yellowstone's Journal: Is anybody out there moderating?

When I opened /. this morning, I discovered I have 15 moderator points. Fifteen!

The bad news is, I mostly lost patience with the /. commentariat a long time ago, since the comments seem to fall into one of a few categories:

• Microsoft is evil
• The RIAA and MPAA are evil
• Copyright and patents are evil
• Republicans are evil. Or stupid. Or evil and stupid.

Frankly, the thought of wading in to any discussion to find something worth modding up fills me with the profound desire to go find something, you know, productive to do. I suppose what this really means is I should find that place in the preferences where it says "I am willing to moderate" and change it back to no.

Moderating...

[johndiii]

The fifteen point thing started showing up in February, IIRC. It actually makes it a little more interesting, as far as I am concerned. I pick a story that looks interesting and is not too old (under twenty comments), and go in and start moderating. Anything that has some thought to it gets an appropriate upmod; egregious examples of groupthink get an Overrated. I don't moderate anything funny unless I find it extremely so. That would be maybe one or two a year. I'll hit the obvious trolls if I see th