Sanity's Journal: Travesties of moderation

Much as the oh-so-superior K5 crowd might malign Slashdot, it is still a hell of a lot more interesting and fresh than K5's offerings of bland introspection and home-brew beer HOWTOs.

Of course, it is far from perfect, and one thing that really annoys me are the increasingly frequent misuse of moderation, whether deliberate or simply as a result of an overactive sense of political correctness.

Now, this might seem like whining, ok, it is whining, but how could anyone justify moderating this down as flamebait?! I mean, who seriously thinks that the British need to be protected from such racist insults? It is reminiscent of LA County recently asking their suppliers not to use terms such as "master" and "slave" when referring to equipment. Perhaps on /. we should moderate down anyone who refers to male and female cable connectors lest it offend Wayne Bobbett?

Anyway, I am going to keep this story around and post examples of moderator abuse in the comments afterwards, others are free to do the same.

thin skin

[ceejayoz]

Some people here have very thin skin. They'll be gone soon, I'd imagine...

That mod should read this [ceejayoz.com], though.

M2 abuse

[Raindance]

Good point. I'd add that only some of the bad things happening are visible. To paraphrase from my journal,

Some posters, in their .sigs, state that they will meta-moderate all downmods as unfair, to promote upmods. This is frustrating and
1. Is an abuse of the system (catagorically penalizing a subset of users through karma) through a loophole (no infinite-regress moderation).
2. Hurts the success (S/N ratio) of the moderation system.

Yes, sometimes moderators are swayed by grandstanding, keywords, reha

Re:M2 abuse

[lowmagnet]

I am one such person. Things are often marked 'flamebait' because the moderator simply disagrees with the poster.

Re:M2 abuse

[Raindance]

I agree with your rough generalization. However...

Wouldn't you say then that you M2 mods as unfair *because* they are unfair, and don't need to take such an extreme stance as I put forth?
Surely such an extreme stance will result in unfairness, as not all flamebait mods are unfair.

If you use all your M2 points in searching out and downmodding unfair flamebait mods, that's one thing (and what I think you're saying, though it's ambiguous); if you categorically M2-down all flamebait mods, that's another- and

Re:M2 abuse

[lowmagnet]

I really think that the moderation system is very easy to abuse. Overrated doesn't count in M2, so it's very easy for a moderator to get away with 'overrating' a few comments.

What /. really needs is a smoother mod system with only positive numbers 0-5, and four votes of 0 hiding the post. Oh wait, kuro already does this.

Re:M2 abuse

[Raindance]

I think it comes down to personal preference then:

I think slashdot's system is more elegant than Kuro's, you may not.

You think the /. moderation system is very easy to abuse, and hence needs vigelante action, I think it's harder to abuse than people think and that vigelante action in this context is an abuse itself.

You M2-down all downmods categorically (hopefully choosing those which you feel are specifically most unfair), I don't.

I can respect that. All I ask is something I'd imagine you do already, t

Well, I *would* be offended...

[Simon Brooke]

But as I'm off the Internet I can't be.

Re: Travesties of moderation...

[LinuxParanoid]

Without justifying the mis-moderation, let me offer an alternative hypothesis.

Moderator abuse, or stupidity? You say abuse but why not the latter? Perhaps the moderator just read the first few words which seemed antagonistic and skimmed the rest too fast to catch the humor. (Hmm, make that laziness, not stupidity.) Remember, moderators often do read 100-300 article comments at a time. Protecting against moderator abuse is one thing. Protecting against moderator stupidity or laziness is a much tougher