MondoMor's Journal: February is an odd month.

I fully expected to be trolling a lot this month, but the Columbia accident (along with work and family stuff) have changed my priorities. I've been scouring news sites and Usenet for any information, and reading Dennis R. Jenkins' absolutely outstanding book about the Space Shuttle. I was actually getting ready to fire off a few trolls when I saw a post by an AC saying communication with Columbia was lost.

Weird... Slashdot actually provided something useful. Surely a fluke.

I finally got to dive into Slashdot today, and I noticed two interesting articles (more for their comments than the articles themselves, of course):

Samba-TNG Team Releases 0.3

and

Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality

The first article's comments are absolutely DRENCHED in the Old Ike story. I don't know if that article is some sort of crapflooding record, but it's certainly impressive. Even Old Ike himself made an appearance!

In the second article, an AC makes a good point, one that I've tried to make before -- the stupid moderation system is as big a manufacturer of trolls and crapflooders as is brain damage and/or immaturity. If whoever had written that was logged in (or a known "troll"), you can bet the moderation would have been swift and negative. As it is, it appears to have only received one "Overrated" moderation (hi, michael!), plus a couple of "Insightful" and "Interesting" points.

Remember the first Batman movie?

Batman (to The Joker): "I made you? You made me first!"

(If you need spoonfeeding, that's what the trolls (Batman) are trying to tell CmdrTaco (The Joker).)

My point is, the fact that insightful and dissenting opinions are routinely modded down and that editors abuse their moderation ability to further their own agenda generates resentment and rebellion. This gives birth to trolls and crapflooders. (Yes, Jamie, I read your comment in a previous journal, but I don't buy it, as you'll see in my reply. Editors abuse mod points. Just ask Cetan.) The immaturity of the rank-and-file Slashdot poster is almost as big a problem as the editors. These small-minded, insecure zealots censor posts that they find disagreeable.

The mod system has changed recently, and you now receive moderation notices in spasmodic digests, so you can't see the result of an editor's abuse, or the moderator with a grudge.

If you can't bear the sight of an opinion different from yours, you're a fool. If you censor or suppress that opinion through moderation, you're a fascist. Slashdot is supposed to be a community for open-minded discussion, yet its mod system continues to encourage an ever-narrowing viewpoint. It has failed. CmdrTaco can't see this -- he can't handle ANY criticism -- and so continues to make Slashdot worse with each hamfisted hack to the moderation system.

Normally I would think crapflooding the Old Ike story would be immature and ultimately counter-productive. But since I know that this site can never get any beter because of the editorial staff's collective stupidity (and the user base they attract) I just laugh instead, and I participate in the trolling and dissent. I'm playing my part in the band as this Titanic sinks into the cold depths of the post-dot-com era.

Fuck you, slashdot.

YHBT. HAND.

EDIT:
This story got crapflooded while I was typing this long-winded journal entry. Good show.
END EDIT

Par for the course

[Safety Cap]

My point is, the fact that insightful and dissenting opinions are routinely modded down and that editors abuse their moderation ability to further their own agenda generates resentment and rebellion.

With the unwashed masses (UMs), any time you express dissent, they get upset.

The point of the First Amendment is to protect opinions that are unpopular, because one day, "you" might be on the wrong side of the fence. The Framers understood that favorable speech is automatically protected by the UMs, it is only the other that needs protection.

To a UM, anything she doesn't agree with must be bad and therefore should be done away with. What the UM doesn't realize is that only be examining her beliefs within the context of dissenting opinions can she either throw them out if they are faulty or strengthen them if they are not. Beliefs expressed in a vacuum are worthless dribble, much like laws that have not been tested in court. Unfortunately, you'll never convince the UMs of the world that this is true -- "critical thinking" is not something that most people can be bothered to exercise, expecially when "Friends" is now on 4x a week!

Did you forget that this

[DaytonCIM]

site is free? And honestly, what the hell is so important about Karma???

Oh yeah, screw Michael. He's never going to change. He thinks he's right. And no one is going to remove him. :)

missing variable

[rnd()]

My point is, the fact that insightful and dissenting opinions are routinely modded down and that editors abuse their moderation ability to further their own agenda generates resentment and rebellion. This gives birth to trolls and crapflooders.

You're forgetting one crucial ingredient: The countless hours of time that was wasted by people trolling and crapflooding, etc.

Re:missing variable

[rnd()]

I guess you didn't notice that my post was a troll too.