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Journal wowbagger's Journal: Unsubscribe slashdot 16

Journal by wowbagger

Well, my subscription just ran out - amazing how fast 9000 page views can go by.

I don't think I'll be resubscribing. After all, what does it get you?

No ads - who cares, between Squid and Mozilla I can block those rather easily.

"Mysterious future" - great, so I can pay for the priveledge of proofreading the /crew? Every server that dies under the /. effect has died during the MF period, anyway.

More friends and foes - whoopie. It takes an awful lot for me to mark somebody as friend or foe - most trolls are taken care of by the comment threshold, and if one were to try to block the rest one would quickly run out of foe slots no matter what.

The little asterisk - who actually grants subscribers an extra +1, anyway? I don't.

Let's see - I've not seen moderator points in over a year, probably because I actually try to meta-moderate CORRECTLY (just because somebody was TRYING to be funny does not justify a +1, Funny mod. "Yeah, me too" posts aren't Insightful, nor Informative.).

I consistently find posts of mine (made without a karma bonus point, mind you) modded -1, Offtopic or worse yet, -1 Overrated - evidently somebody has made me their "special friend". In some cases I was offtopic, but come ON! A post at 1 modded down with the craptacular posts at 2,3,4 and 5? Somebody needs to get their priorities straight!

Speaking of -1,Overrated - I have had some of my posts modded to +5, then modded Overrated. Fair enough - I think they were overrated. But why do I take the hit because some moDUHrator wasted his points? (Ideally it would cost more points to mod from 3 to 4 than from 2 to 3, but I digress.)

/. still doesn't have even rudimentary spellchecking (how about just highlighting questionable words in yellow in preveiw - and maybe showing "loos(e|ing|es)" in red since so many /.'ers cannot tell the difference between "loose - to release" vs. "lose - to misplace". The Overrated/Underrated exploit still exists, allowing trolls to use mule accounts to boost their Karma without fear of M2. Dups abound, and the editors don't seem to care. The editors seem to select the story submissions that are the MOST slanted, rather than LEAST. We are ALL biased, but the editors REVEL in their bias, making needless editorial comments in the story rather than as posts - what, are they afraid they'll be mod'ed -1, Flamebait?

I try to respond to responses to my posts. The /. messaging system seems designed to needlessly consume pageviews (and thus subscriptions). How about a DIRECT link to the responses in the message page, and how about putting the comment moderation results directly on that page, as well?

How about finer-grain control over ads, guys - let me block the side-bar ads, but not the banner ads.

Simply put - how about a permanent About Slashdot discussion forum - like K5's Meta section, in which the /crew can discuss upcoming changes and accept feedback about what users think of where /. is going? However, the /. crew, and Rob in particular, respond to constructive criticism with the same grace as Bevis&Butthead might respond - "Shut Up! You Suck! Go Away!"

Now, granted: this IS Rob's personal blog - even the contracts signed by Andover and VA affirm that. And theoretically, if one does not like /., one is free to go elsewhere.

Just as theoretically one is free not to run Windows.

But just as pratically one is NOT free to NOT run Windows, there are few blogs that can compete with /. due to sheer size - let's face it, were I to start my own site, how many story submissions would I get? And without stories, how do I get readers? And without readers, how do I get stories?

No, I am not seeing enough benefit to my subscription to renew it. I'll just adjust my userContent.css files, my Squid blacklist files, and move on.

So, now it's your turn to tell me either a) how full of shit I am, or b) how right I am.

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  • 1) I almost always have mod points. If you need some moderating injustice fixed, come to me. AIM: AntiFreeze42.

    2) As for the spell checker, check out my journal entry [slashdot.org] on the subject. Check Cliff's reply, and check the sourceforge wishlist page he links to.

    3) One of the really nice points about subscribing that I've found is the use of https://slashdot.org/. Not because it's secure (who cares?), but because it's a separate server. When everyone else is complaining about slashdot being remarkably slow, I

    • Moderation (Score:4, Insightful)

      by wowbagger ( 69688 ) on Friday August 08, 2003 @10:41AM (#6644764) Homepage Journal
      It is not so much that I feel there is "injustice" that needs correction (though I do feel that), it is that for some reason I no longer get moderator access, and I have no way of knowing WHY - is it a bug in the database, is it because of my metamoderation, is it because I pissed somebody off?

      Even with Karma no longer being displayed in numerical form, you can get an idea of what you are doing right or wrong by watching how you are moderated. But you get ZERO feedback on M2.

      Presumably (I have no desire nor time to look through the Slashcode to find out) they are cross-checking M2 much the same way SETI@Home checks work units - send the same comment out on several M2's, compare the results, accept the majority, mark down the minority. This does not promote good moderation, it merely promotes groupthink - and given that the trolls have come in force, they can force the groupthink to their view.

      At least if I got a summary that said "Of the last 50 moderations you've moderated, 25% of the time you were in the minority" you could identify the groupthink. Then you could either bitch about it, abstain from M2 where you disagree from the groupthink, or at least know WHY you are not getting moderation.

      I would consider taking this up with the /. crew, save for their basic responses as per the above journal entry - I would have more luck yelling down a well.
      • The part that burns me is overrated/underrated is not metamodded... any serious mod bomber uses those to scorch the poster with no fear of repercussions. What is the point of metamod, if you only get the stupid ones. It might be worth the subscription fees if you could see who did the mod-on-crack actions.

        I know I gave up and filter by user name...
        • Yes, the fact that over/underrated aren't M2's is the exploit of which I spoke.

          But not only does it allow jackasses to slam people, it allows people to artifically inflate their karma:

          Create several accounts - Mule1-Mule5
          Post enough innocuous comments to get them eligable to moderate.

          Mule1 gets mod points. Post as Mule2. Use Mule1 to moderate Mule2's posts as +1, underrated.

          Repeat as needed.

          Result: 5 maxed out accounts, ready to troll with.
    • But shhh! Don't tell anyone about this little secret ;)

      Whoops, too late! Well, I guess I already knew about https, but didn't realize that it was on a seperate server. I'll be using it more in the future I guess.

      The only reason I subscribe is because of mysterious future, and extras friends. I've got way more then my limit now. I also refresh the homepage enough that seeing the MF stories are useful to me.

      -Brent

  • Mine too (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GoRK ( 10018 ) on Friday August 08, 2003 @10:28AM (#6644670) Homepage Journal
    Yeah, my subscription ran out the other day too. The other thing it does is let you limit journal comments to friends and friends of friends, but I haven't had reason to use that feature.

    I agree that the ad blocking is kind of a failure.. It's more easily done on my end if I even care and it's too expensive to pay /. to block them for me (and even still I see an ad once in a while, even if i set my page views to 0)

    Mysterious Future.. you are right about it. It was nice for a little bit but now servers go down even during that period. Plus you have to reaload a billion times to even be lucky enought to see them. MF articles won't come up in RSS or anything, so you can't actually see them before anyone because you don't even know they are there! It's nice to have early access, but not if you have to waste all your time on /. to make use of it. A lot only stay there for 5-10 minutes anyway, so it's really kind of pointless. I have a feling whenever slashdot wants to post a story "now" they used to just do it. Now they delay it 10 minutes to show their little "future" ad for no real reason. BTW can non-subscribers turn that crap off?

    All the benefits of subscribing except for MF do not require you to block ads. If I set my page views to 1 then I get one page per day or about 3 years or slashdot for $5, then block ads locally. I don't think I have ever clicked on a /. banner... Ever.

    ~GoRK
  • Addressing a few of your comments...

    1) Subscriber bennies: you misspelled privilege.

    2) Posts modded down: none of your recent posts are at -1. The lowest one is this one [slashdot.org]. So "consistently" doesn't really seem to be true.

    3) Complaining about a post moderated to 5, then 4, is just silly.

    4) Spellchecking for everyone is CPU-intensive. I'm not saying it will never happen, but it's also a potential DOS, so it would be implemented only with a lot of caution. What you really want anyway is a grammar-checke

    • Re:Slashdot Sucks! (Score:3, Interesting)

      by wowbagger ( 69688 )
      OK, to take your points:
      1) Written like a true /troll - rather than focus on the content of my post you pick apart my spelling.
      2) You should practice your reading comprehension - I was stating that my posts had received a "-1, Offtopic" mod, not that they were AT -1. And let us take the post you indicated - I posted it at 1, forgoing my karma bonus. To use the analogy of a party, I was quitely making a comment to the person I was talking to and anybody in the area, and still I was modded down, even while so
      • You. Da. Man.

      • Wow. Michael takes the time to reply to your points, pointing out how the /. crew has already dealt with a lot of the criticisms you dish out. In return, you turn the flamethrower to 'High' and press the trigger. I thought Michael's response was well-reasoned. It's apparent that rational arguments don't hold much sway with you. Not sure what your problem is, but I'd say take a break from /. for a while. Go outside. Smell the flowers. Life (and /.) doesn't suck as bad as you think it does.

        Just my opinion.

        • "Well reasoned":

          Hmm:
          from http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=reasoned & db=*
          reasoned

          Reason \Rea"son\, v. t. [imp. & p. p. Reasoned; p. pr. & vb. n. Reasoning.] [Cf. F. raisonner. See Reason, n.] 1. To exercise the rational faculty; to deduce inferences from premises; to perform the process of deduction or of induction; to ratiocinate; to reach conclusions by a systematic comparison of facts.

          2. Hence: To carry on a process of deduction or of induction, in order to convince or to confute;

          • This is gonna take way more time than it's really worth, but what the hay.

            1. I thought Michael's spelling correction was very 'tongue in cheek'. Since you were the target, it may be difficult for you to see the humor.

            2. Out of your latest 24 posts, only 1 (one) was modded as offtopic. 1. And it was off topic. And you complain about it. All the other mods on your posts were pluses except one that seems to have been modded about 10 times with 3 redundants in there.

            3. You've got a total of 4 minus mods and

            • First of all - you asserted Michael's post was "well reasoned". I then began systematically showing that it was NOT "reasoned" - hence the inclusion of the definition of "reasoned". So, on each point in which Michael failed to reason, I disproved your assertion.

              Secondly, both you and Michael miss the point about overrated and underrated. OK, one more time, as bluntly as I can - I don't give a rat's asshole about my karma as it is indeed maxed out. What I care about is logical consistancy and overall fairne
              • I really don't have the time for this. I did look at every one of your most recent 24 posts (as per your user page). The total I gave of your negative moderation is accurate. Perhaps if I went back further, I would find more. But then you said it didn't matter. Which is it?

                You say "THERE IS NO MEANINGFUL METRIC OF OPTIMALITY". Exactly. The fact that somebody, somewhere finds a post to be overrated does not make the moderation wrong. In their eyes, your post is overrated. You would much rather they pick on

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