all the consequences that come with sponsorship.

Further, to prevent an ass user from spamming these diaries, only allow these unsponsored users a limited number of comments for the duration of their "unsponsorship".

Just an idea. An imperfect one, sure, but no more imperfect than this implementation.

-Soc

I drank what?

I would suggest two things.

1. bring back the old ratings system

2. make an "ignore" feature that allows people to avoid displaying the comments of people they don't like, or people with an average comment score of <x

Sponsorship sucks.

"Let us kill the English, their concept of individual rights might undermine the power of our beloved tyrants!!" - Lisa Simpson [ -1.50 / -7.74]

  • Wow. by tiamat, 03/25/2004 02:42:12 PM EST ( 2.50 / 6)
  • Aye by Aneurin, 03/25/2004 02:51:01 PM EST ( none / 2)
  • Re: suggestion (1) by mcc, 03/25/2004 03:09:16 PM EST ( none / 1)

If this system had been in place, like oh-so-many others here, I wouldn't be here.

I know you've said that you just want people to invite family and friends and the like, but my whole reason for coming here is to have interesting debates with people that I don't know. Why should I invite my friends and family? I can, and do, debate with them all the time. Why should anyone else invite their friends and family? They can, and do, debate with them all the time. Why would anybody invite friends and family?

We don't need a website to debate with people we already know.

---

Beware of peanuts! There's a 0.00001% peanut fatality rate in the USA alone! You could be next!

I am going to use the complaint box to send the admins warm fuzzies about users I like. I encourage others to do the same. Make love, not war!

  • Nah by godix, 03/25/2004 03:50:03 PM EST ( none / 2)

I for one welcome our new sponsorship overlords ( 2.33 / 6) ( #300)

by pw201 on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 02:51:23 PM EST

This seems like a useful way of limiting the idiots. I'm not sure it's a good idea to only allow one sponsor at a time, though. Something like Advogato's trust system might make more sense.

Is there some way to determine as a long time reader / occasional poster if I qualify as a "sponsor"?

I did a quick check in the archives, three stories posted (w/ about 50 comments total) and between 50 & 60 comments made (many not rated). So a strict reading of what you say the rules are, I am not a qualified sponsor. Is that the intent of the rules?

I also have to comment that I don't see any clear way to get myself sponsored if I arrived at K5 at this time. I may certainly know some of the people IRL already at K5 (based on their comments to what I posted) - but would not have know that unless I could have posted. I am also not quite sure if I'd ever sponsor someone unless I knew them for some time.

  --Mark

PS: When I clicked on my name - I saw the [long forgotten] link to my entry in one of the "Who are You?" stories. It has certainly been a while since you last asked that question - will you do it again?

  • off topic by tiamat, 03/25/2004 03:22:56 PM EST ( none / 1)

What the fuck ( 2.51 / 29) ( #302)

by bc on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 02:52:28 PM EST

How many "problem users" are there on k5? You know, the sort that go out purely to hurt others as hard as they can? Three? Half a dozen?

Not very many, that's for sure. So using this hammer to crack such a tiny nut is complete horseshit.

I am absolutely certain that, a little bit down the line, Rusty will introduce a great new idea to combat the utterly stalled growth of k5 (after all, it can only have a few hundred users active enough to invite others). Its simple: people will be able to buy sponsored accounts.

In other words, the wife-pics are being used like Bush used 9/11 - a grand pretext for something you wanted to do anyway, but now can do for higher, purer reasons that you can sell to the suckered, fundraiser-raped masses, and get that revenue-stream you've always wanted.

This sucks. I'm not against the idea of having to pay to get an account at all, but it will be very annoying if its forced in under some pretext, but, given rusty's record, not at all surprising.

♥, bc.

Part I - I really really don't like it. First off a lot of people I see coming on to this site stumbled into it from google, other weblogs linking to it, etc. They don't have friends here to ask to sponsor. You've tied my account into their actions so I'm damned well not going to sponsor someone I don't know. Those potential new users are just SOL. Second off, I'm not a freaking babysitter here. Even if it is a friend I don't want to have to spend the next month or so monitoring what they do and wondering if I'm going to get banned because of them. All sponsorships will do is turn K5 into Metafilter lite, a sad pathetic has-been of the internet that's going through a slow death spiral as their users slowly leave (well, quickly in K5's case, turnover is high here) and never get replaced.

Part II - I like simple guidelines. A statement of 'If you act like a dick you will be banned' should be more than sufficient. Some will complain that it doesn't provide specifics but if there's someone who doesn't realize that crapflooding is being a dick do we want them on the site anyway?

Part IV - So let me get this straight, the next time I say something people don't like in addition to getting a flood of 0's I also get a flood of people telling the admins that I suck? Just because I posted a controversial opinion? Yeah, great idea. The email address for admins is readily avalable already, there's no need for a special 'report user' button as well.

My personal suggestion is to make TU's mean something. Specifically make them mean that diaries can be given -1 and if a certain % of votes are TUs dumping it then the comment gets dumped regardless of it's average score. To counter this power abusing TU status should be the quickest way to get banned.

Thank god I'm worth more than SilentChris

Heh, maybe not. But here it goes. People are right, the sponsorship idea will put a check on the diversity found here. A k5 story will get linked from joeblowsfantasticblog.com and the people who visit will have no way of posting. However, sponsorship will help weed out the idiots.

There is a website out there that has perhaps the best userbase ever. A diverse set of people, not all arrogant slashnerds, who have really interesting things to say. Nary an idiot to be found. You know the site? forums.somethingawful.com. You know why it's the best damn forum out there? Cause you got to pay $9.95 to join. Are you NIWS and try to post shit to somethingawful? Well, your ass is booted, you get a big fuck you, and you dont get your money back. The system works.

I can't help but to think that would work here as well. BUT you can do both. You can a) sign up via a sponsorship from somebody else for free or b) hack up $9.95 for an account. If the account turns out to be an idiot - boot them, no money back. Have they "reformed"? They'll pay $9.95 again. The system works. You can still attract diversity by allowing random people to sign up, but still have a more gated community.

Funny though, I suspect that both ways of regulating accounts will make ratings even more worthless. I suggest you leave them in for a month, then rip them out. Your site doesn't need them; no site does.

Would it be prudent to display, on each user's profile/user page, all of the users they have previously sponsored, just so the community themselves can see who is tied to whom, or would this just encourage more exclusionary behavior? For instance, user A hates user C, A notices user C was sponsored by B, therefore A decides to hate B as well. Despite that possibility, it could provide some more accountability to people, knowing full well that anyone can see who they have sponsored. Personally I'm not sure either way, but it's something to consider at least, and I'm interested to hear other opinions on it.

  • zoo.pl by it certainly is, 03/25/2004 03:35:32 PM EST ( none / 2)
  • But by Emissary, 03/25/2004 06:52:30 PM EST ( none / 1)
  • Viva Anonymous, to a degree by elpapa, 03/26/2004 07:18:21 PM EST ( none / 0)

As much as I dislike "me too" comments, I'm going to chime in and say as an early user who has largely stopped reading and participating in K5, I think you should go ahead with this idea.  Although this is certain to change the dynamics of the site and membership, it can only help with the overall content by making people more cognisant of the decency of their own behaviour towards others.

Rusty, I remember one of your early comments on K5, about how you created the site with a generally open and democratic framework because you believed people generally live up to what is  expected of them.  I'm curious if you still feel this is true, and how you think the sponsorship change might affect people's behaviour in light of this?

MBG

I write a lot of anti-semitic stuff, a few pointless troll diaries, a lot of stuff about liking terrorists, hating america, and the occasional anti-rusty diary. I don't recall ever crap flooding and I've certainly not done any technical crap (I'm not good enough at tech to do such).

Do you recall anything of mine that could get me booted? With what comments/diaries am I walking the tightrope?

I think it will cut down on the crapflooding, but it will also decrease the number of new users.

So you've decided to officially whack the crapflooders... I wonder if it would be feasible to have a banned user "graveyard" where the banned users are listed and the admins would post the reason for the user being banned? Maybe move the offending comments there as proof of the user's crimes or whatever. Allow users to post comment their complaining about the injustice done to their comrade or lauding the admin's decisive action. I think it would be more in the spirit of the site if the bans were transparent.

It would also be nice to have a forum where untrusted users could post so we could identify new talent. maybe wait a few months before you put that in place so we don't get the usual suspects carpping that up.

Anyway... hope this works out.

\\\____

"I wanna have my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames" -- Jim Morrison

then the terrorists have already won. This stinks of the PATRIOT act to me: different contexts, same odious stench, and rolled in under the auspices of trumped up charges of impending doom.

K5's present problem is not from an abundance of noise, but rather from a lack of signal. Draconian regulations may clamp down on noise, but they do nothing to increase the signal, and will probably even hurt it.

It's not much fun at the top. I envy the common people, their hearty meals and Bruce Springsteen and voting. -- SIGNOR SPAGHETTI

Same reasons everyone else has said: encourages cliquishness, discourages new members. I'd certainly never have joined if this had been in place at the time.

Also, for me, one of the best things about K5 is when an article is posted on a specialist topic, and specialists join and start commenting from their own specialist knowledge. That's not going to happen any more.

There are loads of better ways to solve the problem:

  • More editors, more active deleting.
  • Remove the diary section
  • Waiting periods before a new user can post (like DailyKos)
  • Hide/voting system for diaries
  • Return of the -1 rating

I think a one-week waiting period alone would help a great deal with this. They're generally after immediate gratification, and would get bored. Plus, you'd only need to look for suspicious registrations once a week.

Sponsorship seems to be massive overkill: like you've gotten pissed off and reached straight for the nuclear option. Stories and story comments are fairly OK because they're moderated. The problems are mostly in the diary section, which has no moderation. Users can't hide or vote down a diary.

Since the problems are mainly in the unmoderated section, either close it down or introduce moderation. Surely it's better to a least try a moderation solution, rather than leap straight to (virtually) closing down new registrations?

----

Support the nascent Mad Open Science movement... when we talk about "hundreds of eyeballs," we really mean it. Lagged2Death

How about this: membership is open for 1 day every three months (or 4, or 6).  Troublemakers rip the place apart in the last day or two of that period as they can get a new account immediately but the rest of the period is quiet.

--

"If you can't imagine a better way let silence bury you" - Midnight Oil

the mind of the troll (mind being used loosely) ( none / 3) ( #359)

by ljj on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 03:32:37 PM EST

Yes, some of these thoughts could work. Although I can see how some of the measures can be exploited.

Which leads me to the question: why do trollers do it? Why do some people come here, and clearly spend a lot of time and effort to do what they do? It can't be just because they have incredibly low self-esteem, I guess that is your ticket to the trolling game, but there has got to be something else.

If humans are bigger extrapolations of the organic matter that make up life around us ie. if we conform to the same rules that guide cell growth etc, then perhaps trolls are like cancer cells.

If we can understand why some spend so much time doing it, then perhaps we can begin to find a way of stopping it.

Any of the trolls want to offer suggestions?

--

ljj

A simpler, more effective alternative. ( 2.62 / 8) ( #376)

by momocrome on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 04:00:20 PM EST

Rusty,

I have an alternative that would be less drastic and, I feel, more effective than the plan you outline.

Step 1: Revert to the former ratings scheme.  It was fine the way it was, except for the zeroes mod-storming. And that problem would be fixed by...

Step 2: Adding a 'Ban This Account' button on the user info page, having it function much like the 'Move to Vote' button in the edit queue.  Only allow the newly re-instated old-style TUs to see and use it. The userbase should sort itself out quickly, as the legitimate TUs would greatly outweigh the abusive users even with all their dupe accounts.

This small, tight set of solutions would avoid a number of the needless complications and drastic alterations of the atmosphere here that would result from your plan of action.  I don't mean to necessarily disparage your solution, especially since it is certain that you are privy to more pertinent information and vastly more experienced, it just seems to me that less is better, and your plan is overflowing with significant changes to the site.

I don't think raising the barrier to entry is a smart move (unless you are hoping to wind things down around here?), and banning sponsors for the abuses of sponsorees is a type of attrition that can only lead to stagnation.

Instead, let the population govern itself. Give more tools to the trusted users.  With them, the community can protect itself, even heal itself from crapflooder/vulgarian abuses and sock-puppet TU aqcuisition. It also means less work for you and the other admins.

"Give a wide berth to all that foam and spray." - - Lucian, The Way to Write History ‮

  • Alternatives by danharan, 03/25/2004 04:23:02 PM EST ( none / 1)

    • Clarification by momocrome, 03/25/2004 04:27:53 PM EST ( none / 0)

  • ns by Trollaxor, 03/25/2004 04:27:53 PM EST ( 2.20 / 5)

    • good point by momocrome, 03/25/2004 04:30:20 PM EST ( none / 2)

      • weioghwoiueg by Trollaxor, 03/25/2004 04:42:01 PM EST ( 2.20 / 5)

Hey, it worked for LiveJournal-- what a vibrant and intellectual site that turned out to be.

--

jimmysquid.com - I take pictures.

First off, I want to me too a couple of things. I wouldn't be here with the sponsorship policy. I came from the other site, and lurked for a while. I created an account when someone said something really stupid and I had to respond, and post whenever I have time to frequent k5. People get obnoxious at times (I didn't see the aforementioned incident) and that has driven me away for limited amounts of time. However, so has the groupthink at times. The solution to the latter is to simply take a k5 break for a couple of weeks. Your suggestion may be a solution for the former.

Just like everyone else, I worry about new blood. I associate with some heavily geeky groups. That doesn't mean I'm going to invite them along, especially since most are not big on online debate, or on politics. Besides, if I wanted to talk to them about these issues, thats what meatspace is for.

My biggest concern comes from your response here. Sponsorship is permanent? There is no way to graduate out of this tier?

So basically, the root user base, theoretically, will have a long subordinate line of users some of which will sponsor other descendant lines? We may as well call the root users the Dukes and Duchesses and rusty the K5 King. If sponsorship is permanent, the current users have entirely too much power over their sponsored and metasponsored users. If a 2nd level user (sponsored by a base user) angers a root user, even in a way specifically allowed by the k5 rules, he can revoke that users membership. Logically, that would also deactivate the membership of every lower member.

Now this may be an interesting social experiment. We could have charts of pedigree amd fancy heraldry and everything. That doesn't mean it'd be good for k5. Perhaps a rebirth of TU for users of long standing, high ratings and/or no 'demerits' could serve as a graduation process?

And suddenly, the clouds of neglect disperse. At last, some action!

I think it's a bad idea though, mainly because it will prevent those who come from google from signing up. I suppose it's just an experiment though, why not. We must give it enough time to mature before judging it though, and maybe in that time the famous "decline of K5" could become worse.

One point is that you seem to be engaging in this without having done any groundwork to start off with. For example, do you have any statistics on how many people are "referred" by friends as opposed to randomly happening upon the site? For all we know it could be next to nothing.

I can also never remember why trusted user status was abandoned. It's my opinion that this was a good system that could have been strengthened, perhaps with a (very small) upper tier that could delete accounts. For most cases hiding comments is mostly sufficient, and provides a simple disincentive to consistently post attention-seeking shit, because not many people will see it. The recent sort of behaviour that neccessitates account deletion is rare.

In short, I feel that trusted users gives the site huge numbers of administrators, who are able to quickly react to miscreants, and this solution didn't restrict membership.

Disclaimer: All of the above is probably wrong

I guess now is the time to start posting some comments if I want to be a valued k5 member.

First, similar events have happened to a number of people on this site and for the most part rusty didn't think it serious enough to administer a system-wide solution until it happened to him. These events may not have been exactly identical (the photoshop thing), but they were similar in the sense that miscreants have have caused a great amount of personal pain over persons and/or issues near and dear to other users. A good many people have made pleas to rusty to change things and these pleas have fallen on deaf ears for years. The implication is that rusty's feelings matter more than anyone else's.

Second, issues like this ought to be thought through by the CMF governing board by this time. As it is, such board is a joke. This issue is important because it illustrates that the k5 community is currently and will always (at least for the foreseeable future) be run as rusty's private pet project. When push comes to shove, rusty makes all the rules and all the important decisions. This is a bitter pill to swallow given rusty's promises to make k5 into a community.

Third, (related to the point above) if this is implemented, k5 will be made into a gated community regardless of whether or not the user base desires this. While some may very well look forward to this type of change, it is a slap in the face to others. It is, in effect, the rejection of what rusty once set out to do with k5.

Fourth, if this is to be the future of k5, k5 really ought to be incorporated as a business or at least run like one and rusty ought to make clear that the CMF is dead, or at least that k5 is not destined to be under the CMF umbrella.

First of all, I consider entropy as a fact of life. Things rust, wear out, break down. People lie, cheat, steal. Eventually entropy will kill off everything, it's just a matter of time. The question is whether your proposed system will stave off K5's entropy and return the signal to noise ratio back to a presumably healthy level.

I think your plan will need some serious rethinking before it benefits this website in a positive way. The biggest problem I perceive is a matter of stagnation, not trolling, although both serve to reduce the signal to noise ratio. Stagnation is the more serious issue. When there is lots of quality content, the trolls are a simple matter to ignore. When there is not much quality content, the trolls hardly make a difference either way. I don't see how your system of sponsorship will do anything but aggrevate the problem of stagnation. Under its current design, the sponsorship system will see the creation of very few new accounts. Take myself for example. There is nobody else here that I know personally. K5 is pretty big in a specific net geek subculture, but is virtually non-existant beyond that. If I mentioned Kuro5hin in a casual conversation, 98% of people would not know what I'm talking about. K5 as I understand it is only a community in the internet sense. That means the people don't generally know each other and any bonds that would make it worthy of being called a community are generally weak or nonexistant. If the opposite were true, I would consider sponsorship a good idea, but not for this site.

I also have to take issue with your comment criteria. Stories generally move too quickly for such criteria to be acceptable. By the time a story is out of the voting queue, any discussion threads underneath that story are pretty much dead. The longest any discussion thread will stay active is maybe a couple days, but it's usually safe to say if you can't make it back to a thread until the next day, you can pretty much forget that discussion. Good, well reasoned comments take time to write, and given people's busy nature, a more appropriate lifespan would be at least a few days' time. Unfortunately I have no advice on how to effect that. The short-lived nature of comment threads works against achieving good comment ratings. Now that it takes a minimum number of ratings to rate a comment (which I think is good), comment threads die before most comments reach this requirement, although most have at least one rating.

Finally, I'm not too hot on the idea that users need to strive for positively rated comments either. Sometimes a comment will get rated down because the poster said something stupid or ill informed yet totally innocent. Sometimes it will get rated down because the poster doesn't have a particularly popular opinion, or is not good at verbalizing thoughts. I do however feel that a worthwhile contributor will still earn strongly rated comments from time to time. Then again, so will trolls, so it's a tough call.

is it ok to post links to pictures with your face on max hardcore's body?

So if 'A' sponsors 'B' and 'B' gets kicked off then 'A' does too. What if 'A' sponsors 'B' and 'B' sponsors 'C' and 'C' get kicked off? Then 'B' would get kicked off. would 'A' get kicked off too? This could get ugly.

doesn't go far enough ( 2.50 / 4) ( #418)

by boxed on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 04:52:47 PM EST

The idea is positive and would probably help a lot, but I believe there are other levels needed for the system to work properly. Four levels with the top level reserved solely for our Benign Dictator Rusty. The sponsorship system you describe would work more or less like suggested though. The levels would be as follows:

Level 1: Rusty or meta-operators

Level 2: Operators

Level 3: Users

Level 4: Non-sponsored users

This would make the body of operators a dynamic entity sponsored of a leading body, a much more dynamic and flexible system.

  • Or better by acceleriter, 03/25/2004 04:58:53 PM EST ( 2.50 / 6)
  • Too much like IRC by faddat, 04/07/2004 10:41:02 AM EST ( none / 0)

Free spirits are a liability.

August 8, 2004: "it certainly is" and I had engaged in a homosexual tryst.

Rusty has an incredibly long fuse, and I would continue to trust him to not step over the line into censorship. I didn't see those pics, but from the description it seems rather reprehensible.

I don't like the sponsorship idea, although I recognize it may be necessary. As has been noted by mcc, we had an influx of Spanish people around 11-M which did add a great deal to the discussion.

--

So here's a way I think we could let people like that in. Here's a scenario:

New posters have to sign up, agreeing to the rules and confirming their email address, preferably a non-free account.

The first few posts would be marked with an icon or different colour. Trusted users could then play whack-a-mole. Or, if the first few comments are hidden by default to all but trusted users, it would be un-whack-a-mole, which should be even less fun for the graffitti trolls.

We still have code for figuring out who a trusted user is, which I imagine is some sort of advogato-style rating system, so this effectively re-uses existing functionality.

New users could be denied rating privileges to avoid modstorms, perhaps only allowing them to post comments and submit stories. Diaries could be a privilege.

This could be less work for the admins, and provides older users with a way to spot newbies, and welcome them in the community, or boot them in short order.

As for banning people... some have suggested adding a button to ban people, but that seems unnecessary. We already have a 0 rating for comments, and any user which is systematically getting zeroed by trusted users should be reviewed by admins and considered for deletion.

Needless to say, 0 should be reserved for tasteless trolls and personal attacks. Interesting trolls are akin to jesters - they thread a fine line, but are a good way to avoid group think. Insults and name-calling are beneath trolls, and have no place in a community that wishes to promote dialogue and healthy debate.

Hopefully this solution requires less coding and ongoing work from admins. Opinions?

is a page listing all the banned users, with reasons why. Even a brief reason ("diary spamming", for example). If that isn't there, there's really no way to know why someone got banned except word-of-mouth.

I question the sponsorship system, though. As mentioned by many many many other people, I don't know anyone else on k5 personally. So remove sponsorships, and I wouldn't be here either.

This seems like an invitation for small fiefdoms and cliques centered around the assumed benevolence of some sponsor. If I had waited any longer to change from lurker to member, I would not be inclined to beg some random K5'er for their approval -- not out of fear that some complicated troll plot would be uncovered, but because the barrier to entry is not worth overcoming.

I enjoy participating in the K5 community, but not enough to hassle strangers for the privilege. This seems like a great way to eliminate moderate or casual users, but certainly not effective against trolls who have proven themselves willing to get around any barrier.

It's time for a new anything-goes site.

--

kuro5hin is about to E.X.P.L.O.D.E!!!

  • it's called husi /nt by mcgrew, 03/25/2004 06:15:48 PM EST ( none / 0)

    • Nuh-uh by RandomLiegh, 03/25/2004 10:20:42 PM EST ( none / 1)

4 1

deuce a'port

this.

but one-ly because i'm afraid of people.

I. Don't wipe the users' comments, diaries & stories

If you're dead-set on doing this, I respectfully ask that you don't remove all of the sponsor's and sponsored's posts. It is really silly to remove hundreds of pieces of various discussions; it disrupts the comment flow and chews up the history. Hours of work spent writing decent, interesting posts are lost, leaving nonsensical gaps. (OTOH, I'm in favor of removing the offensive posts, and if this isn't at all practical, wiping the sponsored's account.)

II. What is "respectful of others"?

This sounds really subjective. The example you gave is obviously unwelcome, but debate often heats up into name-calling. (Usually tongue-in-cheek of course.) I think many regulars here have been disrespectful to their fellow users at one time or another -- should ad hominems really be grounds for banning? Or is it only if they're crudely / offensively worded?

One of my favorite things about k5 is the debate. And when it gets personal, that's fun too. How can you have k5 without disrespect of one's schoolmates?

(The 2nd point is rhetorical; I understand & agree with the spirit of what's being said in section II, but take issue with the broad wording of the "be respectful" rule.)

And i thought my suggestion was a pain in the neck!

Mine is actually similar to the sponsorship one, except new users get "sponsored" by the site rating system. At least this way, if the abusers are going to troll the site (or whatever) they'll have to post some decent comments first!

---

When free speech is outlawed, only criminals will complain.

Just a note to everyone:  I'll be out of here by morning.

Well, maybe this will help. ( 2.84 / 13) ( #461)

by ghjm on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 05:52:47 PM EST

Certainly some sort of radical change is needed. But I have to say, right now the worst thing about the site for me isn't the crapflooders or the trolls or whatever, because I rarely ever see those things. The worst thing for me is: I'm sorry, I can't find that story.

If I'm randomly following links to comments, etc and whatever, and I happen to see an interesting comment - well, it doesn't matter that the story it's attached to didn't happen to meet the high editorial standards of the "-1, buy an ad" community. I'd still like to know what people are talking about.

This creates a subtle bias. People who have enough free time to pathologically monitor the queue will see every article, so they know what the hell it's all about. Less, er, "dedicated" users, such as myself, wind up a bit baffled by some of the goings on.

I understand that when a story dies in queue, it shouldn't be posted to any of the sections. But either its comments should go with it, or the story should be reachable via links from those comments.

So what does all this have to do with sponsorship? Simple: It seems that you're going to create a new link target of I'm sorry, I can't find that user. All this talk of deleting and banning and so forth has me concerned that the archive is going to turn into Swiss cheese (or rather, into a more bubbly form than what it already is).

All of which will make more people like me go away, or at least post less and lurk more. Which, in my own not-very-humble opinion, is exactly what you don't want.

-Graham

I fully understand the motivation here, and understand the problem.

However...

K5, like any community is going to have a reasonable turnover of membership. Some people remain for years, but some people are active for a few months or something. If a community is to survive it must gain members at the rate it loses them. My gut feeling is that the bar for sponsorship is set too high. As you're vouching for them, making yourself vulnerable, you're unlikely to vouch for someone you don't really know; a brief encounter on a mailing list won't count. Also, I don't knowingly know any other K5 readers. I'm sure I know several, but it's not a matter I've ever discussed. If I wasn't already in, I wouldn't know where to turn to get sponsorship.

So while I'm making a few assumptions, I think these rules will kill the site.

General comments My biggest worry about these modifications is that it completely blocks users who don't know anybody in this site from posting, which seems like a recipe for stagnation.

I don't know how technically plausible this amendment would be, but here goes: unsponsored users are limited to one post per story, and the length of the post is limited.

The problem with this is that somebody could set up a script to create many accounts and flood, which I'll admit is a problem. The only thing I've managed to think about this problem is to have these comments be in a separate "sandbox".

The idea here is simple: it should be possible for somebody to pop in, create an account, say something smart in response to a story, and get sponsored.

Specific comments

The criteria for this are adjustable, but I'm leaning toward a requirement of 60 days of sponsored membership and 40 positively-rated comments before you can sponsor others. Yes, that is a high bar. I think it should be pretty high.

I'd like to see a justification for such a high bar. I'd think (a) the number of days doesn't need to be nearly that high, (b) a high number of positively-rated comments runs into trouble if people just don't rate a lot.

you can revoke your sponsorship of a user at any time, if you think they're being obnoxious or you no longer trust them.

I think this is a terrible idea, at least if it's implemented without limit. This means that if you piss off your sponsor for ANY reason, your sponsor gets rid of you.

There's also a semantic unclarity here: what happens to people sponsored by the person disowned by the sponsor?

Proposed modification: sponsors can only disown users who can't yet sponsor others. In more detail: there's three user classes, full, sponsored and unsponsored. Full users don't have an active sponsor, and are capable of sponsoring new users. (The system can still keep track of who were the original sponsors for a full user.) Sponsored users have a sponsor, can't sponsor, and migrate to sponsored user status upon meeting the appropriate criteria. Unsponsored users work as you described.

Be respectful of others

...

Threats against or harassment of another user is grounds for banning

I'd get rid of the first of these guidelines. There's always been plenty of "disrespect" in this site that's not impacted quality (e.g. when a discussion gets very heated up). I'd think the harassment guideline covers all the legitimate, ban-worthy "disrespect" cases.

if a user gets kicked off the site, their sponsor does too.

...

Also, with sponsorship, one person's obnoxious behavior can affect someone else, who may be innocent of it. So I want to implement a warning system, so people will know when they've gone too far.

I don't see that why sponsors should be automatically kicked off the site, and less so if there's warning. What about simply automatically warning the sponsor?

There's another semantic ambiguity here having to do with the sponsorship tree: if user A gets kicked off, their sponsor B gets kicked off. Applying the logic very strictly, since B just kicked off, their sponsor C must get kicked off, until we reach a sponsorship tree root...

Under the modification that I suggest, once somebody is a full user, if they get kicked off, their former sponsor isn't affected. I think this is good. There should be a point beyond which the sponsor is reasonably held not to be responsible for the people they've sponsored.

--em

On killfiles and stuff. ( 2.70 / 10) ( #472)

by i on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 06:10:35 PM EST

Let's dissect that little page linked in the above article. If every user has a different killfile (or even if a substantial minority do) then each has a different view of the community around them, who has spoken, who is silent and what the gist of the current conversation might be.

This is right for USENET or other places with broken or nonexistent threading feature. Threading just nullifies this argument. When a post is ignored, just suppress the entire thread under it. (A very solid proposition, if you think about it just a little.) Whoops! There's no such thing as "current conversation" that might possibly go wrong anymore.

Once in a while you might stumble upon a quote from someone you killfiled; that's fine, just ignore it. OTOH if your "friends" talk about your "foes" every so often, and this annoys you, you might reconsider your choice of either.

Fundamentally, in their devalued and abused form, killfiles are not about community at all, they're about individualism - they're about trying to find a way to minimise an individual's exposure to problems rather than (1) confronting and resolving the problem or (2) organising to minimise the community's exposure to problems.

On the internet, the exposure to the problem is the problem. Kill the exposure, and the problem goes away. Lookie, maybe www.somesiteoranother.com or alt.foo.bar.baz.mumble.mumble.mumble look like a problem to you? Fine, don't go there. Why some random troll here is different?

So where's the community in all that, you might ask? There's no the community. There are communities, killfiles or no killfiles. It's a fact of life. Deal with it.

The clearest evidence of their basic redundancy as a structuring principle is what any community that has substantial killfile-usage looks like from the outside or to a new member - incoherent, fractured, troll-filled and consumed with infighting.

Wrong. A community that is incoherent, fractured, troll-filled and consumed with infighting will look just like that. Granted, a loosely knit bunch of communities might look just like one incoherent comminity to an outsider, but only briefly. As soon as the understanding of multiple-communities is achieved, all is well again.

The killfile behavior, is simply put: "sweep-under-the-rug", "bury-head-in-sand" kind of behavior. Imagine that in a gathering where if everyone totally ignores other's voices except their own kind, then what cacophony would result?

To an outsider, briefly. Previous item redux.

Similarly, if we ignore the problem of crime by simply using larger locks for our own doors, what consequence would result?

The consequence would be: more peace of mind, less crime. Doh!

Disclaimer: this pointless exercise in futility is not actually aimed at anything that resembles a somewhat coherent goal.

—

and we have a contradicton according to our assumptions and the factor theorem

  • Well yeah.. by Kwil, 03/26/2004 02:59:40 AM EST ( none / 1)

You mentioned deleting multiple accounts from the same trolls trying to get back in. Can't your software be set up to reject new accounts by IP or IP range? If yes, that's your solution. If no, start rewriting. If you're writing the solution, I suggest making an IP range block default to temporary, since chances are, you are trying to get rid of one idiot.

The "sponsorship" idea is a bad one. If I'm new somewhere and want to contribute information to a thread, there is a very definite limit to the number of hoops I'm going to jump through to make it possible before I say "fuck it, maybe I can find an editor willing to buy this turned into an article" instead. Anyone with anything worthwhile to contribute is likely to feel the same way.

Making "sponsors" responsible for their "sponsored" people's behavior? This isn't realistically possible and I think you know this. Implement this and K5 will stagnate within a few weeks.

The other obvious point is that how can anybody tell if somebody's posts are worth reading unless she is allowed to make some?

II, III, and IV are worth keeping.

However, you're emphasisizing structure over common sense. Your userbase can either trust your judgement based on results or go elsewhere. A web forum is no more "a government of laws, not of men" than a BBS was back in the old days.

I think the majority of us agree that in order to keep discussions going, the price is that occasionally, some idiot who is deliberately and consciously trying to disrupt it (as opposed to simply having a controversial opinion outside the consensus) or harass the sysadmins is going to get whacked.

All you need to be able to is the ability to whack a user and make sure he stays whacked.

People who can't accept this can download your blog forum software, get blog forum software from someplace else, roll their own, and try it themselves... and find out for themselves why weeding a userbase has to be done once in a while.

"The horse is dead. Fuck it or walk away, but stop beating it." Juan Rico

  • Already exists by TheophileEscargot, 03/25/2004 06:21:24 PM EST ( 3.00 / 6)

    • Proxies by greenrd, 03/25/2004 10:51:58 PM EST ( none / 3)

      • IP blocking by Mitheral, 03/26/2004 02:33:35 PM EST ( none / 1)

  • Dynamic IP? by irrevenant, 03/27/2004 07:10:53 AM EST ( none / 0)

I won't go into great detail as to how much I've suffered due to trolling, nor remind anyone why trolling is the number one threat facing decent folks everywhere.

I'll just say that any effort to increase the exclusivity of a site is a step in the right direction. I've always been deeply disturbed by the riff raff polluting the Internet population, and the only solution is processes like Sponsorship that keep them out.

I do think warnings are vital -- for the sponsor. There is no way I will ever sponsor anyone if it means I have to babysit them for the rest of my life. If someone I'm sponsoring is about to get booted, I want the chance to revoke my sponsorship before I get burned.

Obviously, it wouldn't bother me at all if I never sponsored anyone. The fewer the better.

Adequacy.org

combine a couple methods ( 3.00 / 7) ( #483)

by j0s)( on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 06:30:12 PM EST

Sponorship is a good idea. It, however, will not work when we have something like the Madrid bombings occur. Or when we had the posts from Iraq. How will people be able to come to this site, and add in their 2 cents?

I think the best idea is to have multiple methods to becoming a full user. Possibilities include --

  • have an admin or "trusted user" (you can bring those back for this sole purpose) vouch for the person and they get in automatically.
  • give them a limited account, such as, only posting comments and stories, until they get enough positive feedback. like a stories queue for new accounts
  • pay to get instant access, non-refundable, so if youre tossed, your out $10 too

I don't agree with censorship, but with the issues raised in section one, I can't help but agree that it is at rusty's discretion, he is the master of this domain.

I think the best possiblity for this, so we can still encourage growth, but growth of discussion that is meaningful, is to put restrictions on new accounts. Banning the sponsor though, thats not so good an idea. Sometimes I don't check this site for a few days, does that mean I should get tossed because I was out of town, or becuase I didn't un-sponsor quickly enough? maybe a three strikes your out, three bad sponsors, your tossed too.

I think it is important that we still allow new users the ability to post right away. That way people who just stop in, or who are refferred becuase of a particular conversation, can immediately join in. There is a comment about making new users comments stand out. a special icon, or a different color text. once the user makes it through probation, the icons and text revert back to normal. The first time we have an internatinal incident and people have to try and find someone to sponsor them in order to add to a discussion, well realize how bad an idea straight sponsorship is.

Giving a new user the choice seems the best. they can choose to ask a friend who refferred them to sponsor them, they can pay a fee and be done with it to get full access with the knowledge it can be revoked, or they can have limited access until the community deems that they are a benefit and be given full status for free. I think well see similar numbers in account creations, but well see the signal to noise ratio increase as we police ourselves. and for god sakes, a sponsor should have the more than one chance. if they made it past the threshold of meaningful participation needed to become able to sponsor, theyve obviously contributed meaningfully and deserve to have at least a second chance to keep their account alive if one of their sponsorees goes crazy.

-- j0sh -- of course im over-dramatizing my statements, but thats how its done here, sensationalism, otherwise you wouldnt read it.

  • EDIT by j0s)(, 03/25/2004 06:34:05 PM EST ( none / 2)
  • in addition by j0s)(, 03/26/2004 03:25:11 PM EST ( 3.00 / 4)

I posted the basic idea I have earlier (comment #178) and promised a more coherent version after work.  It's after work. I know alot of what I am going to express here has already been brought up, but I feel like fleshing out my idea anyway.

I like the idea of more accountability, however a blind sponsorship system seems rather simple.  As I would be held accountable for anyone I sponsor I would be very leary of sponsoring anyone.  Even with the ability to drop sponsorhip, I would fear a string of bad luck may be possible.  For instance, I sponsor random troll 1, and drop his sponsorhip after he misbehaves.  Then I gamble again and sponsor random troll 2, with similar results.  If random troll 3 becomes my sponsee, it would seem there is a pattern forming.  Either I would stop sponsoring anyone, or it may seem that I am in fact the troll, just keeping an account that appears to be responsible.  In fact I see this as a potential major abuse of the sponsor system.  A troll, or a person with trollish tendancies, could abuse the system of dropping sponsorship, just the way extra accounts are used today.

Another concern with this system: a person could sponsor a very insightful, well written poster, whose politics disagree with the sponsor.  The sponsor could drop the sponsee for these matters, leaving a good contributor without a voice.  The problem with both of the above scenarios being there are still methods of abuse that aren't that difficult.

I propose a system of probationary membership.  A propationary member may contribute to the discussion, and post diaries, comments, etc.  However, the only people who would be able to see the probationary members' comments would be those who are eligable sponsors (and this could even be optional).  The propabionary account would also lack voting and moderation abilities. (However they could comment in the edit and voting queues).  Then those who are able to provide sponsorhip could pick the accounts they want as full benefitted accounts, possibly with the rules Rusty proposes, or some tweak of them.

I also wouldn't mind seeing Y be able to graduate from being X's sponsee to just being Y. (The "green card" idea posted many times below).  Also this would not be hard to moderate.

The result of this as I see it: probationary accounts could be bonged, whack-a-mole style, without worrying about the sponsor's reputation.  Also it makes the new people more active without trying to find a sponsor, a common and valid concern I've seen here a lot today.  Perhaps on the probationary user's web page, there could be a count of how long they have been so, and of course the links to thier comments.  This way someone could come along and check out the probationary members and sponsor someone who seems reasonable for such.

Perhaps there could be an time limit to finding a sponsor, or some other form of automated probationary account removal as well.

Anyway, that is my suggestion.  Rusty I hope you will consider this or something like it.

ignore their complaints, kill them

if they ps your wife's face on a porn image, kill their accounts, no explanation, no apologies, nothing of the sort needed

the vast quiet majority here appreciate your work

the outspoken minority of sociopaths seek only to make you an issue, as their psychology dictates that they can only think in terms of high school level popularity and cliques... they are children, they can't think in terms of the site, or the health of the site, only in terms of their own ego

they are children with crushed egos, and they inflate their malformed social selves by attacking your ego, by making you an issue when you aren't the issue, your site and your work isthe ireal issue, the vast moajority understand this, but the sociopathic monority don't understand that

they are perpetually socially malformed children, they can only think in terms of their own crushed egos, they are psychologically inept

it's a psychological problem of theirs, you do not need to understand them, you do not need to engage them, you do not need to mollify them... kuro5hin is not a site for treating the wounded egos of sociopaths, it's a good debate site, a good meta site, it's "technology and culture, from the trenches"

just delete their accounts, move on

the vast quiet majority are with you, and thank you for your work

I'm making a Low Budget HDV Filipino Horror Movie in NYC

Instead of adding to the 400+ comments saying "me too" in 500 words or more, I agree mostly with what BadDoggie said.

And rusty, I would just like to say thanks for all of the work you have put into the site over the years. The coding, maintainence, putting up with a lot of bullshit. This site, for all its faults and annoyances has made my life richer up to this point and I thank you for that.

Modern life, in EVERY ASPECT, is a cult of mediocrity.-trhurler

Announcement

When this change is rolled out I will give anyone my sponsorship, no questions asked.

Upon recieving a warning, I will withdraw my sponsorhip of the user in question.

All I ask in return is that if you decide to crapflood/troll/etc you do it Once and Once only so that my account isn't immediately endangered.

It's up to rusty to decide whether my blind trust in random strangers is so undesirable as to require the termination of my account.

I will post a procmail recipie and associated script for automating the sponsorship process, so my expenditure of effort is minimal. Others will then be free to follow in my footsteps if they so wish.

End Announcement

... be sponsored, and like Groucho Marx said, I'm not sure I want to belong to a club that would have me as a member. Especially because I happened to join in '02 instead of begging sponsorship in '04.

It's elitist, it's self-defeating and it puts the onus of saying who should be "worthy" of posting to K5 on the whims of those who are already here, instead of the inspiration the individuals themselves have when they see this site and decide they would like to say something here.

No well informed Spainards discussing M-11. No J.A. Joyce trolling the hell out of the blogging community. No Something Awful regs and nanau regs arguing about SPEWS. No out-of-a-clear-blue-sky stories by "nullos" that nonetheless got voted up because of their worth. No unique and different voices chiming in unexpectedly. Just the same old people and those they invite posting the same old opinions, ad nauseam.

All this to eliminate a few fuckheads, who can be eliminated by nuking accounts anyway.

Do we REALLY desire safety over liberty THIS MUCH??

Are we REALLY this thin-skinned?

Sure, page-widening and photoshopping Rusty's wife is going too far. And so are the rather repeated piss-poor excuses for trolling I've been seeing in this site.

But killing off future potential members is going too far.

If I was coming across this site 3 months from now, and couldn't join without asking people, "please, please, please, can I post here?", I wouldn't bother. And I'm really not sure why I SHOULD bother, just because I happened to get in before then.

I loathe mindless conformity and knee-jerk reaction and it's beginning to look like this is what this site is becoming. It made me sick to see all the "these TROLLS are ruining this site and here's what we should do" CRAPFLOODING I saw over the weekend here. That's right - CRAPFLOODING - I saw a lot more of that then I did abusive posts and it was as predictable and as meaningful as WWWWWWWetc.

Skynight's only half-right - true, you should be posting interesting things instead of whining. What he doesn't realize is that a lot of you don't have anything interesting to say.

This site was a hell of a lot better when people worried about what THEY were saying instead of what everybody else was saying.

Oh, well. Have fun.

On the Internet, anyone can accuse you of being a dog.

Perhaps you may allow diary authors to specify if they want to allow anyone to post.  For one thing, this may be a way to get in good people from outside the system.  If they post elsewhere in the same manner and offer an address, they may be verified by the diary author, who may take the risk in sponsorship.

This could be for subscribers.  Perhaps those who subscribe could get more powers to hide posts in their diaries?  To be fair, it might be implemented as all-or-nothing where if you hide one, all are hidden; this might guard against unfair selective deletion.

That might help make diaries into near-blogs; I don't know how much you wish to get into that.

This is the most fuckterrible idea I have seen yet.

The problem to me, seems to be that A, Too much shit you don't like gets posted to the site and B, said shit remains unhidden for all the un-logged in users to see. If you can fix B, then A stops becoming a problem (except for the stuff like the picture, illegal links etc.).

From this it's blatantly obvious that the problem can be solved through moderation. I've been saying for some time now, the problem isn't with the system, it is with the users. After the maynard rating fiasco, and the associated rating wipes, Hide the Hampster went from having 12 hidden comments to close to 100. If four or five "abusive" users can have this kind of effect, imagine what hundreds of kurobots rating would do?

Here's an idea - if you browse as a logged in user, let there be some percentage of comments viewed that have to be rated. Maybe 10% or so. If they don't rate this much, disable comment posting, and throw up a little message about supporting the community, etc. If users can't even find one in ten comments that they either agree or disagree with, they are probably reading the wrong site.

Extend this to the diaries as well. Put a rating box next to each diary, and if it has below a certain score after a certain number of votes, dump it, or make it visible to logged in users only.

Effectively halting the registration process is not going to do anything to encourage diversity of opinion on this site, which is what it desperately needs.

Making the moon less necessary since 1998.

  • Yeah! by melia, 03/25/2004 08:55:36 PM EST ( 3.00 / 8)

sponsorship vs. spontaneous participation ( 2.83 / 6) ( #528)

by fhotg on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 08:16:03 PM EST

The main drawback of the sponsorship model appears to be the exclusion of people who drop by first-time and are willing and able to contribute valuable content, i.e. the Spaniards at M-11.

I think this sucks and is a serious change in K5's character and mission.

However, if you are going to implement it Rusty, please consider to allow nullos to still post stories. This ability can hardly be abused, as any attempt to do so will be erased from the voting queue in a matter of hours.

On the other hand, someone who writes a story that gets posted can't be that bad, and this could be a second line of approval, next to sponsorship.


Gitarren f�r die M�dchen -- Champagner f�r die Jungs

- [Options](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=528#760) by Mitheral, 03/26/2004 04:15:47 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

**Well, rusty, if you can me find papi** ( [1.20 / 5](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/538?mode=alone;showrate=1#538)) ( [#538](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/538#538))

by [mami](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:8654) on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 08:32:04 PM EST

to sponsor mami, I am all for it ... :-)

- [goah, are you a humorless crowd, unbelievable (nt)](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=538#872) by mami, 03/27/2004 11:29:43 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

In the knowledge that rusty was an utter pansy and they could get away with _absolutely anything_ without fear of even the slightest repercussions, not even a ban (banned? heck! just threaten rusty personally and the chicken-shit will give you it back!), Kuro5hin would become the new trolltalk.

99% of all messages would be high-school children trash talking each other and posting gay sex stories with the names changed to the editors of this site.

_kur0shin.org -- it certainly is_

[Godwin's law \[...\] is impossible to violate except with an infinitely long thread that doesn't mention nazis.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2002/11/12/20311/594?cid=127)

- [Now: K5 is not a cess-pool. trolltalk is.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=542#705) by it certainly is, 03/26/2004 11:08:21 AM EST ( **none / 2**)

  - [Nope.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=705#729) by it certainly is, 03/26/2004 12:59:29 PM EST ( **none / 2**)

Consider this scenario:

- Alice sponsors Bill
- Alice sponsors Chuck
- Bill gets banned
- Alice gets banned

What happens to Chuck?

I think that a better policy might be to, if a user you've sponsored gets banned, prevent you from further sponsoring.

If you are so prevented, another user sponsoring you can restore your sponsor privileges. If you sponsor a second user that gets banned, the restriction returns and can only be removed by two more users sponsoring you. A third user that gets banned will require four additional users to sponsor you. If you've had _n_ users banned in your career, it would require 2^( _n_-1) sponsorships to restore your sponsoring privilege.

If at any point, out of _x_ users that you have sponsored, _x_/2 users have had sponsor priviliges revoked within the previous, say, 90 days, you will lose sponsorship privileges, with _x_ additional sponsorships (ie sponsorships from users who have never sponsored you before) required to restore sponsor privileges.

A page listing users requiring sponsorship (either because they're new or because they've lost sponsorship) would be a good idea, methinks.

This proposal should also allow sponsporships to be made effectively irrevocable, except on appeal to the admins.

- [Addendum](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=544#588) by leviramsey, 03/25/2004 11:21:57 PM EST ( **none / 1**)
- [On redeeming sponsorship](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=544#614) by yfaway, 03/26/2004 12:59:21 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

Now that I've thought about it some more, I like all but idea #1. Seems a bit too exclusive, a little too demanding on the current userbase, and bars the gates for people who might be genuinely interested. Plus I can think of ways that could be exploited, even if it'd mean sacrificing an account or two.

The thing that's always bugged me (and part of the reason I've never been willing to contribute) is that, if I contribute, my benefits include spell checking and a handful of largely meaningless features. Why not give paying customers more say? Give a certain amount of weight to users' ratings and voting based on contribution level. It may seem a bit too capitalist for some of the readers, but it's an idealized version of how the capitalist world works. Warn users that if they unduly abuse their influence that they'll be banned without a refund.

I could see weighting scores based on certain contribution levels. Suggestions, anyone?

\[ [random rambling](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://home.earthlink.net/~regeya) \| [kuro5hin diary](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/regeya/diary) \]

- [people will resist](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=548#833) by jettero, 03/27/2004 08:18:18 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

As a lot of people have pointed out already, the biggest problem with this is how to help new users find sponsors; without a "voice" they can't really draw the attention of a sponsor. While it's possible, I suppose, that a potential new user could get my email address from one of my comments or my user info, how many people actually put a valid email address up there?

- One possibility would be to provide some sort of system for new users to self-identify somewhere, maybe with something like the moderation queue. They can post there and users with sponsoring privileges can view the queue of potential new users and pick one to sponsor.
- Or new accounts could be granted commenting privileges, but have the comments start out hidden to everyone except accounts that can sponsor, with a "Sponsor This User" link down next to "Reply." Or this could really turn into MeFi and it could be a "\[this is good\]" link.
- Or let them comment, but only in one area of the site. Like, maybe, the diaries. And give diary authors control over comments in their own diaries. Since, in theory at least, regular diarists are people who are fairly committed to the site (this assumes that this scheme will also kill off the crapflooders who infest the diaries at the moment, and thus is perhaps too optimistic), it means higher possibility of exposure to someone who'll sponsor a new account.
- Or there could be something akin to the "private message" seen on other sites, where an orphan new account could contact an established user and start a dialogue that could eventually lead to sponsorship.

Or there are probably a bunch of other, better ways to do it, but I'm just tossing ideas out here.

Also, the "green card" idea is a good one and needs to be implemented somehow. I'd suggest that the criterion be something like a combination of comments posted, average of ratings received, and stories posted; the requirement for graduating an account from the sponsorship stage should require proof that the user is interested in sticking around and being a contributing member of the site. Perhaps at first (or even always) this could be a manual decision by the admins and not a software-enforced one.

Aside from those two concerns, I like the sponsorship idea. It doesn't completely choke off the influx of new users but does throttle it significantly, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. It ensures that participation here requires at least enough commitment to find someone who'll sponsor you, which hopefully means you won't squander the privileges on crapflooding; the new users we get will be fewer in number, but better in quality. Signal/noise improves. All are happy. And if nothing else, it's a solution for the Whack-a-Mole problem, which seems to have gotten pretty significant.

I also think there should be much more copious documentation available, especially for new users and especially with a system like this in place (the current FAQ just doesn't cut it), but that's another story. Give me a little while to get my ducks in a row and I'd be more than willing to help write up some better docs.

--

_You cooin' with my bird?_

This spells the end of any creative thinking on kuro5hin. Membership will dwindle as the site becomes less diverse. Rusty, I implore you to keep the site the way it was.
People complain about problems here, but I never really noticed anything. The "crapflooding" I see in the diary section is usually more entertaining, as well as enlightening, than many of the posts I see elsewhere on the site. Rarely do I see anything truly abusive, such as the picture of your wife. It's easy to just delete that crap and move on, instead of implementing some drastic change that will absolutely wreck the site.

If this cult-like system is implemented, Kuro5hin will be officially off in the weeds.

- [Er.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=551#597) by ubernostrum, 03/26/2004 12:01:54 AM EST ( **3.00 / 4**)

  - [Yes.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=597#628) by aphrael, 03/26/2004 02:45:15 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

I've been reading this site since, well, since pretty close to it's beginning.  I used to post far more frequently, but watching it slowly spiral aroudn the drain bugged me.  This is a drastic fix, but as they say, drastic times call for drastic measures.

Rusty, I think sponsorship is the right thing to do.  And hell, it's not like the Scoop code isn't open.  Someone who doesn't like it is perfectly free to start a site of his own for all the troll, crapflooders and other wastes of bandwidth.

You've got my support.

-jason

I'd be much more willing to support a dual registration system the wannabes and the insiders.

Everyone on the inside of the velvet rope can once a month vote on one topic per area (culture, tech, politics).

The voted topic gets displayed outside the velvet ropes where the wanna be's have 72 hours to write the best post on the topic.

Only insiders can vote on the previews


After 3 successive "best of shows" that UID gets allowed inside the velvet ropes and can't vote in anybody for 6 weeks. To many negatives or trolls in the 6 weeks dumps them back outside the velvet rope.

It would mean a lot of coding to build all the cases and clocks but its much more fair, develops a topic oriented discussion user population that stresses quality over crap.

What I fear is what is next is post or perish user K5 user accounts!

First Rusty Henchcode came for them, then they came for me!


**Rusty, just so you know. . .** ( [1.33 / 6](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/556?mode=alone;showrate=1#556)) ( [#556](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/556#556))

by [Pop Top](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:34822) on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 09:21:44 PM EST

After reading all the comments, I have decided three things:

(a) You are a genuis! Can I subscribe to your newsletter?

(b) What are your hourly rates? I want to start a website.

(c) I forget the 3rd one. . .

- [...profit? \[nt\]](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=556#605) by emmons, 03/26/2004 12:15:06 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [Uh, yeah. . .](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=605#678) by Pop Top, 03/26/2004 09:32:18 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

This kind of thing has to be expected in an open forum. And while the starry eyed optimists of the world will claim that the Next Great Algorythm That Will Make The Perfect Moderation System is just around the corner, I've heard that story over and over and I just don't believe it.

There's nothing that beats a good moderator with a big stick and a sense of purpose.

I also don't see sponsorships or warnings as making any real difference. The roaches will find new cracks to get in through. The only REAL effect will be to alienate and drive away the current base. If the fix doesn't fix anything, have a beer instead.

So, personally, I say NO to sponsorships, and NO to warnings except at the moderator's (that would be you, rusty) discretion.

You wanna make changes? Hire or recruit a few hired goons to moderate in your stead.

But I'm always in favor of improved guidelines, being a spec lawyer at heart :-)



// Worst. Comment. Ever.

- [Guidelines, shmidelines](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=557#571) by greenrd, 03/25/2004 10:16:56 PM EST ( **2.75 / 4**)

**trusted user status through sponsorship** ( [2.75 / 4](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/558?mode=alone;showrate=1#558)) ( [#558](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/558#558))

by [mami](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:8654) on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 09:36:14 PM EST

[speek's](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/251#251) idea is pretty good.

Add the right of a diary author to decide, who is allowed to post in his diary space or the right to decide who can get illiminated from posting in this diary space. Let the author create a list of people who are invited to comment and lock all other's out.

Make it possible to bring a story back up to read for someone, who finds an interesting comment to an article that was voted down. I search comments by posters sometimes, most of the time those comments make me curious about the original article posted and then I hit the wall: "Sorry, I can't find this article" or whatever it says. Very annoying.

- [moderating diary comments](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=558#627) by Mindcrym, 03/26/2004 02:41:47 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

  - [I agree (nt)](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=627#655) by mami, 03/26/2004 06:54:27 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

You implement the sponsorship. You add the suggestion of the greencard upon a newbie graduation as a full member, whatever.

The real issue is not people who are here getting kicked out. It's about new people trying to get in. Are most internet users going to bother waiting for someone to sponsor them before being able to post a single comment?

I doubt it. I was a lurker here before I started posting, and I never bothered to sign up for an account. Then, I read some comments and really wanted to post replies. Created an account and I was in there. Topical, and most importantly, _timely_.

That initial fire to get those first few posts is something that has to be used FOR the site, not against it. If we don't allow people to post immediately, they'll lose interest, and lose interest fast.

I'm a member of k5 and HuSi, but I couldn't bother to come back and post more than one comment on DailyKos, because they didn't let me post when I wanted to — right when I signed up. (Granted, that certainly hasn't killed that site at all, but really... they talk about the same thing _every goddamn day_.)

So if you're going to invoke this, and it looks like you will, we need to keep those inital posts. I think that new users should get maybe five posts a day until they are sponsored, and _one diary_ that gets put into a separate diary section — Resumes or Applications or something. This section could be like the Roll Call diaries that we have popping up here from time to time, a chance to describe yourself, and maybe convince someone to sponsor you. In the meantime, you'll have a few chances a day to build a rep on the site, without being allowed to crapflood to any worthwhile extent.

OK, that's all from me, I just needed to let that out. Thanks Rusty.

\- m13b

- [I think you misunderstand](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=560#568) by greenrd, 03/25/2004 10:11:16 PM EST ( **2.60 / 5**)

  - [I really hope you're the one who's wrong,](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=568#580) by misfit13b, 03/25/2004 10:34:21 PM EST ( **3.00 / 8**)
  - ["Social Networking"](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=568#731) by duffbeer703, 03/26/2004 01:05:18 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

Rusty, hopefully you're still checking the new comments here. The sponsorship idea is unworkable and unsustainable for any period of time. Just look at the game theory involved here: why would any trusted user who liked the site ever risk sponsoring someone interesting who might get banned? Why would any new person try to even enter the community.

My proposal would be to leverage the community and the story queues in a new way:

0) Grandfather in existing users with full rights through whatever method you deem suitable--number of posts, number of story submissions, longevity, etc.

1) Allow anyone to create an account as before, but assign new accounts a default permission that only allows them to post stories, and comments to their own story thread.

2) Once the new account has posted an acceptable story (or two) that makes it through the queue, they have presumably added value to the site and become worthy of a probationary period. Then grant them the ability to rate comments.

3) After reaching a certain combination of successful story submissions + comment ratings + time or visits, they are then granted the permission for general comment posting and story voting ability.

4) Any outright violation of terms of conduct (e.g., posting Photoshopped Rusty Wife pr0n, etc.) can warrant administrative dismissal immediately. Since now the only place that the jerks can post is in the newbie story queue, the community can take care of most violations within a matter of hours, if not minutes.

5) Run of the mill trolldom could result in members (through a reporting mechanism) or Rusty initiating a "vote of no confidence" for the member, in which case we subject them to a gladiator-style referendum using the story queue mechanism. Present the electronic evidence of their comments and story submissions, their purported violation, and let the community decide by voting yes/no/abstain. It'll take awhile to try to find the right dump threshold. I'd set them so it is easy to dump people who are obviously adding no value, but giving the benefit of the doubt to people who are in the middle. This process will take some work to find a good balance.

Bottom line, Rusty: you've got all the mechanisms in place and a pretty good story queue procedure that could be adapted to let the community control things without killing the openness of k5. Let the community manage it.

The story posting requirement will cut down on attracting new users, but not as much as sponsorship will. You have the added benefit of people providing new content to get in, and once they're in, the community has blessed them. Trolls can still work the system, but for every ban, they have to contribute one or two worthy stories to get back in.

- [some good ideas](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=561#624) by Mindcrym, 03/26/2004 02:28:31 AM EST ( **none / 2**)

  - [Hear Hear](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=624#913) by hershmire, 03/30/2004 02:35:12 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

- [The bar is too high.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=561#664) by mr strange, 03/26/2004 08:18:31 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

  - [Comments](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=664#666) by GenerationY, 03/26/2004 08:28:15 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

Will there be limits to the number of people a given user can sponsor/be sponsored by? As an example, I could invite a group of my friends into K5 and sponsor them all. After they've made their 60 days and 40 >0-rated comments, we could all co-sponsor each other, making the sponsorship ties of everyone inherently stronger. Further, if I were to leave the group for whatever reason (like I got sick of K5, had a falling out, etc.), their "sponsorer" status wouldn't catastrophically collapse.

Just my $0.02.

--

Website Developer. Network Technician. Software Designer. Freelance Geek.

"Is it dead?" "I can't believe that just fuckin' happened! Oh my God!" - Rocco and Murph, _The Boondock Saints_

- [Sponsorship will have a throttle](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=562#626) by aphrael, 03/26/2004 02:40:29 AM EST ( **none / 2**)

  - [Multisponsorship](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=626#636) by jargonCCNA, 03/26/2004 03:50:09 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

I basically like the idea (though it has the problem of creating an impossibly high bar for people that do not know anyone already using the site).

But, given that this scheme will be rolled out, I have a suggestion for a tweak: Use two warnings, not one. This is for the benefit of the sponsor, more than anything else.

Alice sponsors Bob

One warning:

- Bob writes stupid comment, Alice and Bob gets the warning email.

- Alice talks sternly to Bob.

- Bob, however, is irredeemably a posterior orifice online (something Alice never fully realized about him), and so posts another stupid comment.


Result: Alice and Bob are kicked out.

Two warnings:

- Bob writes comment on left-handed people. Warnings ensue.

- Alice gives Bob a piece of her mind (and a nasty one, too).

- Bob persists in his harassment of left-handed people.

- Second warning is posted. Alice realizes he does not heed her admonitions, so she cuts her losses and removes her sponsorship.


Result: Bob is up the proverbial creek, while Alice could give her acquaintance a chance without risking her own account.

\-\-\-

Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.

- [another tweak](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=567#736) by danharan, 03/26/2004 01:39:09 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

How about anyone can make accounts, but in order to have the priveledges to post comments to a story you first have to get a story posted yourself. That should get rid of the non participating crap flooders pretty fast, as well as seriously boosting the site participation. Also, a way to delete crap-flooding diaries would be nice.

- [The crap flood](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=569#734) by danharan, 03/26/2004 01:33:33 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

I have been going to this site for practically two years, and have noticed how horrible it has gotten in regards to trolls. The content also suffered since these people do not allow quality stories to be modded up.

This was an extreme but neccesary precaution in my opinion. It puts control back in rusty's hands and might be the thing that saves this site from being destroyed by its own users.

As an extra note, I do think there needs to be a process to get new users into the site. That allows for some with nobody connected to this site. I for one found this place since it came by default in my old news panel applet.

I have wondered the world, and searched for the answer to it all. And then I discovered I never physically left, just my mind.

- [Absolute bollocks](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=573#647) by nebbish, 03/26/2004 05:42:05 AM EST ( **2.50 / 4**)

The two major approaches to discouraging abuse are to deny benefit and to punish. I personally don't think the possibilities of the former have been exhausted. But then exactly what benefit a troll receives from his or her work isn't something I understand very well. In any case...

The "ultimate punishment" that an admin of K5 can give out, assuming someone hasn't done something illegal enough to get law enforcement involved, is a lifetime ban (that would be the lifetime of the nickname).

Obviously that's pretty ineffectual if a troll can sign up for another account with little or no effort, expense, or time involved. The obvious conclusion is that accounts need to be made expensive, time consuming, or difficult to acquire.

The catch that many people have pointed out is that if accounts are difficult, time-consuming, or expensive to acquire, new users won't go to the trouble of signing up for the minimal reward of being able to contribute. In fact the reward for making a valuable contribution (under the most recent system) was exactly the same as for trolling, namely a bit of a boost to the ego.

On the other hand, the time-consuming bit enforces some mandatory lurking, while also having a second-order deterrent effect on trolls (the first order effect being that it makes accounts less disposable). I don't think the difficulty/hassle of finding a sponsor is an especially good tradeoff between encouraging new users and discouraging trolls, but I don't necessarily have any better ideas that don't smack of discrimination against the poor. Which brings me to...

I think you should be able to buy your way into a full membership. Spending $20 for an account makes it valuable enough to most people that they won't abuse it. I'd also suggest against allowing this account to be able to sponsor other users until it itself has been sponsored. Wealthy repeat offenders will simply be contributing to the Monoc^H^H^H^H^H CMF's war chest.

I can't remember the last time I posted a comment. But that doesn't mean I've left.

And the same goes for the rest. Most people haven't left, I would imagine, but rather become lurkers tryin to spot out any intelligent discussion amongst the copious noise and trolls that infest this place.

(Note: Looking at my "My Comments" page, there is no comments there, so I guess its been a LONG time since I last posted.)

- [You've been archived.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=587#710) by ti dave, 03/26/2004 11:27:29 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

  - [Sig Silliness](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=710#845) by gravenimage, 03/27/2004 01:12:40 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

    - [Don't bother...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=845#847) by gravenimage, 03/27/2004 02:04:12 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

- [Flawed logic](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=587#733) by danharan, 03/26/2004 01:29:42 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

**I strongly disagree with the system as proposed** ( [2.83 / 6](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/590?mode=alone;showrate=1#590)) ( [#590](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/590#590))

by [jrincayc](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:23878) on Thu Mar 25, 2004 at 11:40:06 PM EST

The punishment for sponsoring a user is too great. I was going to say that there was one user of K5 that I might consider sponsoring, but then I remembered this [post](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/2/25/101848/859/80?mode=alone;showrate=1#80) that might be considered disrespectful of a user. In light of that, I don't think there is a single person I would seriously consider sponsoring (including myself, if I was not already part of the site).

I see this as something that will cause kuro5hin to die a slow death as the number of new users decreases.

A big problem with this is that the users who are requesting sponsorship are most likely to be trolls. This is first of all because if you never get kicked out of kuro5hin, then you will only need to be sponsored once, but if you get kicked out of kuro5hin, you will probably try to get in more than once. Therefore, even if there are an equal number of valuable contributers and trolls, the trolls will try to get sponsored twice as much or more than the non-troll users. Second of all, sponsorship gives a whole new way to be an annoying troll. Don't like a user who is trusting enough to sponsor new people? Then just create a new fake account, get sponsored by them, and then get yourself kicked. Instant kick for the user who sponsored you at no risk to your real k5 account. Enough times like this of people gaming the system, and then existing users will not want to sponsor anyone. Thus, the slow spiral of k5's death begins.

In short, if your goal is to kill k5, I think this is a unique and creative way to do it. If you want k5 to continue to be an interesting discussion site, I think this _cure_ is worse than the disease.

This'll teach me to click on that link that says "There is New Site News". I found out about it on Me Fi, for cripes sake.

I have been staying away from K5 for a while; got tired of the poor behavior of a few that turned into not so few. Not that I am particularly verbose; I generally don't post much and comment only when I feel I might have something of particular value to say.

This medium is always going to have some problems, I guess, since it's so easy to take a potshot at someone or something. I also believe it might be a sign of the times, since politics and social issues in the US and much of the world has driven a wedge between even friends. It's hard to talk with people who disagree with one another under the best of circumstances, and the amped up rhetoric I've seen sometimes could be fueling some out of bounds behavior.   Time for some rules and enforcement of same.

Thanks Rusty!

You were born with Pandora's box in your lap... what are you going to do with it?

**New mod system...** ( [2.14 / 7](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/613?mode=alone;showrate=1#613)) ( [#613](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/613#613))

by [edmo](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:54264) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 12:56:17 AM EST

I may be new here, but I think I understand the problem. As the community gets bigger the signal to noise ratio goes down as trolls decide that it's fun to play here. In my opinion all the sponsorship plan will do is make this a kind of elitist community that slowly shrinks either from fear of getting kicked for sponsoring a new user, and/or from current users getting kicked for sponsoring someone who turns out not to be what they appear...

My suggestion would be instead to instal a karma/mod system something like slashdot.org. Basically all new accounts would start at a karma of 1. This would give them the rite to post and 1 mod point per day. Karma would move up or down according to the ratings people receive on their posts and stories(obviously stories should be worth more). Karma should be hard to get, around 1 point for every 20-30 positive comments. As users gain karma their post would start out with a better rating, say n where 2^n=karma. Better rated posts could be filtered to the top of the discussion and/or posts below 0 could be automatically deleted. If a users karma goes down below 0 they get temporarily banned from posting. After that time it would be brought back up to 0. If a users karma dipped below 0 three times with out passing 1 then there account would be banned.

Obviously there are a few rough spots, but I think it's going in the right direction.

- [Great idea!](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=613#768) by RandomLiegh, 03/26/2004 06:04:08 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

- [because people would abuse it. \[nt\]](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=618#662) by tiamat, 03/26/2004 08:06:48 AM EST ( **none / 0**)
- [apparently you're unfamiliar with the kabal](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=618#925) by thelizman, 03/31/2004 10:28:40 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

I'm not convinced you're solving the problem that got you pissed off.
I understand your current frustration and anger about this, but ask yourself: will any of those measures stop those same things from happening in the future?
Let's count them:

1) photoshop. Nobody can block somebody from posting anything they like somewhere on the net. If some asshole wants to post fake pictures of your wife, you can't stop them. They can even try google bombing the hosting site. None of the proposed actions here can change this. With Google bombs, you can try to contact Google under DMCA provisions (you have copyright over the picture, even if it's a heavily modified picture, so you can demand removal).

2) server breakin. This is a hacking problem which all big sites on the net have. Maybe the trolls here are responsible, but nothing you can do on k5 can stop them from hacking into k5 again. You've got to protect it as best you can, and if you can catch them you can prosecute them.

3) page wideners etc. This is the only class of problems you can deal with by instituting new user controls. But you don't need the full power of your new rules for that. here's a simple rule: anybody who posts page widening code is immediately banned for life. Sure that's just one rule, what about other types of crapfloods? I don't have a general answer. I have an unfinished [thought](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/607#607) to offer, but that's it.

Overall, I'm skeptical that the new rules address the issues which made your blood curl. If they do, it's fairly indirect. I'm not sure what I think of them yet, but there have been some good objections.

The site is in great shape. It has never been better, funnier, and more informative on a variety of topics. The ecology is much richer today than in the past, when, let's be frank, it was mainly a treadmill for uncreative and aggressive pseudo-intellectual blowhards like trhurler and eLuddite.

I think you are overreacting. The way you've taken the community personally, as if you owned it or felt responsible for everything that didn't conform to your prosaic standards of acceptable speech, is not only whack, it is responsible for the adversarial environment that you're constantly escalating with lame administrative and technical "correctives." The rating fixes begat user sponsorship, which will beget measures that are even more draconian six months from now. Why you fight? The trolls will find an even more destructive way to game the system. Trolls are pit bulls. They have an inbred desire to fight and never quit. Dogmen push pit bulls to the limit, close to death. Fights can last for hours. Dogs are separated then released to prove they want to continue fighting despite their broken bones, torn muscles, dehydration, blindness and severe blood loss. They will fight until they win or die. Do you know what breeders call this canine virtue? Gameness.

So I would suggest to you the problem with K5 is Rusty. Fix Rusty. Ice Rusty and create a new account, one that has no connection to you in real life, and CHILL OUT. Because you're not a pit bull, Rusty. I would say that you're a Labrador Retriever. You just don't have the \`game' in you. In a fight against a pit bull, you are likely to quit or be killed before the pit thinks of stopping. Only it isn't you that will die - and anyway who cares about you -- it's the site.

Stop the war. Stop this madness. Give up.

--

Stop dreaming and finish your spaghetti.

- [+200 FP](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=625#643) by Michael Moore, 03/26/2004 04:48:05 AM EST ( **none / 1**)
- [Not sure about getting rid of rusty](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=625#649) by nebbish, 03/26/2004 05:46:47 AM EST ( **none / 0**)
- [K5 is the new Adequacy (no text)](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=625#656) by Phssthpok, 03/26/2004 07:14:11 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

What reward or benefit does anyone get from sponsoring a new user? Under this system, I would be reluctant to sponsor anyone, ever -- I'm held accountable for their actions, yet I gain nothing. It's a burden with no reward. Safer to just stay out of it altogether.

- [You gain new vassals!](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=632#709) by ti dave, 03/26/2004 11:25:57 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

  - [Can I set them to aquiring resources for me?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=709#762) by cburke, 03/26/2004 04:52:02 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

- [I'm never going to sponsor anyone.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=632#831) by bigchris, 03/27/2004 07:53:24 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

I doubt people will sponsor with this system, and think K5 will be the worse for it. If rusty is set on sponsorship and no killfiles, I suggest the following system:

Unsponsored users can post "special" comments. These are title only, click to read. If these do not get at least 1 3 in the first 20 reads, they become hidden.

Users can post comments regularly if they are sponsored.

There is a limit of 80 comments and 800 ratings per day per user.

Users can submit stories and rate if they have a sponsorship available.

Sponsored users get one sponsorship per 40 positive rated comments.

Users who have had a story posted can submit stories and rate when they can't sponsor.

If a user is banned, users sponsored by the person become unsponsored, and everyone else further down loses available sponsorship(s) if they have them until they get another 40 positively rated comments.

cheers

\*

\[kur0(or)5hin http://www.kuro5hin.org/intelligence\] - drowning your sorrows in intellectualism

- [You have useful ideas here](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=634#679) by RaveWar, 03/26/2004 09:32:51 AM EST ( **none / 1**)
- [Addendum/Revision/Clarification](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=634#767) by bjlhct, 03/26/2004 05:59:16 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

**the affects of anonymity on online communities** ( [2.57 / 7](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/635?mode=alone;showrate=1#635)) ( [#635](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/635#635))

by [Mindcrym](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:15946) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 03:42:13 AM EST

Rusty,

I think, as many before me have already stated, adding sponshorships to K5 is going to kill the growth of the site, rather than "manage" it.  There are a lot of good ideas that people have had in regards to modifying the ratings system, banning users, etc.  I suggest you listen to what people have to say before you hastily implement sponsorships.

The other day a friend and I were discussing the fact that the trolling phenomenon happens far more often on web forums than it does on mailing lists.  One difference between the two is that typically mailing lists reveal a person's identity while web forums allow varying degrees of anonymity.  Its this anonymity that leads some people to act like [fuckwads](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2004-03-19&res=l).

A couple of ideas have already proposed capitalistic solutions, so I'll add one of my own.

**Sell anonymity.**

Still allow new users to post as soon as they sign up, but only allow them to use the email address and name they used when they created their account.  If a user wanted to buy a username they can do so for the subscription fee.

This does three things.  First, obviously, it raises money for K5.  Secondly it makes the mission of acquiring many troll accounts prohibitively expensive.  Thirdly it would flag accounts as being from the same person if the financial information (CC or Paypal account) were common between them.

While selling anonymity may sound like a drastic measure, I don't think it would be as harmful to K5 as sponsorships would be.

  -Mindcrym

- [Nah, fake names, free email is easy](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=635#645) by jongleur, 03/26/2004 05:37:54 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

  - [in practice though...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=645#761) by Mindcrym, 03/26/2004 04:22:37 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

    - [No these guys are in it seriously](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=761#766) by jongleur, 03/26/2004 05:43:01 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

      - [you may have a point but...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=766#774) by Mindcrym, 03/26/2004 06:34:17 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

    - [I don't troll and I have extra email addresses...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=761#829) by irrevenant, 03/27/2004 06:55:23 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

**Back in the day** ( [3.00 / 4](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/637?mode=alone;showrate=1#637)) ( [#637](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/637#637))

by [niku](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:12442) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 03:51:19 AM EST

This used to happen on BBSs. Not many solutions came up that fixed the problem. I had experience with a similar system, which led to the annoying people having one regular account and then using that to sponsor fake secondary accounts. The one system that I did see that worked was making people pay for the privledge. Not a lot, like $1.00 to join. Hell, it could be $0.25, but they have to provide a credit card, or paypal account. Some users, specifically ones who are under age, this will not work for. As for that, I don't know.


--

Nicholas Bernstein, Technologist, artist, etc.

[http://nicholasbernstein.com](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://nicholasbernstein.com/)

- [I used to be a BBS sysop.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=637#1010) by haflinger, 05/14/2004 08:56:24 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

This is a good intention, but I don't see how it could actually be implemented.

Let's say I'm a new user. I lurk for about a month, and I like the site. Then, I see some comment that I'd really like to reply to. How can I do that ?

I need to apply for sponsorship, but how ? No one posts their email address here (unless they have unwavering faith in their spam filters, or unlimited bandwidth, or both). So, email is out. I can't ask for sponsorship in a comment, because, uh, I can't post comments. I could probably post something in my diary, but what are the odds someone will read it ?

Furthermore, let's say that I actually did manage to somehow contact a potential sponsor -- through telepathy, perhaps. What would make them want to sponsor me ? By vouching for me, they are putting their own position at risk, and they have no idea what kind of a person I am, because I haven't posted anything, because I can't. Sure, I could write a really polite telepathy-gram imploring them for sponsorship -- but how do they know I won't just turn around and crapflood everything in 500 mile radius ? They don't, and the risk is too high.

So, yeah, I think this sponsorship scheme is a disaster, because it's functionally equivalent to turning off the "new account" function altogether.

>\|<\*:=

- [isn't that your email address?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=638#661) by tiamat, 03/26/2004 08:04:34 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [Yeah](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=661#683) by bugmaster, 03/26/2004 09:47:34 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

So if I sponsor A, who six months later sponsors B, and so on, will I eventually get kicked when Y makes a bad decision and sponsors page widener troll Z?

Tim

"We are trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death."

**Basically think the idea is OK, but** ( [2.93 / 15](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/640?mode=alone;showrate=1#640)) ( [#640](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/640#640))

by [niku](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:12442) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 04:03:45 AM EST

... I don't know if it would work for users like me. I generally read the articles, post when I think I have some insight, but don't look at kuro5hin as a social place -- I haven't made friends through k5, I doubt many people here would recognise my username; I have no idea who would sponsor me, and I wouldn't sponsor anyone else. I'm guessing that there are a lot of users like myself, who contribute to the site, but don't get \*too\* involved. And, I don't really want to get into k5 that much, where I'd need to find other users to sponsor, and try to get people to vouch for me.

--

Nicholas Bernstein, Technologist, artist, etc.

[http://nicholasbernstein.com](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://nicholasbernstein.com/)

You mentioned that there is a problem with creating a chain of sponsored accounts and use the last one to go evil. You can partially track this by passing the buck to the sponsor of the sponsor too. In the days of the binary, the following system looks neat:

`
give 1024 minus points to the account getting banned(active acount).
Unset the sponsored flag on this account.
Repeat:
select the sponsor of the active account as active account.
half the minus amount
add this to the sponsor as minus.
unset the sponsored flag if >1024 minus.
until minus less equal zero
`

This would change your system a little to mean that a sponsor needs two bad sponsorships to get whipped. Another addition would be a way to atone for minus, although this would be hackable.

The obvious bug of this system is how does one get a sponsor ? Will a new site spring up where one asks people if they sponsor you for kuro5hin ?
I think its obvious that one needs an area in kuro5hin for sponsorship propositions, probably flat without replies so that it doesn't became the core of the site.

Finally, one good thing about this new system is that it is finally interesting to gain positive votes on your comments.

Moderation in moderation is a good thing.

I, like many other users, found Kuro5hin from a link somewhere (in the KDE ticker, I think). No way I could've ever got in if I had needed sponsorship. I think that applies to a huge number of users.

I say bring back trusted users and allow them to vote to ban naughty users. As well as "hide this comment" there should be "vote to ban this user". As long as there are more sensible trusted users than trolling cliques voting each other up like some sad circle jerk, such a system could keep down the number of idiots.

Perhaps to supplement such a system, you should allow new users to only post 1 or 2 comments a day, till their ratings go up. That would make it less worthwhile to register lots of accounts.

Wanna get really clever, run text analysis now and again over users' comments and compare new users to existing ones, which would identify the same users using different accounts.

- [re: "vote to ban this user"](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=642#708) by ti dave, 03/26/2004 11:23:41 AM EST ( **none / 2**)

  - [maybe...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=708#764) by werner, 03/26/2004 05:33:07 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

fantastic idea, rusty. i'm with u on this. fuckin brilliant! :)

\\_\\_\\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

"Apparently, all the assholes went nuts at the same time." - rusty

**Don't we get to vote on this first? \[nt\]** ( [2.00 / 4](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/660?mode=alone;showrate=1#660)) ( [#660](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/660#660))

by [Stick](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:14634) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 08:03:18 AM EST


\-\-\-

_Stick, thine posts bring light to mine eyes, tingles to my loins. Yea, each moment I sit, my monitor before me, waiting, yearning, needing your prose to make the moment complete._ \- Joh3n

- [well, there was a poll...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=660#676) by tiamat, 03/26/2004 09:27:20 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [I suppose...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=676#689) by Stick, 03/26/2004 10:07:24 AM EST ( **none / 2**)

**a complimentary idea** ( [1.50 / 4](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/663?mode=alone;showrate=1#663)) ( [#663](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/663#663))

by [speek](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:2731) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 08:17:57 AM EST

Hide all posts until they have passed the rating threshhold (currently 4 ratings) with a rating higher than 2.

--

al queda is kicking themsleves for not knowing about the levees

- [how to rate hidden posts, idiot? \[n/t\]](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=663#672) by TurboThy, 03/26/2004 09:11:26 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [indeed](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=672#682) by speek, 03/26/2004 09:46:00 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

    - [satire? on k5?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=682#688) by TurboThy, 03/26/2004 10:02:20 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

With this system in place, there's just no way I'm going to "sponsor" any new users. Kicking the "sponsor" should only happen if he repeatedly abuses his privileges.

Also, I think that a lot (if not most) of kuro5hin's users find their way here by some random link on the web, and not by recommendation from some other user, so for a new user, finding a sponsor can be hard.

I'm all in favour of reverting back to the old "nonprivileged" user system, or something similar, but these proposed measures are just too draconic.

**After deeper reflection, I ask whether** ( [2.77 / 9](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/680?mode=alone;showrate=1#680)) ( [#680](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/680#680))

by [Pop Top](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:34822) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 09:39:21 AM EST

Rusty can arrange a co-venture betwen Kuro5hin and [Quixtar](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/https://www.quixtar.com/010-en/vs/default.asp?surfer=USEN).

This whole sponsorship thing seems like an ideal platform for multi-level marketing.

Would you buy household goods from fellow K5 members, if you got a cut of the revenue earned from lower level members?

**Congratulations for balls** ( [2.40 / 5](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/686?mode=alone;showrate=1#686)) ( [#686](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/686#686))

by [theboz](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:10432) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 09:56:01 AM EST

You're showing balls, which is a good thing. I hope you manage to clean up the site.

I don't really like your system though, as it sounds like it adds difficulty for people to sign up and that it will kill the diversity of a site that doesn't have much already. I'd prefer something like a BBS callback system, but that is still adding a lot of administrative overhead. One thing most people have not suggested is placing collect calls as part of the callback system as to avoid paying, and to make the user pay a little bit to use K5. You could even make a subadmin group that are not administrators, but have the right to call people (usernames will not be attached to the phone numbers, only a "yes/no" field and a phone number.)

Stuff.

- [hahahahahaha](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=686#730) by Kax, 03/26/2004 01:02:04 PM EST ( **1.16 / 6**)

  - [Give me a break](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=730#814) by theboz, 03/27/2004 01:14:39 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

**Your site your call, but....** ( [1.50 / 6](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/692?mode=alone;showrate=1#692)) ( [#692](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/692#692))

by [stilch](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:44894) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 10:16:12 AM EST

One of the biggest flaws in k5 was the clichish control of the voting process, the trolls could at least be interesting or funny, if you extend even to the diaries, inho, you have gone too far.

It's your call, but you have proven me right about those "in crowd" theory I always had about k5.

I was too nice, you have had the gall to whine for money, and infest the site with advertising, now you turn it into a snob community. This is the first step towards k5's inevtiable demise.

"Conflict is an important social force among online communities, as it assists in the construction of hierarchies and social orders without the need for prior knowledge of individual participants or other forms of verification or trust in relation to the claimed identity of others."

- [Debate ok, conflict is different and not so OK](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=694#770) by elpapa, 03/26/2004 06:26:24 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

  - [whatever](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=770#849) by stilch, 03/27/2004 02:39:41 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

**I have thought about it more** ( [3.00 / 9](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/696?mode=alone;showrate=1#696)) ( [#696](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/696#696))

by [TheWake](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:31344) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 10:32:30 AM EST

And I like the idea of sponsorship even less. I think you should drop the idea (or at least put it on the back burner) and implement your other three ideas. Once they are working at a good place, some of the problems should clear up. If not then bring back the sponsorship idea for discussion.

The discussion here seems to be highly ploarized with regard to sponsorship. It is obscuring the three exelent ideas you have in the guideline clean up, the warning system and the feedback system. Put them in and enforce the guidelines very strictly.

- [Can this be added as a poll option pls?<nt>](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=696#700) by GenerationY, 03/26/2004 10:40:27 AM EST ( **none / 0**)
- [Sponsorship's the key to it](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=696#742) by minamikuni, 03/26/2004 02:12:26 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [How so?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=742#897) by TheWake, 03/29/2004 12:35:35 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

    - [Because](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=897#908) by minamikuni, 03/30/2004 07:59:14 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

      - [And sponsorship helps how?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=908#909) by TheWake, 03/30/2004 10:24:11 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

        - [There's almost no way back in](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=909#942) by minamikuni, 04/02/2004 07:05:09 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

It is now ~24 hours since this story was first posted. Since then, many valid and interesting points have been made, both for and against. It is clear that some ideas raised have been adopted, some are being considered, and some have been ignored (that's not meant as a perjorative; it's impossible to please everyone). As it stands, this thread has hit 700 comments in just a day; that's got to be up their with the most 'active' of them.

I know it'd be a major, major hassle, but it would it be possible (either as a top-level post in this thread, a reply to this comment, or as a new story or diary) to reiterate where these ideas currently stand?

Part of the problem, I think, is that people are both cheering on, and sniping at, something of a gymnastic target. This is just going to increase the noise and decrease the signal as issues are raised which have already been dealt with, and I think the majority aren't quite sure what the exact implementation is going to be, given the contributions made here. Those that are may just be mistaken. If nothing else, I'll put my hand up to being confused and would appreciate some clarification as to the current state of affairs.

--

' _My god...it's full of blogs._' \- [ktakki](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/1111608261_iOfSoDHA/11#11)

--

- [Look](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=698#711) by gumbo, 03/26/2004 11:32:10 AM EST ( **none / 3**)

  - [Damn!](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=711#715) by toulouse, 03/26/2004 11:43:39 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

    - [Yes](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=715#719) by gumbo, 03/26/2004 12:01:32 PM EST ( **none / 0**)
    - [Except maybe....](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=715#748) by Pyrrhonian, 03/26/2004 03:12:08 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

      - [As I understand it,](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=748#749) by toulouse, 03/26/2004 03:17:38 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

        - [Pants](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=749#819) by Pyrrhonian, 03/27/2004 04:20:58 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

- [Yes](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=698#844) by rusty, 03/27/2004 12:30:47 PM EST ( **none / 3**)

Damn you trust your wife way too much.

--

[efn](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://enterfornone.net/) 26/m/syd

Will sponsor new accounts for porn.

- [carefull, you'll get banned](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=699#702) by auraslip, 03/26/2004 10:47:54 AM EST ( **1.42 / 7**)

  - [oops](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=702#704) by enterfornone, 03/26/2004 10:55:13 AM EST ( **1.11 / 9**)

**Rusty, you're making this too difficult. Easy fix.** ( [2.14 / 7](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/713?mode=alone;showrate=1#713)) ( [#713](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/713#713))

by [fyngyrz](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:53792) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 11:38:12 AM EST

Make the site a paid site. After being here a few weeks, I'd be more than happy to throw some bucks your way for the quality time I've been enjoying. I joined the basic membership within the first few days after I found it - that's how fast the site's value was apparent to me.

So, charge a significant fee to be a posting-level community member. That'll cut the chaff right out of new membership, and every time some loony wants back in under another ID, they have to spend another XX dollars. Then kick flooders and other over-the-top users as they appear from a very high administrative level (in other words, not member-to-member.)

As a member-to-member mechanism, I suspect the sponsorship idea is just as prone to being abused as anything else that lets user A inflict their opinions upon user B in the form of retaliatory action. User A thinks abortion ought to be mandatory under age 30, User B thinks abortion clinic bombing is an idea method of social feedback... somebody's going to misuse the mechanism.

The only question is, how much is a "significant fee"? I'd be willing to pay $25 to $50 as a one-time join-to-posters-ranks fee. The higher you set it, the fewer fools (and other newbies of any kind, of course) you'll get. You might want to grandfather the current membership. That'll keep the site robust, and raise the bar at the same time. And buy a few pizzas. :)

My .02


[Graphics s/w](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.blackbeltsystems.com/windex.html)

- [Right...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=713#718) by WWWWolf, 03/26/2004 11:58:06 AM EST ( **2.50 / 4**)

  - [Paypal](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=718#726) by bugmaster, 03/26/2004 12:27:57 PM EST ( **none / 1**)
  - [I'm NOT for compulsory paid memberships but...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=718#828) by irrevenant, 03/27/2004 06:50:00 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

- [I disagree with this idea](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=713#769) by elpapa, 03/26/2004 06:16:06 PM EST ( **none / 0**)
- [You're not up on site history.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=713#776) by Estanislao Mart�nez, 03/26/2004 06:37:02 PM EST ( **2.80 / 5**)

  - [Eh?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=776#785) by fyngyrz, 03/26/2004 07:58:07 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

    - [Duh.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=785#792) by Estanislao Mart�nez, 03/26/2004 09:24:16 PM EST ( **2.50 / 6**)

      - [No.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=792#793) by fyngyrz, 03/26/2004 09:37:47 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

        - [lol](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=793#840) by Duke Machesne, 03/27/2004 11:43:46 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

Your main problem seems to be that the cost for a new identity is pretty low.

While sponsorship makes it difficult to create a new identity it requires knowing at least one current user good enough to make him willing to take the risk.

As an alternative you could use hashcash (HC) to make it more difficult to create a new identity/gain posting privileges

A new user has to calculate (small java applet?) a certain amount (\*) of HC to gain posting privileges. When his posting privileges get revoked he can get them back, but only when he calculates twice the amount of HC than last time.

Option: every user gets a "HC-account" and he can calculate as much HC as he wants (he stands to lose all the HC if he misbehaves, so a lot of HC indicates seriousnes). Every article shows how much HC the Author has in his account and his personal posting threshold (low threshold -> has never been banned).

(\*) adjusted up and down depending on troll activity

See [www.hashcash.org](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.hashcash.org/)

- [Hashcash](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=714#778) by dn, 03/26/2004 07:09:03 PM EST ( **3.00 / 4**)

  - [imagine a world](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=778#822) by khallow, 03/27/2004 05:23:12 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

First and foremost, drop the posts counting crap. Has never been and will never be useful. I don't think I have done 10 posts on this site but have been around long enough. Time is fine, post-counting is bad.

Sponsorship would have certainly kept me out. I don't know anyone on this site. Can you really trust someone you don't know to vouch for someone else whether they know them or not?

Third, scour the incoming posts and remove all bad html. And with links, make them easy to remove by having them redirect from the local site.

Lastly, allow people to see their posts but block them when they have been warned. Then someone can review them and decide whether they should be displayed. Hopefully, this can defuse any sort of hotheadedness by letting it play itself out.

**How a bout a waiting period + New user moderation** ( [2.75 / 4](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/738?mode=alone;showrate=1#738)) ( [#738](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/738#738))

by [niku](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:12442) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 01:54:59 PM EST

How about all new users have a one week waiting period where all of their comments get reviewed by a moderator or a random user. That would make it enough of a hassle that you could get rid of all of the sub accounts.

--

Nicholas Bernstein, Technologist, artist, etc.

[http://nicholasbernstein.com](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://nicholasbernstein.com/)

**problem with sponsorship, and ugly alternative** ( [2.00 / 4](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/746?mode=alone;showrate=1#746)) ( [#746](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/746#746))

by [urdine](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:38991) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 02:46:55 PM EST

The only problem with sponsorship is - what's in it for the sponsor?  It seems like they just put themselves at risk for someone with no real gain.  And how do you find a sponsor if you just found kuro5hin?  If your friend linked you, it's easy, but what if they don't have an account but you want one?

The real problem is accountability.  We need to find a way to make people accountable for their actions, which is one of the biggest problems on the Internet.  What there SHOULD be is some third-party site that lets site's verify user's by SSN - the verifying site never sees the SSN, but they know that the user entered a unique and valid SSN that matches to their name, and then these "multiple account" problems go away.

Since that's not a possibility, you could do some sort of credit card check on everyone, but that probably comes with expenses and is a bigger hassle than people would deal with.

The best I can think of that's easy and fair would be just to make a two week waiting period.  Most evil trolls wouldn't have the patience to wait two weeks before going off, and most wouldn't have the foresight to create accounts in advance.  Only premeditated attacks would get through, but I think most of the worst ones are spur of the moment ragefests that could be stopped by this...

I dunno, but this is a problem all over the Internet and hope someone solves it soon.

- [Ugh](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=746#779) by dn, 03/26/2004 07:11:20 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

In the internet world, how do we get to know others well enough? I might know that somebody with whom I argue on another message board (or IRC) under the moniker "TruthMonkey" might be a good candidate for K5, but how we transfer the anonymous authentication from one website to another, without an extensive PKI substrate?. Where is Clay Shirkey when we need him?

Growth would have to come from family/school/work/church contacts and from emailing lists (listervs). Possibly from usenet, toothing groups, conspiracies and identity theft. This leaves out all the shutins, unemployed, home workers, early adopters, and social misfits.

I would never have been able to join K5 if the sponsorship system were in effect, thereby rendering my life meaningless and void...


--

By reading this signature, you have agreed.

Copyright © 2003 OldCoder

**in addition - continuation of #483** ( [2.83 / 6](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/753?mode=alone;showrate=1#753)) ( [#753](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/753#753))

by [j0s)(](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:6558) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 03:46:48 PM EST

After further thought, I realized that when I joined this site, if these rules had been in place, I never would've returned. I joined, lurked for awhile, then started posting comments when I felt I had something of value to say. I will still go a couple weeks between posting anything if I feel that I don't have something worthwhile to contribute. There is no way in hell I wouldve jumped through the hoops of making friends for the sole purpose of being "initiated into the k5 frat". There is a reason I declined the invitation to pledge when I went to college. I'll make friends with those people that I enjoy talking to or have something in common with. I can't do that when I have to beg someone to let me in the club.

I do enjoy this site, I threw money at it when we had the pledge drive thingy, but I wouldn't feel comfortable asking random people to sponsor me, nor would I feel comfortable sponsoring someone unless I knew them from outside k5 to begin with. I still feel there should some sort of compromise. Multiple ways to join - 1. sponsorship, 2. paid, 3. post enough worthwhile comments and stories to earn your way in. Personally, I like #3 as the default with probationary users comments graphically differentiated. Make the threshold high, that is fine; make them post the needed amount within a time limit (but make it a "longer" limit), but sponsorship only is just going to stagnate the site. it will be whoever was lucky enough to get in before the sponsorship and hardly anyone new. that is not a growing progressive discussion site.

earning your way in is the easiest and most democratic way I can think of. It's just like the real world. the more, better quality contributions you make, the quicker you get in and earn more priviledges. seems like a perfect solution to me.

\-\- j0sh -- of course im over-dramatizing my statements, but thats how its done here, sensationalism, otherwise you wouldnt read it.

**Just in case you missed it Rusty** ( [2.55 / 9](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/758?mode=alone;showrate=1#758)) ( [#758](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/758#758))

by [godix](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:26945) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 04:04:58 PM EST

[Polling](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/3/25/154447/571) shows that out of 74 out of 88 people would not have joined this site under your sponsorship idea with another 6 people not sure. I don't know about you but I think K5 would be dramtically different, and not in a good way, if 83% to 89% of the users had never been here. Take a look at all the people who've posted in this article that they wouldn't join and ask yourself, are those the people causing the problems? Would K5 really be better if you had NIWS and others like him who've proven to be persistant enough that they'd probably jump through sponsorship hoops but didn't have all these others?

Thank god I'm [worth more](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/3/25/24351/9375) than SilentChris

- [Seriously](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=758#782) by Rahaan, 03/26/2004 07:40:04 PM EST ( **none / 2**)
- [Fair enough](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=758#837) by Duke Machesne, 03/27/2004 11:16:42 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [You're right, it isn't retroactive](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=837#850) by godix, 03/27/2004 03:48:51 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

**Club doesn't work, here is why and my idea** ( [2.20 / 5](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/765?mode=alone;showrate=1#765)) ( [#765](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/765#765))

by [elpapa](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:50800) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 05:41:27 PM EST

No one excluded sponsor system = bad idea

Why:

1)doesn't let new people enter quickly

a) fresh new people may introduce other ideas not seen before

b) one needs to evaluate different points of view, not necessarily always rational, well tought educated ones

2)promotes and relies on individual judgement (you're worthy, you're not worthy)

a) worth what ? The risk of having my access revoked

b) how much is my access worth ? For trolls, probably zero

3)escalates punishment without merit

a) punishment must go to the one who caused the trouble or broke the rule

b) one can't exactly foresee another person change of mind

c) the sponsor has no method to prvent "damage"/"offence" other then asking

the sponsored not to break the rules.

4)increases chances of being expelled

a) for each new member sponsored, the chances of being expelled because of new memeber errors increases for the sponsor.

Therefore I think such a system leads (in the long term) to the formation of a group of orthodox people (abiding to a set of rules) ; the problem is not with the formation of an orthodox group of people, but with the method used to form the group.

For instace, given a set of rules, I will evaluate a person behavior BEFORE he/she actually enters the group according to how much is he/she abiding the rules in other forums or according to my sensations.

If I'm right, I receive no reward for filtering people, other then enlarging the group.

If I'm wrong, I will be punished because others think I failed at filtering.

Given that I can't foresee some other people change of minds, I will not let anybody enter the group for fear of having my access revoked.

_**Mandatory** Peer-review system_ with anonymous discussion tiers = probably better system

Objective: demote coming to Kuro5hin to play the "point" games, yet save the point system

for measurability shake

That's my vision of how it should work

**1.0 Posting and Reviewing**

1. Joe user is a new member of KuroShin. He has posting rights and review obligations. He has some posting points to start.

2. Joe can post, if he reviews. If he doesn't review enough, he can't post (promote user help-2-filter)

3. The amount of post he must review is determined as follows:


a) comments without any review are picked from a couple of  topics, to maintain user concentration

b) the username is stripped away from the comment that must be reviewed. Signatures are banned.

Comments are randomly picked and the topic is randomly picked as well. This is done to DEMOTE trolls voting for each other

c) for each N comments reviewed, Joe gains K posting rights

d) depending on the amount of comments NOT yet reviewed, Joe received a batch of post (for instace 10) he must review in ONE session, if he wants to gain posting rights. Reviewing 9 out of 10 gives nothing he must review all of the batch. The batch size is dinamically calculated so that

I. the topic with the least number of comments reviewed is given review-priority over others.

II. the comments batch size is not greater then Z, where Z is a number that doesn't overload

user with reviewing duty, yet makes the user either review or give up commenting.

d) if there is no post to be reviewed, Joe is granted some free posting rights to keep the comments flowing.

**2.0 Discussion Tiers and Anonymity**

1. The Joe new user belongs to Tier 0 as any new user but he will never know exactly in which tiers he belongs.

2. Joe comments are reviewed and voted as follows:


a) Promote OR

b) Demote  OR

c) Troll (optional)

1. As Joe gains Promote points, he's moved to higher tiers of discussion. The more he's promoted , the more he advances. Joe can now choose to add his comments to tiers to which he belongs or lower tiers, but not higher.

2. As Joe gains Demote points, he's moved to lower tiers and can only hope that somebody will Promote him.

3. Joe must gain X points to be promoted and X to be demoted, where X is greater then a certain number of Promote or Demote votes. The number is never little (2-3 votes) so that he can't rely on friend to casually promote him. Consensus must be wide, yet it's not an elitarian consensus as everybody can promote or demote whoever he wants ; that is to say, high tier can't promote lower tiers  JUST because they're higher tiers  because the high tier user doesn't know at which tier is the user whose comment he's voting.

4. To demote the use of Promote of Demote as a funny kind of game, no user can only Demote or only Promote. For instace he could be forced to have either 80 promote and 20 demote, or 50/50 or lose promoting/demoting rights (therefore losing reviewing rights and by this way commenting rights). This is a nice kick in the ass to serial demote or serial promote kiddies.


I guess this system could work, what do you think ??


- [counter points](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=765#800) by kpaul, 03/26/2004 10:25:35 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [yup i think you got it right](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=800#810) by elpapa, 03/26/2004 11:38:54 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

I think that the link between sponsor and "sponsoree" should be broken once the new user has gained the ability to sponsor others. That is, you are responsible for the new users you sponsor during their "trial period", but once they have gained enough trust to be able to act as sponsors for other, your responsibility for them should end.


**Have multiple ways of implementing accountability** ( [2.62 / 8](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/773?mode=alone;showrate=1#773)) ( [#773](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/773#773))

by [Sloppy](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:4073) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 06:33:47 PM EST

It looks to me like there is an underlying purpose to the sponsorship idea: to create accountability. Rusty doesn't want to ban disposable identities just to have them come back, and back, and back.

Sponsorship is fine in that regard, but I would suggest that there be _other_ ways for a new account to obtain reasonably-trusted standing, also. Sponsorship just isn't going to work for everyone. There are new people out there who we shouldn't be afraid to allow to post, but who aren't going to know anyone.

One way to have accountability (which other have mentioned) is paid membership. If someone wants to pay $20 and get banned and come back and pay again, I don't think Rusty will be frustrated as he laughs all the way to the bank.

Another would be some sort of authenticated accounts, thus not being disposable. I'm a computer nerd, so PGP quickly comes to mind. The WoT is a powerful, if underused, distributed authentication system. If someone signs something that proves their account to be non-anonymous (e.g. I sign a statement, "I am user Sloppy on K5" with my PGP key) and then an admin can find a sufficiently-trusted pathway through the WoT to that identity, then that account is authenticated. That person isn't going to act up, and if they do, they're not going to be able to re-use that identity. (And getting a lot of sigs on your PGP key can be a lot of work. You don't just throw that away.)

Any other ideas? I suspect that if we offer Rusty some acceptable alternatives to sponsorship, we can have a community where new strangers are welcome but also act responsibly too.

["RSA, 2048, seeks sexy young entropic lover, for several clock cycles of prime passion..."](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.biglumber.com/)

- [PGP isn't really the answer to this](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=773#869) by joelweber, 03/27/2004 10:20:43 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

i first have to confess that i have only a limited knowledge and understanding of the system here-i read stuff that sounds cool and i spout off occasionally when some new or existing outrage in our society is spotlighted. i do notice that viewers here are involved in the workings of the site, so i would assume it should be possible to implement an interactive solution to rusty's concerns.
i suggest that some sort of button or clickbox be present on every posting( or whatever discriminations seem workable and appropriate ) that would allow all registered users to vote on whether to make the thing disappear. if and when the thumbs down count reaches a majority(defined as you like) the thing is gone. any such annulments would accrue to the posting user's demerit account and he/she would be gone upon accumulation of whatever major or minor demerit count to be specified.
what i see in this approach is that it is democratic and it presents the opportunity to create an environment enabled by the active will of the inhabitants

Basically what this system means is that comment moderation is worthless? If I post 40 comments that just say "I agree", or some other kind of bland statement, that means i'm able to sponsor a user, irrelevant of how good my comments actually are. All you have to do to become a user who's able to sponsor is just post boring comments that you won't get kicked off for, and wait. So if you use this system, are we getting rid of comment moderation?

Disclaimer: All of the above is probably wrong

- [Sorry](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=780#824) by Koutetsu, 03/27/2004 06:08:56 AM EST ( **none / 2**)

I never look an my info page.

- [I imagine you'd be emailed (n/t)](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=783#826) by irrevenant, 03/27/2004 06:31:51 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

K5 used to auto-rate user accounts up to Trusted status based on a number of factors. Why not employ the same concept in reverse.. That is, the more a user's comments are mod'ed down by the community, the more their mojo decreases. If it decreases beyond a certain point, the account is locked.

You might even have an interim stage.. let's call it probate user. If a user's mojo falls below "normal", s/he is put on probation and cannot \[rate comments and/or post stories/comments\].

_When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him._ \-\- Jonathan Swift

- [trolls on a poetry site - user levels...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=784#799) by kpaul, 03/26/2004 10:19:26 PM EST ( **none / 3**)

  - [What about demotion rather than promotion..](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=799#851) by ignatiusst, 03/27/2004 04:03:15 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

I don't like the concept of sponsorship for this reason: Had sponsorship been in place when I joined the K5 community back in (what?) December 2002, I would never had gotten through the door.

I don't know anyone - that is, I don't know anyone in the purely _physical_ sense - who uses K5. Everyone I know who uses kuro5hin, I have met throught kuro5hin.. I don't know about the other users here, but if I had to put my account on the line to sponsor a new user, I certainly wouldn't sponsor someone I met online.

Sponsorship will lead to this site's stagnation.. I am sure we can put our minds together to come up with better alternatives.

_When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him._ \-\- Jonathan Swift

throwing out ideas for a revised K5 system, I'm going to propose one! You already have super users, or Users, and paid "premium" memberships. This is good because it will make implementing the following not-so-radical ideas very simple.

Revive the mojo system to its former glory.
Revoke this unlimited user rating system you have going. Replace it with a system where, based on the user's mojo, or "karma", if you will, the system will periodically broker out the ability to rate comments. The ability to rate will be available to users that meet a certain "karma" threshold.
I like where you're going with this ratings label thing. Encourage, Neutral, Discourage, Hide. They're all a welcome addition. I propose that you take it a step further. Introduce labels such as "Troll", "Flamebait", "Insightful", et cetera. This will allow for a realistic "community view" of comments.
In case of trollbombing, implement a so-called "meta rating" scheme. You could call it, oh, R2 for short. Allow everyone in the high "mojo" caste to get this every day. Also allow a more broad, larger cross-section of K5 to have it from time to time. R2 would have a reduced rating strength, but would be balanced out by a larger cross-section of K5ians.
Some K5ians have already proposed a "Fans/Freaks/Foes/Friends" system. I fully endorse this idea.
Allow the super users to have the final say before a story is voted to front page or section, in case a trollbomb rates up a mean-spirited/hurtful/disgusting article. Maybe the Users could have a secret editor's voting guild. ^\_^
Introduce ad banners.

_Free spirits are a liability._

_August 8, 2004: "it certainly is" and I had engaged in a homosexual tryst._

- [I like you](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=789#815) by crayz, 03/27/2004 01:31:48 AM EST ( **3.00 / 7**)

  - [lolz](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=815#893) by MMcP, 03/29/2004 12:14:43 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

    - [I think it was Commando <nt>](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=893#919) by Baldrson Neutralizer, 03/30/2004 07:02:36 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

- [Slashdot?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=789#838) by OneEyedApe, 03/27/2004 11:18:50 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

  - [I'm not sure if you're being disingenuous or not..](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=838#883) by chuhwi, 03/28/2004 05:56:33 PM EST ( **none / 2**)

    - [Thanks](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=883#946) by adimovk5, 04/02/2004 11:01:38 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

- [don't forget](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=789#891) by llimllib, 03/28/2004 10:08:48 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

**The fundamental error in** ( [1.75 / 4](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/790?mode=alone;showrate=1#790)) ( [#790](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/790#790))

by [quartz](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:19195) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 09:07:53 PM EST

this proposal lies in the implied assumption that policy decisions should be made on a per-account basis. This will never work for the obvious reason that accounts are abstract entities, and thus punishing them accomplishes nothing.

In order to be effective, punishment for bad behavior should be administered to the person behind the account rather than the account itself. This can be accomplished rather easily with the help of a function than maps UIDs to real-life identities. Such a function would make punishment measures such as revoking someone's posting privileges considerably more effective, since it will span _all_ their accounts, not just the one that triggered the punishment.

How to implement such a function is left as an exercise to the reader. It's certainly not trivial and it can't be perfect, but it's not a new problem either -- many commercial establishments already have implemented pretty good approximations. Like, say, credit cards.

--

Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke, and fuck 'em even if they can.

- [This is avoided](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=790#795) by SamBC, 03/26/2004 10:07:36 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [Sponsorship has serious drawbacks](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=795#804) by quartz, 03/26/2004 10:42:47 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

- [Given unobtainium, any engineering is easy](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=790#853) by Julian Morrison, 03/27/2004 04:21:32 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

I like the basic idea. I understand you're extremely upset and frustrated and pissed off, but I think by kicking out the sponsor as well as the sponsee, you're closing the gates too tightly. The people who value K5 and want to make sure they remain members will IMO be very reluctant to sponsor anyone who they don't have full confidence in. And these are the people -- the ones who like K5 and want to stay -- who are its culture, and who you want to be sponsoring people. I suggest the following changes:

First, allow new users to post diary entries and comments within their own diary entries. This allows them to participate (in a limited fashion) immediately. But they still need to be sponsored to be a "full" member (post comments elsewhere, vote on submissions, etc.).

Second, rather than kicking out the sponsor if their "sponsee" gets kicked, deny them the ability to sponsor new users for 30 days. (Or whatever period of time you like.) Another alternative here is to kick the sponsor if they have 3 sponsees kicked within a one-week period. (Again, adjust to your comfort.)

I think these changes will minimize the "silly shit", and minimize the impact/risk to existing members (and new users who become full-fledged members).

-Thomas


- [An even better solution...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=791#852) by Julian Morrison, 03/27/2004 04:06:27 PM EST ( **3.00 / 4**)
- [Babysitter](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=791#906) by MicroBerto, 03/30/2004 01:17:12 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

**I may not agree with everything you say...** ( [2.75 / 4](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/794?mode=alone;showrate=1#794)) ( [#794](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/794#794))

by [Azmeen](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:49036) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 10:04:57 PM EST

but you have my full respect in implementing some sort of control in order to inject some form of "chaos-avoidance techniques" to make K5 a "saner" community for its members.

Sponsorship may not be the most ideal situation, but I'm sure that as time goes by, there will be some tweaking done to this procedure, and all in all, hopefully it'll make K5 stronger and not drive it in the opposite direction.

Good luck, and cheers.

[HTNet](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.heritage-tech.net/) \| [Blings.info](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://blings.info/)

haven't read it all yet, but i will. just wanted to say you shouldn't feel bad about drawing the line.

looking forward to k5 taking another evolutionary leap.

[webmaster chronic](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.webmasterchronic.com/)

**Remember, people, 'this is an ongoing experiment.'** ( [2.31 / 19](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/801?mode=alone;showrate=1#801)) ( [#801](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/801#801))

by [RobotSlave](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:850) on Fri Mar 26, 2004 at 10:27:48 PM EST

That's the important thing to remember. Every time rusty makes an arbitrary change to K5, without first consulting the users who write all the stories and do all the filtering, he reminds us that 'K5 is an ongoing experiment.'

But an experiment in **what**, exactly?

I suppose we're supposed to just unthinkingly _assume_ that K5 is the same kind of experiment as The Great Experiment, i.e., an experiment in **Democracy**. But there hasn't been anything even remotely democratic about recent changes, has there? Do you remember the open debate that resulted in the new comments rating system? No, of course you don't. Rusty simply imposed it unilaterally, just as he's unilaterally imposed this new, radically less open new-user sign-up system.

When rusty tells you K5 is an "ongoing experiment," you need to remember that what he means is that it is **his** ongoing experiment, not yours. You don't get a vote. Your Comments will be not be Requested For before the spec is finalized. You don't get a representative in the process. Your President isn't even appointed by a high court, let alone elected.

Rusty isn't interested in building out features or mechanisms that K5's users have reached rough consensus on, after open debate and discussion. If he were, then K5 might reasonably be called a "community" experiment, but no. That's not the kind of "experiment" he's got going on here at K5.

When rusty says "K5 is an ongoing experiment," what he really means is that he's just reconfigured the Golden Ant Farm again, and you will now provide a bit of testing for the latest Scoop feature, which rusty would like to pitch to a potential client (or perhaps has already promised to deliver, but doesn't want to roll out on a live site before a bit of
"real-world testing").

OK, so he's probably not quite that cynical or commercial about it, but make no mistake-- if K5 is an "ongoing experiment," then it is not one that deserves to be even implicitly compared to the American Experiment.


- [It's something like H2G2...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=801#818) by Farq Q. Fenderson, 03/27/2004 02:21:27 AM EST ( **none / 0**)
- [Remember, people, RobotSlave is a petulant loser.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=801#834) by Sock Puppet, 03/27/2004 09:17:00 AM EST ( **2.25 / 4**)

  - [Aye, but a petulant loser with a very good point.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=834#841) by toulouse, 03/27/2004 11:53:01 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

**Raise the bar for trolls without hindering newbies** ( [2.77 / 9](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/817?mode=alone;showrate=1#817)) ( [#817](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/817#817))

by [FlipFlop](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:29286) on Sat Mar 27, 2004 at 01:45:31 AM EST

mstefan [proposed](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/161#161) a means to help new users gain sponsorship. After reading mstafan's proposal, I've developed another idea.

K5 needs some means of enforcing user guidelines. It appears the key problem facing enforcement is that it is too easy for trolls to acquire new accounts and resume trolling. Solutions to that problem make it too difficult for new users to start posting.

To strike a balance between these two issues, I propose a variation on mstefan's probationary system. Every user will have a status of:

1. Probationary

2. Normal

3. Trusted


New users start off as probationary. They can post a comment which will be immediately visible to themselves. When the comment posts, the system will pick a small random number, R. Any trusted user whose userid1 modulo R = 0 can also see the comment (highlighted with a request to rate). In other words, one out of every R trusted users will have an opportunity to see the comment; and it will always be the same set of trusted users so reloading the page won't help a troll with a trusted account. If the comment gets rated up, it becomes visible to everyone.

Once the user has contributed a couple dozen meaningful posts, they will graduate from probation. If a significant portion of their posts get rated down, the account closes.

You may also want to limit the number of probabationary comments a trusted user will see (like one per article, and place it at the top of the list).

Under the proposed system, new users can post immediately, while trolls can only offend one out of every R trusted users (unless they first contribute significant meaningful content to graduate from probabation). The proposal significantly raises the bar to resume trolling, without significantly hindering new users.

\-\-\-----

1Or better yet, use the MD5 hash of the userid. Then compute the MD5 hash modulo R. The MD5 hash would throw off trolls who collect a bunch of trusted accounts with sequential userids.



[_AdTI - The think tank that didn't_](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.adti.net/)

- [F\*cking Awesome Idea. <nt>](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=817#861) by Imperfect, 03/27/2004 07:33:08 PM EST ( **none / 0**)
- [Restricted Account Level](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=817#862) by ronan, 03/27/2004 07:37:13 PM EST ( **none / 1**)
- [I like it](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=817#879) by bugmaster, 03/28/2004 09:20:49 AM EST ( **none / 0**)
- [erm](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=817#888) by conthefol, 03/28/2004 09:22:20 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [also](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=888#889) by conthefol, 03/28/2004 09:28:28 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

    - [Mea culpa. I did the math wrong!](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=889#890) by FlipFlop, 03/28/2004 10:02:33 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

- [one thing added/changed](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=817#900) by SyntheticAngel, 03/29/2004 04:37:45 PM EST ( **none / 1**)
- [A problem...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=817#901) by toulouse, 03/29/2004 06:43:00 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [The pool only needs a few active users.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=901#905) by FlipFlop, 03/29/2004 09:03:05 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

You are trying to devise a technical fix for a problem that is not technical. In the UK, the police take internet stalking very seriously, maybe that's true in the US too. Rusty, I think you and your wife have been stalked. If banned users make up new IDs and re-enter the site then they are accessing your systems without permission.

Why not go to the police? If it's only 3 or 4 people as you say, then I really think this approach might work.

I'm loath to suggest this, but I really do think that posting photoshopped porn images of your wife crosses a line. You might find that the police agree.

**intrigued by your idea that fascism is feminine** \- [livus](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2007/4/20/214737/425/55/)

- [Stalked?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=821#825) by Michael Moore, 03/27/2004 06:27:36 AM EST ( **2.00 / 11**)
- [I can hardly believe](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=821#915) by UncannyVortex, 03/30/2004 03:07:31 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [I know for a fact...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=915#918) by mr strange, 03/30/2004 05:07:20 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

    - [The British police, you say?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=918#922) by UncannyVortex, 03/31/2004 02:29:39 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

**ok, what's the fuss about 800+ comments?** ( [1.37 / 16](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/839?mode=alone;showrate=1#839)) ( [#839](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/839#839))

by [mami](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:8654) on Sat Mar 27, 2004 at 11:36:38 AM EST

nothing - bottomline, rusty has the wrong ideology to begin with, refuses to acknowledge it and changes his mind only, if pain hits home.

It needed his wife's dignity to be violated and hurt to make him angry enough to suggest changes to K5 sites. Well, if it's anybody else's dignity that gets trampled on, he really did't care that much, or did he?

What else is new? Children who get burned their fingers, learn that it might not be the best idea to allow arsonists doing their business in you living room.

Rusty, the reluctant firefighter -  I bet he regrets by now to have chosen his career field.

- [cute](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=839#941) by rizzustizzle, 04/01/2004 11:24:31 PM EST ( **none / 2**)

I like what you're suggesting here; it sounds likely to go a long way towards bringing the site back up to the quality that attracted mny of us in the first place.

It seems you left out that the sponsor should also receive any warnings given against their sponsored ccounts, but I'm sure you've also thought of that.

-robin

Turning and turning in the widening gyre


The falcon cannot hear the falconer;


Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;


Mere [Anarchy](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kulture.org/) is loosed upon the world.

- [Your sig...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=846#895) by B'Trey, 03/29/2004 09:12:31 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [heh](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=895#898) by Arkady, 03/29/2004 12:50:54 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

**Possible Twist on Sponsorship** ( [2.80 / 5](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/855?mode=alone;showrate=1#855)) ( [#855](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/855#855))

by [schwar](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:21983) on Sat Mar 27, 2004 at 05:10:45 PM EST

Not sure if its been already suggested but hows this for an idea. Users can create accounts and post immediately. However all their comments are flagged as untrusted (maybe rated to -2 or a bit flag or something) or something.

Default settings for browsing stories will be set so that these comments will not be visible. However when a new user receives sponsorship from a benevolent -2 post viewer, all there comments ratings are reset to being visible to everyone.

- [I guess](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=856#859) by Julian Morrison, 03/27/2004 07:05:41 PM EST ( **none / 2**)

  - [also](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=859#860) by Driusan, 03/27/2004 07:11:52 PM EST ( **none / 3**)
  - [you mean like Dr. Duck?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=859#871) by Mindcrym, 03/27/2004 11:29:22 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

If this system had been in force. I don't know anyone. Heck, I'm not even on the same continent (planet?) as most people here...

Why is that a problem? For one person, me, this is meaningless but I followed a link here and A **lot** of other people came here too. Doubtless, you get user "churn" all the time. With this system, you will just get user attrition.

There is very little possibility that I will sponsor anyone. I see little/no benefit and some risk. This is probably how others feel.

Keep the trusted membership idea but there will need to be a change to the joining mechanism.

PS - what's modstorming?

"Holy war is an oxymoron."

Lazarus Long

I've been around k5 for 5 years now, and I've watch it have its ups and down, and I think this idea sucks. I know nobody IRL who would be even remotely interested in k5, nor who I would trust to sponsor.

How's this for an idea: Each new user gets 5 (or more) random sponsors. For each comment/rating/diary/etc that the new user posts, one of that users sponsors has to OK it before anyone else can see it. If a sponsor OKs a stupid comment, then they deserve to get kicked out.

The 60 day limit is fine, but the 40 positive comment thing sucks. I have been here for FIVE YEARS, and I only have 48 comments to my name, about half of which dont have any ratings. Have another test, but not the number of comments. Just because someone doesn't comment on every story they read doesn't mean they aren't worthy of sponsoring someone.

I'll give it about a week and if the sponsorship system stays, I'm out of here. The fact that anyone can post an opinion is what I like about k5.

My prediction if sponsorship stays: The number of users will decrease dramatically, then level out at about 5% of its current. There will so few new users that k5 become stale quickly, although all users will love k5, and just discuss the same topics over and over.

- [yup, the comment count sure sucks](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=865#881) by dke, 03/28/2004 01:43:35 PM EST ( **3.00 / 4**)
- [even longer](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=865#904) by asad, 03/29/2004 08:57:54 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

  - [Fake accounts aren't the problem](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=904#907) by willie, 03/30/2004 05:50:10 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

    - [how could you not see the relation ?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=907#932) by asad, 04/01/2004 11:42:15 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

- [Lowered threshold](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=865#950) by cgenman, 04/06/2004 09:50:39 AM EST ( **3.00 / 2**)

**livejournal** ( [none / 2](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/873?mode=alone;showrate=1#873)) ( [#873](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/873#873))

by [phr](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:10776) on Sun Mar 28, 2004 at 12:29:12 AM EST

has a less complicated system than that, and it works ok, apparently.

- [Actually, they are open to all](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=873#874) by asby, 03/28/2004 06:04:45 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [But you choose who to interact with](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=874#877) by piranha jpl, 03/28/2004 07:45:44 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

- [Indeed](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=873#967) by Badger Patrol Leader, 04/14/2004 09:49:35 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

I still can't come up with anything to improve the site quality that couldn't be subverted. Perhaps my best idea is to ignore the moderation of people who persistantly give posts with low moderation averages high scores. Maybe diaries should have a "vote queue" as well, with reasonably lenient guidelines.

Sponsorship sounds like a dead end idea. Who came here at the reccomendation of someone else? Not I, and few others, as all of the other posts detail.

- [Ignore moderation won't work](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=878#955) by ocrow, 04/10/2004 05:21:40 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

**How about a Multi-Tiered Trust System** ( [2.83 / 6](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/882?mode=alone;showrate=1#882)) ( [#882](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/882#882))

by [Mysidia](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:25267) on Sun Mar 28, 2004 at 05:12:13 PM EST

That is... users would be allowed _varying levels of participation_ based
on trust.
Finer granularity than "No participation" or "Full participation"

Think of Advogato. Their system isn't perfect but seems to work well,
and they already have algorithms to handle the computations...
don't need to reinvent the wheel.

Know when what someone else has done may help solve the problem.

Have different tiers:

I. Trust Level ; Observers / Guests, Brand new users.
They cannot post articles or comments on articles.
They cannot comment on others' diaries, except if the poster of
the diary they want to comment on has certified them.
Cannot moderate or vote on stories, nor moderate others
diariy entries, but may vote on some polls, and moderate comments
in their own diary entries.

They can post their own diaries, but they won't appear as prominently,
I.E. summaries do not appear or something

Before a user even visits a diary, it will be obvious what Tier the poster
of a diary is in, via color coding, icons, whatever.

Also, diary entries could be moderated / rated for display on the main page,
just like comments on articles are.

Use color coding, and perhaps sorting by rank in descending order,
after time.
The more trusted people tend to have more interesting
diaries. After rank, rating, if moderating of diary entries is done.

II. Provisional Users / Initiates; Can comment on any other users diary,
and articles. May vote on stories and polls, but they may not moderate,
and their certs are more or less worthless

III. Full Users; Can comment on others diaries, Posted diaries that will appear
more prominently (their summaries can appear on the diary page);
Can post stories, moderate on articles, and their certifications have some weight.
They can

IV. Trusted Users; Their certifications have even greater weight. They
may propose that a user be canned, or that a user's privileges to be pulled,
to be voted on users in III+ using some kind of "site voting system".

This does seem like it might be hard to implement. I'd be happy to help
implement stuff, if there's any way I could.

-Mysidia the insane @k5

- [Advogato](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=882#899) by jup, 03/29/2004 02:02:48 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

**Question from an old user** ( [none / 3](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/885?mode=alone;showrate=1#885)) ( [#885](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/885#885))

by [Dacta](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:281) on Sun Mar 28, 2004 at 07:02:40 PM EST

How do I know how many positivly rated comments I have? I have a _fairly_ early account, and while I'm not a very active K5er anymore I do still read stories and I don't want to lose my account.

- [activity level](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=885#892) by janra, 03/28/2004 11:41:59 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

First thing I thought when I read this was: how would I have ever been able to get an account back when I joined?

The answer is, I wouldn't.

That was years ago, but today I still wouldn't. I just don't know any K5ers IRL. So I guess I belong to a group of people no longer wanted here?

I'm not very fond of this trend of invite-only sites, and don't see why K5 has to follow suit. On the other hand, the trolls and crapflooders are one important reason why I very seldom post here any more, so I'm not against changes aimed at driving them away.

My first thought was: as an alternative to getting sponsored, let users pay a registration fee of a few dollars to get a full account. It's unlikely the trolls and crapflooders would spend that money only to have the account shut down a few hours later. It would also make it possible to join K5 even if you don't know any members, like it always has been. (While browsing through the comments, I  saw this scheme was also proposed by coryking in an earlier post to this story.)

- [Me Too!](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=894#952) by faddat, 04/07/2004 08:11:26 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

**Advice from Poynter Online www.poynter.org** ( [2.50 / 4](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/902?mode=alone;showrate=1#902)) ( [#902](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/902#902))

by [beelers](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:17168) on Mon Mar 29, 2004 at 08:27:04 PM EST

Posted by Norbert Specker 8:46:49 AM
Internet Defamation and Forum Guidelines
Every once in a while the question about moderated and unmoderated discussion forums on news sites pops up. What if people misbehave? And how can guidelines be established so they are followed? The London Free Press (http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/LondonFreePress/Business/2004/03/27/397648.
html) of Canada describes two recent libel cases that have the courts sending clear messages that defamation on the Internet is no different than defamation in print -- and hence can be very costly. Maybe a good dose of reminding readers that e-mails and discussion forum posts will never go away -- and can always be traced back to the originator -- mixed with a couple of successful libel cases will be enough to help readers keep discussions civilized.



This has been long overdue. I see people complaining how they would have been able to join in before. It's sad but you wouldn't have been able to crap flood or ruing k5 (IMO) the way others have been able to either. Don't blame rusty blame the trolls and idiots who have made k5 what it is today.
Trolling is not an art it's not a skill it's people with too much time on their hands adding noise.
Hopefully this will move up the signal to noise ratio.

- [AMEN!](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=903#940) by rizzustizzle, 04/01/2004 11:23:03 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

**Future past? How about Future NOW!** ( [none / 3](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/910?mode=alone;showrate=1#910)) ( [#910](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/910#910))

by [aguila](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:54174) on Tue Mar 30, 2004 at 10:28:32 AM EST

I don't know what k5 was in the past. I do know what I appreciate in its current form. The opportunity to review and consider what others have written and make comments interwining them with various topics from philosophy up to and including current events -- done within a respectful manner is something good that should be carried forward.

It is generous and unique that the owner of this website even cares about such things. It allows the rest of us to explore and utilize in a phenomenal although simplistic manner a hopefully growing form of culture to culture - if not quite person to person - expression, which can lead to better understanding and consideration of our choices and how it may affect others on our planet.

Just reviewing what generally takes place here, even with those topics I'm not interested in or don't participate with, is absolutely amazing in its range. That nearly any voice from nearly any experience can participate is very, very unique.

If there were enough websites like this accessible
in China, Cuba and other regions available on the net, eventually this planet and the United Nations would be a very different and more open and inclusive place.

It is telling that the only cultures in the world fearing openness and discussion are those who have thrived on dominance, tyranny and restriction of information. Our lives are demonstrating that safety and freedom depends upon transparency/open-
ness. This also means that every human culture has a right to its existence, and no view ignoring that can be viable any longer.

K5, is part of that process encouraging freedom, tolerance and respect. What a way to go - K5. Many Kudos!! Keep it up!!!

===============
Lakota Sioux: Mitakuye Oyasin
English Translation: We are all related.

"These two are now associated, and if a user gets kicked off the site, their sponsor does too."

That's a little harsh don't you think? Just for making a bad judgment call. I don't think anyone would be sponsering anyone with it being like that. They should simpley lose the right to sponser anyone ever again.

Also, maybe you covered this, how the hell is the newb supose to prove themselves, to get a sponser. A sponser should be required to do anything other than make coments. And the coments of an unsponserd person should be limited.

"The basic points I have in mind so far for appropriate use guidelines boil down to:

\*Be respectful of others"

Be respectful of other, what the hell you fasist pig. Define respectful. People should be able to say whatever the fuck they want as long as they don't continuosly harass somone. If I want to call you a worethles hypocritical egotystical athoritarian greedy selfish childish white nigger with a skanky slutty pig for a wife, I should be able to. As long as I don't keep pestering you about it. After all, coments can be hiden.

It should be left as is in this aspect. It's not like Kuro5hiners are imature childish fools who automaticaly start name calling whever they feel threatend. I doubt most are silly enouh to get offended over somone calling them names either.

I have a question for you rust. If somone posted a link to a picture of my wifes head photoshoped onto a skanky porn star in the act of getting a train pulled on her. Would you have deleted their account? Would you have decided to get all crazy dictator up in this place?

Don't be a worethles hypocritical egotystical athoritarian childish white nigger and delete my account if I insulted you. I know your in a touchy mood, the fuse has hit the dinomite, the fork has gone in the microwave, Bush has gotten the inteligance, the plane has hit the building, family guy has been canceld, the nuke has landed, but be a merciful god rusty.

Relax, laf at me.

\>

**( @ )'( @ )** The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force. - _Adolf Hitler_

Saddam Hussien tried to kill my dad, so we're going to go get him!

s/Saddam Hussien/Trolls/

s/kill my dad/make my wife cry/

s/go get him/all suffer until I get my way/

Democracy in action.

It tastes sweet.

- [By the way rusty,](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=920#921) by debacle, 03/30/2004 09:06:31 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

  - [You think i'll ever forgive you guys for](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=921#939) by rizzustizzle, 04/01/2004 11:21:39 PM EST ( **none / 2**)

**I don't think you have much of a right to complain** ( [2.16 / 6](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/923?mode=alone;showrate=1#923)) ( [#923](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/923#923))

by [Delirium](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:5720) on Wed Mar 31, 2004 at 05:03:15 AM EST

This site seems to have gone downhill largely because it's perceived that you basically abandoned it. I know I heard a lot of stuff about the Collaborative Media Foundation; I've heard solicitations for donations, and intially we were all very supportive of donations and textads, and raised tens of thousands of dollars. And as far as we can tell, the money was just pocketed, and working on K5 or Scoop did not happen as a result: the changes were few and far between, and the most significant ones were done by third parties (like panner) anyway.

Anyway, I do think k5 was a great place, and this all worked fine for several years. Did you get burned out on it or something?

Now, frankly, you just seem a bit bitter.

- [Lassez-Faire != Abandonment](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=923#926) by thelizman, 03/31/2004 10:33:45 AM EST ( **2.50 / 4**)
- [It's just in DC i had a steady supply of weed nt](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=923#938) by rizzustizzle, 04/01/2004 11:18:07 PM EST ( **none / 2**)

Darn. I come so little nowadays that I completely missed this. Pity.

Anyway. rusty, people have to earn their rights to use the site, and this has to be a slow and perhaps relatively painful process. It was all OK to allow everybody to do wahtever they wanted before, but now as you have realized this is almost impossible with such a big site.

You could in a programatic way, little by little, provide more privileges to a given account. I envissage a system of levels:

Level 1. New account: you can read, post a limited amount of comments (lets say 10/day).

Level 2. Well behaved newbie: after a month in the site you get your diary.

Level 3. Responsible newbie: another month, now you can moderate comments.

Level 4. Active newbie, you can post more comments (30/day?).

Level 5. K5er: now you can post histories.

And so on (without excluding some of the obvious points of civility you just mentioned).

In any case nobody should be able to post an unlimited ammount of comments per day. I am sure you have enough statistics to reach a reasonable number of comments/day allowed to any user.

Of course paying users should jump directly to one of the higest levels, people that are prepared to put money where their mouth is should be given som benefits (but never excluded from the rules of course).

I don't like the sponsorship approach, I think it would kill the site (but maybe that is what you felt like doing when you dealt with the problem you describe).

Might is right

[Freedom? Which freedom?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm)

Buried deep in this nest of comments is one where someone advocates a $1 entrance fee if you don't have a sponsor.  Best damned idea ever.  Add a tiny bit of effort to the registration process and you'll cut out 99% of the frivolous single-use accounts.

And if Rusty or his loved ones get slandered again, at least he's got a dollar for his troubles.

- [But...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=931#935) by lens flare, 04/01/2004 05:43:52 PM EST ( **none / 2**)

  - [I'd still suggest it's still better...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=935#943) by GhostfacedFiddlah, 04/02/2004 09:33:20 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

- [Since nobody believes that this ghetto](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=931#937) by rizzustizzle, 04/01/2004 11:16:13 PM EST ( **none / 2**)
- [and your mole?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=931#1002) by khalua, 05/04/2004 07:04:04 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

**Unsponsored get a automatic mod rating?** ( [2.71 / 7](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/933?mode=alone;showrate=1#933)) ( [#933](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/933#933))

by [Gooba42](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:33759) on Thu Apr 01, 2004 at 04:27:34 PM EST

Rather than unsponsored users having no route by which to gain a sponsor, maybe they should get an automatic rating of 0 or something like that?

Effectively their posts don't exist unless you're looking for them. Users interested in sponsoring somebody could sift through the crap to find someone they want to sponsor. Someone who isn't interested in sponsoring anybody isn't forced to read it all.

It still gives K5 administrative control but it also allows new users the chance to make a name for themselves in such a way that sponsors would hopefully have some idea what they were getting into before they got canned for someone else's bad behaviour.

As described in the original post, I wouldn't sponsor anyone, ever. It's a crapshoot and I'm sure a lot of people here feel the same.

Also, what's to stop someone with a bunch of fake accounts from using their one real account to sponsor the fakes? The fake gets one warning, gets dropped and a new one takes its place and gets sponsorship from the same user.

- [Fake accounts](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=933#934) by Driusan, 04/01/2004 04:54:55 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

Create four levels of user:

Apprentice

Journeyman

Master

Senior

Create a Sandbox area. Apprentice users could post and comment only in the Sandbox and Diary but could read anything. Transition from Apprentice would occur only on sponsor ratings from at least nine Journeymen or three Master users.

> This would limit the ability of one person to open accounts and cause damage. It would also enable new people to contribute. It would allow older users to communicate with other experineced users. Older users could interact with newer ones when they wished.

Journeymen could post anywhere and comment anywhere but they could only rate in the Sandbox. Transition to Master would occur upon sponsor ratings by nine Master users three Senior users. A Journeyman could sponsor a number of people at any time equal to the number of articles successfully posted.

Master users could post or comment or rate anywhere. Transition to Senior would occur upon approval by Rusty. A Master could sponsor an unlimited number of people.

Senior users would have the greatest powers. They could view the abuse complaints and issue warnings. They could review the accumulated warnings of users. They could view the list of who has the most warnings and eject the most abusive.

Abuse of privleges would result in a warning notice on your account and a mentor warning on the account of your sponsor. Each warning negates the lowest level sponsor on your account. Sponsors may drop a person at any time and erase the mentor warning. If your sponsor level drops, you drop back to a lower level.

Paying customers would have the same privileges as a Master or Journeyman depending on the payment.

- [Throwing out the baby with the bathwater](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=947#964) by haroldmarshall, 04/14/2004 02:27:56 PM EST ( **none / 2**)
- [Advogato](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=947#1021) by pin0cchio, 05/20/2004 01:36:04 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

**I like, but I think it should be supplimented** ( [2.50 / 4](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/948?mode=alone;showrate=1#948)) ( [#948](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/948#948))

by [CAIMLAS](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:2113) on Sun Apr 04, 2004 at 02:27:39 PM EST

I like your suggestions. I also think the two comments I moderated positively have some good ideas which might be well employed

Here are two concerns I have about your proposed model:

1. Users will likely not sponsor a user if they see a payoff for doing so, i.e., the user is a real-life friend or some other incentive. The model you've proposed doesn't offer such a psychological payoff.

2. A sponsoring user should be notified that one of their sponsorees has been warned prior to the killing of the sponsoree's (and subsequently, the sponsor's) account. Maybe over a period of 30 days or 2 log ins, whichever is shortest. After that time/frequency has passed from an initial warning, that offending/warned user could be removed, but not until - so as to protect the person that sponsored them, giving them the chance to unsponsor them. The sponsoree account should be suspended from use from the time of the warning until when the sponsor has been given a chance to act upon the warning so as to prevent the user from further abuse.

3. There is no convention discussed for what happens to a non-removed sponsoree's account when a sponsor's account gets killed. Does it revert to non-sponsored status? Or does it remain unattached? I can't immediately think of any problems with a socially-unattached account; does anyone else have any ideas?

4. There was a 4th and possibly a 5th idea, but I had to attend to the kid, and wasn't able to get them down prior to forgetting them, unfortunately; now I can't recall what they were. :-/


--

Socialism and communism better explained by a psychologist than a political theorist.

**i'll abstain from commenting...** ( [1.75 / 4](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/951?mode=alone;showrate=1#951)) ( [#951](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/951#951))

by [Vesperto](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:36057) on Tue Apr 06, 2004 at 01:50:59 PM EST

...on this article until whomever is respondible for help@k5 decides to reply to my email. It's been over two weeks since i sent it.

I am not a Premium user.

\\_\\_\\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

Be well, misbehave.

- [Just making sure...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=951#996) by driph, 04/27/2004 12:18:18 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

**SOLTUION: PAID ACCOUNTS ONLY** ( [none / 2](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/954?mode=alone;showrate=1#954)) ( [#954](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/954#954))

by [simul](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:42974) on Fri Apr 09, 2004 at 08:53:14 PM EST

Sorry for the all caps... but I hate to see kuri5hin in a bad way.

Give in already! Even if it costs $5 for a lifetime membership, that's totally fair... and it will prevent mutliple account abusers... except rich ones with lots of different credit cards.

Read [this book](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0553576399/qid=1055172594/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/102-6493137-3637760?v=glance&s=books) \- first 24 pages are free to browse - it rocks

- [$5 is not a fixed sum](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=954#956) by ocrow, 04/10/2004 05:31:18 AM EST ( **none / 2**)

  - [Whatever](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=956#958) by simul, 04/11/2004 11:47:29 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

    - [Dismissed without consideration](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=958#959) by ocrow, 04/12/2004 05:40:52 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

      - [i don't think you know what you're talking about](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=959#963) by simul, 04/14/2004 10:15:13 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [Well...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=956#962) by DAldredge, 04/14/2004 12:20:19 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

    - [typical retarded USian attitude](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=962#969) by Penrod Pooch, 04/14/2004 10:04:18 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

      - [Bah](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=969#981) by Cro Magnon, 04/15/2004 09:52:18 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

        - [but](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=981#982) by Penrod Pooch, 04/15/2004 10:23:42 AM EST ( **none / 0**)

**Instead of sponsorship, "obnoxious"** ( [none / 2](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/957?mode=alone;showrate=1#957)) ( [#957](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/957#957))

by [ocrow](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:12921) on Sat Apr 10, 2004 at 06:58:16 AM EST

Sponsorship is not a good system for reasons that others have described well.  But behind it is a worthy intent - to prevent abusers from creating throw away accounts with which to harass the community.  There are two desirable features of the current system that should be kept: (1) it's easy to obatin an account, and (2) with an account you can post comments.  Together these imply that there will always be new users posting comments of unknown merit.

Instead of trying to limit new users, let's use the rating system to limit the damage done by abusers, whether they be 'new' users or old users.

Let's rename the 'hide' rating to 'obnoxious'.  'Hide' makes me think hide-and-(go)-seek, and 'hidden secret'.  'Obnoxious' makes me think of people I don't want to talk to at a party.

The help file for ratings should describe when users should apply a rating of 'obnoxious' to a comment -- when the comment is reprehensible in intent or has patently offensive content.

Comments that get ranked as 'obnoxious' are automatically hidden except for users who expressly request to see them.  No fuss, no bother, no attention focused on people determined to waste all our time by trying to offend and irritate us.  Ignore them.  They won't go away, but it doesn't really matter.

Put a disclaimer on the "show obnoxious messages":  The following messages have been marked by Kuro5hin readers as obnoxious.  Some of them may be offensive or reprehensible in content.  You don't have to read this page if this sort of thing might bother you.

I've seen a lot of comments about letting people pay for instant access. I'm not really a big fan of giving people with disposable income a greater voice than those without.

But what about this: you put $5 in escrow to get instant posting access. If/when you get a sponsorship, then you get your $5 back. If you get kicked, your $5 goes to support k5. If you know someone, and can get a sponsorship before you post, then no worries.

I like the idea of "bonded posting" better than paying for instant access. For some reason, I'm more comfortable with new users tying up $5 for a month than paying it outright.

- [Also, $5 is fairly trivial](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=961#994) by KrispyKringle, 04/25/2004 09:09:40 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

Its all talk. When is this magical new thing going to happen?

_"You're an asshole. You are the greatest troll on this site." [Some nullo](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2008/9/9/18447/26490/3#3)_

- [I agree](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=972#974) by conthefol, 04/14/2004 10:57:31 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

Please, Rusty, you're my friend. I'm sick of this account. If you let me create a new one I promise I'll work it hard and stick to character.

--

Stop dreaming and finish your spaghetti.

**When we reach P1K, K5 will explode. (n/t)** ( [none / 3](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/978?mode=alone;showrate=1#978)) ( [#978](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/978#978))

by [JChen](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:22725) on Wed Apr 14, 2004 at 11:33:11 PM EST

- [Encourage (3)](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=978#984) by Badger Patrol Leader, 04/15/2004 02:07:53 PM EST ( **none / 2**)

I'm of the mind to make my account available for proxy commenting. I will filter the commnets and then post them withe the proper nickname to the discussion site for the review of the global community.

I'll be to post for my email for contact for your review at some point in future.

- [This suggests a mechanism...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=985#990) by marcmengel, 04/22/2004 02:48:20 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

  - [Thats a crazy amount of effort<nt>](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=990#991) by GenerationY, 04/24/2004 06:31:14 PM EST ( **none / 0**)
  - [Nice idea, but...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=990#993) by KrispyKringle, 04/25/2004 09:02:17 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

    - [that is the problem](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=993#998) by RandomLiegh, 04/30/2004 10:27:23 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

I can see why you want to do this, and approve of it. And I also think you are closing the site off completely to random users. Few who value the site would risk account termination for some random guy who they don't know. I found this site randomly a few years ago, and wouldn't have been able to participate in it under these rules.

I've read a few suggestions on ways to allow novice users to prove their worth without giving them the ability to cause any damage. I hope you will take the time to implement one of these suggestions (0 modded posts for new users, user privelege levels...) down this line.

- [I think you're right...](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=986#992) by KrispyKringle, 04/25/2004 08:58:21 PM EST ( **none / 0**)
- [I also found kuro5hin randomly . . .](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=986#995) by 5150, 04/26/2004 02:35:40 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [y?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=995#999) by RandomLiegh, 04/30/2004 10:27:31 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

**I don't want to post links...** ( [none / 1](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/987?mode=alone;showrate=1#987)) ( [#987](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/987#987))

by [atheist](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:46498) on Sat Apr 17, 2004 at 02:55:52 PM EST

..but please delete my other acounts anyway.

Thanks!

ooo

Unlike religion, the freedom to think cannot be imposed on anyone.

**Rusty, did it occur to you ...** ( [2.20 / 5](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/997?mode=alone;showrate=1#997)) ( [#997](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/997#997))

by [tilly](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:37885) on Thu Apr 29, 2004 at 09:46:20 AM EST

that the offenses committed against you and the site in general are not just silliness but part of a concerted sabotage effort? That there are groups out there with the motive, means and the time to organize such efforts? I've already read you talking about DOS attacks ...

In other words, you may be a victim of your own success. Internet is one of the last bastions of freedom and your site is a shining example of that. Opinions get expressed here, sometimes quite effectively, opinions that deflate the prevailing myths and they are not deleted within a few minutes of their posting. A few memes out there that have changed the cultural landscape may have had this site as their birthplace.

Hey, I know at least one political party, with a 200 mil war chest, who can afford to put a few operatives onto the task.

Not that I know what you should do about this but understanding that it is not personal might help in not letting it all get to you ...

- [wtf?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=997#1000) by RandomLiegh, 04/30/2004 10:27:58 PM EST ( **2.00 / 4**)
- [Give me a break.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=997#1003) by partykidd, 05/05/2004 09:23:27 AM EST ( **3.00 / 2**)

**Less strong than transitive banning** ( [none / 1](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/1004?mode=alone;showrate=1#1004)) ( [#1004](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/1004#1004))

by [Morosoph](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:52182) on Sat May 08, 2004 at 01:39:02 PM EST

**Currency in rated posts.** If someone that I sponsor is banned, I lose some of this currency (40 maybe, to fit in with the minimum?); this prevents obvious injustices, and dries up quickly, inhibiting troll-support accounts.

If you ban rating one's own sponsor up (just as one cannot rate oneself), this will counter the most obvious abuse: "gratitude" yielding self-restoration. More complex webs can be easily sniffed out and ruled out by special excemption.


- [40 IS too high.](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=1004#1006) by darkonc, 05/09/2004 01:45:45 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

  - [Re: Suggestion](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=1006#1007) by Morosoph, 05/09/2004 03:44:55 PM EST ( **none / 0**)

    - [Below Zero](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=1007#1008) by Morosoph, 05/09/2004 04:42:19 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

I've been reading Kuro5hin since back when Rusty was still advertising it in his Slashdot posts. Since it's been over a month and a half since Rusty wrote this post, and he has not posted any update or reenabled new accounts, I feel like there will never be another new user in K5. This saddens me. I don't know what great stories have not been written by the new users that could have joined, or the insightful posts, or the annoying trolls. I think that K5 is entering it's death spiral, and if I thought that the trolls had won, I wouldn't care, but I don't think that the trolls have won. But if K5 never allows new users, then the trolls have succeeded, they have destroyed k5. Rusty set up K5 so that it could be almost entirely run by the users, from the stories to the comments. But eventually people burn out and lose interest in K5. Rusty seems to have, and if there are no new users, eventually the entire K5 will die. I think that the internet will be worse off if that happens. Here's to Rusty and the truely wonderful site that he created. May it not die.

- [It would be sad to see it go](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=1009#1011) by Narux, 05/15/2004 09:44:23 AM EST ( **none / 2**)

You could probably even create a simple java applet which people could run in the background while they're viewing k5.  Then the applet could beep at them or something and then they'll get the code.

Whack a mole is much easier if they need to max their CPU for half an hour to create a new account.

http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/hashcash/

--
[Daniel Benoy](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://daniel.benoy.name/)

- [second that](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=1015#1032) by MrLarch, 06/26/2004 03:12:25 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

sure it may solve the problem, but think of all the people it will scare away. All those good potential users who do not abuse the system, will not be allowed to contribute to K5.

Why not have an email verification system, and then report the abuse if any to their ISP the email account is on, and the IP they were using? This is done by many system admins.

Also have a system of IP bans and ban subnets if they use Dynamic IP with a message as to why the IP or subnet was banned.

I must say that in the past I was harassed here by people using multiple user accounts spoofing my name, and many who attacked me, and where very abusive. A good system would have prevented that. It is not just you who suffers, the Internet is full of jerks who heap this sort of abuse on others.

There are many who want to take down K5 and other sites, and will do what it takes to do so. This form of cyberterrorism cannot be tolerated.

Maybe put in a system to disallow accounts created from thwe same IP address in the past few hours or something can help this?

I have had people steal my online photos and put them on fake profiles and do what they wanted with them. So I sort of feel your pain. They could not get a photo of my wife so first they used a rhino and then some obsese woman's photo they stole from somewhere else that did not even look like my wife, and they created bogus web pages based on those. I contacted the ISP that hosted the profiles and web pages and eventually got them taken offline. So I try to remain anoymous and don't use photos of myself anymore or try not to release my personal contact info.

It would be better to have a sandbox that new users can post to, and have the trusted users decide if they can be trusted to post on the other areas. Like you said, maybe 40 positive posts in a row? Then they are submitted to admins to approve or deny their membership, perhaps? That to me would be a much better way of handling things.

\\*\\*\\* Anonymized by intolerant editors at K5 and [also IWETHEY](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/IWETHEY) who are biased against the mentally ill \*\*\*

This is the first time I've logged in since the "incident", just due to not caring anymore. I've been here (under another name -- that's a long story) for several years -- but it's apparent that the K5 I used to know is dead. Too bad. Those of you who are still hanging around to watch its demise -- have fun, I won't be back.

I truly admired K-5. It was a place where anyone could post freely (within the bounds of Internet etiquette), and I loved reading wonderful stories and learning from detailed reports of science and culture.

The people who made the Photoshop picture of Rusty's wife certainly crossed the line. I can agree that it was intolerably disrespectful and way out of line.

Still, though, I have to ask if the implementation of strict measures will destroy the intellectual community we have.

I have no great solution to propose, and, to be fair, the idea of sponsorship _is_ rather creative, but will its benefit be a Pyrrhic victory?

Rusty, I hate to disagree with you, but you've never had a long fuse. I could perhaps mention a certain credit card details accident that occurred a while back. Not sure how many users remember it, but I am sure that you do.

Kicking whoever messed with your wife's pictures is something no one can blame you for, however, K5 is not yours to police. Users do that by voting comments and stories down.

Please don't further limit K5's appeal. I 'left' a while back in a hissy fit. I just came back this morning because I could not find a decent K5 experience anywhere else. It certainly was not for lack of sites with machiavellian acceptance rules. At this point you're probably considering everyone who complains against your idea someone you're better off without anyway. How about you try asking your wife? I am sure you'd be surprised at her reaction to your idea.

Life is a tragedy to those who feel, and a comedy to those who think

**Real sponsorship and simple rules** ( [none / 1](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/1024?mode=alone;showrate=1#1024)) ( [#1024](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/1024#1024))

by [egeland](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:13482) on Tue May 25, 2004 at 01:36:41 AM EST

Charge everyone $1 per year, only from major credit cards.

I don't think $1 per year will be a big deal to proper users of k5, and the benefits will outweigh the drawbacks. Limit memberships to one per CC number. Charge a membership termination fee of $25 for forcibly terminated users. (Leaving voluntarily is free). Put this in the sign-up agreement.

This kills two birds with one stone:

Moron trolls won't bother spending money to troll (since their accounts will be terminated if they act like morons, and it will cost them more money to sign up again)

User authentication is automatic. Yes, this will limit k5 memberships to those with credit cards, but it might stop some of the less mature comments you see around the place.

The user-sponsors-user scenario where the sponsor gets tossed out if the sponsored user is bad, is just dumb.

Sorry, Rusty. Why would anyone sponsor anyone else? How could potential new users get an account, if they knew noone on k5 from elsewhere?

Who would risk their own membership on someone they don't already know. Result: tiny userbase, dead community.

Warnings, however, are a good idea! "Change now or get out."

Rules.. how about:

**Rule 1 - _Don't write anything your grandma would be disappointed or shocked at reading_.**

**Rule 2 - _Don't be a moron_.**

**Rule 3 - _If you can't follow rules 1 and 2, then you get tossed out._**

 --

[Some interesting quotes](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.quotegarden.com/vegetarianism.html)

- [Credit Cards](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=1024#1025) by LordVan, 05/30/2004 03:39:41 PM EST ( **none / 1**)

  - [Too young?](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=1025#1026) by egeland, 05/31/2004 08:02:33 PM EST ( **none / 2**)

    - [Yeh, right...........](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=1026#1029) by Pingveno, 06/10/2004 12:16:00 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

- [$25 could be abused by site owner(s).](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199?pid=1024#1031) by tid242, 06/22/2004 06:20:46 AM EST ( **none / 1**)

**First off, let's have someone** ( [3.00 / 2](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/1027?mode=alone;showrate=1#1027)) ( [#1027](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/comments/2004/3/24/0502/96199/1027#1027))

by [dimaq](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.kuro5hin.org/user/uid:21194) on Wed Jun 02, 2004 at 08:17:14 AM EST

clean the front page off the "geek porn" text ad.

after that we talk.

Follow the Something Awful policy

- $10 to join.
- Reading the rules is manditory.
- Sporadic banning at moderators discretion.
- $10 to re-join.

There's just so much crap flooding the distards can afford.


Sponsorship and the associated delays that go with it, are intended to limit the growth of the site to a rate that allows new users to get used to the place and its culture (and vice versa), and to make it difficult enough to get an account that jerks, spammers, and fly-bys will go elsewhere.



[机票](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.airpiao.com/) [打折机票](https://web.archive.org/web/20091212002958/http://www.airpiao.com/)

You said:

"So the question is, how do we make it more difficult for obnoxious people to disrupt the site, without barring the gates altogether? "

And it makes me wonder if, perhaps for paid accounts specifically but maybe generally, the option to turn off the ability to see comments _except for a whitelist of selected users_ could be a display option?

For example, I might not be able to predict who will give me random noise comments - but I'm starting to get a feeling for who will make at least reasonable statements. And I've definitely seen users who've made comments to others that make me want to never see another comment of theirs ever.

Would a per user white list be difficult to implement or contrary to the site philosophy?

It would tend to create a "rose colored" glasses effect with every user using this feature more likely to only see comments from their friends.

On the other hand, it would allow people to ignore the other users who seem to enjoy doing nothing more than posting hostile or worthless comments.

If it became a popular feature it might be something that would for the premium accounts. So then being a free account you'd be forced to take in the unwashed masses opinions, but for a paid account you could filter out the noise and hear only from those you want to hear from.

_"So then, why don't you die?"-Antisthenes_