Why Muti moderation might work

Muti has been suffering the plague of the downvote debate for a while now. I have blogged about it before, I have banged my head on a table and shouted and screamed at/with various people about this debate.For those of you who aren't aware of Muti it is "a social bookmarking site inspired by reddit and Digg but dedicated to content of interest to Africans or those interested in Africa."I have always been a fan of downvoting on Muti. The way I think of it is that it is a democratic "talk with your vote" situation. Unfortunately, just like any great democracy corruption exists and people end up abusing the downvote system on sites like Muti, Digg and Reddit for their own gain.This is where moderation comes in to the picture. And here begin my reasons for thinking that moderation might work moving forward.

Moderation is a better name than Downvoting

The first fantastic thing that Neville (the creator of Muti.co.za) has done is not call the process "downvoting" but "moderation". This immediately takes the steam off a pressure cooker that was waiting to be attacked by the nay-sayers. It is now a process, not an abused system.

Reasons for moderating an article

You can no longer simply vote a post down for no apparent reason (unless you choose "other"). There are specific criteria that a posted article can be moderated on. These are:SpamExcessive Self PostsLameIrrelevantInapropriateDuplicateAgainst Terms of ServiceOther"Other" does present a bit of a problem in terms of the lack of specific reasoning. Some have suggested that the "other" option have a text box where a reason can be entered. I am sure this is under consideration but I don't think is important enough to warrant concern. The next point will illustrate why I don't think this is a problem.

Transparency

The moderation process is completely transparent. Any user can see why a post has been moderated and more importantly can see who has moderated the post. This basically implies that if you are moderating an article and you own content miraculously appears above that moderated article, no matter what reason you gave for your moderation, it will look suspicious.In turn this makes people consider, relatively seriously, how badly they want to actually moderate the post. The name and shame nature of the moderation process therefore makes you think twice about throwing your weight around or your mod points at the problem. If you vote, they will know, if they know, how will you feel? If you think you'll feel a bit naughty then you probably wont vote.

Mod points are not given, they are earned - much like respect

This is one of my favourite things about the new system. You are not simply handed an unlimited number of moderation points. Every time you vote for an article, you lose a moderation point. This definitely makes me think twice about moderating a post or article on Muti. Do I really want to blow one of my two moderation points on this irrelevant article that no one will vote up anyways? No, I probably don't. I'm going to wait it out until something really bad, racist, self-punting or community thrashing is placed on Muti. Then and only then will I use my moderation option.

Mod points promote activity on Muti

Why? Well it's simple (from moderation proposal):

Mod points are earned:

• when other users having a minimum kudu score vote items you submitted up. The minimum kudu score requirement will prevent people from earning extra mod points by simply creating new users, since new users always have a zero kudu score
• when a user with a minumum kudu score votes a comment you have made up
• You need to also have a minum k-index to earn mod points (this will prevent people from posting hundreds of junk articles to get mod_points). Note that the k-index and the kudu score are NOT the same thing.
• when you vote other peoples items up. (This is to encourage people to vote up and not just downmod all the time)
• mod points will be applied in realtime ie you will earn them instantly when the above activities take place
• your current balance of mod points will be viewable in your profile page

So basically you need to participate to gain the ability to moderate the community. This is a sheer stroke of genius. Much of the time you wont even realise that you are actively earning mod points but when you go to moderate an article you will have them. This means that Muti users need to begin commenting on articles, voting posts up, engaging and interacting with Muti, the posts and the community members. This is the kick in the pants that Muti needed. Active users, more voting, commenting and sharing.Strangely enough I think that at the end of the day the concept of "down voting" might just be the firecracker that lights the sky for Muti.

More votes = More voting

I've had this theory that today has been proven. To one extent or another more votes = more voting which = more votes. It's a cycle of voting.The people on muti are there. The voters and users exist but are apathetic. When something comes along, they will vote. Once they are on the site they will peruse other posts and vote more often.This is visible today:On an average day the top post on muti can receive up to a whopping 5 or 6 votes. Today the top 5 have a massive increase on that number!Simple theory, more votes = more voting. Done.

Name and shame Muti spammers

I have been harping on about this topic recently. But the debate isn't closed in my mind at all.I concede that there is definite value in self promotion when the post is relevant, well written and valuable. Let me just say that NO ONE has ever written 100% of their posts to be 100% relevant to everyone at all times. So if you are submitting ALL of your post ALL of the time ONLY then you are spamming. Simple.You might disagree and that is your prerogative. You might even think that no one does that, let me prove that there are users on muti who are doing that:anjamerret:newscribe:iz4u:guymclaren:guymclaren is a bit of a tricky situation, there is a lot of self promotion that borders on spam but not only from his one blog, from various blogs he owns and others. In my mind, this counts to a degree.And just for good measure, some of my own muti submissions:I have submitted the occasional SA Rocks post but none that I personally wrote and they are few and far between one another.What I am basically saying is that there is spam around and it is very present and people are not voting it down because not many people actually take not of who has previously submitted posts from which blogs and how often. This is why I think spammers should be made known.Do you know of any others?

The plan is here, it's voting time

I mentioned that I would be coming up with some sort of a plan. I have struggled and battled with internal strife and maintained my dignity - to some extent. Here is the plan for now:Gather a group of like minded bloggers (by that I mean bloggers who are tired of spammers on muti and self-promoting-spammers - SPS - on muti). Get these bloggers to vote down Spam and SPS on muti.Now you might ask who gets to decide what is spam and what is SPS? That's a good question. But let's rather ask: What makes spammers think that they can use muti as a service to spam me?I have spoken to Robert and a few others bloggers who are keen.The simple process is this: Spot a post on muti that is excessive self-promotion or spam and vote it down. Then comment on the muti post with "SPAM" for spam posts and "SELF PROMOTION" for excessive self promotion.I think that it is ok to promote your own sites or posts to an extent. It is when this self promotion becomes excessive and meaningless link-baiting, that it becomes spam. Simple.So, if you are interested in joining us on our voting down syndicate, please email me and let me know!Here goes...

The Muti model and Zoopy spam

Recently I have been making use of muti alot. I am not sure what marked my return but I am thoroughly enjoying the site. That was up until today's abuse (and a fair amount this week) of the service by Zoopy. Within an hour Zoopy had voted themselves on the the muti charts over 5 times (it is against the rules to have more than 5 submissions (to the same hostname) inan hour).This really got my goat so I took it upon myself to let Neville know about this. Neville is great and responded fairly quickly to my irritation with feelings of agreement and frustration. He is at a bit of a loss about what to do with potential spammers, spammers and general wrong-doing. He asked me what my opinion was and I was also at a bit of a loss.My suggestion is to open it up to the people using muti. This is the purpose of this blog post. I want to know what you all think a possible solution to the above-mentioned problem could be. But first let me actually elaborate a bit more from Neville's perspective:

Remember that muti started out as an experimentto see if a reddit like site could work in a regional contextsuch as South Africa. For this type of site to work it needs 3things:1) a sustainable # of active member2) a suatainable # of submissions3) voter participationMy assesment is that muti has 1) and 2)but on 3) there are not enough people participatingIt is to me a very interesting question as to whySouth Africans are not participating in 3)

I think that Neville has stumbled upon an extremely interesting and poignant issue here. Participation. Participation is absolutely crucial to the success of this sort of site as well as just about any web 2.0 endeavour.One of the solutions brought up is to weight voting according to reliability of user, length of time a user has been registered, reputation, k-index, kudus and/or number of submission to muti. But writing this post I think that a better way to solve the problem is to possibly find a way to incentivise people to get involved and vote the good stories up and the rubbish, boring, old, irritating zoopy spam down (OK enough zoopy bashing, sometimes they post good stuff).So, what do you think a possible solution is? And how do we prevent the muti elite from taking over the world?

Does the SA Blogging "elite" dominate Muti?

I have just read two great posts about the downfall of Digg.com. The post pretty much asks if Digg is or ever was a democracy where the best posts prevail, or whether the "Digg Mafia" bury what they don't like and give rise to an underworld of posts.This question is well posed and poised to alert the general public to the issues surrounding services like Digg and the South African equivalent, Muti.Muti is brilliant, I love using it and reading the posts. However the "stats" section on the Muti site is somewhat worrying in regard to the Death of Digg post that I read. It seems that there is an "elite" posting cream at the top of the Muti crop. These users have the most "kudus" and are submitting the most content. I am interested to know how many of these users posts have consistently reached the top spot and stayed there the longest? I have a feeling that the results would not be surprising.I would like to know how Muti is differentiating itself from the likes of Digg. Is the content different? Maybe, but more recently I have noticed many "Top 15..." posts from international sites reaching the top 20. These posts simply aim to reach the top of any rating site and they seem to be doing fairly well. Why are these posts reaching the top? Why are users not voting them down and how is Muti going to prevent a Digg scenario?If these users maintain their dominance over Muti what is the chance of an unknown blogger or contributor to Muti being heard for long enough to make any sort of impact? Many new voices that emerge have incredible things to say. Yet it seems that unless a prolific submitter discovers them and submits their post to Muti the new voice will wither away and die a slow and unrecognised Mutied death.Is Muti actively trying to engage the general blogging public? Are people aware of the service and the public and open nature of the service? If they are then maybe they simply choose not to submit for fear of looking stupid, but if they are not aware of Muti I think it is time to let the public know and make their posts and submissions count.In the very heated debate on stii's blog regarding the SA Blog awards, the "elite" bloggers were mentioned as an issue in the SA Blogosphere. I am beginning to wonder if this "elite" is dominating in more ways than we may realise.The SA Blog awards, Muti and then the world!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 License.