Comparing the reputation systems of Slashdot (slashdot.org) and Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com), highligting details and presenting possible changes. Christoph Matthies (@chrima0), Robert Lehmann (@rlehmann)

1. Hacker News
vs.
Slashdot
Reputation Systems in
Crowdsourced Technology News
Robert Lehmann, Christoph Matthies
(@rlehmann) (@chrisma0)
Nov 2012

2. 1000
2000
3000
2011 2012

6. Slashdot
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○
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○

7. Slashdot users
alexa.com, Nov 25th 2012

12. $ $

14. +1, Insightful
Unfair

15. ●
●
●
●
●

16. +1, Insightful

17. “
■
■

18. +1, Insightful
Unfair

19. +1 / -1
Unfair

20. ○
○
○
○
-10 -1 0 12 25
Defaults in Slash CMS (slashcode/sql/mysql/defaults.sql)

23. Hacker News
●
●
○
●
●
●
●
“
If you apply for YC and get
rejected, pg [Paul Graham] may
follow-up with an explanation just
because you have a high score.

24. Hacker News users
alexa.com, Nov 25th 2012

25. “
Anything that good hackers would find interesting.
That includes more than hacking and startups.
If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be:
anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

27. Upvotes
Upvotes

29. no duplicate votes
once you have voted

30. kinda bookmarks
not only endorsements

33. scale

34. rewards

35. report inappropriate content
reply flag
(spam or offtopic, for stories too)

36. new story type: polls

37. change top color
(yay! o/)

38. downvotes for comments only

40. comment score below zero
(def comment-color (c)
(if (> c!score 0) black (grayrange c!score)))

42. Community Nature

43. Four design goals for distributed moderation systems

44. Four design goals for distributed moderation systems

45. Four design goals for distributed moderation systems

46. Four design goals for distributed moderation systems

48. Four design goals for distributed moderation systems

49. Effectiveness of metamoderation on Slashdot
% of
moderations
reversed
Metamoderation's agreement with fairness
of moderation

50. Other considerations

51. Other considerations

52. Other considerations

53. Other considerations

54. Other considerations

55. political discussion
● ●
● ●
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56. buried treasures

57. Is this a
problem?

58. % of
moderations
reversed
Metamoderation's agreement with
fairness of moderation

59. How? Attention Deficit
●
○
29% 30%
25%
9%

60. How? Attention Deficit
●
○
●
○
○

61. How? Attention Deficit
● X II ⅕
○
● X II
○
○
X II ⅕
●
○

62. How? Information Cascade Effect

63. Information Cascade Effect
as applicable to Slashdot
+3, Insightful
explicitly visible comment scores

64. Remember, though though
Remember,
All these effects don't have to be negative.
e.g. Information Cascade Effect can strengthen
good comments and further demote bad ones.

65. Lampe’s Solution [1] visible
hidden
Adjust the damn comment filter.
before
most recent
after
recently written recently moderated

66. The four design goals in Lampe’s proposal

67. Lampe’s Solution
as applied to Hacker News

68. Power to the people M2
*

69. Encourage constant greatness
*

70. protection mechanisms

71. cheating, the secret sauce
(def vote-for (user i (o dir 'up))
● karma bombing prevention
(unless (or ((votes user) i!id)
(and (~live i) (isnt user i!by)))
○ prevent cabal against individual users
(withs (ip (logins* user)
● downvote ratio
vote (list (seconds) ip user dir i!score))
(unless (or (and (or (ignored user) (check-key user 'novote))
○ cannot cast too many downvotes
(isnt user i!by))
(and (is dir 'down)
● sockpuppet protection (~editor user)
(or (check-key user 'nodowns)
(> (downvote-ratio user) downvote-ratio-limit*)
; prevention of karma-bombing
(just-downvoted user i!by)))
(and (~legit-user user)
(isnt user i!by)
(find [is (cadr _) ip] i!votes))
(and (isnt i!type 'pollopt)
(biased-voter i vote)))
(++ i!score (case dir up 1 down -1))

72. and now a word from CmdrTaco
rigorous checks for legit posts
● HTTP Proxy
● maximum number of posts per day
● "trollishness"
○ half-lived amount of downvotes
if ($constants->{comments_portscan}
● compresses too well (with Zlib) && ( $constants->{comments_portscan} == 2
|| $constants->{comments_portscan} == 1 &&
○ ASCII art $user->{is_anon} )
) {
my $is_trusted = $slashdb->checkAL2($user->{srcids},
"nobody should be using that many wide
'trusted');
characters in the Standard English alphabet"
if (!$is_trusted) {
my $is_proxy = $slashdb->checkForOpenProxy
($user->{hostip});
if ($is_proxy) {
$$error_message = getError('open proxy', {
Anonymous Cowards punished harder. unencoded_ip
port
=> $ENV{REMOTE_ADDR},
=> $is_proxy,
});
$form_success = 0;
return;
}
}
}

73. and now a word from CmdrTaco
rigorous filters for legit posts
● 7 whitespaces in the subject
lots of space in the subject ... lots of space in the head.
● more than one character
one character. Hmmm. Gee, might this be a troll?
● words longer than 80 letters if ($constants->{comments_portscan}
&& ( $constants->{comments_portscan} == 2
that's an awful long string of letters there! || $constants->{comments_portscan} == 1 &&
$user->{is_anon} )
● 50% caps ) {
my $is_trusted = $slashdb->checkAL2($user->{srcids},
'trusted');
PLEASE DON'T USE SO MANY CAPS. if (!$is_trusted) {
USING CAPS IS LIKE YELLING! my $is_proxy = $slashdb->checkForOpenProxy
($user->{hostip});
● "feces", "goatse.cx" if ($is_proxy) {
$$error_message = getError('open proxy', {
unencoded_ip => $ENV{REMOTE_ADDR},
too smelly to submit port => $is_proxy,
});
$form_success = 0;
return;
}
}
}

74. banhammer

75. Use -f to forcibly slap
warning if a user has more than 10 Karma
● Karma: Terrible (-10) ● Karma: Terrible (-10)
● default comment ● revoke all
score of -1 moderation points
● set all comment
scores to Offtopic (-1)

76. nuke
blast blast
kill submission +ban the site
+
ban user

77. hellbanning
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●
●
●
“
a hellbanned user is likely to get bored or
frustrated and leave [...]
the silent treatment is the cruelest
punishment of them all. [1]
— Jeff Atwood

81. Backup slides

82. General cheating (this always works)
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83. Gaming the System
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85. “

86. unless ($opts{'f'}) {
die <<ERR if $user->{karma} > 10;
User $_ has a karma of $user->{karma}. Slap aborted. Use -f to forcibly slap.
ERR
}
print "Bitch Slapping #$_...n";
print "Karma Reducedn";
print "Default Score Reducedn";
$slashdb->setUser($_, {
-karma => $constants->{badkarma},
-defaultpoints => -1,
});
print "ALL live comments moderated downnn";
$slashdb->sqlDo("UPDATE comments SET points=-1,reason=1 WHERE uid=$_");
Exhibit A — source of bitchslap (Slashdot)

87. Moderation adjectives

88. Tweaking options on Slashdot

89. Basic Social Media

90. Submit-Publish

91. Slashdot submission overview

92. Hacker News submission overview

93. Comment overview on Slashdot

94. Hacker News comment overview

98. Distribution of comment scores on Slashdot