Journal dal20402's Journal: The Short-Bus Slashdot Mods 11
Recently another user accused me of fancying myself the King of Moderation. Well, I am (sorry, CmdrTaco). So, forthwith, I proclaim:
Most Slashdot moderators do a great job. But there are a few who deserve special mention. And by "special" I mean "Timmy has a special helmet" special. There's at least one type for each of the descriptors.
Insightful
Insightful doesn't mean "I agree." It means "That post contains a substantive point which no one in the discussion brought up before." Here's a hint: "ME TO" is probably not Insightful, even if the parent was the best Slashdot post EVAR!!1. "DRM sucks" or "M$ sucks" are not Insightful either. They're too obvious.
Interesting
Almost any post can be "interesting" in someone's eyes so it's hard to abuse Interesting, but some mouth-breathers manage anyway, again by using Interesting to mean "I agree." Repetitive posts making well-known arguments are exactly the ones that aren't Interesting, unless you just like your little echo chamber.
Informative
Here's a hint: if you don't know it for a fact, don't mod it Informative until ou verify it... it's really bad when you see something like "No laptop has a DVI-D port" modded Informative. (Here's a hint: I'm typing on a MacBook Pro...)
Funny
No Soviet Russia, Beowulf, or Korean old people joke has been funny in years and years and years. If you mod them funny, you're just abusing your fellow users who browse at a high threshold and have to see them anyway. Please stop.
Flamebait
Just like Insightful, but in reverse. Flamebait (and Troll, while I'm at it) do not mean "I disagree." Flamebait is a special kind of troll, designed to evoke heated responses and start a flamewar. A strong opinion, by itself, is not flamebait, or any sort of troll.
As a perfect example, I recently had the following post moderated Troll (which, in part, inspired me to write this journal):
I appreciate the severity of the blizzard and am glad you got home safely. But an all-wheel-drive car with good snow tires would have done the same job. If you were caught off-road, you would have had a much better chance with a Wrangler or short-wheelbase pickup. Your experience doesn't change the fact that other vehicles do everything SUVs do much better.
Controversial? Sure. Strong opinion? Absolutely. Respond and flame away. Mod me "Overrated" if you don't think it's worth a "4, Insightful." But, if that post was a troll, then I am a schnauzer.
Troll
Speaking of Troll, real trolls are "trolling" for victims or responses. Goatse links, famous copy-paste trolls such as ATTN: SWITCHEURS!, intentionally wrong posts designed to get n00bs posting away: those are Troll. Crapfloods, GNAA shit, "m0d 3own," and posts designed to break Slashcode are not seeking victims and are therefore not Troll. They are merely Offtopic. Mod accordingly.
And my favorite of all, Redundant
Redundant means "the idea has been expressed before in the discussion, and therefore there is no purpose for this post." It doesn't mean "I disagree" or "This idea was expressed on Slashdot two years ago" or "I can't find any appropriate downmod but I want to m0d 3own." And the first post is probably not redundant.
Another common problem with Redundant is that people don't check the times of posts before modding when viewing in nested mode. Where there are two redundant posts, the first one often gets modded Redundant if it was posted in response to a later reply. Posts also unfairly get modded Redundant when two similar ones were made at exactly the same time. Check the timestamps... or are you too "special" to read the time? I thought that might be it.
Overrated or Underrated
If you're using these because you agree or disagree (not because you actually think the post has been over- or underrated, or because you're trying to award karma for Funny) then you are a chickenshit. Subject yourself to metamoderation like the rest of us, wuss.
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Edit: I totally forgot to mention one of the more interesting moderation quirks I've run across. I have been known to post some controversial political opinions from time to time. Unsurprisingly, these often start mod wars, with much moderation both up and down occurring. After maybe 12 hours, people aren't reading anymore, and the dust settles. But, often, two days later, someone will come along and mod down all my posts in an entire thread. I have never had an up mod happen to a political post this late. I am liberal; is there a cadre of conservative mods who like to swoop in at the last minute and get the last word?
Garbage In - Garbage Out (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not blaming Taco or the system, I'm blaming the humans (and whining while I'm at it). The ones who *fell off* the short bus. (Ouch!)
Re: (Score:2)
Funny doesn't give any karma, but still raises your comment's visibility, making it ripe for smackdown and stripping karma.
As for the overrted/underrated mods, they don't come up in M2, so there's room for some serious abuse there.
Moderation Flaws or Features (Score:2)
the mod system is a mixed blessing (Score:1)
I like the positive side of the comments system. Everybody starts out at the noise floor and good comments are modded accordingly and rise above the floor. That's very nice. I don't like so much the negative modding. It's nice to get rid of the obvious troll and flamebait comments, i.e. when someone is deliberately trying to be a douche. But as you saw in your own post, yo
Re: (Score:2)
In general, downmods and upmods are worth the same. But there is a situation where downmods have more power.
If a comment gets two downmods, it loses any karma bonus it has, no matter what the ratio of upmods to downmods may be. This makes sense when posters with good karma are trolling, but it really doesn't make sense where they are posting controversial statements that are attracting a lot of moderation in both directions. I suppose it is good that the lost karma bonus doesn't count against the poster's
Re: (Score:2)
I don't generally post comments on people's journals, but since you've brought it up...
I have given up being irritated by moderation of my posts. Overall I'm clearly considered a reasonable and constructive poster by the moderator pool, and there are always a few idiots abusing such a system. I now take a little pride in the fact that most of the downmods I get are the metamod-proof (-1, Overrated) on posts that are also moderated (+1, Insightful) multiple times. I just smile to myself, content that whoev
Re: (Score:1)
Waa! Mommy! Mod parent -1 "He destroyed my argument with logic and I can't think of a suitable rebuttal!"
Hey, here's a question about Funny mods (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. Believe it or not, your karma decreased by 1 from that post, even though it earned a Score of 5.
But don't worry about it. If you don't occasionally get modded Flamebait, your posts are probably too boring. And if you reach the karma ceiling, which you eventually will if you post frequently and with reasonable quality, you can take some mod abuse without losing your karma bonus (I'm not sure exactly how much).
Re: (Score:1)