Shut Up! No, *You* Shut Up: A Pattern Language for Moderation Strategies Clay Shirky http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2006/view/e_sess/7791 O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference Mar 8, 2006 Cory Doctorow doctorow@craphound.com -- Pattern languages as tools from architecture * Description of a problem and solution or goal and strategy * No so detailed as to be tied to one domain Pattern language for moderation strategies * Increasingly a developer problem * No catalog of successful/unsuccessful strategies Imagine "communal freedom" -- the X axis * How much freedom does the software allow the group to have in intercommunication * Notepad can't catalyze group conversation * Usenet is for group conversation -- no restriction on user-registration, no control, implicitly global Imagine "annonyingness" -- the Y axis * Flaming, trolling, etc The more communal freedom, the more annoyingness Even moderate amounts of communal freedom yields lots of annoyingness -- Imagine you were a developer with this kind of problem. * Slashdot has lots of users, with lots of comments * Over 10 years, it's done a remarkably good job of maintaining homeostasis without being swamped by negative effect * Slashdot's success: Members defend readers from writers * A small number of readers form a defensive membrane * But this doesn't tell you how to design the system * Looking at the detail -- ratings from -1 to +5, assigned by moderators * The average reader never sees 0 or -1 posts -- over 20% of comments How does Slashdot get this done? * Path: Are you logged in, high karma, selected and do you choose to mod -- if yes to all, you get to moderate * Implementing four subsystems on a single click is daunting * Just porting the Slashcode isn't successful; those few sites that use the codebase (e.g. Plastic) forked it Neither the macro nor micro view of Slashdot tells you how to solve this problem, you need a pattern language -- Slashdot has a tragedy of the commons * Each poster is motivated to "defect" -- troll -- to get more attention * How does Slashdot change this? * Move comments to a separate page, subdivides the problem * Treat readers and writers differently -- no one class of "users" * Let users rate posts * Defensive defaults * You could implement some of these without lifting the code -- Unintended consequences When you create a set of users who judge other users, you have a new problem: who will guard the guardians? Patterns: * Treat users and members differently * Measure good behavior * Enlist committed members * Judges can't post -- A stub for a system that solves these * Bronze-Beta, Buffy fansite, not like Slashdot * Front page asks for email address, screen-name, comment and an optional password * Every comment posted goes to the top of the queue * Simplest possible group-blog Easy to think that this was accidental, a CGI script circa 1996 But this is the second iteration! The users decided to remove features, make comments central, make login optional None of these are better or worse, but there's a crucial opportunity to ask these design questions. Writely and many other group writing sites use group logins, not individual users logins -- We need help Me and my students at NYU/ITP have been fleshing this out on a wiki: social.itp.nyu.edu/shirky/wiki moderation_strategies@yahoo.com Please come and join us and help us improve -- Hobbes and Rousseau argue about Dave Winer In 2003, Dave Winer ran a mailing list called blogrollers, about RSS and weblogs * One day in April, Dave turned it into a moderated list * This wasn't well-received * Transmuted the system from anyone-talks-to-anyone to only-talk-if-Dave-approves * The ensuing conversation was normative: "What right does he have to do this?" Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan: * Humans in their native state live in such chaos that they need absolute monarchs to impose control or will lead a nasty, brutish and short life * Tyranny is better than chaos Rousseau: The Social Contract: * Might doesn't make right * Force is no reason * People have the right to be served This is the conversation that people have when mailing lists go moderated -- no matter what the software allows, the system should still allow the users to defend themselves from their leaders. -- Social Software design is the experimental wing of political philosophy, which doesn't know that it has an experimental wing We are encoding the values of freedom of speech and other democratic fundamentals in our tools We need to have a conversation about what we're supporting and what we're trying to do Society needs us to get it right. Join the wiki/mailing list!