You Were Obvious Before You Even Began to Type

[Laurin Sorbet]

Back when moderation was a matter of a tsk or a humph, heads sometimes ended up avatar butts.  Now that we have entered the age of mesh, threads are deleted and warnings and worse rampant,  heads are falling off avs and  floating all around the grid.  Maybe it is just an inevitable sign of the Second Life forum times and the current crop of mods are taking the analogy a little too far.

PS Hiya girl, I recognize you, too :-)

[LaskyaClaren]

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Laurin Sorbet wrote:

 

PS Hiya girl, I recognize you, too :-)

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That's because I'm 78.3% predictable (n = 1).

[ZoeTick]

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LaskyaClaren wrote:

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Laurin Sorbet wrote:

 

PS Hiya girl, I recognize you, too :-)

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That's because I'm 78.3% predictable (

n

= 1).

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How do you apply a two tailed test to a normal neko?

(WARNING! Academic "jokes" are considered worse material by the LWL Mechanical Turds Turks and may be perceived as anti-socially elitist by mods pursuing an inclusiveness agenda.)

[irihapeti]

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LaskyaClaren wrote:

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ZoeTick wrote:

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LaskyaClaren wrote:

Another interesting aspect, btw, is the conclusion that severe or heavy-handed moderation may actually increase "bad" behaviour.

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Their conclusion is flawed. It equates further post deletions with "worse" behaviour, which is particularly indicative of moderator bias against individuals rather than their posts. Hence my PPS.

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It may well be flawed, but it also factors in moderator bias by noting that part of the mechanism at work is the response of people to "unfair" moderation:

 

 

While we present effective mechanisms for identifying and potentially weeding antisocial users out of a community, taking extreme action against small infractions can exacerbate antisocial behavior (e.g., unfairness can cause users to write worse). Though average classifier precision is relatively high (0.80), one in five users identified as antisocial are nonetheless misclassified.

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yes agree. This is the heart of it

the model doesnt predict the actions of posters. It predicts the action of moderators responding to real and/or perceived poster behaviours

 

[irihapeti]

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ZoeTick wrote:

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There seems to be a "perceived" or two missing from that.

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^^ yeah that ^^

[Kelli May]

Create software that identifies Future Banned Users.

Ban on that basis.

Claim software is 100% effective.

+++ PROFIT +++

[Syo Emerald]

Minority Report for forums?

[heraldprophet]

Hark!

What do these eyes here behold?

Why it is the gracious and insightful Lasky with a Friday thread. Wonders beyond His.

I am the bearer of welcome and happy tidings from valiant, and steadfast of heart Derek, who has been banish'ed to the Isle of Rhodes where he continues his scholarship.(sotto voce: Confidentially, I believe he is spending most of his time in pursuit of the sultry and smouldering Mediterranean hussy, Scylla, she of the dark eyes and skin with hot blood coarsing through her veins...ahem you get the idea)

Good Derek bids me convey that he concurs with most of the analysis given thus far by Lasky and the erudite Zoe, while lamenting the tripe that passes for science these days and muttering something about "...the best thing to come out of Stanford in the last ten years has been an empty bus."

He would like to add, as you know how he gets once fired up, that immoderate persecution sanctioned by graduates of the University of  Phoenix School of Business with a course in I/O Psych clinging to the untenable and flawed concept of Progressive Discipline, a question he posed to the feed of one with some kind of puffed title which she characteristically deleted, will necessarily come to the conclusions reached by the authors of the paper under consideration. Appearing insightful but lacking any depth whatsoever and the requisite sophistication that would lead to any worthwhile understanding. Let me see if I get the quote right, "There are three kinds of explanations, parsimonious, simplistic and simple minded and the paper fits the latter."

To close he bids all good health and happiness.

On a more personal note, to satisfy my own curiousity, I am wondering Lasky why it was you chose the name of a 1920's Brooklyn burlesque house that was burned down by suffragettes and temprance protesters?

[ZoeTick]

Have I submitted enough posts to this thread yet to determine whether I am likely to be banned in the near future?

Or does the title of the thread apply, and make any and all of my efforts superfluous.

PS That last word should get the mods and most readers running to their dictionaries, I bet. Inclusive? No! Elitist? Yes!

[ZoeTick]

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Syo Emerald wrote:

Minority Report for forums?

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That would be the LWL Watch Committee.

[Venus Petrov]

Death threats?  Clearly, not sophisticated trolling.

[LaskyaClaren]

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irihapeti wrote:

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LaskyaClaren wrote:

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ZoeTick wrote:

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LaskyaClaren wrote:

Another interesting aspect, btw, is the conclusion that severe or heavy-handed moderation may actually increase "bad" behaviour.

---

Their conclusion is flawed. It equates further post deletions with "worse" behaviour, which is particularly indicative of moderator bias against individuals rather than their posts. Hence my PPS.

---

It may well be flawed, but it also factors in moderator bias by noting that part of the mechanism at work is the response of people to "unfair" moderation:

 

 

While we present effective mechanisms for identifying and potentially weeding antisocial users out of a community, taking extreme action against small infractions can exacerbate antisocial behavior (e.g., unfairness can cause users to write worse). Though average classifier precision is relatively high (0.80), one in five users identified as antisocial are nonetheless misclassified.

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yes agree. This is the heart of it

the model doesnt predict the actions of posters.

It predicts the action of moderators responding to real and/or perceived poster behaviours

 

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Far more succinctly stated than anything I wrote, irihapeti! It's not really a study about trolls at all, but about moderation. And that makes its conclusions about algorithmic protections against trolling all the more suspect; the proposed software would merely replicate the tendencies, and mistakes, of human moderators -- without the human element.

[LaskyaClaren]

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Venus Petrov wrote:

Death threats?  Clearly, not sophisticated trolling.

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As I think I have observed previously, we have a much more sophisticated breed of troller here.

(Never received a death threat here. I have received a couple of "offers" to "rape" me, but that was in-world, albeit as a consequence of things I'd written on the forum.)

[LaskyaClaren]

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ZoeTick wrote:

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Syo Emerald wrote:

Minority Report for forums?

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That would be the LWL Watch Committee.

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Ah, the "LWL."

The semi-mythical elite who are the Illuminati of SL forum conspiracy theories.

(Did you know they assasinated a JFK avatar?)

[LaskyaClaren]

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heraldprophet wrote:

Hark!

What do these eyes here behold?

Why it is the gracious and insightful Lasky with a Friday thread. Wonders beyond His.

I am the bearer of welcome and happy tidings from valiant, and steadfast of heart Derek, who has been banish'ed to the Isle of Rhodes where he continues his scholarship.(

sotto voce

: Confidentially, I believe he is spending most of his time in pursuit of the sultry and smouldering Mediterranean hussy, Scylla, she of the dark eyes and skin with hot blood coarsing through her veins...ahem you get the idea)

Good Derek bids me convey that he concurs with most of the analysis given thus far by Lasky and the erudite Zoe, while lamenting the tripe that passes for science these days and muttering something about "...the best thing to come out of Stanford in the last ten years has been an empty bus."

He would like to add, as you know how he gets once fired up, that immoderate persecution sanctioned by graduates of the University of  Phoenix School of Business with a course in I/O Psych clinging to the untenable and flawed concept of Progressive Discipline, a question he posed to the feed of one with some kind of puffed title which she characteristically deleted, will necessarily come to the conclusions reached by the authors of the paper under consideration. Appearing insightful but lacking any depth whatsoever and the requisite sophistication that would lead to any worthwhile understanding. Let me see if I get the quote right, "There are three kinds of explanations, parsimonious, simplistic and simple minded and the paper fits the latter."

To close he bids all good health and happiness.

On a more personal note, to satisfy my own curiousity, I am wondering Lasky why it was you chose the name of a 1920's Brooklyn burlesque house that was burned down by suffragettes and temprance protesters?

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Gosh. You'll turn a poor girl's head with all of this fancy prose.

 

I may of course be wrong, but the idea that any of the moderators here (or probably any other forum you might wish to name) reflect in any serious way upon the more subtle mechanics of effective moderation (yet alone with reference to academic studies on the subject) seems a bit unlikely. My sense has always been that, with a few exceptions (Blue, maybe?), moderation here has been delegated to those with nothing else more pressing to do, as a sort of afterthought (or maybe as a disciplinary measure?)

I'm not sure, though, that what ails this place -- if indeed, anything does ail it, as it may be exactly what most of those who post here want it to be -- is related to moderation.

I have to say, too, that the GD forum has always been a place where people came with general questions. Indeed, the precursor, going way back, to the GD forum was, in fact, called "Resident Answers." It was those who engaged in general discussion there who were the actual usurpers.

 PS. I know nothing of this burlesque house of which you speak. Tell me more!

[Madelaine McMasters]

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LaskyaClaren wrote:

the proposed software would merely replicate the tendencies, and mistakes, of human moderators -- without the human element.

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You make that sound like a negative. If you were writing the checks, would you rather write just one for the software, or one every two weeks for the moderators? Irihapeti's correct observation does not affect the business case, it explains the business case. If management hasn't a high degree of confidence in the capabilities of its moderation system/staff, wouldn't even a flawed algorithm warrant consideration? The flaws in each system may be different, the costs certainly are.

Think like a CFO rather than an academic. Follow the money.

[LaskyaClaren]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

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LaskyaClaren wrote:

the proposed software would merely replicate the tendencies, and mistakes, of human moderators -- without the human element.

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You make that sound like a negative. If you were writing the checks, would you rather write just one for the software, or one every two weeks for the moderators? Irihapeti's correct observation does not affect the business case, it explains the business case. If management hasn't a high degree of confidence in the capabilities of its moderation system/staff, wouldn't even a flawed algorithm warrant consideration? The flaws in each system may be different, the costs certainly are.

Think like a CFO rather than an academic. Follow the money.

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Oh, I certainly get the principle. And "the money" is very much what this is about, of course. But the proposed software -- the point of the algorithm, really -- is not just that it can assume the tasks more cheaply of a human moderator with some degree of precision. It's that it is "proactive," and can (supposedly) "predict" thought crimes trolling behaviours before they might, hypothetically, happen.

I take your point, and can understand the appeal of such software from a CFO's perspective, but I can't beileve that you -- with your non-CFO hat on -- would think that this is a good thing?

[ZoeTick]

Erm, you're ALL missing the point.

The assessment of posts (we'll ignore the non-definition of "worse") in the study was carried out by a LWL Watch Committee Mechanical Turds Turks as I have already highlighted. In case readers don't understand what this is, I would explain it as an internet mechanism whereby desperate anonymous busybodies (probably mainly ESLers) offered opinions for minimal compensation.

I can see no explanation of definitive criteria by which they judged the posts.

Since there seems to be no prescriptive criteria by which software could assess posts, there is no way that moderators could be replaced by AI (artificially idiotic) software. The algorithm is only potentially of use AFTER assessment of posts is done by a "human".

All the study is saying is that a moronic moderator who deletes one post is likely to delete more of that person's posts until the number of deletions reaches the point at which the moderator is required to ban the person.

[KarenMichelle Lane]

As Imad ad-Din al-Isfahani stated: Your quality will be known among your enemies before ever you meet them

[Madelaine McMasters]

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LaskyaClaren wrote:

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

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LaskyaClaren wrote:

the proposed software would merely replicate the tendencies, and mistakes, of human moderators -- without the human element.

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You make that sound like a negative. If you were writing the checks, would you rather write just one for the software, or one every two weeks for the moderators? Irihapeti's correct observation does not affect the business case, it explains the business case. If management hasn't a high degree of confidence in the capabilities of its moderation system/staff, wouldn't even a flawed algorithm warrant consideration? The flaws in each system may be different, the costs certainly are.

Think like a CFO rather than an academic. Follow the money.

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Oh, I certainly get the principle. And "the money" is very much what this is about, of course. But the proposed software -- the point of the algorithm, really -- is not just that it can assume the tasks more cheaply of a human moderator with some degree of precision. It's that it is "proactive," and can (supposedly) "predict"

thought crimes

trolling behaviours before they might, hypothetically, happen.

I take your point, and can understand the appeal of such software from a CFO's perspective, but I can't beileve that you -- with your non-CFO hat on -- would think that this is a good thing?

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Before I forget, the title of your thread is a calculated stretch in this context, you actually do have to begin typing. But you don't have to type much, or anything in particular...

http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/20/typing-cadence-used-to-identify-authorized-database-users-loc/

Now, my response...

Human moderators act proactively as well, often erroneously so. Have you got anyone on your block list? Is the notable difference between the algorithm and the human in the disclosure of the inner workings? We don't like people who are caught being judgmental.

The behavior this technology "predicts" is afforded by other technology (anonymous social platforms). If we're going to judge the former, shouldn't we judge the latter? Is anonymity a good thing? If one can effortlessly create anonymous personas and learn from mistakes, what is lost if one of them is banned? If anonymity is not possible, how often does the behavior occur?

This is a single example from the large and fast growing world of algorithmic behavioral profiling. Google and Amazon have been profiling me for years, I can see it in my search results. And that is a small sliver of the larger and faster growing world of "big data". I suppose it bothers us to think that we are predictable, particularly if that's likely to increase over time. "Ignorance is bliss" is ripe for reconsideration as our relative ignorance grows in comparison to the algorithms.

Some people are taught that their god knows what they are thinking, and will take them to task for that in the afterlife. We've been manufacturing "thought police" for the purpose of exerting control over people for a very long time, the difference is that these new cops don't require faith.

My ambivalence here, as in so many things, is borne of knowing my own ignorance. Give me time, I'm learning.

And, just to make this seem all the more sinister to those who'd worry, imagine these algorithms were written by women to mimic our abilities...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/crossingborders/2012/09/30/why-the-best-spies-in-mossad-and-the-cia-are-women/

And finally, JFK sends his regards.

;-).

[ZoeTick]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

Google and Amazon have been profiling me for years

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Me too. And they don't have a clue about anything but the public facts.

Maybe it's because I deliberately confuse them.

Pretty much the same as here, I use multiple identities linked to a range of bank accounts, switch credit cards frequently, run my darknet access through Tor, and lie a lot.

You don't HAVE to let Big Brother get a handle on you if you don't want.

As long as you understand the way Big Brother works.

And since I helped design some of it, I think I have an inkling.

[ZoeTick]

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Madelaine McMasters wrote:

t to make this seem all the more sinister to those who'd worry, imagine these algorithms were written by women to mimic our abilities...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/crossingborders/2012/09/30/why-the-best-spies-in-mossad-and-the-cia-are-women/

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I had to laugh at this. It appears that the Head of Mossad hasn't heard that the old saw about women being better multi-taskers than men has been busted wide open, the truth being that men are better multi-taskers when they think it necessary, but are much better decision makers when it comes to prioritising tasks and completing them, whereas the female of the species tends to prevaricate and thus juggles lots of activities, unnecessarily and inefficiently.

Oh, and women aren't better liars than men, it's just that men don't particularly listen to what women say, and thus aren't really worried about whether they might be telling the truth or not.

[Dillon Levenque]

Ha. I am in and in print even before your program started to run. Under the radar has always been my style.

 

All  your algorithms are belong me.

[CheriColette]

I dont have 'propensity to swear' nor do I post a lot,  so guess Im safe too Dillon. 

[Dillon Levenque]

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CheriColette wrote:

I dont have '

propensity to swear' nor do I post a lot,  so guess Im safe too Dillon. 

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A propensity to swearing is one of the triggers? Damn! I mean, Darn! How the hell am I going to get around that?