Occationally I metamod unfair, particularly when I beleive a point is overlooked because of a troll-like approach, just because someone phrases a post differently or has an abrasive opinion doesn't mean they should be censored. Strictly speaking it's not censorship in the sense that a post is not removed, but it is censorship by rating.
Slashdot needs a one line synopsis that can be added as an aside to a post and story submission. The synopsis should be available only to moderators and could be used by a poster to explain their comment. It would avoid jokes, rhetoric and deliberate abrasive comments from been overlooked by the either overworked or dim mods. The description would have to be one line because otherwise there would be an unreasonable level of information for a moderator to take in.
The current moderation system is broken, badly, and important posts are overlooked. I don't for one second mean any of my posts, although some of the stories I have submitted (death of FAS's Victor Weisskopf, Manhattan Project scientist and a founding member of the Federation of American Scientists) I beleive relevant and important. The reason I state that the moderation system is broken because of the moderations I see while meta-modding. Which I guess is the point of meta-modding, that said, it doesn't seem to make much difference and if this practice allows the continuence of censorship it is clearly wrong. Under-rating is one thing, but modding down on a superficial basis is far, far, worse.
I can understand the mods viewpoint too. There is a gargantum number of posts flowing through this site and a reasonable level of error is acceptable. It all depends how frequent the errors and how bad the errors are. Allowing the poster to write a single line as to why they think the post should be modded up, or even just not modded down, would solve this problem.
