King of the World's Journal: Giving to trolls for the benefit of us all

GIVING TO TROLLS FOR THE BENEFIT OF US ALL

"Call It A Night, Cowboy! Slashdot only allows a user with your karma to post 2 times per day. You've already shared your thoughts with us that many times. Take a breather, and come back and see us in 24 hours or so. If you think this is unfair, please email [e-mail] with your username "GafTheHorseInTears". Let us know how many comments you think you've posted in the last 24 hours."

You know, this really does show that Slashcode is giving up on moderation. The original freedom behind moderation was that users could always post, and you could always see others posts, they'd just have a score and a viewing threshold. There was however a risk for trolls in getting an account - they would now have a history and they'd be judged on it. But the fact that no one could impersonate you, and that you could have two-way conversations outweighed this. The trolls had a karma sink account, the rest had a karma rise account, and that was that.

There is now a limit of 2 posts per day for trolls. Of all slashdot users, the blabbermouth trolls need more. It's difficult to say what exactly the programmers behind Slashcode thought this would accomplish. That they would stop trolling? There are always other options, easier options, and there is now no good reason for a troll to bother with an account.

Without incentive to use their account the trolls go through usernames like diapers, or they post as AC. These accounts have no history. More to the point, they have no history to be used against them. When they accumulate a negative history the trolls move onto the next account. The fresh account, or even an AC, post at higher score than a troll account would. Slashcode needs to understand that encouraging trolls to get an account is a Good Thing. If we can't track trolls we can't filter them.

Moderation hits down on ACs and users, but only frequent logged-in users will feel the accumulated weight of moderation. Without this history, moderation loses much of its power. Trolls must be allowed to post more than twice a day or their habits will overflow into accounts without history.

Give the trolls a carrot, so we can see them.

slashdot city is getting crowded

[dattaway]

If only 100 people still visited slashdot, trolling would still rule the day. There's still usenet newsfroups and lots of personal homepages for trolls to spider. The ones with most potential are the ones that allow posting of images. Too bad slashdot fixed that little hole where one could do that.

Re:Um...

[King of the World]

Not at all. I make the odd quip, but I invite anyone to point out any particular comment I make that is trollish.