Slashdot Mirror
Dealing With Venom on the Web
theodp writes "In a world where nastiness online can erupt and go global overnight, BusinessWeek finds Corporate America woefully unprepared and offers suggestions for how to cope, including shelling out $10,000 to companies like ReputationDefender.com to promote the info you want and suppress the news you don't. And in what must be a sign of the Apocalypse, BW holds Slashdot's moderation system up as a model for maintaining civility in message boards."
Clearly, they must be new here.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
Queue the modding up of blatant trolling and such silliness.
It's that Venom doesn't like loud noises. So when I don't have a church bell handy, I just scream... really loudly... a lot.
That's not to say that /.'s moderation system completely keeps the nasty posts out, either... it only buries them way out of view. It's still a pretty effective system, though, especially in the way that it automatically picks out the people with the best reputations to handle the moderation. Without manually lowering the viewing threshold, I almost never see rude, disgusting or otherwise insulting posts on here.
/. were even more serious about keeping the crap out, they could disable the anonymous coward. But as you can see, it is still open to anybody's input, even without requiring a login.
If
/* No Comment */
This is great for a big corporation. But the real damage is done when one vindictive person freaks out on the internet and takes it out on a small business. The small business can't afford legal actions and they can't afford to pay some firm $10k to deal with their reputation. However, there are plenty of websites where you can register and file complaints in the public about a specific company. Even if you've never actually done business with them. Or even if you're just going nuts on the company because you forgot your medication.
I have personally dealt with this where I refused service to someone for harassing my other members on my online business. It's actually less a business than just a hobby, but my name and business name are out there and involved nonetheless. This underage person freaked out and spent months inventing various things to complain about and posting them on every recommendation site possible. They even went so far as death threats and attempting to extort getting their account back or else they'd spread rumors about improper discussions with said person by myself (the owner). Now, again, I never did any actual business with this individual and I knew nothing about them other than they were harassing my users so I shut down their account. That was the extend of it. Yet they have been a thorn in my side for two years now and there is nothing I can do about it. Anyone searching for my company online will find the most horrendous things said about me by a completely anonymous nutjob.
If by Maintaining Civility they mean "Only showing what the majority agrees with while everything else is downmodded" then yes, that is a good description. I'm not saying /.'s mod system doesn't have its merits, but it does suffer from groupthink.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Please go sodomize yourself with a retractable baton. ^-^
In the real world, slanderers will face penalties. In certain countries falsely accusing anyone is punishable by death. In the internet world, people are not bound by such physical punishments. You can kick people off temporarily, but you cannot actually prevent them from returning under a different name - just as you cannot ban a paying player from MMORPGs because of offensive behaviors. The part that needs changing is reception, and most people who read net news are not ready for such.
You'd be amazed what kind of crazy-ass posts you can find if you browse at -1.
TLF
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Is that anything like Claris?
An author over-hyping a situation for his new book. How
If you've ever worked for or with a PR company, you'll know how wrong that is. "Transparency" is exactly what they do NOT want.
And so on. This is nothing more than an ad piece.
1) Treat your customers, partners, and employees fairly.
2) Empower your employees to deal with problems when they arise and make things right
3) Obey laws (for instance don't cook the books, backdate stock options, spy on employees and the press).
4) Have contact information for problem resolution on your web site.
5) Admit problems when they occur, publicly state what you're going to do to fix them, never cover things up.
[Insert pithy quote here]
You can probably tell from my UID I've been coming here a long while. In fact I was a slashdot visitor back before it even had a domain name and was hosted on Rob Maldas University server. That said, slashdot has gotten a lot better than it was and I think in part it's because of the moderation system. People who continuously get modded down for the flamebaiting and trolling eventually get frustrated and leave. Some remain, others are just burning karma, but all in all the system is a solution, regardless of how imperfect it is. Yes some group think comes into play but it's generally only on political matters.
The bottom line, to me, is that when dealing with humans who by nature are imperfect, no system can possibly be perfect.
At least it can help weed out the most abusive moderators. I seldom call a mod unfair, but when I do I suspect I'm not alone.
Oh ya, well go to hell submitter.
No tell me exactly how they are going to remove my old website from archive.org, my embarrassing posts in news groups from google groups, or porn pics done in my youth shared by millions on p2p networks ?
Short of bombing every server on the planet you cannot do anything. Once things are out, there are out, you cannot take them back.
I have been reading /. for years and never fully understood how it friggin works ..
Post anything remotely pro-Microsoft, anti-Apple or anti-Microsoft and chances are your post will be modded into oblivion even when its 110% accurate...
"... including shelling out $10,000 to companies like ReputationDefender.com to promote the info you want and suppress the news you don't."
You sure they aren't affiliated with Fox??
As everyone was walking out, I talked to the asshole and said "You fucking pig, shouldn't you be helping in NYC, not fucking harassing innocent students who are trying to make a difference?" I got arrested, charged with felony riot, disobeying a peace officer, summary harassment, and disorderly conduct. The two most serious charges (riot and disobeying...) were dropped the next day. The two other ones, I plead no contest to in exchange for 48 hrs. community service and a year's probation with the informal understanding that I leave the state after graduating that spring and completing the 48 hrs. In retrospect, I should have fought it and plead not guilty, but I was young, naive, and had a stupid attorney.
Anyway, after two years, my record was expunged. However, the original newspaper article; written before I was interviewed but NOT before the police chief was interviewed, remained the first thing that appeared under a Google search of my name for another year or two. Was kind of interesting to explain when I was interviewing for jobs!
For some reason, this no longer appears at all when you search for my name (I think the campus and local newspapers have put up a robots.txt file, and, anyway, there's more recent stuff by me and my business website on the web).
-b.
"Chances are there is information about you and your family on the Internet that you don't approve of. It's time you do something about it." (from reputationdefender.com)
The current administration must love this site! On a more paradoxical note, I bet there's nothing but positive reviews of this website on the web, at least if they're doing their job correctly.
Let's suppose scox does not like what is posted on groklaw. So scox signs up for "ReputationDefender." What can ReputationDefender really do? Ask somebody to remove the content?
Accord to the website: "Our trained and expert online reputation advocates use an array of proprietary techniques developed in-house to correct and/or completely remove the selected unwanted content from the web."
Yeah, okay. And that would be what? Send an email to the website maintainer? For $15.95 a month, I doubt that ReputationDefender will be filing any lawsuits.
Oh noes! V.E.N.O.M. is on the web? Quickly, we must alert M.A.S.K. before their evil plans unfold!
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
I think the very worst I have seen is FreeRepublic. Libertarians get banned there from posting all of the time for having the wrong views. Hell, even many conservatives get in trouble there for pissing off the wrong people. The "Admin Moderator" user/users will basically just yank your posting privileges if you buck the status quo. You don't have to be a troll or "mobying" (pretending to be a conservative for liberal causes, to manipulate right wing media). You just piss off the wrong people and instead of getting moderated down, you're silenced.
It was always for the comments.
:)
Slashdot's moderation and meta-moderation system was carefully thought out, and kept ahead of the wave of forum-spam and general "hey look maw ahm on the interweb" disruption that you find in every other forum. For that, it should be held up as an excellent example of the ThinkAboutItCarefully pattern.
Oh, and my UID's lower so thhhhppppt.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
as in payper liesense hypenosys stock markup FraUD felons, & life0cidal egomaniacs. there's just just not that much (anything) good to say about it/them, unless they are going away? what a revolutionary concept.
from previous post: many demand corepirate nazi execrable stop abusing US
we the peepoles?
how is it allowed? just like corn passing through a bird's butt eye gas.
all they (the felonious nazi execrable) want is... everything. at what cost to US?
for many of US, the only way out is up.
don't forget, for each of the creators' innocents harmed (in any way) there is a debt that must/will be repaid by you/US as the perpetrators/minions of unprecedented evile will not be available after the big flash occurs.
'vote' with (what's left in) yOUR wallet. help bring an end to unprecedented evile's manifestation through yOUR owned felonious corepirate nazi life0cidal glowbull warmongering execrable.
some of US should consider ourselves very fortunate to be among those scheduled to survive after the big flash/implementation of the creators' wwwildly popular planet/population rescue initiative/mandate.
it's right in the manual, 'world without end', etc....
as we all ?know?, change is inevitable, & denying/ignoring gravity, logic, morality, etc..., is only possible, on a temporary basis.
concern about the course of events that will occur should the corepirate nazi life0cidal execrable fail to be intervened upon is in order.
'do not be dismayed' (also from the manual). however, it's ok/recommended, to not attempt to live under/accept, fauxking nazi felon greed/fear/ego based pr ?firm? scriptdead mindphuking hypenosys.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators. providing more than enough of everything for everyone (without any distracting/spiritdead personal gain motives), whilst badtolling unprecedented evile, using an unlimited supply of newclear power, since/until forever. see you there?
ma-ma-ma-ma-mask!
No-one knows what lies behind the masquerade!
ma-ma-ma-ma-mask!
Don't you cum into my gatorade!
Shucks... I was hoping for something about Cobra Commander. At least Spiderman....
"In a world where nastiness online can erupt and go global overnight
But a new wind was about to blow! Payback. This time, it's for real.
The lack of nesting makes it harder to filter out irrelevant discussion subtrees; in short, with Digg, you display all messages or you miss out. Slashdot's moderation may be far from perfect, but it's outstanding compared to the adolescent pack mentality on Digg.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Groupthink is just disparaging term for what happens in the real world, which most people think is a good thing.
If I participate in a real-world discussion, whether in a social or academic context, and just start behaving disrespectfully (or present an extreme view and don't make a good case for it, or whatever), there are repercussions, which can range from mild social disapproval to being dragged outside and getting my ass kicked.
Moderation systems, in my opinion, do the same thing online, where otherwise anonymity removes those repercussions. I don't see it as a bad thing. I just wish there were more "groups" to choose from with good moderation systems.
I think groupthink is more of a problem on Digg, as I inhabit both. Digg has more frequent articles, some interesting and many frivolous, but reading the comments sections is like visiting the nerdy version of a lockerroom and the intelligence/groupthink that goes with such an environment..
Actually, groupthink is a term that describes how people in a group tend to build consensus and shut out minority views, even if those minority views happen to be ultimately more correct. This is why concepts such as "crowd wisdom" are fallacious and tend to ultimately bring out the lowest common denominator in quality.
Therefore, whatever is enforced by the group represents the group as a whole. The real world is full of people of varying intelligences, but as the bell curve shows, there are not nearly as many intelligent people as there are dumb and average people, therefore what we get is merely representative of the average, at best.
Many years ago I was threatened with a lawsuit over some comments I made on-line. I'd posted under my name and wasn't hiding anything. (The dispute was with a company, not a person). The next day I got a call from their lawyer; fortunately the matter ended up being settled out of court and I didn't lose anything. If I'd only said the factual matter of the case there probably wouldn't have been any question, but I blew my top about every bad thing I felt about them, all statements I would had to have defended. I also had found out just how expensive legal proceedings are; even if you win you lose.
So today I usually think twice about whatever I post, and there's many times I decide it's better to just hit the delete button. I've been shocked at what some people post online in their blogs; or anywhere on the web with the same user name over and over. They never seem to think that it's very easy today to link it all together and see all the things they assume no one will ever know. You could say I'm just being paranoid, but in today's world it's better safe than sorry.
I know the discussion was quick to turn inward thanks to the flattery of Slashdot, but check out these "reputation defenders". They sound like the freaking Free-Speech Suppression Mafia, despite what their FAQ pays lip service to. I can see it now: ordinary people won't be able to afford to use the service to defend themselves; Big Corporations keep a steady account to asstroturf forums and sue websites whenever they say something about a company that the company doesn't like. Just great. More legal harassment for bloggers!
Damned spamming retards.
This obviously means that the BW editors are a bunch of fucktards.
Slashdot even gives moderation privileges to morons who think irony is an element in group 4 of the periodic table.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"The bottom line, to me, is that when dealing with humans who by nature are imperfect, no system can possibly be perfect."
Democracy. And no I don't think the slashdot "prisoners guarding the prison" system is the best we can do. Any more than slashdot's "slashdotted, haha" tagging system works. The system that would work costs money. The present system doesn't, and it shows.
"You can probably tell from my UID I've been coming here a long while. In fact I was a slashdot visitor back before it even had a domain name and was hosted on Rob Maldas University server. That said, slashdot has gotten a lot better than it was and I think in part it's because of the moderation system."
So have I and I think it's gotten worse because the real contributers got tired of the BS and left. Their replacements aren't anything to brag about.
"Yes some group think comes into play but it's generally only on political matters."
Sez you. Why don't you take a trip through the archives? You'll notice the difference.
Ooooh, because you WORK for the reputationdefender website, and here you are in action defending your own reputation! Wonderful, just what the world needed was a professional asstroturfing service! I'm glad we met; I'll be keeping on eye out for your company sending its trolls to *my* website.
Slashdot does OK.
;)
Now and then, a nasty word or a Troll sneak in, but the Nazgul consume them quickly.
Groklaw does ok too. (Trolls there glow orange when they pass the door)
Those other sites though.....
At first I thought it would be bad if they see 4 am, but finally I figured out what could be even worse. :D
Is it just me?
Also, the comments about holding /. as a template for moderation... more boring nonsense. Stop feeding the troll.
www.jmagar.com
-
Smells like another abuser of DMCA.
Ironically the validation word is 'dubious'
I read the headline with the words "Venom" and "Web" and thought the article was about Spider-Man.
No, I'm New Here
There's one way to see if the disabling of ACs work. Jump over to OSNews. They disabled ACs, so let's see if their quality really did improve.
TrenchMice has a similiar protection racket too:
Cred InsuranceSM and the MiceTipSM Service...
The highest membership levels have features allowing you to monitor, protect, and repair your reputation
Do you all remember that slashdot story about preloading and Microsoft, titled "the power of the default"? Well the same principle works when applied to reputation-based moderation systems.
Sometimes "trolls" are insightful, even if accidentally. More so some "funny" posts. Sometimes "insightful" or "informative" posts are inane. Last April 1st,
^[:q!
No one cares, because Mac users don't suffer the kind of desperate, crushing loneliness that drives you PC users to video games in the first place.
You see, we Mac users have these acquaintances we call our "friends," with whom we can "go out" and "socialize," maybe having a drink or three, or shooting speedballs, or even stealing a casual fuck in the bathroom of Union Pool. Meanwhile, in your mother's basement, you're sobbing into your macaroni and cheese while trying to convince yourself you actually enjoy your video game hobby.
I'd write more, but I have to get ready for a show. Ta!
And a few notes...
I could not bring myself to finish reading your article. For one, it is misguided, and two full of wrong information. Do I know everything myself? No. Do I something about most, not all, of the topics you bring up? Yes. I still think that you are just trying to troll though.
---FourChannel---
The ReputationDefender user agreement looks dangerous.
They become your legal agent. But not your attorney. "You authorize us to be your privacy advocates. In this role, we might contact third parties, including creators of unwelcome content, hosts of unwelcome content, and other parties who might have control or authority over such content. You authorize us to take such action on your behalf, and to identify ourselves as acting on your behalf. You recognize that such contact may have unpredictable side-effects, including but not limited to negative responses from others. We are not your lawyer and cannot dispense legal advice, nor does this Agreement or the Services create any attorney-client relationship or legal representation."
Then they try to escape any liability: "You agree that you will hold harmless ReputationDefender, Inc., and its officers, directors, and employees, from all claims arising out of or related to your access or use of, or your inability to access or use, ReputationDefender's services, this Web site, or the information contained in this Web site or other web sites to which it is linked."
As your authorized agent, if they do something they shouldn't, you are liable. That's what "agent" means, legally. ReputationDefender doesn't take responsibility for its own actions. That's a dangerous position to be in contractually.
Usually the people you might let be your agent, in the legal sense, are regulated in some way. Realtors, stockbrokers, accountants, private detectives, employment agents, and lawyers may act as your agent. But those are all regulated businesses, for good reasons. Such people take on liability and usually carry insurance coverage. There are established guidelines for what people in those fields can and can't do. That's not the case here. ReputationDefender, which is unregulated, wants you to take the responsibility for their actions, while being rather vague about what those actions might be. This is an open-ended risk.
It would be a very good idea to consult a lawyer before signing up with ReputationDefender.
you cannot control message boards.
Your competition can use anonymous proxies and tor servers to go online with sockpuppet accounts and totally trash your name or your company's name and there is nothing you can do about it!
Even better if they recruit people from colleges and other message boards to go about and repeat their libel about you and your company so that their hands don't get dirty.
The Democrats do this quite a bit against Republicans, more so than the Republicans do it against Democrats. Simply because public schools and colleges are staffed mostly by left-wing political zealots pretending to be teachers and teaching left-wing dogma. Then when their students get on the Internet, they trash everything that is not left-wing and form sites like Wikipedia, The Daily Kos, blogs, forums, whatever they want.
There ought to be laws against that sort of thing, and there are for commercials on TV and radio, but not for the Internet because you cannot police the Internet with the level of anonymous users from anywhere in the world.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
>>In any case, services range from sending polite requests on customers behalf (automated and manual depending on context), search engine optimization techniques, arranging for legal intervention in certain cases, and more.
Okay, from your FAQ, legal stuff is rarely done, and costs more. So that leave letters and SEO. Letters are hardly some great proprietary technology. And SEO does not remove anything.
I suppose there could be some use for the service, but I'm not impressed. This article seems like a slashvertisement anyway.
Mmmmmoof!
How is any of this new? It's been going on for decades. Doesn't anyone remember "A Rape in Cyberspace"?
The idea that companies should ever control what the web says about them is so abhorrent I can hardly put it into words.
Has anyone else found themselves not "willing to moderate" one day and miraculously having mod points the next? I know for a fact I have unchecked that box at least once before because I never use the mod points, and somehow it keeps coming back on. Predictably, I end up with mod points that never get used about once a week. (In fact I have 5 right now and had 5 on April fool's day)
Slashdot moderation is seriously flawed.
/., registered people see the stories first (I infer this from what I read in the past) and ACs are de facto ignored (this I know from experience).
/. was 8 or 9 years ago. /. got older, with clogged arteries and deaf: I've written oh-so-many-times about this and nobody has done anything about it.
/. still matter?
A lot of good comments go unnoticed because they get a 0 score (for being ACs), while an entire ocean of useless babble get automatically promoted to +1 (registered users) or +2 (karma loaded jerks).
And how does a jerk get +2? Just think about how many people voted for some idiot... as one writer once said in my country: "All majorities are dumb."
Heck, I've seen a lot of +5, Insightful which are (IMO, granted) totally clueless. It really hurts to read them... automatic scores do lower the content-to-noise ratio.
Of course, it's important to avoid useless racist posts; but a lot of valuable content comes from comments -- and in those, a lot of good-willing ACs contribute with things they wouldn't otherwise say... yes, I know, there is no real anonymity on the Internet, but what is stopping ill-intentioned guys from faking names? (Good people do not want to lie, they'd rather go AC).
Some stories get 300 +1-rated posts and another 80 0-rated ones: what would go wrong in displaying these extra 80?
Say what you want. On Digg, you can get the "upcoming stories": non-voted, not-yet-manipulated. On
Digg is now what
As of the last year, I've been even refraining from posting. I may well one day surrender and register, but I'm sure to feel defeated if I do so... and, besides, will
...and I have personally renounced it.
I unchecked "Willing to Moderate" in my account preferences, because I know I'm an intensely biased, flawed person, and I would happily ostracize my enemies and laud my friends regardless of the quality, or lack thereof of their posts. I hate a lot of people. A lot of the people on here, come to mention it. Having mod points gives me the power to act on the desire to do something about it, and power (even the power to demote your post because I think you're an idiot, or meta-moderating with an agenda) corrupts. I, apparently, am quite easily corruptible. I couldn't enjoy reading this site, because I was looking to deal with people I thought should be pushed down. Now that I can't do anything about it, it's a lot less frustrating to read things here.
However, I've set my highlight threshold to +4, because experience has taught me that even a bunch of my fellow random idiots on the internet can't be wrong all the time. Approximately 90% of the stuff that gets modded that high, I can only assume as a result of some kind of emergent reasonableness from a sea of unreasonable stupidity. The other 10% is easily skipped, and doesn't enrage me like reading the vast sea of idiocy those posts have somehow risen above does.
It's a bit hypocritical of me, to take the product of the moderation system without contributing to it, but if that matters, you shouldn't allow people not to opt out. I don't contribute to any open source projects, either financially or by helping at all, and use the hell out of their software either, and that doesn't trouble me much either.
...the user interface is one of the worst on the web.
Just bust out that sonic gun!
I wish "wisdom of crowds" were actually fallacious as you say it is. Because if it was, I sure should be able to guess a lot better than the "crowd" whether a stock will go up or down, and I should be a billionairre in a few years.
While there are imbeciles for the most part here too, the Slashdot crowd tends to be in the industry and/or college and seems a tad experienced in the ways of the world.
/.ers with diggers? That's like comparing six year olds with two year olds. Or six year olds with Fark-ers. Or six year olds with Fox News.
Sorry, just clarifying the sentence for you.
And comparing
Clearly the six year olds are more intelligent, but they're still six years old...
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
"Digg it baby
Digg it baby
Digg it a hole"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84DHHdQUpnQ
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
"I'd say on most days it does a fair job of at least hiding the blatant trolls from view"
So does leaving them at the default "0". Why people even bother moderating something that's not going be seen anyway escapes me.
"Not because I'm afraid to stand behind my opinions, but because it's not uncommon for employers to google potential applicants."
I'm an AC for various reasons, but the main one is that you should be able to judge my words on their merits without getting permission to think from the crowd and their scoreboard.
"I think allowing AC posts is great. I often want to contribute to discussions here, but I only post anonymously."
A couple rounds of "are you new here" will quickly take care of that feeling.
I also find it ironic that his AC post about how AC posts get buried, is +5 insightful. Obviously the system is working as intended...
"Obviously the system is working as intended..."
One grain of dirt does not a mountain make.
just for the sake of argument...why is this troll and not flamebait?
But really I see way to many repeated spams here. You've all seen them making
staight up nonsensical jibs at geeks. This would be my only argument for eliminating
AC posting.
Money is the root of all evil?
I always love this post. Really, haven't seen it in a while and forgot how great a 'reefer madness' feel it has.
Politicians are like diapers - they should be changed frequently and for the same reasons.
Is that suppose to be some kind of counter-argument? Your failure to pick a stock? You might want to read some academic literature on "group-think". Pick up a book on stock trading while you're at it.
I have almost the inverse of his problem. I post anonymously, but only when posting from work.
:]
Why? I don't want them to learn my Slashdot username. Not that I really have anything to hide, but it's more out of trying to retain some semblance of privacy. And they do have that annoying censor firewall in place, though my boss is nice enough not to care what I do online so long as I get done what he wants done.
Oddly, I end up submitting almost as many stories as comments, and waiting an hour to post another anonymous comment is kind of annoying, but that's somewhat better, because it makes me think about which comments are the most useful, rather than dashing off every post that comes to mind
Slashdot moderation is *far* from perfect... but it's a hell of a lot better than elsewhere. You have to wade through a lot less crap to get to the good stuff than you do anywhere else. Fark comments aren't worth reading, although the photoshop contest pics can be cool. I don't even read Digg, and sites like Groklaw are nice enough, but it's really time consuming to find the interesting posts. Unless PJ reposts them as a story, you'd never know that the 39th post in that huge thread was the interesting one, while all the rest just said "when will SCO get delisted?" (Short answer? They'll hit bankruptcy first.)
Civility my ass and manly side boobs! I spit upon BusinessWeek and all its stakeholders.
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
because you can change the weightings yourself here :
http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm
Anonymous posts (like other categories) can be adjusted plus/minus 6 points.
Now if only they allowed html entities so I could use & plusmin;
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
'BW holds Slashdot's moderation system up as a model for maintaining civility in message boards'
.. and so on ..
The only use I can see of the mod system here on Slashdot is it allows some PR astroturfer to post 'I really like X product' msgs and then get it modded up 5+ interesting by a group of fake disinterested parties. That, and get some real legitimate post modded down as off topic. Eg. Every time someone mentions IExplorer, talk about the Firefox memory leak bug
davecb5620@gmail.com
"Unprepared" is an understatement. The article's implicit assumption is that the attitudes of customers can be contorlled the same way a Chief Marketing Officer approves every commercial and media budget. Given the general contempt I feel most companies have for their customers, should they really be surprised that this pent-up anger is finally getting expressed? Poor little corporations getting picked on? Are they kidding? Most of the "nastiness" that really mushrooms is the direct result of some corporate gaff - a fake in-store website, denying rebates, refusing account cancellation requests, batteries that are known to catch fire but aren't recalled, etc. etc. It's assumed that negative info online can be suppressed the same way these big companies can spam editorial departments with their PR spin. They assume they can still control the message, but that's not the case anymore. Major advertising agencies (I only recently used to work for one such agency) struggle to hold on to the ultra-profitable TV model. While their clients are mystified, most big shot advertising execs are in denial. They think they're searching for right approach for changing customer tastes or the right media mix for younger generations. While they struggle to "think out of the box," but they can't even fathom that the their one-size-fits-all business metaphors no longer apply. The nature of the game itself is changing dramatically. Commercial competition is no longer "$X advertising + minimum customer service + cheapest product possible = profit" (or something of the sort). The whole chain, going back as far as raw materials suppliers, is coming under scrutiny by their customers like never before - if ever before - and these trends are only likely to accelerate. While some dramatic, game changing event may yet take place - i.e. regulation of speech on the interweb - I doubt we can even see the tip of the iceberg from where we are now.
Commence troll ratings in 5... 4...
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
No, Clarus goes moof, Claris goes back and forth with being independent of Apple.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
I SCUBA-dive. Where I live, a controversy brewing over the lat 15 years or so has resulted in the government instituting a "diver's license". The thing is that SCUBA shops offer the training and certification, which is, in fact, like car dealers not only driving driving lessons but also giving the license tests.
You can see that with such a system, diving shops have no real incentive to "sink" a failing student...
This system yields enormous classes of 15 people to one instructor, and the net result was some fatalities, hence the controversy and government "diver's licenses".
So, here I was criticizing the system on the internet, and one day, I walk into a diving shop, only to be bluntly told to fuck-off because "I criticize the system on the intarweb".
The silliest thing is that this was the only shop who did not have it's captive herd of instructors, but rather sent the students to independent instructors (a muuuuch better system). As a matter of fact, when people wanted SCUBA classes, I even sent them there!!!! (the only thing I could bitch about that diving shop is that they sold DACOR stuff, which is basically for losers - thankfully, DACOR has since folded-up...)
But, when you are clueless, you are clueless, so they stopped getting people referred from me...
I used to browse at -1, but I got so fricking tired of the GNAA. Then I used to browse at 0, but the stupid ass ACs made my teeth hurt.
Now I browse at 0, with all ACs taking an automatic 3 point penalty...I switch to -1 when I'm modding, but for the rest of the time? If no one liked it well enough to get it up to 0, or if the damn AC isn't saying something pretty damn interesting, I don't want to hear it...I've got better things to do with my time than read through a bunch of uninteresting crap...though if you're a big fan of Digg, I understand why that's your thing.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
There are plenty of mods who feel "overrated" is there to be used on comments with which they disagree.
So, let's say a post is rated +5 Insightful. Yet, I have mod points, and I do not think it is at all "Insightful". Is it actually wrong for me to mod it "Overrated"?
True, I "disagree", but how else could it work?
But you won't be just for disagreeing. By all means ban anyone who's rude or incomprehensible. But far too often someone will give a well-reasoned, polite disagreement and get modded town for it, where in real life you'd shrug, conclude that you disagreed on the subject and move on.
I am trolling
of the population. People here are more likely to listen to dissenters and read comments from the outliers, embrace them even, than the general population. Yet still I see complaints about what seems to me the "tyranny of the majority." Sure, the /. system would work fine for discussions among more typical groups, so long as you never want to hear a minority opinion or pesky facts that sink the majority conclusions.
What I would like to see is something along the lines of:
That way, I can look at only the -1, or only the +5, etc. This would allow a helpful scan of moderations... "Are all of these -1's really deserving of being moderated into oblivion?", OR "Are all of these +5 posts equally deserving of being top-rated?", etc.
Is there a way to do something like this already? If so how? If not, are there others here who would make use of such a tool, or even better, be willing to add this capability to the slashcode?
I read slashdot because the majority of posters are of above average intelligence, and are largely non-defensive people. The only problem is that a lot of people seem to talk emphatically on issues they don't actually understand fully, so there is a definite bullshit factor here. Trust me on this, I had like 5 psychology classes in college, I know what I am saying.
"Register and participate, or come up with a better solution."
Not that you're ever going to read this, but what makes you think I haven't? Oh right I gored your sacred cow and you think that makes me a do-nothing. I have a better idea, why don't you all do it right the first time instead of making excuses for the failings of the half-way effort you presently have?
It's all in the numbers.
It's not like some AC comments didn't get voted; the general rule is ACs are not seen, so, to use your metaphor, a lot of drops do make a swamp.
The fact that I got +5 as an AC is surprising because it is rare; were it common, nobody would care to point it.
> Register and participate, or come up with a better solution.
I'm in the first phase, in which we perceive something is wrong: register and participate -- it should IMO only be "participate", without the "register" part.
Look at this:
"
Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 16 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment
"
Is this reasonable? Do you think 16 minutes are used to prevent GNAA posts? 1 minute, 2 minute, heck, even 5 minutes... but 16 minutes???
I don't really see the problem with the "register" part. Why is it bad to require registration before participation (modpoints etc.)?
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
It's actually a problem. I had a bad experience with Travel Document Systems. I wrote a page on it. Because of SEO type crap, and companies like reputation defender, it is not even showing up. I wish there was some way of dealing with SEO and search engine spam. I'd love to be able to search for reviews, criticisms, and things like that, without having to go through 50 commercial pages advertising products first. Maybe if we could tag pages "noncommercial" and search noncommercial pages, or something?
What if companies simply tested their hardware before releasing it and made sure it worked the first time!
Buggy hardware is exactly what we need to go along with todays buggy drivers. Not only will we get kernel panics and bluescreens, we will also have fried motherboards, processors and memory. Wonderful.
ACs are modded -6. I don't read you, I don't mod you, I don't see you. Don't like it? Don't be a coward.
Fuck you, asshole.
SLASHDOT should support OPENID.NET auth THEN! n/t