Slashdot Mirror
Hype Vaporware, Go To Jail?
Tim Dierks writes "The New York Times (registration required) has an article describing a federal case against executives in Enron's broadband data division, based upon the charge that Enron claimed that a software platform was more complete and more functional than it actually was. It seems to be that if this case holds up, most of the software industry is guilty. Would the world be better off or not if it was illegal to overpromote the functionality or features of software?"
better off.
Oh well... What is it, 5, 6 years now?
Is that something that can be proven, or is this more troll FUD ala' the fyodor flap?
I'm pretty sure Funny gives karma, since I got Excellent karma through almost exclusively Funny posts.
And regardless of your opinion of htem, the trolls tend to be the ones who first note changes to slashdot. Rumor has it that Taco doesn't like some of the comments that get modded up as Funny (he doesn't find the humor in them.) Rather than just accept different concepts of humor are part of the Slashdot omelette, he just made it so rating a comment as Funny no longer increases the posters karma.
It does, just not to you. We're hoping that you get a life beyond the /. karma whoring existence that you appear to be obsessed with.
Maybe the New York Times reporters should get screened as well ;)
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
At least the part where you mentioned that the trolls are usually the first to point out changes in slashdot. This is why I'm burning karma on what I feel is an important question. It may be FUD, it may easily be true...I'd like to know which.
The problem being, due to the nature of trolling, using them as a news source is unreliable at best because of exagerrating and fact twisting.
However, they are a better source of information than nothing. ['nothing' being the slashdot SOP ]
and your mother sews socks that smell.
**YAWN**
CmdrTaco has long had a hard-on against "funny" comments. I guess giving readers the option of ignoring funny modifiers wasn't enough. The last time his journal discussed altering moderations, it was wrt dropping over/under rated. That was before the switch to adjectives (instead of numbers) for karma (which makes checking for stuff like this harder).
Next thing you know, troll will count double, or anonymous moderations will count against you.
If i didn't know better, I'd assume Rob Nambla was trying to suck ass.
usually, slashdot "enhancements" are accompanied by everything being fucked up all morning. Maybe it was last week, when everyone had access to the mysterious future?
"In the mean time, we're making some changes to throttle the number of
points going into the system. Right now for every 10 comments posted,
7 moderation points are used. The unintended problem is a
disproportionate number of Score:5 funny comments which just aren't.
There are a few things I could try, like making Funny have a default
-1 setting (creating a ceiling of 4 for funny comments for anonymous
coward). I don't want to stretch the range outside of -1, I'd rather
make 5 harder to attain. Maybe require more mod points to push scores
higher than some threshold, like double the moderation to get from 3-4
and 4-5. The problem is that Score:5 is a great way to read Slashdot,
but to many Score:5 comments dillutes the value of reading that way.
Anyway, the short term solution is simply to cut mod points by 20-30%
and see how that helps."
PS - the fyodor incident did happen, but mostly only the trolls were
complaining.
You'd think that if Taco wanted to rid Slashdot of a lot of unfunniness, he'd start by ridding his site of all those not-funny April Fool's Day stories.
For those of you too lazy to click a link from the FAQ...
Let me try to give you an analogy for Slashdot's homepage... The ultimate goal is, of course, to create an omelette that I enjoy eating: by 8pm, I want to see a dozen interesting stories on Slashdot. I hope you enjoy them too. I believe that we've grown in size because we share a lot of common interests with our readers. But that doesn't mean that I'm gonna mix an omelette with all sausages, or someday throw away the tomatoes because the green peppers are really fresh.
There are many components to the Slashdot Omelette.
Hence, Slashdot content is content he feels he would enjoy. Whether we enjoy it or not may be inconsequential, although he hopes we enjoy it.
If you were in charge, and you saw comments that some found funny but you found utterly useless, would you allow them to float to the top? You may, you might not. I'm not sure myself and might subject it to my mood. Altogether, I think people pay too much attention to the mechanics, and not enough on the stories.
"Last one in is a rotten goblin!" - Kepp
If slashdot comments range from -1 to +5, one would expect a peak at score 2.
Let's use this story as an example, as it currently is moderated:
- 5: 19
- 4: 11
- 3: 19
- 2: 108
- 1: 79
- 0: 60
- -1: 16
Just eyeballing the numbers, they don't look like an unreasonable distribution, although 3/4 should be higher.Perhaps moderators should be required to browse at -1 nested. If they browse at +2, they can only see the high-moderated posts. If they browse threaded, they'll see top-level and high-moderated posts.
"the fyodor flap" actually happened. dumbass.