Comments from new users won’t display by default until they’ve been approved by a moderator.
It sounds like you’re getting ready to add a pretty significant new workload to the tasks already incumbent upon the mod team. Approving all comments from new users seems like a high volume of work compared to my impression of your current duties, and it seems like the moderation skill threshhold for new user comment approval might potentially be lower than it is for moderators’ other duties.
You may have already considered this possibility and ruled it out, but I wonder if it might make sense to let existing users above a given age and karma threshhold help with the new user comment queue. If LW is able to track who approved a given comment, it might be relatively easy to take away the newbie-queue-moderation permissions from anybody who let too many obviously bad ones through.
I would be interested in helping out with a newbie comment queue to keep it moving quickly so that newbies can have a positive early experience on lesswrong, whereas I would not want to volunteer for the “real” mod team because I don’t have the requisite time and skills for reliably showing up for the more nuanced aspects of the role. Others who lurk here might also like to help out in this way, and might like to help out intermittently by opting in to a notification that the newbie comment queue is longer than usual and needs some curation.
Thank you for the work you do in maintaining this well-kept garden, and I hope the necessary new work can be undertaken in a way that doesn’t risk burnout for our dedicated mods.
It’s also quite plausible to me that carefully prompted language models, with a few dozen carefully explained examples and detailed instructions on the decision criteria, would do a good job at this specific moderation task. Less clear what the payoff period of such an investment would be so I’m not actually recommending it, but it’s an option worth considering IMO.
I would be interested in helping out with a newbie comment queue to keep it moving quickly so that newbies can have a positive early experience on lesswrong, whereas I would not want to volunteer for the “real” mod team because I don’t have the requisite time and skills for reliably showing up for the more nuanced aspects of the role.
Were such a proposal to be adopted, I would be likewise willing to participate.
Thank you for the transparency!
It sounds like you’re getting ready to add a pretty significant new workload to the tasks already incumbent upon the mod team. Approving all comments from new users seems like a high volume of work compared to my impression of your current duties, and it seems like the moderation skill threshhold for new user comment approval might potentially be lower than it is for moderators’ other duties.
You may have already considered this possibility and ruled it out, but I wonder if it might make sense to let existing users above a given age and karma threshhold help with the new user comment queue. If LW is able to track who approved a given comment, it might be relatively easy to take away the newbie-queue-moderation permissions from anybody who let too many obviously bad ones through.
I would be interested in helping out with a newbie comment queue to keep it moving quickly so that newbies can have a positive early experience on lesswrong, whereas I would not want to volunteer for the “real” mod team because I don’t have the requisite time and skills for reliably showing up for the more nuanced aspects of the role. Others who lurk here might also like to help out in this way, and might like to help out intermittently by opting in to a notification that the newbie comment queue is longer than usual and needs some curation.
Thank you for the work you do in maintaining this well-kept garden, and I hope the necessary new work can be undertaken in a way that doesn’t risk burnout for our dedicated mods.
It’s also quite plausible to me that carefully prompted language models, with a few dozen carefully explained examples and detailed instructions on the decision criteria, would do a good job at this specific moderation task. Less clear what the payoff period of such an investment would be so I’m not actually recommending it, but it’s an option worth considering IMO.
Agree, I’ve said to the team that I think we could get some mileage out of this kind of thing.
Were such a proposal to be adopted, I would be likewise willing to participate.
I really appreciate the thought here (regardless of whether it works out) :)