Pan T. Hose's Journal: Modbombing on Unprecedented Scale

I have already described many strange moderations in the past, I have posted results of my research, but I haven't seen anything like this ever before.

I noticed that something strange is happening when I saw that my last comment (Exactly posted to Digital Life and Evolution) was moderated Overrated. This was (and still is) the only moderation of that post. It was originally posted with Karma bonus, so it was Score:2. As you can see it is actually an excellent comment. If you read the story with Threshold=5 and then my comment you will see that it contains a lot of crucial informations not included in the story or any other comment. I am actually ashamed that I have spend so much time and energy on writing such an interesting and informative, honest post on Slashdot.

I can understand that my previous comment in that story, Tierra (that was moderated as +1, Interesting Insightful Troll) can be read as a Flamebait (if I understand that word correctly) as the follow-up discussion seems to demonstrate, but the second post, the last one that I posted to date, is quite frankly the best one I posted during the last months, if not ever. When I was posting it I thought that it's a pity that it is a late post so it won't get moderated up for everyone interested to read, but it had never occurred to me that it might be possibly moderated down, as Overrated or for any other reason (thought the Overrated moderation escapes the metamoderation process so it is not surprising if it was a conscious unfair moderation). Posting any other comment (except the obvious +5, Funny ones) I was expecting to get some negative moderation, but not in the case of this one. In fact, I will quote it here:

Sounds like Tierra from the early 1990s

Just what I thought. Next thought was man these people are clueless, how can such great software experiments have been forgotten?

Exactly my first impression. I thought that this research must be not interesting at all because there is no reference to Tierra, but fortunately I was proved wrong. It turns out that the only people who are ignorant of Tierra are the story submitter, editor and the author of the linked article. As soon as you find the website of this project (not directly linked in the story) and click the first link called Introduction and Background you will read five paragraphs about the Tierra project as well as information about even earlier research based on Core Wars called Core World, in the section History of digital life, which I will take the liberty to quote here:

[quote removed, see the original]

Read the entire article. After finding and reading that and other texts on the Avida Digital Life Platform and the MSU Digital Evolution Laboratory websites, I came to the conclusion that contrary to the impression one has after reading the Slashdot story, this is an amazing project with fantastic team and decades of fascinating scientific research behing it, all wonderfully explained and thoroughly referenced.

I came to that conclusion only because I bothered to search more informations than only those directly linked in this story, and only then I decided to download the Avida software. A quick look at the CVS respository shows signs of development after the release of the latest packaged version in 2003 but I decided to try the tarball first. It compiled cleanly on my Debian Woody box, but it took a lot of time. If you see that the quick flow of the compiler messages suddenly stop and freeze for half an hour, don't think it halted, just be patient.

I had no time to run it yet (the binary doesn't seem to be called "avida" so I have to read the documentation first) but I look forward to experiment with this amazing project. It certainly makes more sense to waste my cycles on Tierra or Avida than on SETI. Why look for life when you can evolve some of your own?

Which leads to an idea: if there will ever be an initiative to run a distributed version of Avida, I'm in. Just imagine how unimaginably complex creatures might evolve after few years of a distributed simulation using hundreds of thousands of computers! And this is a perfect prooject for parallelisation: every one would have her own population on her computer, even if off-line, and from time to time the computer would connect with the central server to exchange some of the organisms. It would be perfect because (1) it doesn't matter how often do you connect with the main server, or how many generation you can process, or how large is your population, so there are no networking issues, and (2) it doesn't matter if you cheat or try to disrupt the project because the server would only exchange valid chromosomes and if they were not good they would die rather quickly on the computers that don't cheat. Everyone even could have slighltly different mortality and other factor which would mean that different species would be best suited.

Furthermore, even if you wanted to introduce an "intelligent design" to the evolutionary process by cheating, creating an instance of "guided evolution" in your own population, it would still have to compete with substantially larger population of naturally selected species and even if you managed to introduce malicious agents into the global population, it would force the rest of the species to adapt to this new situation. This would be really fascinating. I'll try the software as soon as I have some time and then search whether there are any plans to develop a distributed network based on Avida.

When I saw this post moderated as Overrated, I knew that something strange was just happening. And today I saw the Comment Moderation summary for that period. Please keep in mind that I posted only two comments on Monday and nothing later, and this is a summary posted on Wednesday:

Comment Moderation
sent by Slashdot Message System on 1:05 Wednesday 16 February 2005

1. MySQL vs PostgreSQL , posted to Comparing MySQL Performance , has been moderated Troll (-1). It is currently scored Informative (4).
2. Cool Processors , posted to Cooling Down Hot Processors , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Insightful (4).
3. Amazing , posted to 2004's Most Creative Games , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Funny (4).
4. We don't need more "power" , posted to The Quest for More Processing Power , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Interesting (4).
5. Tetris is great , posted to Tetris DS - First Nintendo DS Homebrew Game , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Interesting (2).
6. Frightening , posted to U.S. Denies Patent on Part-Human Hybrid , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Flamebait (0).
7. Exactly , posted to Digital Life and Evolution , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Normal (0).
8. Serious problems with Apple , posted to Napster To Campaign Aggressively Against iPod , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Normal (0).
9. Good news? , posted to Cisco Evolving Into A Security Company , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Interesting (2).
10. Tierra , posted to Digital Life and Evolution , has been moderated Troll (-1). It is currently scored Insightful (2).
11. Just as secure as any other , posted to How Secure Is Microsoft's Fingerprint Reader? , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Informative (3).
12. Hard to remember? , posted to Password Security Panned , has been moderated Troll (-1). It is currently scored Informative (3).
13. Reassuring , posted to EU Software Patents Dead Again , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Informative (3).
14. Bad license , posted to Open-Source Technique for GM Crops , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Interesting (4).
15. Solution , posted to Scientists Find Flaw in Quantum Dot Construction , has been moderated Troll (-1). It is currently scored Funny (3).
16. Solution , posted to Scientists Find Flaw in Quantum Dot Construction , has been moderated Troll (-1). It is currently scored Funny (2).
17. MySQL vs PostgreSQL , posted to Comparing MySQL Performance , has been moderated Overrated (-1). It is currently scored Informative (3).

(Please remember to add one point to all of the final scores of comments that are not already capped at Score:5 and were posted with Karma bonus)

Summary:

Positive moderations: 0
Negative moderations: 17
Undone moderations: 0
Total: 17 Karma fluctuations
Final result: -17

Moderation spectrum:

-12, Overrated
-5, Troll

That's right. Those were seventeen negative moderations and no single positive one, all in one day, in a period when I didn't post anything. Those are mostly old posts, many of them were Score:5 before this modbombing incident.

To fully understand how far this moderation deviates from the usual, you have to compare it with the summary of the moderation done during the last 30 days:

Comment Moderation messages
sent by Slashdot Message System
between Saturday 15 January 2005 and Tuesday 15 February 2005

[97KB list removed]

Summary:

Positive moderations: 227
Negative moderations: 84
Undone moderations: 1
Total: 311 Karma fluctuations
Final result: +143

Moderation spectrum:

+70, Funny
+66, Insightful
+48, Interesting
+35, Informative
-30, Overrated
-27, Troll
-14, Offtopic
+8, Underrated
-7, Redundant
-6, Flamebait

As you can see, during the last 30 days, I got 227 positive and 84 negative moderations. The total result was +143 points. Not counting the Funny moderations which actually does not increase the Karma, it is +73 effective increase of Karma, enough to get from the Terrible Karma to Excellent, but I had Excellent Karma before and Excellent Karma after that month, so thanks to the Karma Cap, my actual Karma did not change at all. And then, one day of moderation abuse has costed me 17 points. Notice that 71% of that abusive moderation was Overrated which will be excluded from the metamoderation process, so the dishonest moderator will not face any consequences unless Slashdot editors routinely verify strange moderation patterns even of those moderators who don't get any Unfair metamoderations.

I have lost Karma: Excellent, my trademark since I invented the "Karma: Excellent (Mostly due to ...)" Slashdot signature. But I have just lost something much more important than that, something much more valuable. I have lost time and energy on writing this post. And this is something that I will never get back. I feel violated, brutally raped by Slashdot moderators. And that is something that will be hard to forget. I will have to live with that shame. Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.

P.S. I have heard about plans to start a petition asking Slashdot editors to set the $rtbl flag (the secret Slashdot blacklist flag) of those moderators who participaded in this moderation abuse scandal, to ban them for life just like those who moderated this post (readable link) three years ago (details). I believe it would be a good idea. Slashdot is too important for such outrageous abuses of power.

Observations

[Dunkelzahn]

I haven't been quick to post lately (so I'm chicken) because of all the really oddball moderations and modbombings of whole threads.

I'm going have to get back into daily M2, but I doubt that will help.

I'm glad to see that other objective minds are keeping an eye on things. ;)

Only people I ever downmod are fp trolls, goatse fetishists and other similarly inane posts. Opinions are someone's right, even when I think they are stupid/wrong, and I metamod accordingly.

Re:Reasons:

[Quobobo]

T'wasn't me, I never get mod points. I was just stating some reasons why he's likely being modded down so often. There's obviously more than one person doing this as well, if he got 17 negative mods in one day.

Ehh, as for the "hobby" part... I just check on the journals of people in my foes/friends lists occasionally. Not much more of a waste of time than most other things on Slashdot. I posted anonymously because I figured people might think I was claiming responsibility for the modding.