I adore /. for its purity of thought, its perfection of moderation that lets me see all the words writ by any who would write, even though most have little useful to say.
The egalitarianism of the moderation system is perfect in its design and execution. It's a beautiful thing. Some seven years I've read and subsumed every comment reading at -1, and learned quite more from the -1's than the +5's. Among other things I have the 2^8 days read in a row achievement, and that was just when I was logged in. You can be assured that if you've writ a comment on /. in the last seven years, it's likely I've read it. If you've been wondering if anybody bothered to read your work, rest easy.
Even though I've posted things when I was a drunk ass and would like to erase them, I appreciate that you can't take /. comments back or edit them once posted, and worked that to my advantage.
Today though, I have a different issue. Once upon a time at /. there was a particularly difficult user: twitter. Twitter's a guy. He's got issues, but he knows his shit and he's tapped into the tech vein that we crave.
/. is a good thing, but it has one thing I cannot in good conscience bear. Somebody on the /. staff has it in for the user "twitter", and unlimited modpoints such that even referencing the name "twitter" is proscribed. I'm not OK with that. twitter was an idiot sometimes, quite open about his sockpuppets, and gaming the /. system. He was also one of the most prolific posters of timely and interesting articles. Whether he was good or bad is irrelevant to me - that some moderator can transparently banish him so thoroughly that I dare not mention him for fear of being modded instantly from +5 to -1 just for mentioning him, is.
I'm an American, and this looks like prior restraint of speech to me.
I love me some /., but this is a game I won't play.
If /. can't bear the mention of twitter, maybe I should try Reddit. I hate the Redditor thing, but maybe it's better than a site that pretends to be purely open except that it can't bear "twitter". Reddit looks to me like a site more open to dissent than one that can't bear a twitter.
How many others browse at -1? (Score:2)
So many of those with mod points are browsing at zero or -1 ... and I'd suspect that many of them then leave it at that setting, since, as you point out, there's gold in them there cowflops :-)
Of course, if someone's karma is permanently damaged, then they'll probably abandon the
Moderation issues (Score:2)
I looked into the comment you're concerned about, and there does not seem to be any abuse going on. It was moderated down five times and moderated up four times. There was a small cluster of votes shortly after you made the comment, and then several more spread out over the next 7 hours -- this is a typical voting pattern. The downmods came from users with distinct IPs, and from accounts that are in good standing (i.e. from people who post non-troll comments and who use the moderation system without an appa
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I would ask why I've been mod-banned for the last decade. I got suckered in by commenting on some stupid post in the early 2000s, and was silently included in some sweeping permamod-banninations as a result. It's not like I'm a troll myself, or that I've ever had anything less than excellent karma. I intensely dislike Pudge's politics, so maybe he's got it in for me or something, I don't know, but nobody's ever told me why, and it seems quite petty and ridiculous.
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I'm not sure what's happening here -- I don't see an explicit mod-point ban on your account. When one of the engineers with database access gets back from holiday break, I'll have him look into it and get it fixed.
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Interesting. After ten years, we finally have confirmation that there is a settable mod-point ban for accounts. For a decade (since the post plover mentioned) there have been rumors and suspicions. All either ignored or denied. Thanks for finally coming clean, even if inadvertently.
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Glad to be of help.
There are basically 3 levels of regulation. The first is the metamoderation system (and to a lesser extent, the karma/clout systems), which determine who uses mod points for good and who uses mod points for evil. Over time, this will cut off mod points to people who are abusing the system, and give more to people who are helping to foster good discussion. This ticks along without assistance from admins, other than the moderations and metamoderations we perform ourselves. The second option
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Your Karma can go up as fast as it goes down. If it was just three comments that got modded down, you can probably get back into positive territory with just a few good comments.
The best advice I can offer for writing good comments is to find something interesting that adds to the subject at hand and make a reasoned post about it. Being able to communicate clearly (i.e. double-checking spelling and grammar) goes a long way, too. There are a lot of people who browse at -1, so you'll definitely get some expos
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reading at -1 (Score:2)
If there's one gripe I have about the mod system it's that it often happens when I read comments about an article, they are mostly snarky meta-discussion about a peripheral aspect of the topic rather than about the topic itself. Sarcastic chat may be entertai