jpostel's Journal: Editor/Moderators

Today, while commenting on an Offtopic rant by someone else, I felt that I had made some valid points on both sides of the issue they were addressing. The original post had been moderated all over the place. Up down and sideways.

I have seen several posts made by people about the 'editors' changing moderations to suit their likes and dislikes. I guess I never really thought that timothy or taco, or anyone else for that matter, would take the time to screw around with the moderations. It just seemed like such a waste of time and effort, and who cares about what some overzealous nut thinks about the slashdot moderation system anyway?

I just opened up slashdot to check the afternoon articles to find that my comment had been moderated. I thought this particularly odd since the discussion I was commenting on was several days old. I find it odd that someone would use their moderation points on such an old article. I use mine pretty sparingly and I also prefer to mod up or not at all.

Lo and behold, I had been modded down twice as offtopic. Who would go back and mod my comment at all? Either up or down? Why would they waste their mod points for such a silly discussion? Maybe one moderator would see the post and do it, but two?!?

I had actually responded anonymously to the guy before in an earlier discussion on the topic of Cowboyneal in the polls. I joked that he took the polls a bit too seriously. He did not respond angrily at all, rather he restated his opinion in a way that made more sense to me. I did not know at the time that he was performing an informal experiment into the moderation process.

It seems as strange to me as anything I have seen on this site. I feel like I am on the X-Files and Mulder is trying to convince me of a conspiracy, but I don't get it until 'they' turn on me.