Ellen Ripley's Journal: more on moderation, found at Everything2

This is excerpted from a Slashdot post, The first Slashdot troll post investigation, found via an Everything2 node called Slashdot Troll's Greatest Hits.

• More moderator points are being used to mod posts down than up....
• Logged in people are modded down faster than anonymous cowards....
• ... So, for successful trolling, ALWAYS log in.
• A lot of the modded down posts are actually quite clever, funny, etc., and they are only modded down because they are offtopic....
• ... the vast majority does NOT want the moderation we have here today....

I certainly don't know how accurate the results of this "investigation" are. However, some of it tracks, and I'm a little surprised that it would go through the incredible down moderation it suffered. The 377 Offtopics, I can kind of understand; technically it is offtopic ("Oracle breakable after all"). But out of 851 votes there were 4 Flamebait and 27 Troll votes. How did 31 people look at this post and decided the intent of the poster was to stir up trouble?

I don't agree with all of what "negativekarmanow tm" said. The implications of referring to the moderation poll is just silly; every option in "that poll" (with the possible exception of "A Dozen Moderators") can be activated by user preferences.

On the other hand, the trend toward modding down seems strong enough to have inspired a (small?) counter-movement. I feel that "King Mob" is just as effective at censorship as "Big Brother", and I think there are at least a few others here at Slashdot who feel the same way. The fact that people couldn't wait to mod down a post that was factual (if not neccesarily accurate... I presume the /. hoo-hahs could post the appropriate log abstracts) seems to be proof of at least some of negativekarmanow's points.