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NetBSD gets New sysctl Infrastructure
jschauma writes "NetBSD's Andrew Brown has committed a complete rewrite of the kernel's sysctl infrastructure. To test these changes, he cross compiled 150 kernels for 30 architecures to see where some problems might come up. Additional information can be found in Andrew's email to current-users."
That's dedication. Kudos.
Emacs: for people who just never know when to
I am sure the OpenBSD developers will check it out and add it if it makes sense to them, without affecting security. I recall they had to add sysctl variables for pf, which is what makes thing brittle to change.
Kudus, that is a lot of dedication!
What are the benefits to having this new sysctl infrastructure?
Moderators are selected from the Slashdot community, and so have the same biases. Six months ago I would have said that the Slashdot BSD section had a trolling problem. I think it's pretty clear now that Slashdot itself is a good part of the problem.
Slashdot has taken the attitude that the BSD community is responsible for cleaning up the problem via moderation, and failure to do so means that the community doesn't care. Since the community doesn't care enough, the reasoning goes, BSD really is, in some sense, dying and not worth saving. But this makes two assumptions that are easily shown to be false:
This ignores the asymmetry of the situation. A crapflooder with a dialup connection and an idle hour or two can post dozens of messages. For this, several community members have to use up all of their weekly (if they're lucky) mod points, knowing full well that the same misfit can come back and do it again minutes later.
There aren't that many more trolls or crap flooders in the more popular sections but there are a lot more moderators, so no one has to blow their entire allotment of mod points dealing with miscreants. (And I might note that all the complaints about trolls and crapflooding here indicate a community that would deal with the situation if it had the mod points to do it.)
The fallacy of this belief was brought home to me not long ago when I was metamoderated "unfair" twice in succession for down-moderating obvious trolls in the BSD section. And, as many of us have noted lately, there are an increasing number of irrelevant postings and even blatant trolls getting positive mods. Once again, the supposed self-correcting nature of moderation fails for lower-trafficked sections.
This is actually just the tip of an iceberg which threatens to smash Slashdot into a chaotic free-for-all; I don't think the BSD section is likely to be an isolated case for long (if this is even the case now). Just skim through the postings on nearly any technophile (i.e. geeky) subject, and see how little interest there is for true "News for Nerds" any more. At least the half the posts will be "Who the hell thinks this is interesting enough for an article?" or "Hasn't this been done before?" There is little moderation and it can take some time before the trolls and crapfloods get mopped up.
On the other hand, each tidbit from the SCO or RIAA affairs gets many hundreds of highly-moderated "Ain't it awful" posts, and at least for the first several hours obvious trolls get squashed in minutes. (This despite the fact that very little is newly Insightful or Informative any more on thse subjects, or even much left that is Interesting.) I'm sure that Slashdot gets loads of ad impressions when they run these stories, however, and perhaps the cynics who claim that this is the reason Slashdot runs them are right. But that's irrelevant; the fact is that as a result of these stories Slashdot's content is getting softer and softer, and therefore the average Slashdotter is more likely to be only a camp follower of the technophile community, driven by peer influence rather than an actual passion for computers and technology.
This is all grossly off-topic (except in the sense that Slashdot is a proper topic for a posting on Slashdot), and I expect some Offtopic moderations as a result. But over the years I've seen Slashdot becoming a bloated caricature of its former self, and this seemed as good a time as any to speak up.
Boy, that looks like moderation is working for me. But, perhaps there was some lag in this effect. Also, I give a -1 Anonymous modifier. You might try it. (Granted, it would be valuable if modifiers and thresholds could be made per section or dependent on the number of comments, but beggars can't be choosers.)
The issue, I believe, is that troll patrol is done in large amounts by the slashdot admins who have infinite moderator points. As was shown in the early days of Slashdot, one admin with infinite mod points per 100 users spread across 10 articles is sufficient. The same works for the small sections like Developer and BSD. It just takes more lag time for admin to notice these things in small sections because they're concentrating on more highly commented stories. Once more, as you noted, there are less people with mod points reading. So, as near as I can tell, the system works, albeit maybe a little more slowly than you like.
Now, then there's your reaction. To be honest, the grandparent post was mildly humorous. Since I don't see many troll posts, I don't know if these is a unique post, or just another unoriginal copy and paste. The reason it was made, however, in either case, is because of people -- well -- like you. You're reacting strongly to a stupid post of relatively little significance which most people won't see. The post offends you and raises your ire. But consider the lack of talent required to make such a post and how little effect it truly has. It's a dying joke that anyone who reads Slashdot has seen before in some form or another.
If that doesn't help you, consider this strategy: give anonymous posters -6. Give foes -6. Foe logged in trolls. You won't see trolls. But, as always, please don't feed the trolls.
You really want to be paranoid? For EVERY time someone metamods you as unfair, even if everyone else mods you as fair, you lose karma. Don't believe me? Check out metamod.pl in the CVS. Now if that makes you uncomfortable, I think you lack perspective. If you're not a troll yourself and have useful things to say, your karma will recover. And that second part isn't wholly necessary.
Trolls exist because some guys just plain don't have the right chemical balance in their brains, and they will always be that way. They can destroy a community if not properly regulated because to be a troll is to simply not see value in that community. But it looks to me that they are being properly regulated on Slashdot. Consider that it only takes one active non-troll moderator on average to cancel the effects of an active troll moderator. How many active troll moderators do you think there are? How about non-trolls like you and me? The bad thing is that in individual cases, someone might be poorly treated by the system, but I don't see any reason for your prediction of chaos. System works fine for me, on average.
You like splinters in your crotch? -Jon Caldara