pushcx's recent activity

  1. Comment on Why do new Mothers hate their Husbands. A good read for both genders. in ~talk

    pushcx
    Link
    Don't add your personal opinion on a story to its title.

    Why do new Mothers hate their Husbands. A good read for both genders.

    Don't add your personal opinion on a story to its title.

    3 votes

  2. Comment on ~tildes versus lobste.rs in ~tildes

    pushcx
    Link Parent
    No offense taken, I know how big Lobsters isn't. :) A green username indicates the user is less than a week old.

    No offense taken, I know how big Lobsters isn't. :)

    A green username indicates the user is less than a week old.

    1 vote

  3. Comment on Open Source & Languages in ~tildes

    pushcx
    Link Parent
    You could also do a DCO. Basically everyone submits under MIT or something else permissive so the project owner can relicense if needed, and attests that they have the right to do so. Copyright is...

    You could also do a DCO. Basically everyone submits under MIT or something else permissive so the project owner can relicense if needed, and attests that they have the right to do so. Copyright is not assigned.

    3 votes

  4. Comment on ~tildes versus lobste.rs in ~tildes

    pushcx
    Link
    It didn't get mention here, but the Lobsters moderation log has been an important feature. It lists the edits, deletions, and bans by moderators, and story edits from user suggestions. I think...

    It didn't get mention here, but the Lobsters moderation log has been an important feature. It lists the edits, deletions, and bans by moderators, and story edits from user suggestions. I think it's invaluable for building trust in the moderators and minimizing meta discussion around what happened when.

    5 votes

  5. Comment on ~tildes versus lobste.rs in ~tildes

    pushcx
    Link Parent
    Here's two histograms of the number of votes (not score) and number of comments per story on all Lobsters stories, if it helps. Lobsters doesn't have sticking as a feature for stories or comments,...

    Here's two histograms of the number of votes (not score) and number of comments per story on all Lobsters stories, if it helps.

    an admin sticky with 16 comments

    Lobsters doesn't have sticking as a feature for stories or comments, so I'm really puzzled what you're referring to here.

    (context: I'm the sysop of Lobsters)

    2 votes

  6. Comment on ~tildes versus lobste.rs in ~tildes

    pushcx
    Link Parent
    Invites are hugely valuable to Lobsters. To quote our about page: I (current sysop of Lobsters) added the bit about not being an elite club because it's a common misunderstanding. Spammers are the...

    Invites are hugely valuable to Lobsters. To quote our about page:

    New users must be invited by a current user, though there is no formal vetting process. Invitations are used as a mechanism for spam-control and to encourage users to be nice, not to make the Lobsters userbase an elite club. The most efficient way to receive an invitation is to talk to someone you recognize from the site or request one in chat.

    I (current sysop of Lobsters) added the bit about not being an elite club because it's a common misunderstanding.

    Spammers are the obvious reason: posting spam is cheap and has positive ROI, spambots are now trivially customized to sites so that amortize the cost even lower. Open invites puts you in an arms race with spammers, and the worst part is that they're fighting to make money and you're fighting to lose as little time as possible. You cannot win, just lose more slowly.

    The less obvious reason is community-related. Invites add a cost to creating an account and mean there's more value in maintaining a good reputation with your account. Aside from seeing less abuse and trolling, we don't see drive-by accounts registered by regulars or randos to post abuse from.

    You make a point lower in this thread that "just drop into IRC" is non-trivial, and I agree. I'd be less happy with this if Lobsters wasn't computing-focused. We do allow folks to auth their Twitter accounts (the @Lobsters bot will link your username on your stories), I'm considering a tool to allow new users to auth + see which of their followers are already auth'd to Lobsters.

    Still not perfect, but it keeps a human in the loop, and that keeps a cost to accounts, some spammer filtering, and some knock-on effects like rate-limiting when we get substantial press somewhere.

    5 votes