patrick.net

Ironman says

rando says

OK, most users will now see an "ad hominem" link after "dislike".

Catering to the "minority" instead of the "majority" again.

Got to have them ###'s at all cost.... Even Freedom of speech and it won't help a bit.
Take down the "Free Speech Forum" text....

You're still free to make any point you want. Even extremely politically incorrect points.

You're even free to directly insult other users in the thunderdome thread. Or threads. Hell, new rule: any post with "thunderdome" in the title will allow direct insults.

But you're right, now there is a restriction on attacking the person instead of the point in all other threads. So you're slightly less free here.

It seems like a valid tradeoff, hopefully will contribute to higher-quality discussion, and more users, yes.

rando says

A native descent muslim? What did you shoot forth from the prophet himself? LOL

Can you contest a post flagged as ad-hom?
Some Pnet users are about to test you on this. (see vocal opponents above, and "the usual suspects" ... as ... lol ... the usual suspects.)

Rew says

Seriously, I just made a post that said "you racists f* ..." disappear. Where did it go? LOL.

It went into moderation, I got notified, decided that yes "you racist fuck" is in fact attacking the person and not the point, and I deleted it.

If it were not a true ad hominem attack, I'd approve the comment and it would go right back where it was. That would reduce your credibility in the future.

Rew says

Can you contest a post flagged as ad-hom?

No need. I'll see it in the moderation queue, and as the local emperor-god, will make a determination.

Either I'll approve it to put it back and be more skeptical of that flagger's judgement, or I'll delete it and give the flagger mental credit for being correct.

Freedom Of Speech... What a lie

rando says

No need. I'll see them in the moderation queue, and as the local emperor-god, will make a determination.

Will use sparingly. Sounds reasonable, oh keeper of the way, Patrick.

That said, I think it pays to wear your "ignores" and "your ad-hom score" right on your user line. Patrick, you have a community with no real incentive in civil discourse right now. I'm not interested in handle hoping, hiding, or trying to worm out from under my credibility or mistakes.

You are HARBORING TROLLS! DEPORT THEM or let me see them for what they are. :)

I miss the good old days of being able to see what an ass some people had made of themselves. As a new user, finding my way, it was instructive in making choices about who to interact with, and what to put any sort of faith/effort in discussing. That took over a year, back in the housing bubble days, to sort lunacy from value.

Rew says

I think it pays to wear your "ignores" and "your ad-hom score" right on your user line.

That's kinda negative. How about a "civility" score, which is the percent of your comments that are not ad hominem?

Ironman says

But you keep making changes based on the crying and whining by the minority of posters.

Sorry that changes are annoying. I myself get annoyed by changes in sites I use. But I think this is probably a worthwhile change. Civility is worth something, especially online, where anonymity tempts people to be worse than they would in real life.

rando says

I'm very interested in ways to keep the site up in the face of attacks, exactly because lots of people are opposed to open discussion of certain issues and so I expect them to attack.

CDN

joshuatrio says

CDN

Would work for static stuff like photos and CSS, but dynamic HTML does not lend it self to a CDN.

Though in theory Amazon now allows edge generation of HTML. But then, that would make me dependent on Amazon, which has already banned patrick.net from their affiliates program for political incorrectness.

Ironman says

based on the crying and whining by the minority of posters.

When the civil are the minority, that's exactly when a change like this is warranted. ;)

rando says

Civility is worth something, especially online, where anonymity tempts people to be worse than they would in real life.

Well said.

rando says

Maybe the experiment in radically free speech has failed, and I do need to ban direct insults.

Insults and trolling aren't the same thing. There is overlap, but it is valid to question one's opponents character and sincerity if they consistently engage in deceptive discussion such as repeating debunked lies or attempting to derail a conversation by goating people. I don't think an out-right ban on all insults would be effective. You need to ban trolling, not expressions of disgust, and there is a difference.

However, I do not have a solution to offer you at this time.

rando says

"You are a goat-fucker." = ad hominem, now forbidden

Damn it! There goes half my posts regarding CIC.

Can we subtly imply that a person is a goat fucker if we don't outright call him one? For example,
I'm not saying that CIC is a goat fucker, but he recently bought a lot of condoms and goat feed.

Rew says

I also agree that sections would be great: Econ Sci Polotics Humor

Each section should have its own top trending posts. Each few top trending post should be viewable on the home page.

OK @Rew check out the home page now. Is that what you meant?

Use the front page to promote best/relevant/breaking news stories relevant posts.
In more of a news site layout instead of a forum layout.
More like the way you were highlighting the linked article more than the threads at one point, but some didn't like it because they wanted to see the OP on the homepage.
I would employ that exact same concept but with a slicker news site layout. Something that blows Breitbart and JudgeReport layout away.
The articles can still link back to the slam fest going on in the "All" forum category.

It would involve you or perhaps some admins(not to censors but promote hot news stories) promoting these stories, or you could do it based on a algorithm.

Tenpoundbass says

Use the front page to promote best/relevant/breaking news stories relevant posts.

But what is that ranking exactly?

I currently have the home page categories sorting by most recent activity in a topic.

Could also do newest post.

Or many other ways... Not sure how to select.

Patrick, intentionally or not, you have posed a challenge - how to insult people without being flagged ad hominem. I try hard (really hard) to not insult directly, but I have hard time resisting a challenge.

Well, at least it will be interesting to see what creative solutions people come up with to keep insulting the person without doing it directly.

I think people really enjoy insulting each other online, so they're not about to give it up.

This site's attraction is inside baseball talk about investing. More articles provoking conversation about that might be useful to increase viewership? As to the rest I don't care, it is entertaining to PO the Wogster and the rest of the mutts.

I doubt it would help with first page bouncing, but it might be a nice feature to allow users to login via oauth, like google or facebook. Seems to be popular with many users.

Regarding bounces...I wonder if the big "free speech forum" makes users think that the forum has a different main topic/theme than it really does.

Consider doing some A/B testing, doing tweaks to the homepage to certain random users, and marking them via GA. Then you can see which changes help.

rando says

I think people really enjoy insulting each other online, so they're not about to give it up.

Agreed. It is so much easier doing it online than in person.

I any case, I appreciate your efforts to improve the site.

You could just create a patrick.net subverse on voat. It's pretty much a free speech space (it's essentially an alternate to the heavily censored Reddit).

Thanks, but would that get patrick.net itself more viewers?

rando says

Thanks, but would that get patrick.net itself more viewers?

I don't know, but it might get everyone plus new people already on voat to post in that subverse.

Why not just have an unmoderated section that people can post to knowing that responses can get ugly and personal.
If you don't want to have that as part of your thread, then don't post to that area. It could be kind of hidden so it doesn't turn off new people to the forum.
Seeing attacks isn't all that "welcoming", not that I really care.
Eventually they will learn of the "dark side". :)

And/Or, move the thread response from the moderated thread that is unsuitable to the "unmoderated" (more hidden) section in case people "really" want to see what was said. :)

Also, it seems like the last commented articles are top of site even if the comments are non-contributory. There must be a better way to rate and rank. Maybe a two column approach with trending items on one (new posts, recent updates), and the other showcasing threads that are "growing" consistently over time as more and more people comment, indicating the topic is long term worthy.

The only thing that should be censored here are the pictures of naked men that Dan likes to post.

krc says

Why not just have an unmoderated section that people can post to knowing that responses can get ugly and personal.

Good idea! Did it yesterday: https://patrick.net/1302979/2017-02-14-thunderdome-thread-insult-other-patrick-net-users-with-impunity-here

Also, it seems like the last commented articles are top of site even if the comments are non-contributory. There must be a better way to rate and rank. Maybe a two column approach with trending items on one (new posts, recent updates), and the other showcasing threads that are "growing" consistently over time as more and more people comment, indicating the topic is long term worthy.

Yes, you're right that the home page is currently set to put the last commented articles ("Active") at the top. Two columns is hard to do on mobile, so I want to stick with one for now.

Would it be better to sort the home page posts by number of comments instead? (By which I mean posts created in the last 7 days.) That would look like this:

https://patrick.net/?order=comments

After 7 days, the most commented post would fall off the home page.

Sound good?

Yes. That makes sense (home page/comment/active).
Still maybe the "home page" is some sort of merge of comment/active - not sure how that would looke.

Regarding the "thunderdome", I was thinking more of a parallel universe.
Comments that you moderate out go to the EXACT same thread (looking the SAME) as the original thread but with the removed comments back in place.
Essentially two views you can use - either you use a "moderated view" or a "anything goes view".

Just posting to the "thunderdome" doesn't really help and who really would start a new relevant thread in such a section?

Perhaps that is what you were thinking - I just wasn't clear on that.

To add, maybe new people who don't log in always get the moderated view only. This is because you want them to see value and join up.

Once you create an account and start posting, then you can set your view to "anything goes" if you want.
To me, the biggest turnoff to Patnet is just the lunacy of the barbs going back and forth both right and left.
There are some great topics here and some good back and forth, but it can get personal fast. :)

Sometimes people do need to set standards - and if you do it right you can attract new viewers "and" keep the free speech component alive and well (with the view option).

I think the story of this thread is that the problems on PatNet are cultural, not technological, and so then must be the solutions.

Dan8267 says

I think the story of this thread is that the problems on PatNet are cultural, not technological, and so then must be the solutions.

Yes, as much as I love algorithms, I don't know a way to automatically classify some text as an ad hominem attack or not.

So I'm forced to be a human and rely on personal judgement.

You are focusing on the stick, you should focus on the carrot.

OK, what's the carrot?

I was thinking maybe people with a very high "civility" score should get to be the moderators that decide on ad hominem flaggings.

Where civility is perhaps (number of comments) * (percent of comments that are civil)

rando says

Where civility is perhaps (number of comments) * (percent of comments that are civil)

Very much want. Has to be readily visible.

rando says

Where civility is perhaps (number of comments) * (percent of comments that are civil)

Let me rephrase that:

Civility = (number of comments) * (percent of comments that not ad hominem)

So it would still be "civil" to be overtly racist, for example, as long as the user does not attack the other patrick.net users.

Could be I don't know. But you get what you focus on, I would focus on the carrot whatever it is.

Apparently when this site was booming the real estate boom was on. People were probably looking for answers. IOW IMO people are looking for insight.

Why do people frequent Reddit?

Why do people frequent Twitter?

Why do people frequent Face Book?

I think arguing, albeit on a more reserved level, is part of all of the above.

From experience I know that one of the most successful thing you can do to market a business is to send out flyers to past customers. I assume you have an email list? Maybe send a link to a thread that stirs interest to all the members.

Yes, good idea. When I have the civility thing all worked out, I'll invite missing users back to the new more civil patrick.net.

rando says

Would it be better to sort the home page posts by number of comments instead? (By which I mean posts created in the last 7 days.) That would look like this:

https://patrick.net/?order=comments

After 7 days, the most commented post would fall off the home page.

Changed that to home page showing the most commented posts of the last three days. More timely. People want quality (as indicated by number of comments) but they also want freshness.

Patrick says

How to make Patrick.net home page capture new users?

Offer a one time license to pussy grab.

indigenous says

You are focusing on the stick, you should focus on the carrot.

rando says

OK, what's the carrot?

Every thread should have a background image. Threads start out with a neutral background of, say, traffic in the morning. For every insightful or inspiring post, the background becomes nicer: a scenic cobblestone street with nice shops and flowers, a grassy field, a beach at sunset, puppies rolling on the ground and playing, young women suntanning with their tops untied, underboobage, up to full frontal nudity of hot chicks.

However, every trolling causes the opposite to happen. The background image moves downward in desirability from Walmart shoppers to open sores to goatse.

rando says

Yes, as much as I love algorithms, I don't know a way to automatically classify some text as an ad hominem attack or not.

I wouldn't be surprised if this problem were solved in the next 20 years. It is definitely possible to solve it, but it's not a trivial problem and would require considerable time to solve. Such an expert system would have to have a good linguistic model and perhaps deep learning. I'm reminded of Twitter turned a chat bot into a racist in less than a day. The problem of automatically detecting and rating trolling and other so-called subjective values is basically the inverse of what that Microsoft Twitter bot was doing. This is the kind of problem that I would love to work on if I had endless free time. There are so many interesting problems to solve, but so little time and life is too short to get everything done that you want to do.