Journal Sanity's Journal: Slashdot needs a transparent moderation system 8
I have become increasingly frustrated of-late with people's misuse of moderator privs, it makes posting comments on Slashdot more like appearing on the Rikki Lake show than participating in an intelligent debate. It is almost impossible to say anything contraversial without being moderated as a troll, or flamebait. It is almost enough to make me stop contributing to slashdot altogether.
It seems to me that the Kuro5hin.org approach of making moderations to comments public would help to address abuses of the moderation system more effectively than meta-moderation. The problem with meta-moderation is that in-effect it is too-little, too-late, and the feedback loop for moderators isn't sufficiently transparent to serve as a deterrent to abuse of moderator privs. On kuro5hin, the liklihood that someone will call you on an unfair moderation within minutes of doing that moderation is an extremely effective safeguard against abuse. I feel that if Slashdot adopted this approach, it would benefit the site immensely.
-1 Overrated (Score:2)
Re:-1 Overrated (Score:2)
When you see an Overrated mod in M2, go ahead and mark it as unfair. I'd recommend doing the same with Redundant mods, too, since they tend to unfairly penalize people who don't get in early on a topic. For Offtopic/Troll/Flamebait, if it's not blatantly offtopic/trollish/flamebait, check the post's context and metamod appropriately. If it's just an expression of opinion that goes against Slashbot Thought, metamod it as unfair.
Re:-1 Overrated (Score:2)
I thought I made it clear, but what I meant by "no consequences" is that Overrated and Underrated mods don't show up in MetaModeration. Never.
Of course, I've never had metamod access on Slashdot. Hmmm.
Re:-1 Overrated (Score:2)
They don't? I can't say that I can recall seeing an over/underrated mod show up in M2...you're saying that Slash is written so that those mods never show up? Sounds like a bug (or misfeature) if that's the case...
Re:-1 Overrated (Score:2)
That's correct.
Sounds like a bug (or misfeature) if that's the case...
Bug, no. Mis-feature, yes. I think there is a way to disable over/underrated mods in Slash altogether (which is what I think should be done).
What happens is for example, someone who doesn't like someone else (say, me) gets their 5 mod points and looks up that person's (me) posting history. They then proceed to mod the first 5 posts they see in the posting history as -1 Overrated. Whoo-hoo, don't they feel good or what now? I mean, it's "karma," who really gives a fuck, but it's a loophole in this system that Slashdot thinks is so "effective."
Heh, as for moderation, and metamoderation, I haven't had that chance on *Slashdot*. I think I've been rtbl'd or something. I don't know... I know for a fact that I've had this particular account for well over a year and I've never had the chance to mod or metamod. And I read Slashdot practically every day or every other day. Go figure.
Re:-1 Overrated (Score:1)
Re:-1 Overrated (Score:2)