I moderated for the first time yesterday. Interesting experience, which I am very grateful to of had, I have some observations:

My point about a one-line moderation synopsis (see last journal entry) is valid, there is enough time to read a whole post.

Subjects are *very* important - first thing that grabs the moderators eye.

Timing; the moderation system could posibly do with a 5 minute interval between individual moderations - this would prevent overlap and prevent speed moderation.

Quantity. I was initially allocated 5 moderations this seems a small amount, but that depends on the timescale allocated to usage - I don't have the self-dicipline to ration them and I read very quickly.

A mandatory moderation interval would solve this, forcing moderators to read articles as opposed to scan them and stop early posters been over moderated.

Occationally I metamod unfair, particularly when I beleive a point is overlooked because of a troll-like approach, just because someone phrases a post differently or has an abrasive opinion doesn't mean they should be censored. Strictly speaking it's not censorship in the sense that a post is not removed, but it is censorship by rating.

Slashdot needs a one line synopsis that can be added as an aside to a post and story submission. The synopsis should be available only to moderators and could be used by a poster to explain their comment. It would avoid jokes, rhetoric and deliberate abrasive comments from been overlooked by the either overworked or dim mods. The description would have to be one line because otherwise there would be an unreasonable level of information for a moderator to take in.

The current moderation system is broken, badly, and important posts are overlooked. I don't for one second mean any of my posts, although some of the stories I have submitted (death of FAS's Victor Weisskopf, Manhattan Project scientist and a founding member of the Federation of American Scientists) I beleive relevant and important. The reason I state that the moderation system is broken because of the moderations I see while meta-modding. Which I guess is the point of meta-modding, that said, it doesn't seem to make much difference and if this practice allows the continuence of censorship it is clearly wrong. Under-rating is one thing, but modding down on a superficial basis is far, far, worse.

I can understand the mods viewpoint too. There is a gargantum number of posts flowing through this site and a reasonable level of error is acceptable. It all depends how frequent the errors and how bad the errors are. Allowing the poster to write a single line as to why they think the post should be modded up, or even just not modded down, would solve this problem.

Perl is sometime just so sweet. It does something to me that no other language does, I guess it has the right tedium/fun ratio. I.E. I know what to do but there are a million ways to do it. Most languages I just know what I have to do so it becomes a chore.

"Note: grousing about rejected submissions is Offtopic and usually gets moderated that way. It happens, don't take it personally."

That's what journal entries are for!

Nothing of any major interesting. CDF is going to be published. Oh and er a letter at The Register (not on their US sister site).

Every now and again I get emails that are as suprising as a letter from inland revenue:

--message follows---

Hello. I hope you don't mind me contacting you via this site.
We are compiling a history of the school as the infant and junior departments are due to consolidated onto one site in the summer.
We would like to include some memories from past pupils to make it more personal. So, if you have any stories, photos or memorabilia that you might like to share, please email XXXXXXXXX _ XXXXXXXXX or call her on XXXXXXXX, or contact me.

If you are still in touch with other past pupils I'd be grateful if you could pass this message on.

XXXXXXXXX

--message ends---

Weird huh? By the way, those X marks are not denoting some kind of pornographic services, the names have been obscured so that /.'s don't email them directly.

I thought I'd make an entry before a huge CNET style advert appears by this comment! That or I'll block the ads using my firewall. Play fair? Hmm...

Ahh, I now have CDF to the point where word lookups work, quickly 2ms lookup times for multiple definitions. Working in Perl thus far, I got tired of the monotany of Python.

One note, I can remember reading C reference books back in school (more flashman than anything else) and I cannot for the life of me remember any that pointed out how easy it was to introduce buffer overflows and string format vulnerabilities. Maybe why a lot of my generation writes insecure code?

Amazing that every now and again the bumbling inadequacy of a certain group of people rears up to bite unsuspecting normals. I wonder what motivates the pedant other than a deep sense of inadequacy?

Pedant == pecker

Although a pecker is more useful and a pedant may not be a fully functional pecker.

I do hope that it wasn't because of my journal. Anyway a matter close to the heart, Freenet, heres the link:

Why Freenet is Complicated (Or Not).

A database that contains the genetic details of all the bacteria and viruses that could be used in a bioterrorist attack should be established straight away, leading American scientists have said.

This is just one of the measures they believe are necessary to counter the perceived threat of bioterrorism.

Other initiatives include greater security in laboratories where dangerous microbes are kept and the development of new ways of diagnosing infections. The researchers have also urged the US Government to engage with other nations on biological weapons.

2002-02-18 01:23:19 Call for bioweapons database (articles,science) (rejected)

Not relevant?

All those you may have missed:

2002-02-08 01:58:12 Stallman's reply to The Register Article (articles,news) (rejected)

2002-02-10 20:05:29 Web Services Interoperability Programming Article (articles,programming) (rejected)

2002-02-11 00:40:00 Linux-loving McNealy dons penguin outfit (articles,sun) (rejected)

2002-02-11 13:39:54 Games to take on a life of their own (articles,games) (rejected)

2002-02-12 19:22:53 Widespread SMNP problems (articles,security) (rejected)

2002-02-15 14:52:26 Non-SQL databases (askslashdot,programming) (rejected)

2002-02-17 14:07:51 MS to block internet apps by default in .NET (articles,microsoft) (rejected)

2002-02-17 14:16:02 Public critical of Microsoft deal (articles,microsoft) (rejected)

2002-02-17 14:22:20 MS security chief: We are not stopping development (articles,microsoft) (rejected)

2002-02-17 14:30:53 Microsoft compiler flaw, Cigital responds (articles,microsoft) (rejected)

Interesting to note that these were all rejected up to three hours (especially the CERT release because I had a tip-off) after I submitted them. It is also interesting to note the pro-.NET stance Slashdot is taking (anyone have a vested interest?) currently, especially not covering things like Cigitals response to Microsofts response, the very important news about Microsofts Security Chief and the Roundup of news about the court case. Interesting events? Not according to Slashdot. Check out the last few days news. Very pro .NET. See for yourself if you doubt me.

I include one that I beleive you ought to know about, and indeed will if you read The Register, this one is fairly important.

I've also noticed that the day mods, (US time) seem far more switched on than the night mods. Do the crap moderators/dolts get relegated to night time?

Which is a shame, he best laid plans and all that...

Personal note: Been multi computer language proficient is a pain.

I hate SQL. I mean really hate SQL. I hate it almost as much as COBOL. Why do we need full-blown SQL servers back-ending websites? I no that there is no other [viable] solution but I don't know, it just feels like overkill.

SELECT * FROM SKY WHERE CLOUDS LIKE 0

Ahhh!!!! Why use even vaguely human language? Screw it. I'm going to have to program some regex heavy Perl to work off this tension.

How can a Wednesday transmutate into a Monday?

I hate mondays.