sllort's Journal: The Moderator Challenge (do you have what it takes?)

"I'm open to any suggestions, but anything angry will simply be ignored." - CmdrTaco

"You caught me. I don't give a fuck. Thats why I'm diligently responding to people who are being rude to me about a service we provide for free to them." -CmdrTaco

If you're eligible to Moderate on Slashdot, read on, because I have a very special challenge for you. First, though, some background.

I received two new Moderation Messages from the messaging system today, which I will reproduce for you below:

Moderation of "Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards"

        sent by Slashdot Message System on Tuesday February 26, @03:40AM

A user has given a Troll (-1) moderation to your comment, Re:The Horrors of Punch Cards , attached to When PC Still Means 'Punch Card' . Your comment is currently scored (0).

Moderation of "Re:May I disable Modbombing?"

        sent by Slashdot Message System on Tuesday February 26, @03:59AM

A user has given a Offtopic (-1) moderation to
your comment, Re:May I disable Modbombing? , attached to Quantum Programming with Perl . Your comment is currently scored (-1).

On the face, not really noteworthy. They're just negative moderations of two week old comments buried deep in a thread that nobody reads. So why a journal entry for them? Well, there's some rather interesting observations you can make about these Moderations:

• They were made at approximately 3:50AM
• They were made to comments that were archived

Since the messaging system claims that a user, not an Administrator, made these moderations, we can assume that it is now possible for users to Moderate Archived comments. The only other possibility is that some Administrator was staying up till 3 in the morning writing custom code to modify archived database records for the sake of attacking some user's karma. That idea is (of course) completely absurd. Add to this absurdity the fact that the messaging system would be lying to claim that a user moderated me down if an Administrator had actually done it, and you have complete and utter impossibility. The Slashdot Editorial Staff aren't lying control freaks!

So, here's my challenge for you readers out there:

Negatively Moderate a comment that has been Archived.

To win, you'll need to prove that the comment was Archived before you Moderate it down. A good way to do this is to pick one out of Google, so that you can show us the Google Cached version at Score:1, and then show us your Moderated version at Score:0. Contestants are encouraged to post their successes (or failures) in the comments section of this journal entry.

The winner will be the first user to link to a comment that they Moderated down after it was Archived. Discovering how this new feature works will be a huge boon to the Slashdot readership, because it means we can go back and correct Moderation mistakes made years ago!

Good luck, everybody.

-s.

How many people do you think read your journal ?

[forged]

Several things, in disorder. I for one, have found your journal rather interesting, although I frankly don't care much about moderation. I see the system more like a playground for geeks. Same for the friend/foe system. Yet I'd like to see some figures regarding the usage. Surely some stats would be interesting to quantify things a bit, and possibly moderate the magnifying-glass effect which is rampant on Slashdot stories & comments :)

Re:How many people do you think read your journal

[heliocentric]

How many people do you think read your journal ?

about 5 or 10. my friends list has about 100 entries, and my guess is that of those, maybe 10% have messaging turned on.

If you list someone as your friend they don't (by that action alone) have the opportunity to receive messages about things you do. Only if they list you as their friend (ie, your fan) are they on a list to receive messages (should they have it turned on) about your activities.

Then again, you posted as AC, so I don't know how you can have a friends or fans list...

Re:How many people do you think read your journal

[kiwipeso]

I've argued for a few reforms of Slashdot before. mainly if Slashdot ever goes to subscription, readers should have a better service, no JonKatz, no bitchslapping, no ads.

I'm willing to program some of this stuff later if you have any suggestions...

They are messing with your mind

[John Harrison]

It is possible that the editors are simply trying to mess with your mind. Maybe they are doing things to throw off your investigations or they are simply persecuting your account.

I just got metamoderation, I can help

[kiwipeso]

I think the metamod page only had those within the timelimit, but it could go back to the archived discussions.
This site would be a hell of a lot better if it was a newsnet based discussion group.
We could set the limit for discussion threads at 2 weeks and discussions at 3 weeks.
The best thing about newsnet is that it can be viewed long after people archive it. Has anyone used google's archives?

time

[gmhowell]

Remember that time is not a totally useful metric on /. Assuming you live on the east coast, someone modding you at 3:50 am local might only be up at midnight themselves in CA. Similar arguments can be made for any time zone.

So it is not necessarily someone with a vendetta. But it is odd that these are archived comments.

Re:time

[gmhowell]

My bad. That's what I get for shooting from the hip.

Re:time

[heliocentric]

Studies indicate that approximately 70% of all statistics and numbers used in conversation are just made up on the spot.

Re:time

[gmhowell]

Already had my wrist slapped for the math error.

But I don't think I was totally closing the door on other countries. In addition, considering the obvious bias towards the US of /., it is not odd to express things from a US-centric viewpoint.

Stale messaging?

[heliocentric]

Could it just be some stale messaging and that the posts were actually moderated in a timely format (namely within the bounds of archiving) and that some kink in the slash code (perish the thought of that idea /sarcasim) prevented you from receiving the messages when you should have?

Can you verify what the comments were moderated at say... last week?

I just got metamoderation rights.

[kiwipeso]

There is a difference between metamodding and bitchslapping, bitchslapping is an editor's permament right.
Metamoderation can be given to anyone who has 0 karma or more who happens to have enough interesting posts.
I was surprised to find that I had been granted metamoderation today, my karma must have got up to 0 in my sleep.
I have yet to use my new power, but it appears to apply to randomly selected moderations within the archive time limit.
Of course, you can't moderate or metamoderate your own messages. That appears to be reserved to bitchslappers.

Do you have any suggestions on how I should metamoderate? I think I should even out the linux zealot effect of moderation.

Re:I just got metamoderation rights.

[wholesomegrits]

This seems to be a worthwhile idea, though certianly not original in the least:

Rate as 'fair' nearly all posts which mod up the original.

Rate as 'unfair' any moderation which mods down the original post. This should, hopefully, thin the assholes who use all five points going after first posts and pithy diatribes. Of course, efforts must be made to punish stupid moderation of obvious karma whoring.

Sounds good, will do soon.

[kiwipeso]

First I have to get my system fine tuned on the new install I just did of OS X.

Re:Sounds good, will do soon.

[wholesomegrits]

This is just a theory. Anyone else have suggestions? I'm not too into the subtle subversion or its tactics.

Ideally...

[mirabilos]

you could try to mod The Post.
(Capitalized, so you know _which_ post I
think of...)

It's now been archived since a fair amount of
time, and it'd give an interesting target.