So this is odd enough I figured I'd make a note of it. I'm aware that the way the Slashdot moderation gremlins decide who gets points how often is veiled in secrecy, but still, does anyone have any ideas about this?

I've had an active Slashdot account for a while now. At the beginning I got mod points now and then, no big deal. When my karma hit excellent, I got them a little more often maybe. Okay.

Then about two years ago, they just stopped dead. My karma stayed the same, my posting, site visitation, and metamod habits stayed the same. I have notifications on to tell me about metamods who disagree with my mods and never saw very many of those. For some unknown reason I just stopped getting mod points completely.

Now, all of a sudden last Thursday or so (the 15th), out of the blue, I see that I have 5 mod points. Wow! I spent 4 of them I think and let the last one expire. The day after they expired, 5 more points. I spend all of them I think. The day after they were set to expire, today, bam! -- 5 more points.

It's just odd. I get blacklisted from moderating (I assume) and then out of nowhere get 15 points in some 9 days dumped on me. Did I piss off an editor (I have made fun of a few... it's too easy sometimes) and get an arbitrary 20-ish month ban on modding which has run its course? Seems unlikely, but...

Hmm.

Saw this in Kymermosst's journal.

I find it hard to believe anything a 50-question test tells me, but here's the idea:

Psychologist Simon Baron-Cohen and his colleagues at Cambridge's Autism Research Centre have created the Autism-Spectrum Quotient, or AQ, as a measure of the extent of autistic traits in adults. In the first major trial using the test, the average score in the control group was 16.4. Eighty percent of those diagnosed with autism or a related disorder scored 32 or higher. The test is not a means for making a diagnosis, however, and many who score above 32 and even meet the diagnostic criteria for mild autism or Asperger's report no difficulty functioning in their everyday lives.

I scored a 35.

Sure it's clichéd, but clichés usually have basis in fact: I'd guess that most people on Slashdot score slightly higher than average. Based on the questions, it seems many people interested in technology and engineering may be slightly autistic, being detail-oriented and slightly to largely unsocial.

Or it's just me.

I posted this in another discussion, but figured I'd copy it here for kicks.

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if you don't like it then tell us some specifics on why you don't like it!

Very well. Here's what I've got so far.

    - First up: Big pages load and render SLOW. Pages with a large number of comments like this one [slashdot.org] make IE crap it's pants
    - I don't want it to blockquote something when I explicitly use <i> (like in this entry--it didn't use to do that, did it?)
    - Score and 'Read More' on the right away from other relevant information.
    - The 'Sections' link is worthless and annoying.
    - Spacing in IE is flunky. Various elements don't line up with others. Yes, it's probably IE's fault, but you can't ignore IE.
    - Links in the navigational menus (left and top) have different colors for visited/not visited. Looks better if they are the same and it doesn't really matter if you've clicked them before.
    - Comments are not indented enough.
    - Arrows on left-hand menu get out of sync easily.
    - Method of changing item color (gray/green) in left-hand menu is slow in IE.
    - Element spacing on User page blows in IE.
    - YRO is still ugly as sin.
    - The menu that opens when you click 'Sections' is a nasty kludge. It's way too slow to open, closes by reloading the page (real stupid).
    - The boxes containing "what is this" blurbs in Preferences are too big and conspicuous. They're supposed to be a subtle help, not obfuscate the main content.
    - IT is still puts Janet Reno to shame.
    - Comment headers (containing the subject) seem too big and waste space.
    - It'd be nice if there was some indication the little arrows were clickable (like using the pointer cursor).
    - The 'Sections' section closes after going into a section, regardless of its previous status. Annoying if you're browsing sections.
    - An old bug still exists where the content of a page will sometimes start a full page lower than it should in IE. Stories and user pages are affected.
    - Bad things usually happen if you click the Sections header after IE starts navigating to another page.
    - Simple Design option + the Sections header box = nasty.
    - Too much whitespace. Reduce it or perhaps go with a real light gray in areas.
    - I miss OMG Ponies! Really.

Personally, I think we should get the option to use the old template.

George Lucas raped my childhood and CSS raped Slashdot *cry*

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The new design does feel a little 'cleaner' but I think the problems significantly overshadow the advantages. And I know that plenty of people will proclaim "to hell with IE, standards are all that matter!" The problem is you can't just ignore a browser with it's market share.

Anyway, fun fun.

So perhaps it wasn't the most Slashdot-friendly thing to say, but I said it anyway. What do I get in payment? Some dumbass with mod points decided that my comment was soooo inflammatory that they used their points marking my last 5 comments "Overrated". I suppose I should be flattered that I got the troll to spend all their points on little old me.

In the end they accomplished nothing, so I'm not sure if I really should be irritated. The only thing that bugs me about it is that while I've had Excellent karma for over a year now and I metamoderate on a regular basis, I haven't seen mod points for the last 6 months, yet morons like this apparently still get them. I suppose it comes down to hoping that there is some system (there certainly should be) that monitors moderations and takes some action if a user uses all their points on negative moderations. This goes double for Overrated mods which bypass review by metamoderators.

Oh well.

Don't bother with the journal much, but thought this was worth noting.

I love the Slashdot crowd's perdictable nature. I posted this comment about 30 hours ago knowing very well that it's score would bounce around some, and would probably come to rest either at 1 or 0. I had no idea how much it would really move.

Right now it's at +2, Funny without a karma bonus, however it's not been an easy ride having been at both +4 and -1 two different times each. I decided to watch it as close as I could for a while and from what I was able to tell, it's moderation went about like this:

1 (Initial posting)
2 (+1 Funny)
3 (+1 Funny)
4 (+1 Funny)
3 (-1 Overrated/Troll)
2 (-1 Overrated/Troll)
1 (-1 Overrated/Troll)
0 (-1 Overrated/Troll)
-1 (-1 Overrated/Troll)
0 (+1 Funny)
1 (+1 Funny)
2 (+1 Funny)
3 (+1 Funny)
4 (+1 Funny)
3 (-1 Overrated/Troll)
2 (-1 Overrated/Troll)
1 (-1 Overrated/Troll)
0 (-1 Overrated/Troll)
-1 (-1 Overrated/Troll)
0 (-1 Overrated/Troll)
1 (+1 Funny)
2 (+1 Funny) (current)

It's bounced around a fair bit and based on the age of the article I bet it won't move much more. What I thought was interesting was that in the course of all this 21 mod points have been spent just to juggle a sarcastic comment about Bush around.

Anyway, I just found it interesting.

Just saw this in Kymermosst's Journal and figured it was reason enough to post for the first time in my /. journal.

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Turn to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Sure:

"The Times."

I've got a shiny nickel for anyone that can tell me what book that came from. I'll post the name in a while I guess.