So, Slash Watch logged in today to find that its karma had mysteriously sunk to Terrible, and that all but two of its comments had been busted down to -1, Offtopic or -1, Flamebait. I wonder who this could've been, moderating comments several days after the fact?

Isn't modbombing explicitly banned in the moderator guidelines, michael? Isn't it grounds for having moderation privileges revoked?

Just spreading it around.

Stop michael Now

For literally years, the "editor" "michael" has been splattering his moronic influence all over this website. Now, if Slashdot were some dipshit site without any effect on the online world, that'd be all well and good, but I and I'm sure you too would agree that as editor of the most popular "News for nerds" website, michael has a responsibility to us. Amongst the many things that michael has done are:

• insert biased editorialising into story blurbs by putting words in "quotes" to put Democrat-oriented stories into disrepute
• go off on rants in prominent comments in all caps, screaming and railing against Intel's 64-bit efforts
• posting stories that have been instantly archived, allowing no one to post, and then not fixing the situation for an hour and a half
• moderating to -1, Offtopic or -1, Flamebait anyone who contests his idiot behaviour
• modbombing entire threads of dozens of posts to -1, Offtopic
• applying a "bitchslap" operation to users who disagree with him, setting their karma to "Bad" or "Terrible" and taking away their ability to ever moderate again
• not explain his actions
• hijack domains
• post blatantly false hoax stories, perpetuating the flow of misinformation (case in point: the tsunami creature story)
• post links to sites that have then been switched to goatse, and then not explain what happened afterwards
• not edit stories in light of new, overriding information
• posted stories with broken URLs
• posted stories in the wrong section
• posted consecutive dupes - only he, CmdrTaco and timothy have managed to do this

The list goes on and on. michael must go. Slashdot's not that great as it is, but he's just dragging this place down all the faster. What can we do? Taco ignores all emails about his beloved $20K-a-year staff; he trusts michael more than the opinion of his beloved readers. Taco won't do a thing unless we can hit him where it hurts - in the pocket.

How? Simple. Taco relies upon the insightful-sounding commentary that this site occasionally produces. (You'll notice he doesn't go to the trouble of modding it up himself - he leaves it to us!). Without it, people stop visiting and Slashdot becomes unprofitable. So, here's what to do if you want to oust michael and force Taco to fix Slashdot:

• install adblocking software like Privoxy to block adverts
• set your preferences to eliminate the slanted crap posted by michael
• don't put links to Slashdot URLs on your blog; link directly to the URLs that the Slashdot story includes
• don't post genuine comments in the stories; if you must post them at all, do them in the journals of the people you want to talk to or email them privately
• any time michael (or any editor, for that matter) does something that they need to be called up on, say something. Post about it, even if others have done so - the more noise people make about editor screw-ups, the more incentive they have not to do them
• change your comment preferences to give a +6 bonus to Flamebait and Offtopic moderations. These are popularly used for moderation-enabled censorship. Overrated is too, but I guess Taco wants to keep at least one moderation that we can't dodge
• if you get the chance to metamoderate, moderate all positive moderations as "Fair" and all negative moderations as "Unfair". This won't get picked up at all and you're helping to stop over-sensitive censors like michael
• whenever you moderate, use your mod points to moderate comments at -1 and 0 upwards as "Underrated"; you can't get metamoderated for this

There you go. Now you know what needs to be done. If you agree, reply. If you disagree, reply. Whatever you do, don't just moderate me down without responding first to explain why. Discussion is what this idea is all about. Spread the facts. Keep the dream of journalistic integrity alive. Peace.

This is an original work by Slash Watch, and is placed in the public domain. Reproduction of any and all parts is encouraged.