ak3ldama's Journal: /. and modding down

I am not sure how to state this, and have for quite a while not even been sure if to bring it up. For a few reasons i am: 1) Not many people will probably even read it. 2) It's worthy of discussion. 3) It goes against stated slashdot documents.

I have noticed that recently there has been a lot of moderation of comments down. Even good comments deserving of their current score. It appears as though most of the time this is done in some attempt to squelch other peoples opinions. Such as if there is an anti-Apple comment on an apple article, or an anti-Bush/for-Bush comment on a political discussion. The worst part is there is very little accountability for when people moderate down. Not only that- but this could be done by the /. Editors and we wouldn't even know it. If it is up to the god-like figures to determine early in discussions if something is flamebait or a troll then we should know that it was editors making these decisions. The other alternative is to have more metamoderation going on, especially in regard to modding down comments. This is probably the best solution - the existing infrastructure is basically already available.

Those are just two things we could do to try to expose why comments are being modded down so often. There is the conspiracy theory approach: are the gods of slashdot trying to bring karma back to more of a level playing field? This seems like a very odd scenario, but it could be possible since usually there are not many down mods on any one comment. Wow, maybe I should apply for a job at slashdot? Because I definitely feel like fixing /. would be better than trying to create something new.

Read

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Noted.

I see the same thing.

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[ak3ldama]

"In the 1980s capitalism triumphed over communism. In the 1990s it triumphed over democracy."
--David Korten
it looks like you and MarxistHacker(42?) have the same sig. crazy.

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[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Yeah. And eno2001. We all liked the quote, from a JE.

We've been thru this all before...

[TechnoLust]

They also mod comment Overrated so that they aren't eligible for MetaModing. It can't be fixed, because the Editors don't care. As long as the pageviews keep coming, they don't care. If you think I'm wrong, write a patch and submit it.

Amazing Karma

[Profane MuthaFucka]

I have Karma off the scale, so when something I wrote gets modded into oblivion, I wait a few days and post it again and again and again. I don't know why I do it, it just feels good. I don't worry about getting modded down, I just like getting the last word.

more oversight needed

[AlanS2002]

I don't know if I'd be so quick to blame the editors, unless you know something I don't. I do however see a culture of targeted individuals and modding them down for things they have said in the past that some with mod privileges have disagreed with (I've had it happen to me a number of times). Perhaps there should be oversight put in place where if someone with mod privileges negatively mods the same individual more than twice then there is a flag raised for an editor to see that the moderation is legit. I

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[ak3ldama]

just one second, i have to put on my tin foil hat too. ... I care not about such aspects of slashdot. At least not in such a regard, I merely am trying to discover ways in which a peaceful, normalized existence of such an ecosystem of discussion may take place under. The problems started when slashdot realized they could make money off of their creation. My viewpoint is that they can still make money, but they should/need to take certain measures to ensure that the community may thrive over time.