metlin's Journal: Trolling & Free Speech

I came across a user with the following sig today -

"Support the First Amendment: Read at -1."

Couldn't agree more :-) And that is why I sometimes troll, mehearties. Not to cause harm. Not to plunder and pillage the oh-so-innocent Slashdot editors. But to speak freely as I would want to. To show them how fucked up their system is.

They try to shut the trolls up by more restrictions. And by tightening the screws. But -- they forget that it would only make the serious trolls strike back.

Slashdot is becoming SO hypocritic by the day.

Look at it. It's become so bad that even expressing one's opinion is wrong. Moderation has become something where if the moderator does not agree with you, you're modded down.

I thought that was exactly what Slashdot's moderation system sought to prevent?

Consider Mac articles -- any anti-mac post gets modded flamebait, no matter how relevant. Consider science articles -- inevitably, the classic stemcell topic shall come up and people will flame away. The classic creationists vs. evolution argument. Or the science vs. religion ones.

Although I've been often at the end of benefitting from these (pro-Slashbot-think) --- I was really quite surprised at the amount of prejudice that goes into moderating these things.

Just because I disagree with someone does not mean they would have to be modded down. If anything, their opinons are just as valuable and interesting as mine.

A poster, who shalt remain unnamed said this - "Any pro-Bush post gets modded down. This place is seething with left-wing liberal hippies, who see conspiracy in every nook and corner."

I was like, duh, you're over-reacting. And then guess what? I realized he wasn't - more often than not, offtopic anti-Bush posts are left unmodded while the pro-Bush guys get modded down to oblivion -- hmmm, isn't that a little unfair?

(note -- I don't really side with either, I'm merely observing and nothing more)

What's happening, Slashdot?

Noise to signal ratio is on the rise. Moderation is so broken and haphazard these days. Prejudice and groupthink prevails, rather than commonsense. Dupes everywhere. The Over-rated and Under-rated mods are so frequently abused. Editors who do not listen to the comments we send in, even if you are a subscriber and point out an error during the preview.

Mmmm. Matt Damon! Fuck yeah!

M2 on over/underrated

[Frisky070802]

As has been pointed out in various other journals on the topic of mod bias, it seems one can't at the very least "scold" people for poor use of moderation when they use overrated, say. I wonder why not? My guess is that it's because the system doesn't tell Mr. M2 that it was rated overrated at 4 or at 2. Perhaps if the M2 system gave the chronological history of the moderation being evaluated, M2 would improve? The same would hold true of how interesting or insightful or whatever something is. Yes, an

Re:M2 on over/underrated

[metlin]

Oh no.

It's going to make absolutely no difference.

But that's not going to stop me from beating up my chest though =)

*sigh*

Are you fighting human nature?

[Allen Zadr]

The guidelines are clear both for moderation and Meta-Moderation. The moderation guidelines clearly say that it's far more important to mod things up than down. Don't moderate because you agree or disagree, etc.

Yet, what do we have? Human nature. Given only 5 mod-points, most people have a tendancy of reading and modding posts that get their attention. Some posts get their attention in a good way, some in a bad way. I've had negative Offtopic mods knocked back, because someone decided that no, it's f

Re:Are you fighting human nature?

[metlin]

Well, I guess you're partly right - but modding down valid comments because you don't agree with it?

Isn't that what moderation is supposed to fix? =)

We're the borg, agree with us or you shalt be modded down...

Re:Are you fighting human nature?

[Allen Zadr]

I'm sure that there have been studies done on the behavior of SlashDot readers. It is a community and as such there is an overall dynamic. However, I think the moniker, Slashthink, is a little too simplistic.

At times, certain subjects are probablly succeptable to the Frankenstein's village pattern. "It's different. Burn it! Burn it!"

Most frequently, valid disagreements are modded down because of "abuse of the few". Worse, abusers have a tendancy to be an active and obnoxious lot.

To continue my previous post...

[Allen Zadr]

So, while doing some M2 today, this post [slashdot.org] was marked TROLL, which I said was unfair.

The problem here is that the first part can be taken as inflammatory (thus Troll), or in the way I read it as an exagerated viewpoint, a hook, so to speak. It's still -1 though, even though it created some lively discussion in the threads that follow.

My point is that even a TROLL mod is subjective.