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Journal negativekarmanow tm's Journal: The first Slashdot troll post investigation 47

Journal by negativekarmanow tm

The last few months I have been doing some research into the trolling phenomenon on slashdot.org. In order to do this as thoroughly as possible, I have written both normal and troll posts, 1st posts, etc., both logged in and anonymously, and I have found these rather shocking results:

  • More moderator points are being used to mod posts down than up. Furthermore, when modding a post up, every moderator seems to follow previous moderators in their choices, even when it's not a particularly interesting or clever post. There are a LOT more +5 posts than +3 or +4.
  • Logged in people are modded down faster than anonymous cowards. Presumably these Nazi Moderators think it's more important to burn a user's existing karma, to silence that individual for the future, than to use the moderation system for what it's meant for : identifying "good" and "bad" posts (Notice how nearly all oppressive governments in the past and present do the same thing : marking individuals as bad and untrustworthy because they have conflicting opinions, instead of engaging in a public discussion about these opinions)
  • Once you have a karma of -4 or -5, your posts have a score of -1 by default. When this is the case, no-one bothers to mod you down anymore. This means a logged in user can keep on trolling as much as he (or she) likes, without risking a ban to post on slashdot. When trolling as an anonymous user, every post starts at score 0, and you will be modded down to -1 ON EVERY POST. When you are modded down a certain number of times in 24 hour, you cannot post anymore from your current IP for a day or so. So, for successful trolling, ALWAYS log in.
  • A lot of the modded down posts are actually quite clever, funny, etc., and they are only modded down because they are offtopic. Now, on a news site like slashdot, where the number of different topics of discussion can be counted on 1 hand, I must say I quite like the distraction these posts offer. But no, when the topic is yet another minor version change of the Linux kernel, they only expect ooohs and aaahs about this great feat of engineering. Look at the moderation done in this thread to see what I mean.
  • Digging deep into the history of slashdot, I found this poll, which clearly indicates the vast majority does NOT want the moderation we have here today. 'nuff said.

Feel free to use this information to your advantage. I thank you for your time.

Update 2001-01-17:
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=30, Troll=1, Redundant=2, Insightful=8, Interesting=21, Informative=7, Overrated=2, Total=71
My posting of this same entry has brought about a somewhat bigger response than expected. After an initial rise to a score of +4, it has been hovering between -1 and 4 for some time, causing my karma to rise to as high as -2 at times, until suddenly the entire thread (40+ direct replies) was modded to -1 : offtopic.
I have never been someone who believes every conspiracy theory about /. editors abusing their powers to mod down anything that doesn't fit into their viewpoint, but this struck me as extremely odd. (My karma dropped down to -13 in 5 minutes or so.)
Don't get me wrong, I couldn't care less about these karma points (I'd say the username is a bit of a giveaway), but trying to mod a thread that has caused so much upheavel into oblivion classifies as censorship in my book.
Remember, although admittedly this post was somewhat trollish in appearance, it clearely voiced the opinion of many on slashdot, and many either approved of it, or at least had very clear reasons why they didn't. All of them got modded down in the same sweep of -1:offtopic

Think about it, editors

Another update 2001-01-17:
The thread seems to have settled now, and the original post is back at +5:interesting:
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=34, Flamebait=1, Troll=2, Redundant=2, Insightful=8, Interesting=27, Informative=8, Overrated=2, Underrated=2, Total=86.

Well, I submitted a story, asking the editors to explain more about how and when they moderate. I don't expect to hear about it though.

Yet another update 2001-01-17 (last one today, I promise):
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=47, Flamebait=1, Troll=3, Redundant=2, Insightful=9, Interesting=32, Informative=9, Funny=2, Overrated=2, Underrated=3, Total=110

No surprise, my story was rejected

After another threadslap the entire thread is back at -1:offtopic, and I'm back at -13 karma. I'll just lay low for a while, as I can't post anymore (and with the ongoing moderation being done : +1:interesting, 1 minute later -1:offtopic, it doesn't seem like that's gonna change soon.)

Sad, very sad. I can't even comment on my own journal

Update 2001-01-18:
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=130, Flamebait=3, Troll=4, Redundant=3, Insightful=24, Interesting=76, Informative=17, Funny=3, Overrated=2, Underrated=20, Total=282, and no sign of slowing down.

I heard kuro5hin.org has a story about this little episode, and to my surprise I found an explanation there by Jamie McCarthy. Why he would say this on K5 instead of on /. (This journal would be a good place) is beyond me, perhaps he likes K5 better than /. anyway.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

The first Slashdot troll post investigation More

The first Slashdot troll post investigation

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  • Very good article. Too bad it was modded down as such...

    Anyways, I'd like to go over some of the topics you mentioned but in a different perspective (and compaired to REAL trolling, and Kooking).

    As stated, moderators are using points to mod stuff down much more than up. However, it seems that supermoderators (editors) are abusing this power in general by silencing a said thread. Since there is no way we can 'vote' on articles, people like you must use channels as these (mainly other threads, which risk you as being offtopic) to spread your ideas.

    After seeing only a little bit of Slashdot, I prefer Usenet myself. No moderating server-side, moderating is client-side with whatever field you like. IP, name, email domain, date, and fo course, any field is regex killable- given the correct client.

    However, there are easy improvments on this 'points' system(I refuse to call it Karma, since is largely irrelavalent). I'll try to put these rules into groups.

    1: Unregistered users are put in -1 point pool as default.

    2: Registered users are put in 0 point pool.

    3: Reg-Users are only ones capible of Points system. That alone should 'push' people away from unregistered status.

    4: Reg-users gain default point levels every +20 moderation points given.
    Example: UserA has 37 Points. His default posting point level is a 1. His score will theortically go up until it reaches the average quality of his articles.

    5: There is no Point system cap (other than a built in varible of -32767_to_32768 ), HOWEVER article score can go no further than 5 (100 points of moderation). Further points will have no affect on the article score (having max Points will not make your article immune from moderation)

    6: Article selection will be the majority (overall votes for articles). All registered users can vote once ( 1 Article point given)

    Well, the system would probably require a complete work over to sucessfully complete this. Probably one other thing I would change is to allow 'Funny' articles be selected out from the Moderation Point selection (the ThreashHold). To me, funny has no bearing to the article, however I'd probably go take a look if I was bored.

    Heh, well to talk about Usenet. You know what Trolls are? You don't have a clue. This is a somewhat decent idea of a troll:
    Trolls are Smart beings who lurk about until somebody with a fiery temper comes about. A troll will argue with pointless points (yes, I said that right) for the purpose to piss off everybody in that newsgroup. They usually pull 2 words from an earlier post from one of thier targets and blast that 2 words, which are out of context, to anybody that will listen. If you try to ban them, they come out with a totally different identity, sometimes taking a legit poster. I've personally seen this tatic done to me, unsucessfully (proving that I didn't, I owe thanks to PGP sign). They don't care.. They will attempt to make a legit looking signature, even if it doesn't verify. If you try to fry them by ToS'sing them (abuse of Terms of Service), they come back from the same ISP as a different user or from another ISP altogether. Ok, now from above, a Kook is a Troll^2. On alt.sputum, there's KotM (Kook of the Month). Yes, they're that bad :-( Some Kooks attempt to cancel posts to a WHOLE newsgroups (as in, ERASE them).

    Josh Crawley
  • One of my comments just (tonight) got modded -1 (twice). This is in a thread that was 11 days old...

    Why Slashdot Sucks [slashdot.org]

    Now... my post wasn't a troll, and it was only as offtopic as the rest of the thread. (I simply asked that a certain parent post be modded up.) My questions are:

    1. Who the hell uses their mod points to mark 11-day-old messages as offtopic?!?
    2. Did someone really waste their mod points to mark down every post in the thread? It's really quite bizarre.

    I honestly thought that there was some sort of new auto-inheritence rule in place that I hadn't heard about.

    Perhaps I'm being naive, but it just seems unlikely that any sane person would actually use their mod points like this...
    • Odd - one of my posts from 5th January was modded down 3 times yesterday. It was about the moderation system.

      Someone has entirely too much time of their hands.
  • So, as the Slashdot moderation guru, riddle me this:

    Is this the most moderated comment in slashdot history? (genuinely would like to know)

    Moderation Totals: Offtopic=37, Flamebait=1, Troll=2, Redundant=2, Insightful=9, Interesting=29, Informative=9, Overrated=2, Underrated=3, Total=94.

  • Well (Score:2)

    by mwalker ( 66677 )
    The moderation count is now up to 103:
    Moderation Totals: Offtopic=43, Flamebait=1, Troll=3, Redundant=2, Insightful=9, Interesting=31, Informative=9, Overrated=2, Underrated=3, Total=103.

    The totals will eventually go away, but they're recorded here in your journal for posterity.

    There is, however, one point I'd like to correct you on. Editors do tell you when they're moderating posts. You just have to turn on messaging. When they moderate your posts, you get a message that says that a User has moderated your post; this is because at Slashdot, administrators are actually called "Users". So please, in the future, don't call them "Editors", call them "Users", so they'll know what you're talking about.

    Rob already addressed this issue here [sourceforge.net].

  • (note: i've never had moderator access, so the first bullet might already be in use)

    -Moderators who have access to mod points in an article should not be able to see the user name and their .sigs. This would eliminate most discrimination of moderators modding people according to people they like/dislike. While not a perfect scheme, it would take care of most moderator abuses to play favorites.

    -The concept of putting the most recent moderation on the subject line needs serious revision. For example, a post gets modded up from +1 to +5, Informative. Then some lame moderator comes along and slaps it Offtopic. The subject line now reads +4, Offtopic. According to the poster's argument (which I agree with), this comment will now get more OT mods just because of that one lamer. Hence, I suggest the following: The moderation used most gets placed on the subject line, ties have both listed. For example, that comment I talked about above will list a +4, Informative because Informative was used most on it, but a comment that has 2 Troll mods and 2 Insightful mods will display "1, Troll/Insightful" This forces the next moderator to use their brain for a moment on that comment. Again, not perfect, but a big improvement.

    -Make Overrated/Underrated M2'able!! I cannot say how often these are abused to silence someone with little recourse against the moderator. Because these moderations NEVER APPEAR IN METAMOD, abusive moderators will use the Overrated on truely Insightful comments they disagree with, knowing they will get away with it. Likewise for using Underrated on crapflood posts.
    • (note: i've never had moderator access, so the first bullet might already be in use)

      I've had mod access twice (although maybe never again, after posting in that sid) and I can say that your first point has not already been implemented.

  • if anyone would like to do an investigation of your own, keep formal statistics and records to back up any claims you make.

    Keep track of items like what posts you make (both logged in and as AC), what the default score was (-1 through +2, inclusive), and how moderation was done and how quickly. Use the /. Messaging feature to track times for moderations of comments from when you were logged in.

    For determining exactly what a comment should have been scored, enlist some friends to and vote on how different comments should be moderated. Unfortunately, it's not possible to view metamod records, even though that would be extremely helpful. Do note this is _the_ most tricky part or evaluating how well moderating is happening.

    The Point: By keeping the records, you can establish legitimate argument in favor of your claims.
  • Now up to 131.

    Moderation Totals: Offtopic=58, Flamebait=1, Troll=3, Redundant=2, Insightful=10, Interesting=38, Informative=11, Funny=2, Overrated=2, Underrated=4, Total=131.
  • If you want a chance to discuss the situation on a site that works - try Kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org].

  • The worst part of slashdot moderation... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Wakko Warner ( 324 ) on Friday January 18, 2002 @02:20AM (#2860490) Homepage Journal
    ...is that very few people can effectively control the tone or direction of a conversation. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if there were more "levels" of moderation (i.e. if posts could go well below -1), but, as it stands now, it takes far fewer mod points to make a comment unseen by the vast majority of slashdot users than it does to make one stand out. What this means is that one or two or (at most!) three moderators can take what may be a perfectly decent comment and remove it from view, steering the conversation away from something they consider objectionable.

    While this may be perfectly valid in some cases (page-lengthening posts and ASCII pictures of distended anuses really don't contribute a thing to any conversation), in most it serves merely to enforce the status quo, something slashdot has always strived to distance itself from.

    Unfortunately, Rob Malda doesn't really give a fuck what you think. Moderation's not broken; it never has been and it's certainly better now that we've added meta-moderation! (Never mind the fact that the consequences of meta-moderation can be easily avoided by using Over/Underrated. Will this ever be fixed?) Have a modersation-related suggestion? that's nice, but we don't care [slashdot.org].

    Slashdot is very broken. A single user shouldn't be able to affect the score of a comment by an entire point. An averaging system (like the one used on K5) makes an awful lot of sense, would remove the need for meta-mod, and would actually use less system resources than the current system, assuming you used simple integers rather than the silly "Interesting/Informative/Overrated/Underrated/etc. " bullshit currently in place here.

    Oh, well. As long as the editors can do whatever they want to comments, none of this really matters, does it?

    - A.P.
  • (and yes, stats/numbers are included)

    Ok, first I made a "control" type post. I made this post [slashdot.org] at 12:59AM my time zone according to /. time. At 01:36AM and 01:38AM that post was modded as off topic, or atleast those were the times of my messages. I did this for three reasons, I wanted a way (the /. messaging system) to easily tell when the entire thread got re-slapped. Anyone else who posted in this time frame, please reply with what time you were modded as offtopic - if many occured in the same time frame then it was probably a script, otherwise we may be able to infer that editors were actually going through the comments by hand. The second reason was sort of the supporter in me, I wanted to voice my opinion by being another person to loose karma in this thing - it's left a bad taste in my mouth considering the following post. The third reason was to be sure that I would get hit and if making my second post was needed.

    Well, it got hit as you can see, so I decided to continue. I made this post [slashdot.org] in reply to the infamous post. My post was on topic (in the /. editorial eyes IMHO) and was hit quickly with offtopic moderations (I don't have the times because as of my post here at 3AM there's been no messages - it was modded down before 2:30AM - I'll update with the times if they are before 3AM and therefore interesting). If there is a script running to do the offtopic moderations, then the theory behind it is flawed - since I presume it assumes replies to an offtopic post must themselves be offtopic. I think an ontopic gem, or a funny comment can come at anypoint. Just because someone moderated a post as offtopic at somepoint in time does not mean that all replies to it are also "worthless." If these mods are not the work of a script, then I think there's either an adgenda at play, or the offending editor is a schmuck.

    Since I can not draw clear conclusions from this I'm not sure how to feel yet. Please note, my experience, and my posts to the famous post do not neccessarily mean I suppor the idea presented. I think it would be interesting to devise a way to post to /. the same type of post and conduct a social experiment. I propose these types of accounts and posts to post the same info and record how quickly moderation is done to each.

    A regular sounding account name posting on topic things.

    A regular sounding account name posting off topic things.

    A troll sounding account name posting on topic things.

    A troll sounding account name posting off topic things.

    An AC account posting on topic.

    An AC posint off topic.

    Coming up with the accounts, and the timing numbers/stats is easy - the difficulty is coming up with what should be considered by many similar enough on topic posts (off topic is easy). Possibly limiting these to just science things (post some space info since /. science often means space), or just askslashdot (posting simple google responces perhaps) could help devise a scheme to post similar things.

    Another thing I'd like to mention is that I saw the famous post go from +5 informative with a Total Moderation count of 196, then go to -1 Flaimbait with 197 total moderation count then to +5 interesting again with 198 total moderation all within one minute... interesing...

  • Important: please read

    So far, news of this thread has not been spreading as rapidly as it should. This is most likely due to the fact that everyone who links to it gets modded down to -1. What we really need is a well written post that can be posted many times by different people, and might get modded up.

    I would write it, but I am not a very good writer, so I am requesting three things:
    1) That the owner of this journal create a new journal entry, in which people can put up drafts of "the post"
    2) That everyone who reads this creates a draft, and shows everyone by posting it as a comment in the journal entry above
    3) That people, in the meantime, continue trying to inform people

    If we can get enough people to read it, and see what is going on, we might be able to beat these asshole editors who have been insta-moderating the thread down to -1.

    We can do it if we organize
  • Moderation Totals: Offtopic=101, Flamebait=2, Troll=4, Redundant=3, Insightful=19, Interesting=62, Informative=15, Funny=2, Overrated=2, Underrated=14, Total=224.

    Rather impressive post.

    I've lurked for a while on slashdot until recently I started posting. However, shortly after I started posting, I no longer got mod privs (which I attempted to use as best I could, to mod up interesting or insightful articles).

    Now, with a karma of 42, I metamod about 5 or 6 times a day, however, I haven't had moderator privs on a thread in over 3 months.

    Somewhat strange.

    Anyways, you present a bunch of good points, but I doubt we'll ever see a change in the way that things are run, simply because even though a few people MAY leave, the majority never will, and that's what the Editors rely on, a mass of people being here.

    If you want a good moderation system, try kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org]. The users vote on the article submissions, and as to whether or not they go on the front page or just the section page, or to dump them. Plus, they have mod privs on every single post in every single thread.

    Sure, you can abuse your power, but it's a hell of a waste of time, and I don't think it's done very often.

    Gawyn
    • Strange, I metamoderated once, that was 3 months ago. Since then, I have been getting modpoints about every 2 weeks. My karma was at 1 or 2 at that time, so nothing special. I have spent more than 90% of the points for modding up, not down. Last time was nearly 2 weeks ago, and if my plan is correct, I should be mod next week.
  • Well, in a futile attempt at restoring some sanity to this entire situation, I wrote up this nice summary of the whole situation, asking for Taco to give us an explanation, an apology, or even just a reply, and submitted it for the news. However, I forgot to save it, and since it got rejected in 3 or 4 minutes, I guess that says something about Your Rights Online (the category I posted it under).

    The entire thread is absurdly funny, that Jamie would spend that much time modding down everyone, that the Slashdot Administration doesn't want anyone to know about it..

    How long until the majority of the users on Slashdot know this has happened, and yet there STILL is not an official comment? If they truly believe what they preach in the threads (Open Source, Free Speech, etc.), they will become angry at the Editor Moderations and either post about it more or just leave Slashdot all together.

    Anyone got ideas for setting up a giant information discussion somewhere? Preferably somewhere where people either don't need accounts to post or here on /., where they already have them.

    Gawyn

    PS: As of posting, The Thread is at -1 Offtopic:
    Moderation Totals: Offtopic=139, Flamebait=4, Troll=4, Redundant=3, Insightful=27, Interesting=79, Informative=19, Funny=4, Overrated=5, Underrated=23, Total=307.
  • If you have moderator points, spend them ALL moderating the original thread up! We need the community to waste as many points on this issue as possible as we watch the editors bitch-slap the thread back down on a daily basis. It'll prove a point: that censorship on /. is not only alive, but also strong and appearantly more important than free speech. Here's a more indepth description of what I think ought to be done. [slashdot.org]
  • I found this thread [slashdot.org] with a reply from chrisd.
  • I don't think posting that comment was very sensible--not least because it was off topic and predictably created a huge subthread that had to be modded down. I didn't particularly agree with your conclusions, either. The moderation system seems to work quite well. I just pop my tolerance level to +3, give friends +5, +1 for interesting, informative or funny posts. Incidentally, you don't have to stick _only_ friends in your friends list--I have placed several trolls in mine simply because I find they can be amusing.

    In about 100 posts, I've been modded down maybe four or five times. Usually I could kinda agree with the moderator, and usually the -1 was more than counterbalanced. I read /. mostly for information, but I do like the fact that I can read it for entertainment (which is how I found your comment). It seems to work quite well for both, as long as I'm prepared to make the effort to seek out what entertains me. And that is why these trolls and off-topic comments get modded down. While they're an essential part of Slashdot culture, the news function of Slashdot, the thing that keeps me coming back here because it distinguishes /. from USENET, is more important.

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