Slashdot

It's becoming increasingly clear that Slashdot's comment system is due for an upgrade. Here are a few ideas I have for it's improval.

The comment moderations are a little too generic. I say give a much wider range than -1 to 5. At very least make it -2 to 10. I'd personally perfer it go from -10 to 100. For this to be feasable mod-points would have to be given out much more often, but I don't see that as a problem.

Next I would take advantage of Slashdot's already built in friend system. You should be able to see both a friends' score and an overall score for comments. So you could setup your account to only take into account your friends moderations, or do a combination of the two. People constantly disagree on proper moderations, so this would help I think.

Lastly, I'd add a whole lot more comment labels. You should have an orthoginal design of sorts. If a post can be rated "funny" then it should also be possible to rate it "unfunny". Insightful? How about Uninformed? Stuff like that... How about a "zealot" mod option? Or with things like the GNAA around maybe it's time for a "Spam" label? I'm sure there's lot of new possibilities...

Any other ideas? Care to make a counterpoint (not flame)? Leave a comment below.

Ok, I saw some people arguing over this issue a few weeks ago. I was always of the opinion that adblock would inspire more sites to require subscriptions and payments instead of being free, or at least for the "good stuff." Many news services keep their "exclusive content" reserved for subscription only users these days. This could also lead to sites just not supporting Firefox in fear that all of their readers will block their ads, which pay for their servers, etc... Then I saw someone arguing that when advertisers crossed the line from simple advertising to annoying ads like pop-ups, "eye blasters", automatic videos and whatnot they lost those rights. I started to think you know...that's true too. And I believe I've found the solution. Use Flashblock, but not adblock.

I installed Flashblock recently, and I am loving it! It's making my internet browsing so much more enjoyable than before, and I realize that the plain ol' banners and even the occational animated GIF isn't that much of a bother after living with all the flash based crap for the last few years. Now when webdevelopers look at their web stats and ad revenue they'll see a decline in Flash based (annoying) ad viewing but steady use of regular ads. This is the smart way to boycott ad abuse in my opinion...

I've been bouncing ideas around my head for over a year now on what it would take to make a solid Linux distro that was easy enough for your Joe Average users but powerful enough for more advanced users too. I think with the recent release of Autopackage it might be a little more possible now. I've written an extremely basic, rough paper on what this distro's all about and how it works. I still plan on adding a ton more content, so be gentle..

I just saw an ad here on slashdot that made me laugh... It says that Speakeasy now offers a 6Mbit/768kbit plan at an "unrivaled price" $99/month. Umm, I get that same bandwidth from Comcast for less than $60/month.

Ok, I'm extremely tired of trying to justify my ideas on that World of Warcraft post.

I feel I have done a more than adequete(sp?) job of defending my opinions...but I guess it doesn't matter. I will never try to make an estimate here again, I guess. If you're not 100% exact you will get flamed to hell and back...

One day, when I get to make my own MMORPG, I'll have to release the numbers and show you guys I'm not the idiot you think I am...