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.
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.