patrick.net

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.

Dan8267 says

Every thread should have a background image. Threads start out with a neutral background...

Thanks, this is a pretty cool idea.

I hope everyone realizes I was joking about that. The trolls would troll threads just to make the background go to goatse. You'd have to make it so that the background image was tied to the user's reputation, not the troll, but then again, CIC might still like goatse.

Dan8267 says

Dan8267 (1/1 = 100% civil)

First time in my life I've been called 100% civil.

Lol. I hope it lasts!

I'm not sure what the civil rating is suppose to accomplish. People know who the trolls are and don't need a metric for it. And the trolls aren't going to be shamed into behaving better.

If the site grows a lot, we won't all know each other's civility right away.

OK, but your metric's not really going to accurately measure civility. Let's say user A posts 10 comments, one of which is an ad hom. He gets a 90% civility rating. OK, that seems fair.

Now user B is a mega troll who also posts a lot of inane comments. Let's say he posts propaganda b.s. and other misinformation to the tune of a 1000 posts over a week, 100 of which are ad hominem attacks. He also gets a 90% civility rating, but he's far more offensive than user A.

Furthermore, user C writes 20 ad hominem posts and gets a 0% civility rating. So user C writes a bot that posts random Google search results or images to some threads he or someone else has opened. His bot makes 180 such posts over a few days. User C's civility rating goes from 0% to 90%.

A simple division doesn't accurately model civility. Not all posts are equal. Not all attacks are equal. It's too simple and easy to game.

Of course the real question is what are people suppose to do with the knowledge gained by a civility rating, assuming it's accurate.

Patrick says

Ultimately, I'd like to leave moderation in the hands of the most civil users themselves.

OK, maybe that will work. Don't know. What will the moderators be able to do? Delete posts? How will they deal with reposting, especially from alts?

i understand your desire to grow the site, but don't mistake politically motivated advice from blue team hacks as rationale for why google analytics reads a certain way.

you'll get more users by catering to the SJW crowd, if that's what you want.

Capture? I can donate an old, moldy plywood pillory that I don't use anymore.

landtof says

politically motivated advice

When civil discourse and debate is considered partisan and politically motivated which "team" do you want to be associated with? LOL

I think one could make a strong argument for how the ad-hom button actually promotes MORE speech and discussion. Maybe it doesn't play out that way in reality though, time will tell. (This space here _________________________________________________________________ is where you can make an assertion about me being wrong, and provide no support other than opinion for your claim.)

Admittedly, when Trump finally falls, I'm going to go on a "Thunderdome" binge of epic proportions. Will need to purge it from my system. (wink)

Dan8267 says

A simple division doesn't accurately model civility. Not all posts are equal. Not all attacks are equal. It's too simple and easy to game.

It is overly simplistic, but the problem to solve here is getting people to stop directly insulting each other and to talk about points instead of people. If it's motivating in that way, it's a success. (Unless everyone decides that what they really liked was insulting other people and then they all go away because they can't do that anymore.)

landtof says

i understand your desire to grow the site, but don't mistake politically motivated advice from blue team hacks as rationale for why google analytics reads a certain way.

It seems to me that it doesn't treat one side differently from the other, so attacking to points and not people is not partisan.

There is also the "dislike" link as another way to blow off a little steam.

Personally, I think the best way to change human behavior is to directly modify the human genome. Genes determine how the brain is constructed, which in turn determines how people think, feel, and act. PatNet should really consider implementing this solution.

Dan8267 says

Genes determine how the brain is constructed, which in turn determines how people think, feel, and act.

Funny stuff.