Comment Boards Survey Results
Posted by Chris on 15 November 1999, 01:00 GMT
As our regular visitors are well aware, we have recently experimented with various methods of (not) moderating comments to news articles. For the past week, we have solicited your opinions on what worked and what didn't, and how we should handle commenting in the future.
First, feel free to view the survey results, which have been made public.
The overwhelming majority of votes were in favor of Trial #1, moderation of the comment boards by deleting inappropriate comments as well as removing posting ability from abusive users. After careful thought, we have chosen to continue with this strategy for the time being. We will, however, be continually looking into new moderation systems in the future, and will conduct similar trials when we have some new ideas.
Also of note are new comment guidelines taking effect immediately, in response to complaints that the old guidelines were too broad. These new guidelines are long, but we will soon add an option under Preferences to turn them off after you've read them. While the new guidelines are very specific about what is and is not appropriate on the comment boards, keep in mind that we make a decision about the appropriateness of each comment individually and may decide to remove comments that may not clearly violate a particular guideline but which we nevertheless consider inappropriate.
We'd like to thank everybody who offered their input, and if you have any further suggestions on this matter, please send them to feedback@ticalc.org. Update: We've already got a "Slashdot-like" system in mind for a future trial, so we just want to hear other suggestions. :) Thanks!
