Journal Journal: For shortcomming of the slashdot system
This Journal entry is in effort to identify the short commings of the slashdot system of moderation, as well as slashdots lack of ability to allow readers to view a larger picture of any one poster or total community perspectives.
This matter was initially brought to my attention early on in seeing some of my own posts, relative to the story, moderated down to offtopic. Eventualy moderation opportunity was handed me and I learned how the system supposedly works (how am I to ever really know?). From that I could accept the occasional wrongly biased moderation and the meta-moderation machinery suggested that even this sort of faulty moderation can be kept somewhat in check.
But then in a Q&A Lawrence Lessig did for slashdot readers, he was rather hard on the readers/poster in saying they don't do enough. He was trying to motivate more into contributing finances to the EFF of which he is a part of.
In my effort to respond to him, I discovered that slashdot doesn't provide any sort of worthwhile search engine that can be used to get all the posts by any one poster. The Best I could do in collecting my own posts was the "last 24" posts list (which is generally useful for quicker access to recent posts in order to see if others have responded and to access the thread point so to respond).
I tried using the Google site search engine and only got scraps of returns of what all I know I had posted to slashdot. So I eventuall went into my browser history and going the hard manual (what are computer for?) direction of accessing every slashdot entry in my browsers history and searching for my online name via the entry. From here I collected what is my first Journal entry.
With this I of course composed an email to Mr. Lessig, pointing out to him the failings of the slashdot system in that it could much better be machined so that the benefits of the slashdot moderation system methodology (as mentioned in "Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and the Nature of the Firm" by Yochai Benkler - Duke University's conference on Public Domain papers) could be used to present much larger scope views of not only individuals but community perspective.
I suggested to Mr Lessig that it is possible that the Bigger picture views may exist to the select few behind the Slashdot/OSDN operations. But at any rate, the slashdot readers/posters do alot more than he openly recognizes, in that it takes time and thought to write an itelligent post, time to read and moderate, etc... and there is an end result of a bigger picture. It is not that fault of the readers/posters/moderators that the slashdot system seems to be wasting and/or hiding such a valuable resource.
I have also noticed that there seem to be a growing MS baised trend and consider the probability of MS internally making infilteration of all GPL/GNU communication medias part of the daily tasks of many who work for MS. This probability is preceived given the holloween documents, and other internal leaks of digging into the clients systems and such. This bias can be anything from cutting MS down in ways that are not true (so as to create or influence tha idea that MS has been wrongly judged/preceived), to suggestions that MS is better at this or that than GNU efforts, etc..) Note that Linux itself (what is the beginning of having an actual complete working GNU OS) is 17 years younger than MS's 27 years.
Of this MS biased infulence I've noticed growing in Slashdot and not only the lack of ability for the user to get bigger picture views, but the new friend, nutral, foe options........ OK so the friend/foe options could be used to play "Tag the infilterating MS biased cronies", though it's unlikely to be used so,..... it's likely to be used both ways and for benefits only the select few who have access to behind the curtain search engines. Consider what sort of "opinion" poll results can be had and later considered in trying to influence the community in some direction or another (MS?). Let it be understood that in 1975, at the introduction of computers into the consumer & hobbist market, Bill Gates yelled "Piracy" (TIME mag "The Great Software Flap!" and what really was nothing more than the natural evolution of open source software development and benefits... ) and in so doing he disrupted the natural evolution of software development direction --as can be described as-- a growing puddle of water, to a pond, lake, sea, ocean, etc., of users, where a the piracy disruption wave followed out on the growing edge, infecting everyone with the un-natural piracy conflaberated conflictions of constraining software development and innovations. But now that the markest have slowed in growth, that expand water leading edge is vanishing and causing that disruption wave to begin to return to it's maker in the form of a counter wave called GNU/GPL and everyone can expect a resistance by the initial maker of the wave, to what is in essence, the return to the natural evolution of open source software development directions and benefits.
With all of the above in mind, links like the following are worth collecting for consideration in what is wrong with the slashdot system, such that the atittude is of
kuro5hin - an OSDN branch and slashdot master moderator problems?
