OK, not really my place, but the bar/restaurant where my coworkers and I usually go for happy hour on Fridays. Any and all are welcome. Let's see if we can't get a decent sized turn out for this.

Oh, and the bribe (almost forgot about that): since this is ostensibly IT related, I'll pick up the tab for the first two drinks for each person. And by "I" I mean "my boss's corporate card".

To clarify: I'll need to collect business cards to pick up the tab. Sorry, that's the way things are. If you don't have a business card, just put your name and work number down on a scrap of paper. And do try to be honest, this is for posterity.

Once again, someone went and down modded five of my comments in a two to three minute span of time. All of these comments were from stories that ranged from one to three days old, not old enough to be archived, but not exactly active, either.

This time, I decided to write to the powers that be: Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda. So far, it's proven to be an exercise in futility. Below is the email conversation we've had up to this point, going from oldest to newest email. Be sure to read the whole thing to keep things in perspective, and read on to the end where I've included a call to action.

Monday September 24, 9:04 am CST, from me to Taco
Rob,

My username on Slashdot is corbettw, and I think I'm being "stalked"
(for lack of a better term). I'm hoping you can help.

For several months now, there's been an ongoing campaign by some
person to mod all of my comments down. Just today, when I logged I had a message
about comment moderation: five moderations with minutes, all on different
stories, and all negative. Usually they're Overrated (which, of course, isn't
meta-moderated), but sometimes they're Troll (which is ludicrous).
It's obvious to me that someone is doing this on purpose. I've seen my
karma rating go from Excellent (where it's been for years), down to Good,
and now today down to Positive. Is there anything you guys can do to stop this
kind of stalking moderation?

I know there are more important things in the world than one's karma
rating on /., but it's still pretty annoying and is the only negative thing
on an otherwise favorite site. If there's anything you guys can do to cut
down on this, it would be much appreciated.

Cory

Monday September 24, 9:40 am CST, from Taco to me
I'll look into this and see if anything suspect is happening. Thanks
for the heads up.

Monday September 24, 2:41 pm CST, from me to Taco
I don't know if Slashcode gives you the ability to do this, but maybe you could put a check in place where, if someone moderates comments by the same user more than twice in a 24 hour window, they lose any moderation points in their pool and all recent moderations (within the previous 24 hours, for example) are undone. Though you might only limit it to negative moderations, since it doesn't really hurt anyone if someone gives their friends positive moderations all at once.

Just an idea, I have no idea how workable it is.

Monday September 24, 5:30 pm CST, from Taco to me
there are a number of checks in place to prevent extreme abuses. Don't worry ;)

Monday September 24, 9:25 pm CST, from me to Taco
Well, you might want to double check those checks, because they don't seem to be working all that well. I've heard from several other people today that they've been hit by the same thing.

Like I said before, my karma has gone from Excellent down to Positive. Maybe you guys just need to do away with Overrated, and keep a link to metamoderation up on the front page on a more regular basis (instead of swapping it out for the firehose and other links, like you started doing a few months ago).

Tuesday September 25, 7:03 am CST, from Taco to me
if anyone really thinks this is happening, they need to contact me and
not bitch somewhere that I might not see them. I gotta say- the # of
people that blame conspiracy on simply being modded down by random
users is pretty amazing... what you describe DOES occasionally happen.
But more often, people just can't BELIEVE that 3 people might call
them out on their obviously wonderful perfect flawless genius posts :)

Meta moderation is a difficult thing. We need more people to do it,
but the link is being ignored.

As for karma going from excellent to positive, I don't see that as
much of a big deal. Karma doesn't matter except to be negative or
positive really.

Tuesday September 25, 7:11 am CST, from me to Taco
Don't misunderstand me, it's not that Positive karma is bad, per se. Hell, I wouldn't even care if it was Negative, it doesn't really affect my life. But the speed with which it's dropped is the concern. And I'm not talking about 3 mod downs, I'm talking about 5, all within two to three minutes, all on stories that are two or three days old. It's blatantly obvious that one of my foes is going through my recent posts and modding them down. This isn't what the moderation system is meant for.

I'm a sarcastic, opinionated, guy (which is why I like Slashdot, duh). So, yeah, I'll say trollish things sometimes, or make a snarky comment that's not directly on topic. So the occasional Off-topic or Troll mod doesn't faze me. It's the obvious pattern of stalking behavior that's going on that has me concerned, and that's what I wanted to bring to your attention.

Not everybody is willing to contact you directly about this, for whatever reason(s). Rather than ignore an obvious problem, why don't you post a story on it? Bring the problem out into the open, and give people a forum on the front page for addressing the problem. You might be surprised how many people this has happened to.

Tuesday September 25, 7:25 am CST, from Taco to me
the faq pretty clearly explains to contact me in cases of abuse.

Tuesday September 25, 7:57 am CST, from me to Taco
OK, so now someone has contacted you about it. Now what?

That's where it stands as of now. I'll update as things progress. In the meantime, if you're reading this, and you've experienced the scenario I've described, PLEASE EMAIL CMDRTACO at Slashdot and share your experience(s) with him. He's obviously willing to ignore this problem until enough people complain about it.

UPDATE:
I just received another email from Taco. Here it is:
Tuesday September 25, 8:08 am CST, from Taco to me
I've looked into the allegations of abuse and made my decision about
what needs to be done about it. It's my policy not to explain
specifically what I find (or don't) or what I do (or don't do) in
response.

Hopefully this satisfies you... and hopefully you understand the need
to be coy on the matter... I've had this work out both ways- if I
find no abuse and tell you, sometimes readers will go post and bitch
that I'm a liar. If I *do* find abuse and tell you that, sometimes
readers will turn around and post their 'haha' message to say someone
got busted.

Quite simply, the mod system is an ongoing project with problems and
mistakes... its a constant balancing act... and since we have a small
percentage of assholes, there will ALWAYS be little problems in the
system. The question is how much we can do to stop assholes without
restricting the vaaaast majority of readers who are cool and
trustworthy.

September 25, 8:13 am CST, from me to Taco
Fair enough, although I have to say it's usually better to be open and up front about things like this rather than hide. That policy hasn't worked out too well for the current administration in the White House, I'm not sure why you think it'll work out any better for you.

My only goal in this is to help improve the Slashdot experience, so to help with that I've posted about this in my journal. I'm trying to raise the attention level of this problem.

I'll let you know if I see the same problem re-occurring. Hopefully more people will start contacting you directly about it, and it will finally get resolved.

(Yes, I'm assuming you're blowing this off. I have no evidence to the contrary, and most of your emails on this subject have displayed a very dismissive view on the problem. If that's not the case, then please let me know.)

LAST UPDATE:

Last email from Taco (it's his site, he gets the last word)
September 25 8:51 am CST, from Taco to me
Well, your journal post at least clearly demonstrates why I don't
spell out results of abuse investigations to readers...

Anyway, despite your attitude and insinuations, I welcome notification
from anyone with legitimate concern of abuse. While real abuse is
fairly rare, reader feedback is a key part of us dealing with the
problem when it arises.

So that's the end of the story, kids. Just make sure you email Taco about any problems, and we can all make this a better place to trade ideas and thoughts.

Once again, some fool with too much time on their hands decided to mod five of my comments as either Overrated, Redundant (when it wasn't), or Offtopic (again, when it wasn't), all at once. It makes me feel sad for these people, who have nothing better to do than try to silence people with whom they disagree. Can't they focus on lifting up conversations, instead of trying to censor everyone they don't like?

Thanks to several instances of getting five '-1, Overrated' mods on various posts of mine within a few minutes of each other (even when the posts in question occur days apart from each other), I've decided to fight fire with fire: whenever I get mod points, I systematically go through my friends and fans, find people who have either been modded down or don't get a karma bonus, and mod up whatever I can with '+1, Underrated'.

I call this method the "Share Your Voices" method of moderation. If you're reading this, please consider joining me in this effort to ensure that libertarian and conservative voices are not shut out by the censoring whores of the left on this site.

As for wasting my points on marking things as Overrated, I'll leave it to the leftists on Slashdot to hurt people, I'd rather try to help my friends than stifle my enemies.

I tried submitting this item yesterday, and, surprise!, it was rejected. (I even submitted the link to the original article, not the one to Hot Air.)

Suffice to say, we all know Slashdot editors are idiot liberals, and anything that challenges their world view is verboten. But at least they provide journals so people can share news not deemed fit for the pages of /.

The summary of the article is that Neptune is experiencing global warming, and aside from the number of SUVs the Neptunians drive the only thing our two planets have in common is a common sun. So while I'm sure George Bush is still at fault, it looks like the sun is causing global warming, not "carbon emissions".

In case this doesn't get accepted, here's a submission I just put into the queue:
From the National Geographic Society comes a(nother) report that Mars is warming at a similar pace as the earth, pointing to a solar, not a human, cause of both. Obviously, the Society is pandering to Big Oil....

Michelle Malkin has a follow-up piece about the barking moonbat in VA who attacked some college Republicans in their own home.

Turns out, the crazy man got the Republican's address from Facebook (where crazy man was busy making all kind of hateful posts about Republicans and Jews, and actively supporting Iran nuking the US...but he's not a traitor).

The long and the short of it is, this guy seems to be one of those leftists who believe that if you support the war, you should be in the military. And if you aren't/weren't in the military, you can't support the war.

Well, my friends, the logical conclusion to that is, unless you served in the military, you can't vote, you don't have freedom of speech, and you can't serve in elective office. In other words, they want a military dictatorship.

Somehow I don't think they'd be all that happy if they got what they seem to wish for.

Chavez has done it, he's beat Bush* in the race to become a dictator.

The Congress of Venezuela has granted Hugo Chavez the kind of authority that liberals in American think George Bush desperately desires: the ability to rule by decree. Who wants to take bets on how many liberals denounce this action and start calling Chavez a bloody tyrant the way they do Bush?

*I don't think Bush wants to be a dictator. Hell, I'm not convinced he wants to be a President!

I just learned about this file, hosted on the New York Times website:
http://www.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/international/20060107_ARMOR_TEXT.pdf

It compiles data from a classified report, detailing the weak spots in the body armor worn by US soldiers in Iraq. It even has complete diagrams, showing where to shoot to ensure a kill.

In other words, this is the perfect training manual for Iraqi snipers.

This is more evidence of the treason that runs rampant on the left these days. And because the assholes in the Bush administration refuse to do anything about it, it's more proof that the powers-that-be on the right don't give a rat's ass about our country any more than the ones on the left do.

Now excuse me, I have to go vomit.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,246519,00.html

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee is now requiring fatties who want to get gastric bypass to take an IQ test before they'll pay for the surgery, to make sure the patients understand that afterwards they'll have to eat not so much and exercise. But if you're smart enough to eat right and exercise, would you really need to have your stomach stapled in the first place?

If I've added you as one of my foes, it means one of three things:

1) You're a flaming liberal, and I don't want to waste my time reading your drivel. Grow up, learn how the world and the people in it really work, and become a conservative.
2) You're a self-centered nerd who says things like "I don't like Microsoft, so I don't buy their products, so they will go out of business." Just because you are/are not doing something, Sparky, doesn't mean it's going to affect anyone else. One anecdote does not a data set make.
3) Ur speling and, like, grammar are just, like, bad, and stuff. Go read a basic book on English grammar, so you can learn when to use who and whom, when not to use "you and I" instead of "you and me", and what an infinitive is and why it's so important not to split them.

If you want to know which one of the three landed you on my Foes list, just email me (cor bettw at ya hoo dot com). I promise I won't add your email address to every porn spam page I come across.

Very odd, I Meta-Moderated earlier today, then this afternoon I get prompted to do so again on the homepage. I thought it was set only to do so once a day. Are there that many moderations being done now, with not enough meta-mods? Too sad, if that's the case.

As much as I gripe about the editors and the way they pick articles, Slashdot belongs (in a very real, if figurative, sense) to all of us. We all need to participate in moderation and meta-moderation for the site to function well. So come one, guys and gals, give a hoot, meta-moderate! Remember, only you can stop unfair moderation!

I just submitted this article, let's see if they run with it:

I'm sure most Slashdotters have heard about the Mohammed cartoon controversy already, but here's an update. Fox news is reporting that gunmen have started storming hotels and apartment buildins in the West Bank looking for potential European hostages. This is on top of the large and loud protests in half a dozen Muslim countries, with protestors chanting "Death to France" and "Death to Denmark". If a little cartoon can cause this much uproar, can the Dar al-Islam (Muslim nations) and Dar al-Harb (everyone else) ever live in peace? Should we have any respect at all for a religion with this much contempt for freedom of expression?"

Oh, this is too much. Yesterday, I submit an interesting article about global warming being not-so-global, and it gets rejected. Today, I submit an article about bee flight and make a lame editorial comment about Intelligent Design, and it gets posted to the front page! Global warming, and both the science and politics behind it, are arguably far more important than how bees fly, but the article with the flamebait, anti-religion comment in the submission is the one that gets posted, not the one criticizing liberal beliefs. Sheesh, they're not even trying to hide their bias anymore, are they?

Hey Taco, if you're reading this, maybe you should look in the mirror the next time you want to yell at your site visitors regarding story selection.

The liberal editors of Slashdot keep rejecting my submissions, so I guess it's time I start entering them in my journal, instead. Here's one that was rejected, despite the interest so many Slashdotters have in the environment and the subject of global warming. Guess they don't want to publish anything that will go against the prevailing liberal myth of human causes of global warming:

According to this Yahoo News article, from LiveScience.com, 2005 is the second warmest year on average since accurate records began being kept in the late 19th century. This is significant because it was predicted to be the warmest, showing that the climate data models being used aren't as accurate predictors as some claim.

Also, most of the warming is shown to have occurred in the North Pole. From the article, "It just doesn't look like global warming is very global," said John Christy, director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Given that the warming shown around the world is still 3C cooler than 800 years ago, I really wish the hysteria about global warming would just go away. Humans, and the rest of nature, have experience far more pronounced climatic shifts than what we're seeing today and not survived, but prospered. Even as bad as the Little Ice Age was, if it hadn't happened we wouldn't've had the large influx of immigrants to America (bad for the natives, good for everyone else), wouldn't've had the French Revolution (bad for the nobles, good for everyone else), and might not have had the Renaissance (since the severe population decline from the onset of the ice age and the Black Death that was fueled by it led to higher wages being paid to the few craftsmen who were left, and hence a higher standard of living for the survivors...I'll try to find the article I read about it but it's not coming up in the first few results so far). So while the climate is changing, we don't yet know if it will be a net boon or not to mankind.

Personally, I'm much more worried about the pending magnetic reversals. Though seeing the Northern Lights in Texas will be quite a sight!