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Slashdot's Disagree Mail
On Wed Sept 6, 2006 ********* wrote:
"I can't help but notice the huge amount of trolls posting comments the past few days. I know you guys work hard to keep them down but it's a losing battle. You should make people post comments in groups to get rid of the trolls. Everyone would have a "comment buddy" that has to agree that your comment is worth posting. You could make it part of the preview process. This way trolls wouldn't be able to post because nobody else would mark their comment as worth posting. Maybe if two trolls got together they would be able to defeat the "buddy" process but that seems unlikely to me as I don't think they work in groups do they? Maybe this isn't as good an idea as I think for working against large groups but it might work for lone trolls."
I love the idea of a comment buddy. It reminds me of "Posture Pals" from the famous MST3K short. The next mail comes from a lady who doesn't mind clicking on things, in fact she loves it. If she had her way, everyone would have carpal tunnel syndrome.
On Mon May 7, 2007 ******* wrote
"Instead of a confusing bunch of numbers and some adjectives that don't mean anything why not just have a list of everyone who has posted a comment that a user can go through. That way you could click on a name and then click on their comments until you decided if you liked what they had to say. You could then click on them again and click on a ACCEPT COMMENTS link. Then you could click on them again and let them know that you like what they write so they will probably like what you write. That way it would save some clicking. After a bit you will have clicked on enough people that you could see a dozen or so comments in a story because you can't read much more than that anywy. You'd just have to click on a dozen people for a dozen or so stories and you will have your own little community with only the people who were worth clicking on. Just a thought."
Finally we have someone who thinks speech should cost something. In this case, a nominal fee on an upsliding scale.
On Fri Jan 5, 2007 ******* wrote:
"I have a suggestion to help solve the flame problem you seem to have here. It's simple and will make you enough money that you can get rid of ads. You charge 1 cent for the first 2 comments in a day 3-10 comments cost 5 cents and anything over 10 comments cost 25 cents (nobody but flamers post more than 10 times in a day). People would probably complain at first but they'd get used to it just like I'm sure people complained about stamps but accept it now. I don't think people would be willing to flame if it cost a couple $. keep up the good work."
"I love the idea of a comment buddy. It reminds me of "Posture Pals" from the famous MST3K short. The next mail comes from a lady who doesn't mind clicking on things, in fact she loves it. If she had her way, everyone would have carpal tunnel syndrome."
"Ms. Martin! Tommy drew a bong!"
My work here is dung.
"Instead of a confusing bunch of numbers and some adjectives that don't mean anything why not just have a list of everyone who has posted a comment that a user can go through. That way you could click on a name and then click on their comments until you decided if you liked what they had to say. You could then click on them again and click on a ACCEPT COMMENTS link. Then you could click on them again and let them know that you like what they write so they will probably like what you write. That way it would save some clicking. After a bit you will have clicked on enough people that you could see a dozen or so comments in a story because you can't read much more than that anywy. You'd just have to click on a dozen people for a dozen or so stories and you will have your own little community with only the people who were worth clicking on. Just a thought."
Has she approached Amazon with a draft for a 9-click patent?
My work here is dung.
charging for comments??! that's one of the worst ideas i have heard in a while. i don't think this comment is worth a penny! and i bet a lot of people would agree with me!
"they didn't know it was impossible, so they did it!" - Mark Twain
The Firehose (and by extension, Index v2), came about from people saying that they wanted to vote down stories. But that's the only one I can think of, can you think of any others?
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As for paying to post, well that would rule me out. I don't even have a credit card (the two times I've tried to get one, the bank in each case refused, I think due to the lack of sufficient income on my part). Not to mention, I'm not about to hand over my details for a few cents a day. (And PayPal doesn't like me for some reason, something to do with my combination of NoScript, not accepting cookies and FireFox?)
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I don't even understand the second suggestion.
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And I just don't think the first suggestion could work. There are enough trolls who would vote each others posts up, even if they don't know each other. And of course, one person's flame is another's insightful post.
I wank in the shower.
Clearly he has not heard of Something Awful. Yes, we^H^H they do work in groups.
Here's an idea. Make the
idle comment box wider. One
can barely type more than
half a sentence in it the
way it is set up now.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Perhaps requiring those mods to actually apply to a previous mod would make sense? So you select "Overrated" and then choose to use it to cancel an "Insightful" mod? It is a bit weird that a post can be Overrated or Underrated if noone has actually rated it.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
Rather than getting rid of "overrated" and "underrated", they should simply only apply to pre-existing mods. So, if a post has +2 Insightful (for example), it couldn't be modded "overrated" more than twice. That keeps the original purpose of these mods and limits their abuse somewhat. All mods can be abused of course, but I really do think it's less of a problem than a lot of people seem to make out.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Over and under rated also don't affect a person's karma.
A person might think that a post is interesting, just not the current +5 interesting (and thus the overrated). Or, alternatively, they might think it is errm, interesting, but aren't willing to mod it interesting. Maybe underrated isn't needed.
Perhaps it could be made that overrated can not be used to push a post below 2 (or 1, depending on who you ask), which would mean that it can't push a post to oblivion, but a mod can still express the opinion that it isn't such a great post (though not a troll or flame).
I wank in the shower.
I like the idea.
Just my 2c, literally.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
I think the correct term is accountabilibuddy.
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Does the first writer really mean "trolls" or something else? I thought a troll was someone who intentionally posted an unpopular comment to get a frenzy of reactions. A good troll actually requires intelligence and creativity. It's the humorless automatons who reply to trolls that really clog up message boards. But I don't think that writer meant trolls at all.
Getting a comment modded to +5 results in free pudding.
I used to wonder if a comment could be both flamebait, and 100% correct at the same time.
Now I know.
-- "So they told me that using the download page to download something was not something they anticipated." - Bill Gates
"Over and under rated also don't affect a person's karma."
Since when? Or do I just not see the effect of a modreasons change because I've had this account pegged at Excellent for years? (Slashdot has changed the modreasons from Slash's preset "slashcode/slash/plugins/Moderation/mysql_dump.sql"; for one thing, Funny differs.)
Maybe it's changed, but I know a while back there was a stink about the fact that +1 Funny doesn't affect karma, but -1 Overrated did; so if you posted something which was controversially funny, you could end up losing a lot of karma as you got repeated karma hits from the overrated's, and no bonuses from the funny's which were being down-modded.
If it's the way you describe, you could get a lot of bonus karma by posting an insightful yet controversial opinion (lots of +1's boosting your karma, and lots of -1 Overrated's raising the cap of how many +1's you can get).
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
"Over and under rated also don't affect a person's karma."
Nope. They do affect a person's karma. They don't get meta-modded either. That's why they get used. If someone has a vendetta against you because you said something mean about their favorite toy or their favorite superhero or whatever and they have mod points, they can mod you down by modding you overrated, but metamods can't "fix" it, because under and overrated are not subject to metamod. So, the person with the vendetta can hurt your karma, but no one can hurt theirs for moderation abuse.
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I suggest capping the comment abilities of posters with a UID over #56.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Amen on the comment box, bro.
One way to improve slashdot and reduce comment clutter would be to have a way for the reader to collapse entire threads which have drifted off topic, without changing the comment threshhold. Does anyone have a greasemonkey script that does this?
The best example I can think of where this would be necessary, are the articles about evolution, fossils and such related stuff. Early in the discussion the evolutionist, creationist, and intelligent design trolls post, stirring up a whole hornets nest of other trolls and genuinely earnest posters, all of which get modded to +5 insightful. Then you have pages of meaningless comments obscurring any real discussion.
If I could collapse entire threads when they veer off topic, I can then see the two or three comments which might have something meaningful to say.
In the meantime, I just skip those articles entirely because other articles go off topic, but nowhere nearly as badly.
Also, sorry for the offtopic/threadjack, Dave.
More music, fewer hits
People will use the gold mod point on the first week and spend the rest of the semester posting "If I had my gold mod point..."
-- dnl
Slashdot has one of the best discussion systems there is.
I say again, huh?