Portal Mod's think tank.

[cast]

Earlier tonight yet another topic was submitted to the forums about the status of the Flash portal, by now I'm sure most are aware of past posts, and the issues at hand regarding the poor quality of some content being accepted into the portal.

It has been brought up enough times to encourage me to make this post, so we can discuss the possibility of portal mods, and what they should and shouldn't be able to do.

Here are the basics I have come up with for such a team.

Users will be tagged as irresponsible if they have a continuous voting streak of the same number. Users will also be tagged if their vote varies from the average popular vote of a given submission and tagged with a suspicion flag.

Then it's up do the appointed mods to remove their voting privileges or let them off.

Now what I'm asking you is, could you add to my idea?

Do you feel there is even a need for a portal moderation team?

I would have posted this in liljim's thread, but I would like to discuss this in a mature fashion and he asked for no clutter.

So what do you think?

[JollySpace]

Not when I watch it.
If I don't like the intro I blam it.
Nothing bad gets passed me.

[GUTHRIE]

At 10/25/08 01:51 AM, GUTHRIE wrote:

At 10/25/08 01:49 AM, cast wrote: So what do you think?

DO IT FAGGOT

That was completely uncalled for. I am sorry.
I'd love to see some portal mods cleaning the place up. It's unacceptable for a flagged submission to be in flash limbo for months at a time waiting for an admin to get around to deleting or accepting it.

Once again, I apologize for the preceding post.

[ThePigeonMaster]

At 10/25/08 01:49 AM, cast wrote: So what do you think?

It has a good point and a bad point. The good point is the fact that the portal mods would get rid of the bad/spam flashes and just leave the OK ones. The bad point is the fact that we have the blam system, and we already know the purpose of the blam system.
Also, once those flashes get out of the Latest Submissions they will be history, nobody would care about them.

It would be a little help for the flash portal to keep it more decent, but I really doubt that will ever happen :/

[cast]

At 10/25/08 01:58 AM, pigeonmaster88 wrote: The good point is the fact that the portal mods would get rid of the bad/spam flashes and just leave the OK ones.

The purpose is to remove the abusive users voting rights, not flash submissions.

[cast]

One major thing I would like to add is that unique users votes are only logged for submissions which are under judgment.

[ThePigeonMaster]

At 10/25/08 02:00 AM, cast wrote: The purpose is to remove the abusive users voting rights, not flash submissions.

Then they would be called voting mods, not portal mods (but would be nice if we had them too, as I said). Now I know what I misunderstood the point of this thread :/

Besides I feel sleepy...

At 10/25/08 02:09 AM, cast wrote: One major thing I would like to add is that unique users votes are only logged for submissions which are under judgment.

Yeah, I like that. Let only the NG'ers to decide whether the flash stays or gets deleted fairly.
But it's still the same, I doubt it will ever happen :(
I'm tired of seeing crappy flashes that passes and good ones that have low scores.

But I still will support this, it's a nice idea to keep the flash portal with all the flashes that deserve being there with the score they deserve.

[36Holla]

I don't think it's a good idea. It would undoubtedly cause a lot of people not being able to vote and the amount of angst that would cause would be much greater than most things. Not being able to level up for some people would be a huge blow, and I think that it's possible for someones natural voting habits, even after watching a movie and judging it fairly, can caused them to get banned. I think a system where some mods noted the voting on obvious spam flashes and did something with the people who protected those movies would be more effective than judging on every flash. Not to mention the workload for something like that would probably be huge.

[cast]

At 10/25/08 04:31 AM, 36Holla wrote: I think a system where some mods noted the voting on obvious spam flashes and did something with the people who protected those movies would be more effective than judging on every flash. Not to mention the workload for something like that would probably be huge.

Then we'll make a tweak.

Users only lose the privilege to vote on pending submissions once banned.

The whole system will be focused on submissions which are under judgment, and only on submissions from implementation on out.

As for the workload, it's pretty doable.

[36Holla]

At 10/25/08 05:07 AM, cast wrote:

At 10/25/08 04:31 AM, 36Holla wrote: I think a system where some mods noted the voting on obvious spam flashes and did something with the people who protected those movies would be more effective than judging on every flash. Not to mention the workload for something like that would probably be huge.

Then we'll make a tweak.

Users only lose the privilege to vote on pending submissions once banned.

The whole system will be focused on submissions which are under judgment, and only on submissions from implementation on out.

As for the workload, it's pretty doable.

Put that way, the job becomes easier. The whole system actually seems decently thought out. Weed out the people who vote in the spam flash while also causing people to not want to get banned would probably cause people to vote more harshly on those flashes and help keep them out. If they want protection and blam points too, they actually have to watch the movies and judge them fairly. The only tweak I'd add would be that those who are banned can't vote on under judgment flashes but they can still level up their accounts by voting on other flashes. Having poor voting habits shouldn't affect you gaining a level on your account because the two are not directly related. If these were the guidelines then I wouldn't mind having portal mods.

[Fro]

So what happens on days like Clock day and the days before and after Clock Day? Also, what happens if you have a high amount of blams or saves and want to get the other number up higher so you only vote on movies accordingly. I'm not saying saving every flash or blamming every flash, but only going and blamming the bad ones. Say I get to the last B/P level and I want to catch my blams up to saves? I would then be banned for only voting 0 on bad submissions and not voting to protect anything?

[SCTE3]

This could posibly be truly helpful to most users including sense you can't delete stolen audio pieces submitted
However for now I guess we can leave it up to Rage's gift for the spam and whatnot
The rest we will have to let Wade do until portal mods are created

[Malachy]

Let me make this extremely clear.

it is your own goddamn faults.

if you fuckwads weren't so goddamn worried about getting the most protection/blam points you could get in a single day, we wouldn't be in this mess. We don't need a portal mod team, because EVERY SINGLE USER is a portal mod RIGHT NOW.

you know how you can stop the crap from getting through? VOTE 0.

how fucking hard is this? You morons broke the system all on your own because you got it in your head that shit flash would pass regardless of how you voted...yet if everyone who thinks the portal has gone to crap actually voted fairly (it goes both ways here), than the portal would keep itself under control like it used to.

Back in 2003 wade made a front page post about how he can see how everyone votes and people who voted 0 on everything or 5 on everything despite the actual quality of the submission (say, voting 0 on a submission that passed with a score of 3 or 4) he could easily just erase all of your stats.

Not a bad idea, since if you knock out the b/p of all the idiot stat whores, they wont have as strong of an effect on crap submissions anymore.

[Perceptor]

Yes, if memory serves, that does indeed sound somewhat familiar. However, I'm just wondering here whether or not he's actually ever carried through on that threat. I know that various users have been deleted off the server entirely, posts and all, but I must confess that I've never heard of a case of targeting out b/p points specifically. I don't suppose you'd be able to lend any assistance?

[OsAmARaMa]

At 10/25/08 03:56 PM, Corky52 wrote: So what happens on days like Clock day and the days before and after Clock Day? Also, what happens if you have a high amount of blams or saves and want to get the other number up higher so you only vote on movies accordingly. I'm not saying saving every flash or blamming every flash, but only going and blamming the bad ones. Say I get to the last B/P level and I want to catch my blams up to saves? I would then be banned for only voting 0 on bad submissions and not voting to protect anything?

What part of "Then it's up to the appointed mods to either ban them or let them off" don't you understand?

cast has told people straight up in the past how it really is, but there's still a problem, the users, so now he's going in a different direction because apparently we have to babysit certain users.

[Fro]

At 10/25/08 06:10 PM, OsAmARaMa wrote:

What part of "Then it's up to the appointed mods to either ban them or let them off" don't you understand?

cast has told people straight up in the past how it really is, but there's still a problem, the users, so now he's going in a different direction because apparently we have to babysit certain users.

What's the point of this thread if I'm not trying to find something wrong with it? Don't you agree that people should be trying to find the what ifs? If not then this thread would either die out or be full of plus one posts such as I agree, or I disagree.

[Joe]

Make it so portal mods decide what flash is "good" and what isn't. You'll only get points if you agree with the portal mods. Even if it passes, but the portal mods clearly thought it was spam, and you voted 2-5, you don't get the point. You have less incentive to vote high because you "think" it will pass, even though it's spam if you want the points.

The portal mods don't effect whether the flash is protected or blammed, and stat whores will generally start voting based on the quality of the submission if they want points, not because they think it'll pass.

The portal mods don't have any direct influence on the fate of the submission, they just make the general voting population (mainly consisting of stat whores) vote somewhat more fairly based on the quality of the submission. You can't trust the masses to make the right decision, especially if they can all get a bonus from making the wrong one.

Maybe have 50 "mods" that are active in the portal, have a general idea of what is spam and what is not. Each of them has their vote go towards a separate total as well as the regular score. If that total is above the blam threshold (or some other relative threshold) then any 2-5 votes from the general population will get a protection point no matter what the fate of the submission is.

You just have to make sure the "mods" have good judgement, and that their decision is the "right" one based on the quality of the flash. This way, the masses still decide the fate of the movie, but the honest ones that properly judge the flash will tend to get more blam/protection points. It brings the focus of judgement back to voting on quality, and not voting with the pack.

[Joe]

I'm just going to elaborate on this a bit, try to explain all of the basic ideas that fight abuse and promote honest voting.

They aren't really portal mods, as in moderators. They're more like mods as in "models." Their vote is the "model vote." Basically, when they vote, their vote doesn't just go into the calculation of the submission's score, it also goes into a separate "model vote" number. If the model vote is higher than the threshold, then everyone who voted 2-5 will get a protection point, 0-1 will get nothing. If the model vote is lower than the threshold, everyone who voted 0-1 will get a blam point, everyone who voted 2-5 will get nothing. Whether the submission passes or gets blamed has no effect.

The submission's score is still the same, but the points given are now based on the model vote, the supposed "ideal" average made by the trusted portal mods. Portal mods don't have any special privileges, they can't blam/protect a flash any more than any other user, they can't delete submissions, they can't ban people from voting or anything. All they do is collectively determine which people get the points. The model vote could be hidden just like the regular vote is hidden while under judgement as well, in an effort to keep the portal mods even more honest.

Then, there's the portal mod mods, or the model voter moderators. They don't contribute to the model vote, and also have no effect over the score/fate of the submission. The job of the portal mod mods is to appoint portal mods. Maybe there will be an application or something where people can apply to be a portal mod, and the portal mod mods will decide whether they can be or not. Since Wade has said that admins can see people's voting histories, the portal mod mods could have access to this information. They can look for patterns, biases, and whether the applicant has a general idea of flash quality. They can either approve or deny the application, as well as remove a person from the portal mod position if they find a pattern of abuse in their recent votes (such as clearly 5'ing spam submissions).

Basically, since the problem seems to be the fact that people get rewarded with points for going along with the crowd, no matter the quality of the flash, I think this would be a way to get people to focus more on voting based on quality. If they know that the portal mods are voting based on quality, and they want the points, they're going to have to vote based on quality as well. This way, there's no real "flash moderation" and it's just a measure to try and keep people honest if they want the points.

It's not a system based on control like most moderation systems, it's more of a way to change the incentive of getting points from voting with the masses to voting based on quality. If 10 portal mods vote 0 on a spam submission, and 190 regular users vote 2-5 on it because it's by a known spammer that has dozens of submissions, so they know it'll pass.. Even when it passes, they won't be getting any points. In the future when they see him submit a new flash, they'll vote 0 based on the quality of it since they know the portal mods will be voting 0 based on the quality if they want the point. Since many people only really vote for the points, and not the flash itself, this takes the reward of points away from the act of following the crowd, and gives it to the act of voting on quality.

[Fro]

To Joe's idea.

What I see as the only problem that exists is the fact that people will have different opinion on what spam is and what it isn't even if they do have a general common idea there is still going to be problem. What if one person sees a submission as funny and good submission, but the majority find it as a spam submission? The person voted 5 and of course most of the others voted lowly, but it still manages to pass judgment. A portal mod comes around and deprives this person of their protection point because they have different opinions.

This movie as example.

Poozy at the Disco, by THEJamoke Type: Movie Rating: Everyone

I personally 5'd it because I thought it was funny, but it's nothing more than a spam submission to the people who don't know who Poozy is or don't visit the BBS. It barely passed and had a very low score meaning the majority voted to blam it, in which the flash probably deserved quality wise. So whoever the mod deprives points from here is going to piss somebody off. It's clearly spam, but it's funny so what do they do? Take the blam point away from the people who voted 0 because it's spam or give the protection point to the people who voted highly because they thought it was funny?

You would have this argument with almost every single spam submission out there because there are a few who actually enjoy a spam submission now and then. Notice I said almost because there are still quite a bit that every single person agrees on that should be blammed.

[Digital-Terror]

At 10/25/08 10:02 PM, Joe wrote: Make it so portal mods decide what flash is "good" and what isn't. You'll only get points if you agree with the portal mods.

Like you won't get banned if you agree with the forum mods? BBS moderators decide what's against the rules and what isn't, and they sometimes put in their own. It keeps the BBS under control, in the same way it would in the flash portal.

But, it's not hard to decide whats good and whats not. Spam is obvious, and things worthy of surviving in the portal aren't too hard to pick out. It would bee nice to see a little more control in the portal, like there is in the BBS.

[Shaun]

I completely disagree with these ideas.

Basically what you are saying is that you want to take what makes newgrounds unique and popular and destroy it.

The best way to change the portal is to vote 0 on crap submissions.
Disregard your stats and vote 0.

If mass voting wasn't discouraged, I would also suggest starting a "blam club" based on a website away from newgrounds that discusses, targets and blams crap flash.
There have been similar clubs in the past.
But that is very much discouraged these days so I wont suggest it.

[xenonmonkey]

but what if one person has an opinion differing than the popular vote? he should be lowered for having an opinion?

[Popsoap]

At 10/25/08 01:49 AM, cast wrote: Users will be tagged as irresponsible if they have a continuous voting streak of the same number. Users will also be tagged if their vote varies from the average popular vote of a given submission and tagged with a suspicion flag.

Then it's up do the appointed mods to remove their voting privileges or let them off.

Terrible idea, most people who vote (If they already got their EXP points that day) base it on their opinion of the flash.

Just because a flash has a good (or bad) score, doesn't mean that everyone likes (hates) it.

[Joe]

At 10/26/08 11:27 AM, Corky52 wrote: The person voted 5 and of course most of the others voted lowly, but it still manages to pass judgment. A portal mod comes around and deprives this person of their protection point because they have different opinions.

Well, if the majority of people voted based on their actual opinions, and not because they think something is going to pass, that person that saw it as funny and a good submission wouldn't be getting a point anyway, as the majority probably would have blammed it.

When you compare it to something that's happening now, you're comparing it to a broken system. The majority of the people vote to get points, which is evident since some obvious spam by the kitty krew and whatnot gets through because people assume it's going to pass (like all of the other spam flash by the kitty krew that has already passed) So they feel it's safer to vote 2-5 so they can get their point.

I personally 5'd it because I thought it was funny, but it's nothing more than a spam submission to the people who don't know who Poozy is or don't visit the BBS. It barely passed and had a very low score meaning the majority voted to blam it, in which the flash probably deserved quality wise. So whoever the mod deprives points from here is going to piss somebody off. It's clearly spam, but it's funny so what do they do? Take the blam point away from the people who voted 0 because it's spam or give the protection point to the people who voted highly because they thought it was funny?

Well, if it's going to piss people off either way, it's going to do the same thing without the model vote system. People voted 0 so it would get blammed, since it's not blammed, and they didn't get a point, they could be pissed. If it was blammed, people like you that voted 5 would have been pissed because you thought it was good.

In fact, it could be even better with the model vote system, as the fate of the flash isn't necessarily related to the distribution of points. Say that passed, but the portal mods thought it was spam... The people that voted to blam it get a blam point, and the people that voted to protect it get to come back and watch it and comment on it, and link to it in the future. Both sides win in a different way. Now say it's blammed, but the portal mods thought it was good. The people that voted to blam it get it gone, just like they wanted it, the people that voted to protect it get a protection point. Again, each side gets something positive out of it. Then the other results are just like if the model vote system didn't exist to begin with, with the model vote agreeing with the fate, again, the system doesn't effect the way things are now. The only differences are two situations where everyone gets some positive result.

You would have this argument with almost every single spam submission out there because there are a few who actually enjoy a spam submission now and then. Notice I said almost because there are still quite a bit that every single person agrees on that should be blammed.

Like I said above, you have those arguments all the time anyway. The only difference is that blam/protect points might be affected. And blam/protect points aren't everything. They're supposed to be an incentive to vote so you get a higher voting power. Over the years, the reasons for voting a certain way have seriously gone down the wrong path. This system would be a way to bring it right back on track. Voting based on quality.

[Toiletpaper]

At 10/25/08 04:30 PM, Malachy wrote: Let me make this extremely clear.

it is your own goddamn faults.

if you fuckwads weren't so goddamn worried about getting the most protection/blam points you could get in a single day, we wouldn't be in this mess. We don't need a portal mod team, because EVERY SINGLE USER is a portal mod RIGHT NOW.

you know how you can stop the crap from getting through? VOTE 0.

how fucking hard is this? You morons broke the system all on your own because you got it in your head that shit flash would pass regardless of how you voted...yet if everyone who thinks the portal has gone to crap actually voted fairly (it goes both ways here), than the portal would keep itself under control like it used to.

Back in 2003 wade made a front page post about how he can see how everyone votes and people who voted 0 on everything or 5 on everything despite the actual quality of the submission (say, voting 0 on a submission that passed with a score of 3 or 4) he could easily just erase all of your stats.

Not a bad idea, since if you knock out the b/p of all the idiot stat whores, they wont have as strong of an effect on crap submissions anymore.

You sir, deserve a cookie for writing that. I have been here five months and observed that neignty percent of the newground's community is made up of a bunch of 12 year olds spamming their way up blam and protection points. It has turned into a nightmare. This is the second time I have read a thread dedicated to the portal, and this is the first time I have read where a mod stood up against the people.
Everything is fucked up and we did it. Whoever thinks this is a big mess deserves a pat on the back, seeing as they UNDOUBTEDLY contributed to it.
I could rant about this all day, but seeing as work is calling, tchao.

[LedgendGamer]

I feel tiny posting after all these huge posts, but Malachy beat me to it (and much more eloquently).

It's everyone's fault that these crap submissions are passing, because they all think the portal's horribly corrupted and that they'll never fix it.

if EVERYONE thinks that they'll never fix it and that they should just vote 5 because they'll never affect anything, then NOTHING WILL EVER GET FIXED.

If everyone instead adopted the mentality that they DO make a difference, then their votes would be enough to (in most cases) overpower the votes of the spammers, crews and alts. And that's only in the case of the worst spam submissions, in most cases that's not even true - the pass votes are coming, largely, from the people who think the portal has died and voted accordingly.

Every vote logged purely to satisfy the 'corrupted portal's popular vote' merely does more damage.

Malachy still said it better, read his post if you haven't yet.

[WeHaveFreshCookies]

Doing away with the b/p stat would remove this problem INSTANTLY.

I suggest doing that.

[Fleshlight]

there should be some kind of whistle rank for flash submissions (based on the average submission rating) that is displayed at the flash page. if someone's got a crappy whistle (or whatever it would be) people would blam the flash

[Little-Rena]

At 10/25/08 01:49 AM, cast wrote: Users will also be tagged if their vote varies from the average popular vote of a given submission and tagged with a suspicion flag.

I don't agree with this part, say I really like a flash but the subject of it is something untasteful and the art isn't all that great, I would still probablly vote 5 or 4 because I found it ammusing, now if many of the votes are 0s, 1s or 2s then I would have voted to varie the populare vote just because I liked it.

And vise versa, say I don't find a really artsy flash funny or enteraining and vote really low on it but it passes with 4.xx then again, I have voted against the populare vote because I didn't personally like the flash.

I don't think you should tag people just for voting based on their opinion of the flash, you can't force people to vote like everyone else otherwise we might as well suggest the name "Sheepgrounds, Everything Decided for you."

[lazymonkey94]

there shouldn't be any oversight because if the review and forum mods are any indication, then they'll just cast various people as "abusers" and be much harder on them regardless of quality.