Dear friends,
Yesterday I posted a subtitled video which I knew would be controversial, but I also considered that this was an important topic, so I went ahead with it. This resulted in a few average comments, and some very good ones. But then, today, I saw these two:
The vilification of Peter the Great is a manifestation of (not so) subtle Russophobia, fear and ‘revolutionary’ hatred of Russia. The ‘Holy Rus’ that some people are nostalgic of is the Russia moaning under the ‘Tartar yoke’. The Romanovs were the first fully ‘Russian’ Tsars. They made Russia great.
and
Islam is in fact a sub-product of a “Judeo-Christian” vision of the world. The ‘Judeo-Christians’ were all the sects who, while accepting the historicity of the Messiah-ship and Prophet-hood of Jesus Christ, denied that He was God.
Of course, “white Western judeo-Christian world” does not include Russia. But it does include…Islam!
I noticed that in both cases, we are dealing with anonymous posts.
These are just two examples of what I absolutely loathe: a short series of unsubstantiated slogans masquerading as a “comment”.
Here is how this model works. Take any topic, especially one which people mistakenly believe they have an opinion about, let’s say, forestry. The typical “slogan pseudo-comment” will read something like this:
Forest are important for humanity. Several continents have forests. Rivers are important too, but not as important as forests. I wish forests did not have poison ivy. Animals like forests too. The Chinese communists are really evil. Napoleon was a great genius.
The above does bear a superficial resemblance to a paragraph, until you look closer and see that these are not really “sentences” but more a kind of “flow-of-semi-consciousness” slogans stringed together with no rhyme or reason. People who post this way also think that way (when I think I should have written “think that they think” that way, because this does not qualify as “thought”).
The idea that a thesis is best substantiated with logically processed facts simply does never even occur to them.
Our mods try really REALLY hard, but what are they supposed to do with people who simply have no idea how to think?
The rule of moderation #11 states: “Self evidently stupid, nonsensical and otherwise idiotic comments will be removed with no right to appeal. Frankly, idiots have been the plague of this blog and I am tired of them. From now on comments posted by people who are self-evidently stupid will be banned and their authors warned that a ban is next.”
But where do we draw the line?
Another plague for our moderators have been battling is what I call the “single issue crusaders“. These are folks who feel very VERY strongly about issue X (say, Islam, COVID, (((Jews))), Q-Anon, etc.) and have to always bring it all back to that single topic. Very typically, their actual level of understanding of topic X is exactly inversely proportional to their hell-bent determination to bring their favorite topic back to the forefront not matter what (why? simply, because those who understand issue X understand that it is complex, thus they prefer debating/discussing over sloganeering and preaching).
Our rules of moderation (see here: http://10.16.86.131/moderation-policy/) currently have twenty one (21!) rules. If we continue down this path, we will soon need a full book of rules and lawyers to navigate through them!
Besides, it is quite obvious that most commentators don’t bother reading the rules (one even told me that “since I am well educated, I don’t need to consult your rules”!).
And then, let’s be honest here, just take a look at a Bell Curve: we all can try to focus our efforts on the right hand side of that curve, but we cannot make the left side disappear, especially since folks on the left are too dull to realize where they stand on that curve. Yet infinitely stupid comments are, literally, a type of mental pollution, they derail intelligent discussions precisely by being so stupid. Shall we just ignore them, like mosquitoes on an otherwise very nice hike?
Then there are those who clearly do not read and/or understand what is written. Some even openly say so “I did not read the full article but… bla bla bla”. They are also the ones who typically send me angry “divorce letters”.
How about those who begin crusading against strawman arguments?!
I write A and they read non-A!
So what should I do?
Spell out what I am saying AND what I am NOT saying each time?!?!?! That is not doable, I tried that in the past. It does not work.
The extreme solution would be to shut down the comments section. I don’t want to do that.
Making more rules? As Putin said about forcing people to get vaccinated, “only a few hundred, maybe thousands, of people make the laws, but then millions work on how to circumvent or otherwise ignore them“. He is right.
So making more rules for our comments section is futile.
Make all the comments like those in the current “Vignette” series: only signed-in people can comment?
Maybe…
Banning “anonymous” comments would only be a stop-gap semi-temporary hack, those hell-bent on posting will easily bypass that external limitation.
Maybe accept reality as it is, no matter how frustrating and discouraging, is the only viable option and I should just read the “Serenity prayer” (God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference) every time one of these folks being spewing their nonsense?
Maybe…
So I turn to you, Saker community, what can you recommend? Is there anything we can do to finally free our comments section from this kind of mental garbage?
Personally, nothing demotivates me more than taking the time to put some very real effort into a post, or posting a superb guest post, only to then see the idiots (sorry, no better word comes to my mind right now) derail it all by their idiocy. I just feel like throwing in the towel, give it all up and do something easy and fun (like hiking) instead of putting so much efforts into the blog.
And if the above sounds to you like a frustrated cry for help, it’s because it is :-)
But if that’s just me, then I am okay with it: after all, I don’t write this blog for me, but for you all, my friends and members of the Saker community.
Can you live with more of the same, or do you want changes? If the latter, can you please suggest something, anything?
If you think it’s fine (maybe I am over-reacting!) – also please share your view with the rest of us.
Thanks to all, huge and cheers
Andrei
I’m a computer programmer. And the two paragraphs you quote appear (to me), to be (possibly) computer generated.
I’ve noticed this sort of thing on other sites. And about one week ago came across an entire Web Page full of it.
Each sentence appears to make a (possibly) quite reasonable statement of fact. And the next sentence sort of relates to it. But also drifts off somewhere else. After a few more sentences, the passage either starts contradicting itself. Or changes topic entirely.
What about stringing together say 10+ examples of this sort of thing (as examples for the moderators). And have the moderators just transfer this sort of thing to a “Computer Generated Spam” (or whatever) page.
With perhaps a Comments section. So that people can discuss whether or not any particular comment is real (or not).
That was my reaction as well. It’s most likely AI generated, perhaps an experiment.
It’s time people came to terms with the fact that AI bots will become both better and more numerous.
I’ll submit my own comment on this, but yours makes sense to me.
Thanks for that Merlin2.
I notice that none of the other commenters seem to consider that those posts were computer generated. But as a native English speaker, the fact that this is so just screams at me. But perhaps Saker and other non-native English speakers will have genuine difficulty in detecting this computer-generated garbage.
For the Saker: As an example of what computers can currently (and easily) do, go to:-
https://www.coolgenerator.com/sentence-generator
And type in the word “Judeo-Christian” (which appears in the second post you complain about). And a Quantity of (say) 20 (words). These first two garbage sentences generated are:-
1. “When people from the far right talk about the ‘judeo-christian’ roots of the West, often what they really mean is ‘Christian.’ The ‘Judeo’ part is just fig leaf,” said Donatella Di Cesare, a philosopher at the Sapienza University in Rome.
2. (With Protestant and Catholic countries considered more Western than Orthodox ones, and Israel tossed in to buttress the “Judeo” part of “judeo-christian.”) I noted that non-white or non-Christian countries aren’t generally considered Western even when they are further west geographically than Christian, white ones Morocco v.
These are scarily good. They are MUCH less obviously computer-generated than the two posts you complain of.
Obviously, having computers hijack your Comments section – by generating far more random but related and me apparently meaningful garbage than any number of Moderators can possibly cope with – is easily possible.
The only good news is that with the two posts you complain of, a native English speaking Moderator should have little difficulty detecting and disposing of them. Though if the attackers throw the latest tech. at your, you’re obviously in real trouble (sorry to say)…
Glad you brought up that sentence generator. It is better than most, actually. I have encountered more than a few of these better combinations (ie, pretend knowledgeable) on Reddit, where my little “hobby” is to catch AI’s in a little net I build. I built basically a 10 point AI detector, though generally I need some interchange to firm the analysis. After all, let’s not forget that humans are easier to tempt than bots, also easier to rile up, of course. Therefore sometimes non-engagement alone is a tell-tale sign (not 100% but if they are simply a way too lazy human to even offer a retort when challenged – or satirized – who the heck cares what they say, as long as not too crude?).
In part II I offered my suggestion, which involves eliminating the “anonymous” handle (which is silly at best), leaving the rest to the capable crew of commenters here.
Personally, I don’t mind a cat toy now and then. And non-English speakers can exercise their language skills too.
PS not sharing my 10 point detector for good reasons (except i think i did kind of share 3 of them, in a way. The easiest ones). Why should I provide training for their expert generators for free?
AI bot was also my first reaction. The people we face are all but stupid – and they have important means at their disposition . Saturating the mods and disappointing the readers is a subtle tactic.
Counter-move could be to have both identified commentators (being less prone to problems) and anonymous one that should be watched with more care.
May also be the thoughts entering the head of anyone who is unstable.
Put to text.
Also might be a young teenager or younger kid.
Citing what he knows about history.
Saker should leave them there for everyone’s amusement as we have to laugh about something, given the current unhappy world situation. Perhaps if the Saker would tag them with clown emoji it would suffice.
The clown emoji is a lovely idea. Maybe it helps mitigate the issue well enough. My concern is the workload of the moderators, which will only rise if they also have to evaluate the “quality” of posts before they delete them.
Just adding a clown tag if the post makes no sense at first reading seems to be quick and painless.
Many many years ago, circa 2008, darpa was making project calls for social media/social control/narrative control. then we got big data then snowden and vault 17 leaks, so even a no one like me knows that persona management software that alllows a single individual to control several personas exists for a long time.
That software uses a.i. for text generation seems completely plausible, and as you say, those examples above look like it.
It will be the playfield until something drastically changes.
I for one think is better to be aware of that and know how to deal with that.
I am a website manager and we get computer generated garbage emails unless we use a captcha extension. I hate having to complete captcha personally but it is a necessary means of eliminating bot generated communications.
Might be an idea to add it to your comment text form?
Another rule that I think would help eliminate confusion would be to insist that all commenters avoid using the ‘Anonymous’ user name because it gets very confusing if there several Anonymous contributors. Insist on commenters using another, unique, name.
I think these are probably not computer generated but someone on the edge – possibly a drug addict – or someone with a gripe about something. Or retired or senile person or kid.
May even some English literature and world history dilatant or university student blowing off steam here.
When I see nonsensical posts I simply smile and move on.
This site would be rather blan without them.
I can understand your frustration, Saker. What I am about to suggest is perhaps as idiotic as anything you have seen but who knows. Make one change. Since you seem to be concerned primarily about idiots posting, although people constantly harping on their favourite topic are also mentioned in your rant, and some of them might be intelligent, my suggestion is this. Make a new rule (groan!) so that anyone who wants to post a comment must correctly answer a skill-testing question. If they fail, their comment will not be posted. I don’t know how effective this would be at excluding comments that you want to exclude but at least, you might have some fun coming up with the questions and that, for a while, would take your mind off the frustration that you express in this rant and for which I sympathize.
Probably any skill test might discriminate against some people who are not stupid, ignorant or illwilled, but just lack a number of skills or qualities. Say, there are people who are color blind, people who don’t understand numbers at all, people who have alexia (word blindness), and so on. Any “skill test” might stop their possibly beneficial commenting.
(The AI generated hypothesis sounds about right to me.)
Saker,
Anonymous as you well know is the highway of trolls, the mentally deficient, cyber warriors (packs of them are now paid by various orgs and state bureaus.
1. End Anonymous as a default and as an option. That will cut the total by a significant amount.
2. Use delete more.
3. Any comment that drags the discussion threads away from the obvious topic of the article, cut and paste them in the MF Cafe.
We have thousands of readers and many hundreds of regular commenters who rarely comment, maybe because their fear of language and grammar errors.
4. A thumbs up or thumbs down system would aid their participation rate, and would be an indicator that a comment should be moderated. The system in Disqus leaves the checkers’ “name” embedded in the total of up or down. It’s often an indicator of excellence of a comment and also the need for moderation if some dolt is afoot.
Ending the “anonymous” option sounds good. This will force the person to use an unique ID which could enable us to “know” the commenter after he has made a number of comments.
From the day I was dragged kicking and screaming by Larchmonter to this obscure blog (obscure back then, now the bone in the throat of ‘the other side’) I have been Auslander. I will always be Auslander until the day when I decide to get the coveted red internal passport. What to do? Methinks I’ll remain Auslander, everyone knows the grouchy old curmudgeon as Auslander so why disappoint the babbling trolls regardless of the color of my internal documents?
In regards to the trolls, I would say no more anonymous posts. A name of some kind chosen and, while I don’t know the abilities of the monitors, I would advocate that one troll to one IP if possible. I know my IP is all over H and creation, but that’s the server I’ve got to use.
‘Thumbs up’. Don’t matter to me, but it might to others on this blog.
Auslander
Author http://rhauslander.com/
Never The Last One, paper back edition. https://www.amazon.com/dp/152184905 Never the Last One: A Novel of Spetznaz opens our eyes to a world not described in American news or fiction, a view of Russia as she really is.
“Another plague for our moderators have been battling is what I call the “single issue crusaders“. These are folks who feel very VERY strongly about issue X (say, Islam, COVID, (((Jews))), Q-Anon, etc.) and have to always bring it all back to that single topic. Very typically, their actual level of understanding of topic X is exactly inversely proportional to their hell-bent determination to bring their favorite topic back to the forefront not matter what (why? simply, because those who understand issue X understand that it is complex, thus they prefer debating/discussing over sloganeering and preaching).”
I suppose that I could be accused of this as I regularly post about the issue of growth. It’s not, in my mind, about a “crusade” (in the mold of religions and ideologies) so much as it’s about a PRIMARY component of all that we do (independent of all religions and ideologies), that it’s an issue that we fail to bring into with our other problematic issues.
I spent years on another site prying this subject into the general discussions. Felt that folks were never going to “go there.” But, years later, after I’d given up on that site, I visit back to see that it’s fairly mainstream to now acknowledge that there’s a growth problem. I learned from Derrick Jensen that the trick is to whisk a premise by such that people don’t question it; without seeing/knowing the actual premise it’s possible to concoct a believable story/equation. The solution: ALWAYS QUESTION THE PREMISE (which is likely hidden by fluff- force a tie-in to a base premise).
I say all this because what one believes isn’t relevant may become relevant. Who is to make that call?
I will admit that I become frustrated getting through postings that seemingly are disjointed. But that’s my take. Perhaps there’s value, if not in direct relationship but in a muse kind of way, to be had by someone else (another reader)?
Things are going to become increasingly difficult. NOW is the time to be honest with our discussions. Best way to establish a “track “is to bind to a premise; everything ought to be tested against that premise.
End of my musings…
I think by nature we are many different ideological peoples, with different interpretations and languages that can be very easily manipulated and categorized by those wishing to do so.
There are no easy answers or solutions here, good luck w/the attempt though
I think just doing what the fact checkers do on Facebook, weirdly enough. If your system software has the capability, put a red text banner at the top of the comment saying “this comment makes absolutely no sense, you should probably skip it”. Or perhaps change the text of the comment to red to identify it as a brainless comment
Saker,
Your comment section is one of the very few that is worth reading, it would be a shame to do away with it altogether.
I understand your frustration as some comments detract from an otherwise excellent piece of journalism and impede the thoughtful discussion that normally follows.
From my perspective the most annoying trolls are the “single issue” trolls you mention. No matter the subject, they will find a way to drag the conversation to their pet issue.
In any event, I’d say keep doing what you are doing, I really dig the comments here, and can skip over those folks i find annoying or distracting.
If anything, maybe give the moderators a little more leeway to “censor”. Some will scream bloody murder of course, but who cares?
Saker,
This is your blog. Those who frequent this space are your guests. Most hang out here because they value your analysis and the conversations which are generated in response, and are grateful to you for hosting such a ‘salon’. Anyone who comes as a casual sightseer and litters your space with banal comments, empty wrappers, does not need to be made to feel welcome. I say take a page out of Pat Lang’s book and tolerate only those guests you choose to tolerate, without feeling you owe anyone an explanation as to why you choose one and not another.
Read your “rant”, Saker.
My initial, instinctive response was:
You don’t owe anyone here anything.
So I am replying here^ in support of Laniny’s comment.
You take no paid advertising.
I recall a previous “rant/call for financial support”, where you stated someone had ceased their assistance due to your covid policy.
And another did not agree with something else, and stopped the $$€€¥¥?
You cannot be bought. Right or wrong, agree or disagree with you. Read or don’t read. No one forces anyone to come here.
In fact, it’s a privilege.
This is YOUR blog.
21 or whatever moderation rules is enough.
When I first beached myself here six-seven years ago, the moderation rule I liked the best (and I think there were only seven back then)(/i), was this one:
3/ Any comment designed to make me angry will make me angry and will be removed in anger.
I *love* that.
Stick with that one Andrei. Just go “this comment stinks, makes me angry and therefore is deleted under moderation rule 3.”. Done.
Rule 3 continues: Any comment deliberately and grossly mis-representing what I write will be immediately removed. I shall not answer any “straw man” arguments.
Repeated attempts to misrepresent my views will result in a ban.
Just use Rule 3. It’s a good rule. (And still makes me laugh).
WW.
What I can’t understand is the sudden fuss made about those two comments. Wouldn’t have been simpler to follow the rule and delete them straightaway which happened on quite a regular basis (I presume in anger) and I didn’t send any angry ‘divorce letter’.
Bonjour Saker,
Je suis du même avis que les deux commentateurs ci dessus.
Je vous lis avec plaisir depuis plusieurs années, et je n’ai commenté peut être que 3 ou 4 fois au total.
Comme l’as dit aussi quelqu’un d’autre au dessus, c’est un des rare blog (le seul?) ou je lis les commentaire avec autant d’intérêt.
Laninya et White Whale ont la bonne option : restez le maitre chez vous.
Se battre contre les ignorant est un combat sans fin, c’est comme se battre contre des moulins à vents, comme il est écrit dans Don Quichotte.
Trad :
Hello Saker,
I agree with the two reviewers above.
I have been reading you with pleasure for several years, and I have commented maybe only 3 or 4 times in total.
As someone else also said above, this is one of the rare blog (the only one?) Where I read the comments with so much interest.
Laninya and White Whale have the right option: be the master of your own home.
Fighting against the ignorant is a never-ending fight, it’s like fighting against windmills, as it is written in Don Quixote.
Friendship
Dear Saker,
I am an avid reader of your blog since the “old blog” and I rarely comment. I hang out here every day because as Laninya said I “value your analysis and the conversations which are generated in response”.
I read every article posted on this blog and then I scan the comments to find the regular member; the others I skim past.
I agree with Laninya’s comment.
I feel terrible for saying this, but I laughed when I read the article. Saker states exactly the human condition, which is, there will always be those who will drive us nuts. I don’t care what the activity or topic is, these people exist. What to do about it? I have no idea, and there is an old saying that goes like this: “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.”
But, let’s count our blessings too. This site has fabulous people sharing their experiences and thoughts that far outweigh the single issue obsessed and anonymous blowhards. I think I speak for most viewers, we are grateful that this site exists. That opinion is regularly expressed in the commentary.
Another point that makes me laugh is this site has many well read and astute readers who comment. I would not like to cross swords with most of them. I’ve watched folks like Larchmonter, Amarynth, Auslander, (to name a few) run idiots off the board.
Great site.
It seems clear to me that there are efforts to ruin blogs for malign or political purposes. These are the comments that need weeding out. The plain stupid I can tolerate because it gives a reflection of what we are up against. And we should be prepared to argue and educate – I know its hard work, but this is the correct approach IMHO. I apologise if I sound like I’m putting myself in the non-stupid class, but on some issues this is definitely not the case and I welcome being corrected and given additional information. Its why I visit blogs – to learn and be able to contribute.
Well said Sir!
When I taught 8th grade mathematics, I felt like a total failure. As the years passed, I encountered some of the students that I was sure I had failed to teach anything to at all. To my surprise more than a few told me I was a great teacher and made a class they hated fun. Some of the ones I truly wanted to choke told me may class was one of the classes they looked forward to each day. Needless to say, it was not what I expected. If your intention is to inform and educate, do that. As much as you may want to choke your audience, at least try to make it fun. You will receive your reward from places you least expect it to come from.
I believe some of the stupid ones may be the ones learning the most.
I also believe not all anonymous commenters have an agenda. How can a non-anonymous commenter not be biased against an anonymous one. It is easy to shut down anonymous but wouldnt that be biased.
The comments section is fine as is.
I think the moderation policy is fine as is. I have run across a few comments that I couldn’t understand due to a stream of consciousness style that is often off topic after a couple of sentences. This doesn’t happen all that often though.
I really look forward to the comments. I’ve learned a lot from the people that comment here. There are lot of intelligent people that leave quality comments compared to other web sites.
Right on Andrei. It’s like knowing Robert’s Rules of Order which I think should be required reading for everyone on the planet but wants aren’t always gets. Thanks for spelling that out for us. I, for one, love forests…..oops…love knowing the rules. We can meet, or exceed, them.
I think what is needed is activity from witihin the sense of community to self-generate a subset of shared “moderation” from the ground up. How to do that smoothly and without recourse to over complex and censorious processes though… I agree with Larchmonter445’s thumbs-system but maybe strengthened by demoting a sufficiently down-thumbed post to be only readable by an active click from the interested reader?
Then the next topic becomes “thumb wars” with downvotes potentially weaponised by single-interest fanatics. I think here the idea of requiring a thumb-using commenter to first be logged in, and indeed disallowing user names like “anonymous” might help. “Drive by thumbing” would otherwise ruin this approach.
We need to strenghten the signal and diminish the noise. When it is not painfully submerged the signal in this comments section is extremely high fidelity and most of us are probably in awe of the depth of knowledge so often in evidence.
This blog is an antidote to ignorance, and an education in clarity of thought and expression.
…
NB Is there an automated AI script that is successful at flagging content that has too much noise to be from a trusted source? Essentially a bot-recognition script?
It’s relatively easy nowadays to contract the services of a “bot farms” which can boost “likes” and “followers” on many platforms like instagram, twitter etc.
One of the tell-tale signs of bot intervention is lots of clicks and likes but few comments. This is because comments are much more complicated to generate “en masse”.
For the a/m reason, I would be wary of providing buttons/ likes/ flags and other features that could be easily exploited by enemies and skew the comments. If you were to go down this route then you should provide this feature (eg flagging “troll” ) to signed known commentators but not to the general public.
You are over reacting. Even readers skip the idiotic comments. Only things like vulgar comments and racial slurs etc should be disallowed.
Freedom to post is necessary. Otherwise it is not a discussion but a boring lecture. Sometimes comments are better than the post itself.
Anonymous comments are not necessarily people with an agenda. There are other genuine reasons.
Besides comments also help moderate the ones who write the articles. For example Saker has a certain opinion about vaccines. But it was comments that made him realize not everyone agrees.
Spot on post & comments & I have nothing to add to it except I have found moderation waiting time is often excessive. Definately the comments section is a very valuable reading experience.
I agree.
The post sounds like an attempt to figure out and ask for help in figuring out the oulines of the blog’s Overton Window. Impossible to write rules to censor sensibly. Just stick with the rules that are in place.
This worry seems to have grown since The Saker decided, some months ago, to participate more directly in the comments section.
I post here now as Anonymous, for which I of course have my own reasons.
I see no reason why commenters couldn’t be obliged to sign in before commenting, with a consistent handle, a la the system at ClusterfuckNation, James Howard Kunstler’s blog. One has to sign in anew every day, but then remains signed in for the day, even if one closes out the site and returns to it later the same day. If someone is consistently obnoxious, he gets a warning to clean up his act. If he doesn’t do so he is banned.
At Market-Ticker.com, the blog’s software recognizes commenters and visitors automatically whether one comments or not, so one doesn’t have to sign in to comment. That software also keeps track of how often one comments and how many comments are left. I rarely comment, so I don’t know what happens there when one reaches the limit (10).
Sir, remember this, you have a long list of official detractors.
I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
In as much you have been very successful. Keep it up please.
A few comments that I can make publically. Of course, this issue worries me greatly and has done so for years.
A joke, years ago, many years, I never made a comment on the Saker site. I thought I was too stupid. That was in the times that the Saker commenting section was the best of our kind of blog by far. This has changed and some of it is of course real attacks. The examples mentioned are frequently not benign nonsense, but specifically designed to stop a conversation flow. For careful observers, this is so clear. Sometimes the ‘idiot’ is not an ‘idiot’ but is here for an agenda. Trollery has reached heights of sophistication.
We cannot make more rules. In reality, there are a few older rules that should just drop to the bottom of the rules list. Our rules list has to be dynamic, and not static. As we put a link to the rules on top of comment boxes, we should do a short subset of the most important rules. That is then the best we can help the mods, because in many cases, they cannot do content moderation. Let me give an example – how is a mod from Dagestan going to do content moderation on a thread pertaining to the state of the city of Los Angeles (a crazy example). And how are mods to judge content given the wide spread across the world, of different commentators? Not everone speaks the same.
Our moderators do rules-based moderation. There is no other way around this otherwise there will be no fairness in the moderation. Our moderators also cannot be expected to watch everything and remember Joe from three days ago pushing a single issue, especially if Joe jumps threads with a single issue. It becomes impossible. So the single-issue posters get away with it time after time and for the regular readers, it becomes just incredibly boring over time. These are not here to be supportive of the Saker Blog, they are here to push their issue. Spammers in real language.
I would like to see the Saker commenting section at a high level of quality, but this is just me. The owner of the blog must decide on the level of quality acceptable. It is a sliding scale and I do believe we can do some stuff to slide that scale.
OK, we can talk about the Bell curve but we can also talk about changing the event horizon or whatever, or lifting the quality standards required. From this perspective, I give this few comments and some of them will not be popular for sure.
1. Kill anonymous – I know this looks so little, but it is too easy to talk anonymous nonsense. As we can see the most junk comes from anonymous. First step. (Even because we all know it is actually useless – it is easier for pattern recognition if everyone is not called ‘Jack’. Anonymous thrives on changing colors like a Camelion.)
2. Have a second layer of moderation. A live one or two that can delete what slipped through moderation. We don’t need to be kind as this kind of comment is not kind to us, and the commentator is not doing us any favors.
3. Fights (please do not take this as anything critical to the mods – I appreciate what they do). Most fights come from the 80/20 principle. 80% just fair and fine and good moderation, but 20% moderation oopses – and then the fight starts. I know we have a habit of not deleting what has been posted already, but this is what happens:
A starts a fight and insults B
B feels hard done by and insults A right back.
Moderator mods B and A’s comment stands (because it is already posted).
This sequence I’ve seen many times and it causes great heartache and anger.
Delete A as well, even if already posted.
4. Give the mods teeth. We don’t see enough of moderation such as:
“Mod deleted this statement as a whole. You can do better commentator.” OK maybe not that harsh but our mods are highly protected and nobody ever gets any explanation. So, bad commentators just continue because of a lack of feedback.
5. In general, we don’t act quickly enough. OK, I understand the reasons. Our mods roll over every day and every few hours, so, it is almost impossible to keep track of everything on site. So, we are slow. This gives time for silly comments.
6. I think that a few actions, even if small in and of themselves, can make a big change. A simple action is to close comments on a thread when it is 3 days or so old. (This is a judgment call though and would be dependant on how hot it is). But usually, the most idiotic comments come after a few days.
OK, I am not saying implementation of any of this will be easy, but I would like to again have the Saker commenting at the standard where it was, when I thought myself too stupid to even make a comment. Of course, my value is quality before quantity, and that is the decision point and it is there that one has to make a decision and slide the scale.
#MeToo dear friend. I didn’t comment for years. I’m still intimidated by the intelligence here but I’ve found my way through them and by them. End anonymous comments.
Remember, commenters =/= readers. Maybe 1 or 2% of readers comment, and most of those were triggered by the headline and didn’t even skim the article. Most sites don’t even notify you of replies. If you feel the comments detract without contributing, delete them. The people that are absorbing and digesting your content won’t comment except rarely.
Saker – I’m fine with whatever you really want. I will still always come here first – to see what’s new.
I find trolls abhorrent
Saker – abandon “anonymous” as a handle. I know your reasons for it in the beginning – I disagreed, but on the whole I’m cool with how it went. But your tipping point has come.
Conversation is stronger when people can recognize others and their cumulative views. Weak thinkers will over time be ignored and fall away, while strong thinkers will be engaged and endorsed.
Totally concur.
Your name being one of the stellar voices and unique minds on the Vineyard.
“Judeo-Christian” is such a terrible term and so wrong. One can easily make the case that this is offensive for a Christian and probably for devout followers of Judaism (I cannot comment on the latter). I’m Christian and I have zero Judaic relation, I’m Orthodox but neither Jewish, nor Greek, etc. But enough on that.
However, I’m not much for overly stringent rules. Overly-protective style creates fragile people (which BTW has a lot to do with what is happening in the West now). We need to be able to handle certain level of exposure. After all, I believe most of the people here are adults and have seen more than a few things in life.
Actually, you make an important point.
“It’s obvious (to me at least,) that the two posts the Saker complains of are computer generated. Because there are three sentences that follow the simple structure:-
THE @insert-something-here@ IS @insert-something-here@ OF @insert-something-here@.”
This is the “classic” form of random text generation that’s been used since computers first appeared. As described here, for example:-
http://www.cs.williams.edu/~freund/cs136-073/rsg.pdf
(Skip the first page – the example on the second page is what you want.)
But note how the words/phrases inserted in the two posts that Saker complains of are “aggro” words that are going to wind people up and trigger slanging matches.
Eg:- “vilification” , “Peter the Great” “Russophobia” , “fear and ‘revolutionary’ hatred” , “Russia” , “‘Holy Rus’” “Russia moaning under the ‘Tartar yoke’” , “Romanovs” , “Tsars” , “Islam” , “Judeo-Christian” , “Messiah-ship” , “Prophet-hood” , “Jesus Christ” , “God” , “white Western judeo-Christian world”.
And it worked. It certainly triggered the Saker. In other words, this is BOT generated “flaming”.
The good news is that it appears to have ONLY triggered the Saker. Everyone else seemed to ignore it. Which suggests that the community created by the Saker is actually a very responsible one; not easily distracted by the trouble-makers and trolls that pollute the Web.
1. Make them specify a comment topic
Eg: Russophobia (it doesn’t matter – the test is whether they talk about what they say they want to talk about and even requiring these sorts of people to specify somethings puts constraints on them)
2. Word count restriction – encourages succinctness for genuine commenters (potentially and gives an automatic rejection of over-length comments, providing for easy moderation (automatic) and could even raise the quality of comments overall.
Keep up the good work and don’t let the b*****ds get you down!
Ken.
“Napoleon was a great genius”
Not genius enough not to be caught out by a Russian winter !!
They have them every year apparently !!
For sanity and rest for the moderation, maybe just ban the anonymous comments and look for some troublemakers, but dont overthink too much. The blog format does not permit fluid dialogue or real time replies. So maybe could just pass the “named” comments, and “take a quick look” in the comment in question. Taking out all the trolls is impossible, even more now that this “cold war” is getting hotter and hotter. We are adults and can read between good comments and crap.
Hi Saker,
I read this site for over 10 years before starting to comment. I think most are like this and generally not a problem, and respectful of contributing to the debate. We readers can also usually mentally filter out irrelevant comments quickly.
L445’s four points are a solid backbone of helpful changes.
What I would add are:
5. limit thumbs up/down to established commentators you trust, to wean out drive-by disruptors or bots
6. A second round of moderation, again by pool of established commentators
7. limit lengths as some can be verbose (I can be guilty of this!) due to being speed typers, stream of consciousness, etc. It will force focus and clarity through concision.
8. have commentators type a short title for their comment (or select from pull-down menu). This forces them to focus, stay on topic and hopefully remain logical.
9. Identify how long a commentator wrote on this blog next to their name (I.e. 1 week, 7 years..). Experience usually counts and can help highlight importance of a comment.
10. Have a running stats at top of comments section of most up-thumbed comments (top 10?) to encourage valuable contribution
11. consider a second open threads post in addition to MFC. Entitle it “Open Rants” etc, so do not degrade/pollute more artistic/focused discussion on MFC. This can be outlet for single issue people and controversies not allowed per moderation such as covid, etc as Jabber somewhat remote or not as appealing to most.
Why have comments at all when certain subjects are declared taboo from the start? The comments incriminated were perfectly logical, based on facts. Perhaps the best thing is to close this section altogether.
And here we have it, folks.
A textbook example of an “anonymous” comment.
> thank you Anonymous, for playing.
Here’s a free tip….
>start your own blog focusing on your pet (Saker banned) topic
Or
>find one of the hundreds (thousands?) of blogs that address your pet (Saker banned) special area of interest.
>And Saker…100% of your regular readers are going to see ^Anonymous’s ^stirling contribution, and go meh! and scroll.
Here is a suggestion – let your regular, intelligent commenters take down those idiots – the ones who post their inane idiotic comments. I had quite a few of my comments to such idiots flagged by your moderators – must have broken some moderation rules, but what that does is encorages those idiotic people to spew their idiocy on this site. The switched on, intelligent ones will clean up this site for you if you just let them! Surely your moderators know, or should know, who are the regular, knowlegeable commenters here, with an intelligent analyses that can generate the discussions that you want to see here on your blog. Instruct them to be a bit more discriminatory in that sense. You might even increase the number of such commenters on this site. I believe that alone should improve it, i. e. rid it of such like (Removed,attacking fellow posters violate the rules,MOD)for example! : )
My two cents;
The way I see it getting something into print is not a right, but an honor. Consider running the blog the way most Newspapers run their “Letters to the editor” sections. Most major newspapers get hundreds of letters a day, but only print a few well written ones. After all, it is their newspaper, and they are no obligation to print anything if they do not care to. (Then again, no one is any obligation to read their newspaper either.) In the same way, the Saker’s blog belongs to the Saker, and hence the Saker is under no obligation to print anything he does not care to print. If the Saker feels a comment is worthy of being printed, he should print it. If it is not then he has no obligation to print it. If a comment needs a little help, maybe then it ought to be given some help; i.e. modification. So, in essence the rules don’t need to be rules. Rather they be guidelines for what the Saker would like to see and is willing to print. This way the moderators become free to print, modify, or reject anything sent to them. I believe the only thing the Saker is obligated to do is to make a good quality blog that people want to read. Otherwise he goes down.
Personally, I like to read blogs that have sound high quality comments, and an occasional dash of humor. I like to read what other people think, even if does not resonate with my beliefs. I like to read a balance of opinions to get a feel for what the community as a collective is thinking. I like to read breaking news that people offer up from around the world, and if somebody has some single issue they want to push, that is fine too so long as it does not consume the blog. I don’t like to read posts that are too long. I think the Saker is doing a pretty good job so far. Thanks Saker (Andrei). You are on my reading list everyday.
Dear Saker
It is not in my habit to criticize people who are doing a better job than I am, but since you asked:
– I think all moderation rules for posters are not needed. Train your moderators (with whichever rules you like), the rest of us simply need to accept what the master of the house chooses. I also think hiding the comment is better than deleting it. But that’s just me.
-I will not create an account, simply because I wish to reduce my internet footprint. While you would not come knocking on my door, someday some less pleasant people might.
Respecfully
Isn’t it possible to stop these garbage comments by having a user name compulsory?
If I didnt know better Id say both comments were written by a Ukrainian ultra nationalist.
The first comment in blue simply says how great Russia was in the old days.
And the second is anti-semetic and bashes Russia as being heathens.
What do our Russian readers think ?
I wonder if Mulga Munblebrain who posted here until Dec 2019 has arisen from the grave as it also sounds like his complex rants ?
Saker / Andrei, the most important thing to recognize is that you are on hostile ground. By that, I mean that you rock the boat in oh-so-many ways, and that cannot be tolerated by those ‘up’ the pyramid. (Thanks.) In turn, that means you will get many shills/trolls/distractors whose primary purpose is to gum-up the comments section. (I know you know this; sorry.) As such, the opinionated/single-topic posters are just the small fry; the ones to heavily moderate are those who try to hijack the thread or load-it-up to where ordinary readers just give up. That way, they “win”…
A couple of years ago, you also asked for suggestions for this sort of thing. I recommended not allowing a totally ‘Anonymous’ category, but only semi-identifiable names like Anonymous1, Anonymous X, Anonymouse, etc. That way, an often-offending poster could be identified and blocked. (You might consider not-requiring an email for this category, in order to protect the truly innocent, but require an individual ‘something’ a mod would recognize.)
The other thing I (reluctantly) suggest comes from the SF TV-series “Battlestar Galactica”. The Cylons were much better than humans on anything robotic or AI. The only way humans matched this was by having humans in-the-loop in any transmission. One human could identify another human through personal speech patterns and idiosyncrasies. The other person just felt human. (This could be ‘spoofed’, but not easily.)
So, I suggest that (human) mods be allowed a certain amount of latitude in ‘feeling’ whether a given commenter is either non-human (bot or AI) or smells suspiciously like a ‘plant’ – and have the power to delete a comment on those grounds. This is a slippery slope because it allows human subjectivity (with all its strengths and faults), but may be necessary in this day and age…
Putin: “only a few hundred, maybe thousands, of people make the laws, but then millions work on how to circumvent or otherwise ignore them“.
Actually, in a healthy society, (illegimate or not) laws are made to be (once in a while) circumvented, or else we get a tight Nazi society where every average person ‘s excuse is “i just followed orders”.
The more it gets sophisticated, the more ingenuous you become buz in the end all is vanity…
Saker
Rather than delete these silly and truncated comments as an alternative why don’t you collate all of them each week and put them on a end of week page for everyone’s amusement ?
These may also be a retired person going senile or on the bottle, or a US Democrat on drugs.
Its difficult to filter comments, but many of us like to read and laugh at them.
This site is great entertainment at times.
Having read your above analysis I havent laughed so much in years.
Whatever I had to say here was under my real name.
I have no problem dissenting with what is accepted/allowed in France.
If you wish to get rid of ‘polluters’ do some registration like with the Vignette.
It want stop trolls, but it will reduce them.
Disqus registration, like with Martyanov blog, is good but it does not stop some trolls.
As far as I am concerned, I ignore most comments, except Larchmonter, Auslander and few more.
I come here to listen to you and what you write after giving a subject a serious thought.
Cheers from France.-
This is probably the honest way to go. Many sites and blogs do it and the ‘Vignette’ applies it already. Only registered supporters are permitted to comment.
Put a simple request at the end of the article, e.g. include a color ,in your comment. Delete any comment that doesnt meet the request. Those are either AI or non-readers.
The Saker should consider these may be coded messages of some type using this worldwide site.
They remind me in some ways to the disjointed phrases the Allied forces in UK broadcast on radio to the French Resistance forces in WW2.
Example.
“The wind blows strong from the west to Calais. East winds are weak at noon on the Seine. Pierre wears a brown suit. The grapes of Burgundy must be picked by hand tomorrow. All priests must attend mass by 7pm. Jean has a red car.”
Let me express my views:
(1) ‘The Saker’ blog-site is, perhaps, one among those few websites (may not cross a dozen) where a serious reader/commenter is actually encouraged to come forward with his/her views. No wonder, the comments section is a gold mine of knowledge and information. Now, as it happens with mother earth, NO mineral is in 100% pure form – there would be impurities embedded within the ore, and the user would purify before utilising the metal.
Even if the ‘Moderator’ group works hard, few garbage comments, as pointed out by Saker in this article, remain. IMHO, those nonsense comments may be tolerated, since everyone can identify those clearly.
(2) “Anonymous”/”Anon” should not be allowed to comment. Let all such commenters identify a specific handle for each of them. After those so-called anons start using specific handles, say 1-Jan-2022 onwards, their comments should be tracked for, say 2 months. If required issue warning to those fellows who still continue with their nonsense. If they don’t change their behaviour, block them.
(3) IMHO, a second round of moderation is not required , as it may create an overall negative feeling among the commenters.
I strongly suspect from the syntax you’re dealing with bots rather than humans.
It’s a fairly trivial AI exercise to automate this garbage – cost to them is negligible, cost to you is significant. It’s a form of asymmetric warfare, and an effective one.
Just have the mods delete them. Until you can automate a defence stage it’s your least worst option.
Use your tactical response analysis.. you’re under attack
I have been reading Saker for many years, have never had the feeling I should comment until now. This is why I do not join groups or go to meetings. Please leave the site as is. There will always be people who are not articulate. Do you exclude them? Do you exclude people who’s opinions differ from yours? I often do not read the comments section because I want Saker’s point of view, which I may agree with or not. A comment is your reader’s need to say something, let them. Others do not have to read them.
Yes, trust your readers more to skip the obviously inane comments and suspect commentators. By all means, have rules to reduce their numbers, but try not to proceed too far down the slippery road to censorship.
You could try putting the sub standard comments at the end of the comments section and the best thought out ones at the top.
You could also try blocking IP addresses that produce suspect messages. The AI thing certainly exists and you would expect to be a target.
So you think whomever has access, know how and motive to use a.i. text generating spoofs, doesnt have access know how and motive to use ip address spoofing?
It doesnt work that way.
How about some ”due reward” applied to inane/nonsensical comments? If a comment reeks of spambot garbage, then please go along and do publish it — that is, in a separate section whose very heading amounts to ”Spambot garbage”. Or if the comment is outright silly and/or goes along with the MSM, have it published in another, similar derisive subsection. Most notably, the problem posed.by what I call ”the anonymous scourge” would be effortlessly solved by this approach. A buckload of anonymous comments from different unrelated threads should discourage people who want to get some point across from leaving out the handle (where, of course, ”anonymous” should not be allowed as an explicit choice). It would force some effort upon ’the great unwashed’ coming here to find their own spambot/MSM/anonymous contributions which is far more anathema to the average scoundrel than pretty much anything. It would essentially amount to ”the trolls feeding the blog” rather than the other way around. And it would add some voyeuristic entertainment for quite a few serious readers as well!
Also it would be nice if the comments section allowed the reader to just block a particular comment name from their display.
I don’t think you can turn a judgement call into a set of rules. Just delete anyone who looks like a troll, AI generated or is just taking the piss. That’s as good as it’s going to get.
Try just one rule: “If I or any of the moderators dislike your post, we will delete it without comment, and NO discussion will be entered into.” Stripped of all the fancy justifications, that’s what censorship comes down to. And eventually, everyone censors their blog – or just switches off comments.
I really do believe this is a bit overreacting from your side.
But, alas, to your credit, it must be devastating to see and feel that some morons dump their manure behind anonymity, right on your garden, i mean blog, probably day by day, even hour by hour.
You surely do remember, we must carry our crosses. Well, yours is bigger, and getting bigger with every anonymous pseudocomment, but, God promised us not to lay a bigger burden on anyone than he can menage. So i trust in you.
More cannot be done, your comment rules are by far the most developed ones in a good bunch of bit-parsecs of the www-galaxy.
Eventhough i am not in the position of advising, but your readers can really tell the calf from the sheep, so
trust them, as they are trusting you.
Such an intelligent crowd that gathers here, whose comments I read, can hardly be found elsewhere.
I admire two sites and read them daily for intelligent, socially conscious communication on current affairs.
One is the Vineyard, I learn a lot from its editors and I find no fault with its Moderation policy. Most of the comments are intelligent, informative and imbued with the desire for justice and charity in this world. There are occasional comments of the type which annoy the Saker, but they are a minority, and their comments are usually refuted by comments from Saker’s main readership.
The other site is OffG (Off-Guardian) which is edited by former readers of The Guardian, who rebelled against that Liberal newspaper’s totalitarian censorship of news and comment. OffG has a completely open policy: all comments are published automatically, though occasional trolls, idiots and allied single-issue commentators are refuted by an occasional comment from Admin. Strangely enough, I do not see many more of these negative readers comments appearing in OffG than in the Vineyard. Editorial standards are equally high on both sites. What does stand out, though, is a freer and wider range of readers contributions in OffG; its readers are less inhibited, more chatty and less focused on the issue at hand, taking advantage of a less austere Moderation policy.
Both sites are admirable. I only wish they had many, many more readers; as it is, “the voice of the prophet crying in the wilderness”.
I don’t believe I ever posted a comment here before. If I did then I’ve forgotten about it. The two examples that you provided reminded me of a local news report some time ago. It was someone who found massive amount of negative posting on various social media to be depressing. So this person decided to write a computer program to auto-post positive comments on social media to counter all the negativism.
I don’t remember the details but it highlights Joe Bloggs comment about Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven postings. I’ve noticed a lot of these strangely worded comments in social media sites that I lurk in. Some are really easy to pick out and clearly there is an agenda.
I can’t speak for everyone but I’ve trained myself to recognize these “bots” and ignore them. Perhaps there is a way to isolate the source. A network administrator might be able to help. Sadly I can see this getting to the point where a fake comment becomes indistinguishable from the Real McCoy. Good Luck.
HI Andrei fair question. Just to focus our thinking, please, let us know what you think are the problems with low quality comments. What is the outcome of low quality comments? We we know this, we can have a discussion about these problems and what to do or not to do.
In my opinion, the saker blog has one of the best, if not the best, comment session of the internet. It is not for free, as we can see from Andrei’s post. So what could be done to keep this high-quality and same time, prevent these types that Andrei described from disrupt the discussions and overwhelm the moderators? It is hard to come up with a definitive recipe, because these guys try to circumvent the rules all the time.
Signed and logged comments does not solve the problem. It is actually an additional layer of problems since such technologies are connected with tracking in social networks and spammers. Unless the IT people are whiling to keep the own database of users and logging algorithms. It costs maintenance efforts.
Sincerely, I think more moderators would be welcome and a captcha even when posting as anonymous would help. The rules are already good enough.
You don’t need more rules. Rules #3 and #21 would have given you reason to delete these comments. Your blog – your rules – your nerves. I love reading the comments, so please don’t disallow commenting.
Perhaps the comments are not on an academic level, but by doing so the blog gives an opportunity to all who have a “piece” of truth to give their contribution to the picture of the whole truth. “Poor” comments are needed to balance and maintain the coordinate system. As a reference point from which we can evaluate someone’s comment. It’s hard for me to define that so I’d take a comparison with books: if you only read really good books, how do you know they’re good? I know that a blog does not belong to literature but apart from presenting data the commentator needs to articulate the story.
So, in my opinion, a thumb up / down does not contribute to quality. If, for example, I quote someone proven wise, some people won’t like it and I’ll get a thumbs down. Then who got a thumbs down? I who quoted or the Wise Man whose saying it is. We would never know. A replica should be the only and basic way of communication.
Anonymous must be definitely banned. Don’t they have a mom who gave them a name? If the commentator does not stand with his e-mail behind his words then he himself does not value the words and why should the rest of us read something in which he himself does not believe?
In the end, Saker, as long as the blog is quality and “hits the center” will have enemies. one should not be disturbed too much.
Interesting observations by the Saker,
First one: The Grammar Police. Those self-appointed ‘experts’, particularly the type of English language teacher who will pick you up for the slightest oversight or unforced error. You know the sort of thing. Errrm you left out a comma in paragraph 5, and a semi-colon in paragraph 7! Shame on you! This linguistic crime against humanity means that the writer of the article and the article itself are utterly worthless. What the critics do not realise is that contributors to the blog have to proof-read their own work (always tricky) and can’t afford professional proof-readers. (And even they make errors!) I remember once in a particular article I wrote ‘Wither’, instead of ‘Whither’, this provoked a storm of indignation, not threats exactly, but the Grammar Police were certainly after their pound of flesh that day. And again there was little attention to the subject matter at hand, which apparently deemed irrelevant.
Second one: knowledge of everything. This involves an inability of some contributors to stay within the boundaries of their own knowledge and not go sounding off about every topic under the Sun. I try to keep within my own area of knowledge, in the main, political economy, literature and history. But I must confess that I don’t have any great knowledge of other areas of possible analysis. For example, I don’t know a great deal about particle physics, or the history of ballet, or contemporary Latvian literature (if there is such a thing).
Of the above comments Larchmonter’s points largely summarised my views as well – save for the ‘thumbs up’ provision for reasons cited by Serbian Girl. Lananya, seconded by WW, reminded us that this website is Andrei Raevsky’s domain and we are his guests. The ethics of the situation proceeds accordingly.
In political philosophy two essential modes of governance are reckoned: the rule of law and the rule of men. In the household of our host the latter is pertinent. But a household that becomes a community develops a certain dialectic between the two forms. I think it was the elder von Moltke who said something on the order of: ‘with the field officers it’s train, train, train, drill, drill, and then drill some more; test, test, test. But when hostilities start, well then, it’s all up to the captains’. So guidelines are needed, certainly. But when the comments come in the moderators need discretionary authority to do whatever they judge ought to be done.
They should not be expected to preform tutoring services for trolls and idiots. As per the protocols of the host/guest relationship participation should be regarded as a privilege rather than a right. One should beware of too many rules. Nothing should be done to further burden the moderators. This is a volunteer position and I trust we’re all grateful that they make this unpaid contribution to our collective wellbeing. Just issue them live ammunition and have confidence that everything will work out for the best.
So, basically problematic comments should be rejected. Editors at newspapers do not accept just any old hack job. They just reject scripts that aren’t up to specs. You go back to your desk and try again. Likewise commenters should be given the opportunity to try again. If, after repeated offenses, they have demonstrated that they do not respect the basic protocols of the situation, throw them out.
Otherwise .. my pet peeve is ‘anonymous’. There must be at least several of these people on this website and when I read their comments I often have no idea of who’s stuff I’m reading. I consider this rude. Like if you phoned someone that you don’t know, or know well, the first thing you’d do after customary greetings is to identify yourself. People who post without identifying themselves express their contempt for their readers, or maybe they really have no idea of courtesy. I don’t know, but all posters should be required to use either their name, any name, or a non de plume. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have to form a relationship with your readers. You must respect them, very simply.
Single issue posters. Some of our brethren can’t address any topic at all without going on and on about the Jews. Or Covid. Or the sorrows of the white race. Or they want to enlighten us all regarding their esoteric understanding of the dialectic – Jews again. Personally I’d be delighted if the Resistance were to drive our Zionist brothers and sisters right into the deep blue Mediterranean Sea. But that said, let the mods decide.
Last point. Trolls can derail otherwise important topics. A case in point: right now Smoothie is instructing his regulars on the probabilities of anti submarine warfare, a subject I can hardly follow but am nonetheless very interested in. Just recently a hasbara poster got on to tell everybody that the Standard Missile 6 can take out Zircons. Piece-o-cake. Both Andrei and his very knowledgeable regulars got on this guy like a pack of hounds and finally managed to chase him off. But guess what? The anti sub instruction was derailed for almost the whole thread. Quite a loss, methinks. Once again, mods should be empowered to do as they see fit.
No need for a change. One cannot just make assumptions upon the reasons others have to write something. Even discarding them as “stupid people” is not fair, even if they are: bad arguments should be contrasted with good arguments, not with censorship nor insults.
Yes, the job of rectifying stupid comments is a hard one, while writing a stupid comment is an easy task, but I would then find a method to highlight GREAT comments instead of paying too much attention to the irrelevant ones.
(Also because the moderators are far from being perfect: I had a lot of comments censored in this website, just for having strongly criticized religion, but having also done that with rational arguments and without insults. If you are not able to stand against someone who just tell you that your religious ideology is childish, then surely you’re not entitled to censor anyone without appearing unfair.)
Andrei,
First thing, I think the mods are doing a good job and kudos to them.
One or two inane comments will get through but that’s to be expected especially when we consider that in the main, comments consist of several paragraphs — sometimes longer than the original article — and comments come from time zones different from the mods’ — fatigue may set in on the part of the mods particularly on ‘hot topics’ with more than a page of comments.
If the worry is bot-generated comments, I think you should disallow anonymous comments and set up a verification system — something like CAPTCHA would be good but cost could be an issue — either to read articles or to post comments. Somebody suggested inserting a colour code at the end of articles to be typed at the head of a comment, which I think is a good alternative to Captcha. Numbers or random letters could be used too.
I suspect most regular readers and commenters do as I do: (a) identify commenters to always read (b) skim first few lines of the rest before deciding to continue reading or not (c) generally skip anonymous posts.
How about marking with a star those comments you consider stupid or idiotic. It wont 5ake you more than 10 seconds to decide it is idiotic and won’t have to waste time on it. I have to confess that some comments really are beyond the pale in stupidity.
Prayer of Serenity
Well, automatic content moderation is a pipe dream (I find this to be self-evident; if you disagree, you clearly have no idea how software works). That’s not an option.
Throwing more human labour at the problem (i.e. more moderators)? That would work, but you don’t have the money.
Also, you might want to think hard about your end goal. Do you want to prevent “bad” (for some definition of “bad”) comments from being submitted? Prevent them from being on the page that is viewed by everyone right now? Prevent them from being on the page viewed by everyone long-term (i.e. they show up now, but disappear later)? Allow them to be on the page in the short or long term, but fold them (i.e. hide their text, replacing it with “this comment was marked as bad; click to see the text”)? Because these are different goals.
If you’re OK with just the long-term effects and folding, it might be possible to have a hybrid crowd-moderation system where some registered users are given kind-of-moderation power to mark comments as “probably bad”, which would eventually (when a comment gets too many bad marks) lead to some comments being mostly hidden and is only viewable by people who make a conscious decision to see its contents. That would supplement (not replace) moderation, obviously.
If you want immediate effects and complete removal of bad stuff, that’s probably not achievable with your resources.
P.S. I would like to use this opportunity to once again scold your systems administrator for using Wordfence to block connections from the Tor network. Please stop doing that.
wordfence only blocks tor exit nodes that have been identified as being used by spammers … exit current tor and then try for a different tor exit node… herb … sysadmin
Dear “herb the sysadmin” (did I get that right? Or did you mean something else by “herb”).
I am aware of that workaround (i.e. trying a different exit node). However:
1) This behaviour applies not only to comment submission (which is something I can support, albeit reluctantly – it can be an acceptable trade-off, given your limited resources) but also applies to simply browsing this website. That is, Wordfence not only prevents potential spam from being sent here via comments and such, it also prevents people (any people Wordfence deems “unworthy”) from reading this blog. Now, there’s a case for blocking people from even reading the pages here, since that too can be used for things like DoS attacks. But I would stress that detecting and preventing DoS can be done with other techniques. For example, throttle a connection; I don’t care if it takes a minute to load each page here, but that kind of delay would put a big dent on any node trying to DoS you. By preventing people on Wordfence blacklist from even reading the blog you are doing the worst kind of censorship – the kind where 3rd party censors people on your behalf using algorithms over which you have zero control.
2) This workaround is a pain in the arse to use. I have to cycle through 20 or 30, sometimes 40 exit nodes before I stumble upon a node that Wordfence doesn’t block. Not only that, this workaround is extremely short-lived. Once I find a working node, I can load the front page of thesaker.is (which takes some seconds), look at the latest entries (a few seconds more) – and then, when I click on a blog post I want to read, Wordfence blocks me again, and I have to cycle through nodes once more.
Hi, Andrei,
This is the best-moderated blog by far, and we do not thank you and your team often enough.
I come here daily to learn from your take on issues; from your excellent selection of contributing writers; and from the commenters.
I ignore the trolls when I spot them, or when pointed out by older readers. I know we are over the target when the ack-ack guns go beserk. Even so, when the older readers sometimes dispatch these distracting time-wasters, I still learn.
The poorly-educated sadden me, but then the poor we shall always have with us. I prefer to think that they are here to learn too, whether they intend it or not.
To me, there is no ‘good’ way to ‘improve’ the Comments Section. It is fit for purpose as it is.
You (Saker/Andrei) are the boss of this site & so you can do whatever you feel is necessary – shutting down the comments in my opinion would be a mistake, it is a very attractive feature of this site, but, I don’t see an issue with unapolagetically censoring en masse if that is what is called for, meaning mass deletions of stuping meaningless comments. After a while, the time wasters, malicious or plain stupid commenters will stop wasting their time because they will know their comments will be rubbed out. I know this requires time & resources, the moderator however should use that power liberally – I don’t see why there should be some a priori commitment to free speech when there is no freedom in this world full stop. And it is not that difficult to spot stupid comments within a second or two.
Funny I was just reading about ACT….acceptance theory…interesting..maybe the “weird “comments help us to learn discernment about an unsafe world that can be used as a form of attack and a kind of opportunity to psychologically measure the state of the world… maybe all such doubtful comments should be sent to an open access kind of dustbin so that readers can vote up or down a kind of “salon of refusees” so to speak…and anyone who wants to indulgently engage with such sporting opportunity for free speech and opinion of all kinds can do it there…….
..or the saker stays very tightly focused rather than being diluted..?????? Me…I tend to drift past such comments demanding too much attention and expecting me to surrendering to such intentions to rock my boat.
Let me say something else (and probably overstay my welcome)
The Saker says: “Personally, nothing demotivates me more than taking the time to put some very real effort into a post, or posting a superb guest post, only to then see the idiots (sorry, no better word comes to my mind right now) derail it all by their idiocy. I just feel like throwing in the towel, give it all up and do something easy and fun (like hiking) instead of putting so much efforts into the blog.”
To a lesser but very real extent, this applies to all of our writers. If we get a good submission and the commentators trash it, I feel that viscerally.
A while ago one of the other blogs (that does not allow comments) had a very good writing and I asked for a cross-post to bring it here to our readers. The commentators tore it and the writer to shreds and could not deal with the controversial content. That is not right and is unfair and brings exactly the reaction that The Saker wrote down here. The writer, in this case, told me in no uncertain terms that it is the last time that a cross-post will be allowed.
So, a bunch of unruly commentators really messed with the quality of The Saker’s Blog.
A clean commenting section is a tremendous asset and it is worth working for that.
For that reason, I don’t support thumb’s up or down, or any tagging of posts. Something worth tagging is already worth sending to trash and why give extra attention to trash. Only in rare circumstances, if it is a good commentator that just clutched out for the moment, a friendly tag is a good way.
Don’t stuff about just band the trolls if they don’t like it they can go some where else. Their are many intelligent and interesting articles and comments on this site, you and your readers do not deserve to be bothered by trolls ect.
educational establishments use an anti plagiarism software……could it be used? Something similar?
My dear Saker,
I am not reading the comments… Seems useless. 99% of them should be deleted, they teach us absolutely nothing.
My 2 cents:
Since this is your personal space, but comments are open to everyone, allow me to do this metaphor: this is like your pub, in which you seat at the desk with the regular customers, but there are also many bystanders occasionally sitting, commenting and drinking. Of course, if they are drunk, they shout, they are loudly annoying other customers, or they come only to insult the pub style, they should be accompanied out of the pub. Instead, what would you do if they were sitting alone in a corner mumbling their non-senses?
Probably in a real pub they would be ignored as long as their noise is low. So for me, as a regular customer (although not quite talkative) I am not disturbed, because it is easy to distinguish the regular customers and skip at all anonymous bystanders and their non-sense.
I fully agree with your mod rules so far, and I agree that more rules will be useless. About the “anonymous”, they could just spell it slightly differently and use fake one-shot email addresses. I don’t like so much a thumb system as it would be similar to social networks. Again, in a real pub how would you act? This is your choice, as for me as a customer, I am satisfied with the current situation and mod policy (much better than other sites).
My first post after years of following the blog.
I’d say disallow anonymous posts, let the bots think up a name for themselves at least.
I read most of the comments, which I feel are important to augment the main discussion; that said there have been a few posters in the past whose posts I quickly learned to skip as they didn’t have much to add and /or were engaged in the fascination of hearing their own voice. Apart from the obvious work the moderators have to do I’d say leave it to the discretion of the reader / poster.
Thanks for all the good work!
I’d vote for prohibiting anonymous comments. that will probably eliminate around 80% of all stupidity.
Ok My two cents for what it is worth.
I am a retired analyst living in the EU and read most of your essays when I see those that interests me. Do I bother with the blog underneath ?
Sometimes …
The blog …
I do scan it for KNOWN blog commentators who respond well. I rarely comment. Just like others we all have differing view s on complex topics. Not all are right and not all are wrong …
We just have different view s and quite frankly these differing views can be fascinating altho some are pure … sound bites … the way marketing companys media operate pushing agendas for the super wealthy …. which for the most part are subjective dribble … and keep the sheep confused.
Write more rules …. ? Write fewer rules ?
Well if it aint broke dont change it … can also work.
Finally you write well Andreas and its your essays for me which are dynamic. Less so the blogs but please leave the blog in place.
cheers ciao tschuss
ros
This comment is made by a person born and raised as a Protestant-Presbyterian-Church of Scotland,concerning why the West loathes Russia and in general the Orthodox Christian faith.
It is my firm belief that in CHRISTENDOM the Orthodox Christian faith is considered in the sanme way as Shia are in Islam, hence the continuued vilification of Orthodoxy.
Maybe you can introduce yellow and red flags (like in a football game) to mark dubious comments and explain also why you have label it… You see, this site attracts many people who are found of Saker’s valuable military/geopolitical analysis, but who don’t necessarily agree with Saker’s political views or those of others here. If FB, Insta, YouTube, Twitter… can ban people, Saker can too, but it would be pity for the value is exactly in exchange of opposing opinions. If people would just be more civilized and respectful to each others, agree to disagree so to say, there would be no problem. Look at me, I’ve quite literally waged a war against Serbs in Bosnian war (92′ – 95′), and I see their comments here which can be insulting and hurtful to me and all victims of their endeavors back then, but hey, in face of a threat to all of us by evil empire we need each others to overcome this, even if we were enemies before. Opposing views are not the reason not to respect each others.
Keep up the good work Saker, even if you ban me some day I’ll keep coming for your views.
I think you are putting way too much energy into this issue. There will always be trolls, and always have been.
Just delete the comments that you think re idiotic and be done with it.