Talk:Thoughts on moderation in Flow

plus/minus controls

Re: "Add +/- buttons to each message to sort out poor messages and perhaps approach talk page noise."

There was a related (but short) discussion about this at WP:VPR in April. The main problems are:

• For a plain "+/-" there's the "inability to add/show context" - and any technical solution to change that (e.g. adding an obligatory "edit summary/explanation" field if someone votes), will end up being akin to a standard reply.
  • if we don't have an "edit summary/explanation" attached to +/-, then we have to decide whether to make it an anonymous number, or to add the names inline
  • if we don't have an "edit summary/explanation", then we're encouraging "vote-counting" which goes against the norms at various wikis.

I don't think a "minus" could ever be used, because if we disagree with a comment, it's helpful to say why (and then other people can then "plus" that explained-disagreement). Similarly, "downvoting" on reddit, is generally only meant to be used when a comment is offtopic/trolling, but is constantly misused for "disagreement" (or trolling).

On the other hand, this might be something that could work in particular instances. E.g. the hypothetical "RfC Module" for Flow, where it could replace the "support per user:foo" that is a common response to that type of discussion.

There are a few other related links in trello at https://trello.com/c/mMi2d2h8/ and "voting" or "upvoting" was mentioned a few times at Flow/Research/Experienced user responses. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 00:45, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

Quiddity, you've misunderstood. There are two backgrounds for this feature suggestion. One of them, as you correctly pointed out, is 'I agree' and 'I also have this issue' sort of feedback. Another issue, though, is moderation. I remember the days AFv5 was enabled, and I sincerely find that it was a nice tool - it gave realistic quality feedback at times - but its failure was a problem of that it (i) was deployed at a big wiki and failed to scale with its original implementation; (ii) lacked proper moderation controls (like the one I mentioned here -- it was live in AFv5, but only for a relatively short time); (iii) failed to integrate with an article talk page.

Now, let's put it again - the problem is with handling huge amounts of feedback.

• It certainly helps to categorize them. For instance, at Talk:Flow, add a 'infinite scroll' tag to group some together.
• Some comments will by definition be rubbish. Some will be almost rubbish. Some will be related, but a result of a folk's misunderstanding or malice. There needs to be a mechanism to handle those, other than by removing them - as some of them may be topical, just a heavy sleepiness of the commenter or otherwise garbage. The +/- controls could address this nicely.

Now, as for history. Currently you have means to say things like "edited", "thanked". Probably add "upvoted" and "downvoted" to them?

User's efficiency at commenting and voting is another interesting question. Does a given contributor always downvote useful stuff? Leave rubbish comments? This statistics would be possible to obtain (although I'm not sure where it should be displayed, or how it should be used.) --Gryllida 03:09, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

There are appealing uses cases for +/-, however it would almost certainly have a toxic effect on collaboration when less popular positions get hit with minuses. It is particularly toxic if the minuses diminish visibility. If minuses have a hiding effect it will feel like censorship. Productive editors with minority positions need to feel heard and sufficiently respected in order for them to have respect for consensus. It's probably best not to use +/- at all. Perhaps a plus-only feature might be useful for specific use cases. Alsee (talk) 08:57, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

move from tab to tab

Multi-tab work is common. We're also used to being able to copy almost anything into a generic text editor for modification before pasting it back. Alsee (talk) 08:57, 8 September 2014 (UTC)