chainrust's Journal: Zoo is bad.

Zoo appears to me to be CmdrTaco's thinking he may finally rid himself of the trolls. He has created a blacklist called No More Trolls in order to take advantage of assigning bonuses/penalties to foes of friends, which will make all trolls post at -1 to friends of No More Trolls. This may work, but Taco's other methods such as IP's being temporarily banned, permanently banned, anonymous cowards being linked to their IP, and two posts per day for IPs with negative karma, haven't worked.

However, it is a little black secret that the trolls won't be gone until anonymous posting isn't allowed anymore, or all proxies are banned. I don't forsee all proxies being banned ever, so even with all of Taco's assurance this won't happen, once Slashdot is eventually sold to AOL Time-Warner, as has been rumored repeatedly due to VA Linux's(parent company of Slashdot) leadership problems, employee dissention, and financial insolvency, AOL Time-Warner will require anonymous posting to be ended due to possible legal troubles, which AOL Time-Warner doesn't need any more of.

But, Zoo will wreck havok on the social structure of Slashdot. Various factions headed by users will splinter off from the main readership, and they will block people who dissent with the faction from being seen from members of the faction. The factions leaders will become the most influential people on Slashdot, replacing the editors as the major source of news/direction, and become meta-editors.

My view of the future:
Slashdot a year from now will consist of meta-editors posting journals with the necessary information for their factions, with enemy factions blocked off from posting to the journal. The meta-editors will also be in charge of making sure that all people who are in dissent with the faction are immeadiately added to the meda-editors foe list, so they can be blacklisted by the whole faction. The slashbots will be happy with the direction of the meta-editors, because it allows them to see what they want to see.

Scary, isn't it?
It may be too late to avoid this, as two warring blacklists have already started, No More Trolls (headed by CmdrTaco) and More Trolls, Please (headed by the insane klerck).
At least Taco will be able to eliminate a couple trolls...

thanks to Com2Kid, tps12, and sllort for inspiring this journal.

BS

[GigsVT]

You are full of shit man. You take Slashdot way too seriously. Anyone with a hotmail account can start a new account on Slashdot, it's not like you are stuck with one account to use ever, and once that is blacklisted you are toast. The only way to really control the readership in this way is if Slashdot goes to subscription accounts, in which case a bitchslap would actually cost you money to open a new account.

Re:BS

[chainrust]

Creating new accounts is a waste of time. Have you ever tried creating a new Slashdot/Hotmail/geocities account? It will take you at least 15 minutes for all those to be set up, and once you post a dissenting view, you immeadiately will be blacklisted by the meta-editors. Or, you can be a bland nobody and ally yourself with no faction, which isn't a bad idea. But, like I said in the journal, 90% of users will be happy for the censoring actions of meta-editors.

Re:BS

[GigsVT]

My first message did come off pretty harsh, you do have some valid points.

Re:BS

[duren686]

Have you ever tried creating a new Slashdot/Hotmail/geocities account?

I created two hotmail accounts within the span of two minutes, before getting up to go catch my morning bus. It's not hard, kid, you click links and type things.

"More Trolls, Please" lead by Klerck?

[NaveWeiss]

How do you know?

Re:"More Trolls, Please" lead by Klerck?

[chainrust]

Every time he decides someone is pumpernickel, they end up on More Trolls, Please's list.

Your late

[Com2Kid]

I already predicted most of this when the Zoo.pl system first appeared.

Oddly enough I actually end up with more comments displayed per story now then I did before Zoo.pl. The creative trolls are getting auto upped by +5. :)

The uncreative ones?

They do not deserve to be called trolls any ways.

Re:Your late

[chainrust]

You're right. I just wanted to bring the views of you, sllort, and a couple other people together into one big picture for the common Slashdot user to understand. I actually can't find any comments or journals by you about Zoo, but I remember you posting something. If you could provide me with links to your Zoo comments, I will gladly add it as a source when I make a Zoo FAQ, and I will add it into this journal.

Re:Your late

[Com2Kid]

This [slashdot.org] is my first journal entry on the topic. I posted another lengthy detailed comment about the friend's / foe's system slightly before it was even implemented, when CmdrTaco first hinted at it in His journal, but I doubt that that comment was even archived.

A comment [slashdot.org] on the pills VS dots system for displaying friends of friends and foes of friends. Separate dots where only implemented for I think a bit less then even a single hour.

A journal entry [slashdot.org] where I compare the popularity of FortKnox to some other prominent /. members.

I wish I could find the posting about how I predicted that /. would break off into separate communities that might not even realize the existence of the other communities around them, similar to how there are many web communities that exist but many communities do not know of the existence of the other communities. For instance very few bloggers know that sites like Ars-Technica or Tom's Hardware even exist. Like wise until a short while ago I did not know about Webshots or other such novelty sites. (well I knew about their annoying desktop software and their pop-up ads, but not about the services that they provided)

Re:Your late

[Dthoma]

You mean I'm not the only one who mods all trolls and flamebaits +1? Cool.

Re:Your late

[Com2Kid]

I think that nearly every member of FortKnox's group currently has most of the trolls, through Friend's of Friends, modded up by some modifier.

Heh.

[Dthoma]

Funny comment, but in my case that isn't actually true - neither friends of friends or foes of friends are modded up and down. And I haven't actually seen many trolls that are from friends of friends - they're generally from people who are completely neutral from my POV.

I'm still waiting for the friend of a friend of a friend icon ;-)

Well...

[koh]

You have good points, though you seem a little too paranoid but again who isn't those days... but I think you have to reconsider something.

Slashdot is _not your_ site, neither is it a community-administered site. It's Taco's site, and he's free to do whatever he wishes to do with it. He's not asking us for advice, he's not asking us to tell him what's good or bad in it. He manages his site as it damn well pleases him, and it's a Good Thing.

If you have (better) reasons to think that ZOO is bad, then go ahead and don't use it. Even better, don't read slashdot at all. Create your own blog, reuse slashcode if you like, and then you'll be the one who decides.

In the meantime your rants are quite useless, simply because Taco doesn't (and shouldn't) care about you and your opinion about what would be "good" for _his_ site.