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All:
Sorry for the late reply on this thread ... I was away for a long holiday
weekend.
The reviewing mechanism on MOCpages was meant to be that - for reviews. I
created it as a means for people to offer praise and/or constructive criticism.
Want to chat? Use LUGNET.
The reviews, unfortunately, have the ability to be mis-used as a chatroom or a
message board, which was not the intent. Many of the teens from BZpower.com or
the folks from here on LUGNET are used to a less static means of communication.
When "reviews" are written that clearly are not reviews, I delete them. You would be amazed at how many people just write things like "i can do better", or "you suck", or "legos? get a life", or even simply "where are the pictures". There were even a few rude things directed at Anthony Sava after his message here on LUGNET.
The root of the tension in this thread is a result of volume: I couldn't
possibly moderate every review - there are thousands of them. So, instead,
MOCpages automatically "holds" the reviews that it considers questionable (based
on a set of keyword matches and other criteria) and I review them myself every
few hours.
I delete the bad ones before you even see them... While I believe in the
preservation of free speech, I do not condone cowardly attacks in a community
built upon toys, lightheardedness, and creativity. Reviews that are indeed
"reviews" are then censored by removing vulgarity or slander before being made
public.
The moderation process was not up-and-running when MOCpages was new, so vulgar,
rude, and attacking reviews from a year ago might still be up there. Let me
know if you have them on your site and I will look into it.
I've considered granting MOCpages account holders the ability to delete these
reviews from their pages themselves, but (as someone here mentioned) I am afraid
that people would abuse this right. More importantly, it does not prevent the
hurt that can be done to a very young child when a someone comes in and vulgarly
insults their creations. ("Stop building, you are awful" is a popular theme in
a lot of reviews.) With that, MOCpages would become something that parents
disallow for their children. So, someone still needs to "pre screen" things.
Also, I won't "force" people to create MOCpages accounts just to write a review.
The most compelling reason is the one that Spencer pointed out -- many of the
people that visit MOCpages are not part of the LEGO community. They surf in via
Google, or from blogs and "cool site of the day" links. I wanted to create a
mechanism that does not shun "outsiders". ... and people will very rarely go
through a "registration" process unless they really want to or have to. And
most of the most sincere reviews come from people who don't know about our
little world.
So... I still maintain that if there are reviews that you want deleted, just
e-mail me and I'll look into it. I've already gone and deleted the offending
reviews mentioned in this thread (did I miss any?), and a few dozen bogus pages
that that "Joker" guy created the other day.
Oh, and as a side note, I wanted to thank the three people that donated to
MOCpages this weekend. http://www.mocpages.com/about/donors.php (I can only
assume the dontations were spurred by this thread, because I usually don't get
any.) I spend about $100 each month out-of-pocket to host MOCpages, and I
really appreciate when folks help out.
Sean
MOCpages Administrator
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In lugnet.general, Sean Kenney wrote:
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I’ve considered granting MOCpages account holders the ability to delete these
reviews from their pages themselves, but (as someone here mentioned) I am
afraid that people would abuse this right.
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What about granting the ability to turn on and off the review mechanism
completely? Personally, though I’m gratified by praise for my MOCs, I really
could get along without the whole thing. People can still send feedback to a
contact addy if one leaves one. That’s true feedback IMO. Rude comments (that
are publicly displayed) are mostly for the amusement of the poster anyway.
Since there are always going to be jerks in the world, this type of system will
always be abused and exploited.
Besides, don’t you have better things to do with your time than to moderate (if
even to a small degree) idiots who don’t have anything nice to say? I’m
guessing “yes”:-)
.02,
JOHN
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In lugnet.general, John Neal wrote:
> In lugnet.general, Sean Kenney wrote:
>
> > I've considered granting MOCpages account holders the ability to delete
> > these reviews from their pages themselves, but (as someone here mentioned) I
> > am afraid that people would abuse this right.
>
> What about granting the ability to turn on and off the review mechanism
> completely?
I like that idea-- it's always been an annoying bug in my mind that people will
abuse the voting/reviewing right by simply cleaning out their cookies and
voting/reviewing multiple times; hence boosting their favorite MOCs and (more
devastating) trashing those they don't like (often probably for personal
reasons).
As John suggested, allowing people to turn that off might be a nice feature for
people who are just looking to show off their MOC's.
Another possible soltuion might be to have "trusted votes/reviews" and "public
votes/reviews"-- so if you're logged in, your votes get counted towards the
"trusted" score rather than the "public" score. It might also cut down on your
moderation, since trusted reviews could conceivably require less scrutiny on
your part.
Another benefit of that is saving results. I've voted for a few MOC's (in fact I
remember in the earlier days of MOCPages when I noticed that only a few MOC's
had any votes I went through like 50 in a day)-- however since I travel from
computer to computer, and periodically lose cookies or switch browsers, all my
votes are lost as being 'mine'. It's always nice to see "MOC's you've rated 5/5"
or something like that, but without tying votes/reviews back to loginid's
(rather than just cookies), they're as temporal as my cookie file :(
And of course there's always the idea of outsourcing your moderation too, to
trusted people in the community. If nothing else, it might help cut down on your
review workload :)
DaveE
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