The news mod team has asked to no longer be a part of the project until we have a composite tool that polls multiple sources for a more balanced view.
It will take a few hours, but FOR NOW there won’t be a bot giving reviews of the source.
The goal was simple: make it easier to show biased sources. This was to give you and the mods a better view of what we were looking at.
The mod team is in agreement: one source of truth isn’t enough. We are working on a tool to give a composite score, from multiple sources, all open source.
These are some highlights from the top 12 posts sorted by “top”…
To put it charitably, 2 and 6 are only mildly critical or express tepid support, at best. The remainder are… something less than supportive.
I understand that this is not a democracy, and that it’s ultimately up to your good selves to guide the community as you see fit. However, I think there are valid criticisms to be made regarding your collective ability to engage with feedback.
First, admins have pointed out that dozens of accounts (now banned) were being used to artificially boost certain kinds of feedback and bury others, so if we’re not allowed to point to votes as a source of valid information, then sorting by “top” is equally invalid. Those could simply have been the comments those alts decided they wanted to push to the top, to make their point.
Second, we’re volunteers who have a few hours set aside each day to open a discussion into things that need to be updated or changed, and the vitriol that’s been hurled at us is disproportionate compared to the ostensible “damage” being done by a single automated script. One moderator threatened to resign over the hate that’s been blasted into their face. It took us less than two weeks to post a request for feedback, and then to act on that feedback. You (the disapprovers) all got exactly what you wanted. Pardon me for being blunt, but what the hell else are you expecting from us?
We want the bot gone. That’s it. It’s really that simple.
As stated elsewhere in the thread, my vote audit shows no participation from any of the 29 banned sock accounts the in the !news feedback thread, or this one for that matter. Please take the votes more seriously. If you’d like to spread FUD about the legitimacy of a vote, ask an admin to audit them first so you can state with evidence that a specific vote has been manipulated.
People trust the software to tell them what others are thinking, and if you successfully spread the false idea that votes that disagree with you are manipulated, you’re not just arguing in bad faith, you’re undermining the federated system we should all want to succeed.
Thank you. I don’t have that kind of audit authority and all we were told is that vote manipulation was occurring. We’d love to have you join the team if you’d like to help.
We took all of the feedback seriously because the bot is gone. I’m really not sure why people keep pretending like we haven’t already acted on it.
That you’d call this “spreading FUD” or"bad faith" is, frankly, insulting. I can only act on the information I have. In the end, I said that manipulation made assessing the situation difficult, but we still followed through accordingly. We are volunteering our time, and you lying about our intentions isn’t helping either.
I only have a few hours per day to devote to this. If you think you can do better, then step up.
I don’t think that the mod team has ever said that there is not some valid criticism. Feedback from the community (not just the !News community) is precisely why we have made multiple changes to the way this functions, the layout, and inclusion of different sources.
There is a vocal minority of the community that feels the need to swear, engage in personal attacks, manipulate votes, accuse others of being paid actors, insist that “everyone” agrees with them, and so forth, which does tend to make it difficult to engage in a forthright discussion about what is best for the community.
That’s not what an inability to engage with feedback means though, it means genuinely listening to the perspectives of others even in cases where it’s inconvenient, unexpected, unpleasant, and yes in some cases presented in an offensive manner.
That doesn’t mean you need to just allow people to spew hatred and vitriol at you - of course you can call out that kind of behavior where you see it. It’s probably fair to say that some Lemmy users would struggle to express themselves on topics they feel strongly about without being offensive.
That said, I suspect that a lot of the vitriol you’ve encountered on this topic has in some part been provoked by the mods collective reluctance to actually acknowledge the many shortcomings of this bot or any potential reincarnation.
I mean the following in as congenial a manner as possible, but the comment of yours I replied to earlier (regarding the most downvoted comments in the other thread) seemed quite dismissive. You may not have intended it as such, nevertheless that’s how it appears. Engaging with that feedback would mean considering the actual content of those comments with a charitable attitude? JonsJava similarly quoting vote counts for the other post as a means to disregard concerns.
Again, in as congenial and constructive a manner as possible, Blackbeard has revealed that there has been some vote manipulation which I acknowledge has frustrated things from your perspective, but again the narrative that “there is a vocal minority opposing the bot and inflating comments in opposition to the bot” is dismissive of the very real issues extant.
I’m not alone in feeling exasperated by the cycle of request feedback > dismiss feedback.
None of the feedback has been dismissed. I don’t know how to say that any more clearly.
We read every comment. We have worked with other moderators of multiple communities to implement changes based on the feedback we received from the very beginning. This thread is just one of those examples. The mods and users are on the same side in this effort.
Please understand: the only people who are dismissing user feedback are other users when they say things like “no one wants this.” That’s literally dismissing the many users who express that they find it beneficial. We are working on developing community resources that will meet the needs of most of the people here. That process takes time because we are an asyncronous team of volunteers.
Edit: I should note that the “no one wants this” comment was not meant as a personal attack. I only intended it as a typical example of a reductive, unhelpful, and dismissive comment. I didn’t realize until after that you posted another comment on this thread that was substantially similar. My apologies for the inadvertent example.
Perhaps it is true that you’ve considered all feedback, but I’m sure you can acknowledge my point that comments from mods suggesting that the most downvoted comments are all opposition to the bot, or that votes on upvoted comments ought to be ignored because of vote manipulation might cause those who are opposed to feel as though their opinions have been dismissed.
Regardless, while I look forward to your response should you wish to offer one, I’ve had my say and I feel as though I’ve been heard.
I’ve seen mods suggesting that there is nuance and a diversity of opinion. Its often as a counterpoint to users suggesting that there is monolithic opposition from the users, and mods are forcing something that no one wants. When someone claims to speak for the whole community, then their comment gets dozens of downvotes, those votes are relevant feedback as well.
There is a challenge when portions of the community have mutually exclusive preferences. There is a greater challenge when one portion considers any action based on other’s preferences unjustifiable.
No one on the mod team said that. If you’re going to appeal that we be honest in our engagement, the least you can do is be honest in yours.
That was my good faith attempt to paraphrase this comment:
I don’t think that’s a dishonest or disingenuous interpretation.
Yes, cutting a snippet out of a sentence with broader context is a classic form of bad faith argumentation:
The “if” conditional is pretty fundamental in that sentence. To cut it out and then paraphrase it to mean something it doesn’t is one of the oldest tricks in the book.
The rest of the sentence doesn’t change the meaning, nor the point I was making?