Slashdot Mirror
In Defense of the Anonymous Commenter
Hugh Pickens writes "Doug Feaver has an interesting story in the Washington Post 'in defense of the anonymous, unmoderated, often appallingly inaccurate, sometimes profane, frequently off point and occasionally racist reader comments that washingtonpost.com allows to be published at the end of articles and blogs.' Feaver says that during his seven-year tenure as editor and executive editor of washingtonpost.com he kept un-moderated comments off the site, but now, four years after retiring, he says he has come to think that online comments are a terrific addition to the conversation, and that journalists need to take them seriously. 'The subjects that have generated the most vitriol during my tenure in this role are race and immigration,' writes Feaver. 'But I am heartened by the fact that such comments do not go unchallenged by readers. In fact, comment strings are often self-correcting and provide informative exchanges.' Feaver says that comments are also a pretty good political survey. 'The first day it became clear that a federal bailout of Wall Street was a real prospect, the comments on the main story were almost 100 percent negative. It was a great predictor of how folks feel, well out in front of the polls. We journalists need to pay attention to what our readers say, even if we don't like it. There are things to learn.'"
Hey, dont mod me down because the washington post likes what I have to say!
You can't expect to wield supreme executive power, just because some watery tart threw a sword at you
I don't care what he says, there is no value in "First post!" Ironically I _just_ missed the first post.
Can I leave this box empty?
If this autorefresh / click to unpause crap doesn't stop soon, I'm outta here. This isn't the only place on the net.
It's an interesting indicator of the swing and countervailing political views of a given paper. I've noticed that in "blue state" papers, the comments are often very conservative and red-meat. Conversely, browse a rural paper and you'll find quite a bit of commenting coming from a relatively blue/liberal point of view. It's almost entirely ugly illiterate trash, but it's an outlet for those who may feel oppressed in the general population in which they live.
[
I beg to disagree. A First Post is the perfect place to put a reply where it will be seen.
No one reads anything beyond the twentieth or so reply to an article, if you don't reply to one of the first posts it doesn't matter how funny, interesting, or insightful it is, no one will read it.
And it helps if you change the subject line. From my experience, a reply with a new subject line is much more likely to get a positive moderation than a "Re: ... " subject.
I also have to beg to disagree, because I said there is no value in "First Post" meaning, people who post solely saying "First Post" as opposed to saying there is no value in _the_ first post.
Can I leave this box empty?
Journalist learns that other peoples opinions count. News at 11!
As one who frequents it...frequently...the Washington Post comment section really is a cesspit. Imagine what you would get if the Slashdot mod system worked in reverse, and people were karma whores for "flamebait," "troll," and "offtopic" tags. It isn't 4chan. But it's amazing that it's on the same site as one of the country's most respectable news outlets.
Of course, Feaver's points would carry more weight if the boards were structured differently. For instance, if WaPo had nested threads instead of a flat message board, you might see more of the "correction" and "dialogue" between different posters than you otherwise do. As opposed to ranting, which is what happens when I...I mean, some person...stands on a soapbox without having dialogue. Empty flames cast into a void.
On the other hand, I'll say with a straight face that I think Slashdot has the best comment section around, if not for the quality of the posters themselves, then because it's good at suppressing and elevating voices based on the wisdom of crowds.
But yet I go back there again and again...
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
This is your time to shine! Bring on the Tsarkon Obama reports, Yoda doll insertion tutorial, "*BSD is Dying" announcement, and the GNAA recruitment posting. Don't disappoint me!
This type of interaction is what used to be part of the Letters to the Editor section of the newspaper. Before we could spam online forums with our unmoderated comments, newspapers used to publish the best responses to their stories on the old Opinion page.
Nowadays, with that removal of editorial moderation, we are exposed directly to the effluvium and vitriol that was so carefully screened away from our eyes in those old days. Whether this is a good thing or not, I don't know.
What I do know is that opinions of low or nil value are exposed to the light of day. With this shining light most of these errant posters are shouted down and pummeled (figuratively) by right-thinking mainstream posters.
Whether this represents a significant change is debatable, though. Whereas unpublished letters to the editor forced these people to seek out each other underground, the new method still forces these posters to seek out forums where they are the majority. Perhaps it is Slashdot with its geeks and nerds. Or it is Free Republic with its right wingers, or its counterpart LGF. On the extreme ends you have StormFront and the ADL.
The result is a polarization of the web, people talking only to themselves, and less of a conversation than before. When you become a "troll" for holding a contrary opinion, how easy it is to decide to seek out communities that support you rather than shout you down.
what if these online people express a view that does not flatter one of your advertisers. Would you take them seriously then.
Umm why should you have to defend what is a right guaranteed in the constitution?
No one says you have to make sense or add value when exercising your right.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
... the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m'shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt. Which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. Gimme five bees for a quarter, you'd say. Now where was I... oh yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. You couldn't get white onions, because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
Mod em all down; let CowboyNeal sort 'em out.
Uh, maybe Feavered didn't notice (even though it is the subject of his commentary) it but those "exchanges" are edited by politically correct editors who will edit out the most politically threatening information.
Who reads the Washington Post anymore anyway? If you want to see interesting exchanges about race and immigration, you won't see it in places where the best arguments against the political zeitgeist have been edited out and then proclaimed not to exist.
Seastead this.
To ban anonymity is just a simple (and hypocrite) way to repress freedom of speech. Politicians would desire that, for sure.
On the contrary, anonymity is a practical way to express opinions without loosing time in unuseful registration procedures.
The Washington Post has merely realized that it needs to allow ignorant posters their forum in order to compete with talk radio. I have seen little evidence that ensuing discussions necessarily iterate to rational, informed conclusions.
Providing a forum for extreme ideas is a bit like teaching creationism in science classes.
Woverly Harris Gooch, IV CTO American Fire and Bomb, LLC
that being able to say what you like sometimes you get the truth...
just because you might not like the way someone says something or their view does not mean it's not valid
editors like a easy life with bursts of ego enhancements along the way...
Geez, doesn't he know that journalists need to teach everyone else the right way to think?
Of course, reach back to your younger days in school. Remember the schoolmates who went into journalism?
Yeah, for the most part they weren't the sharpest tools in the shed, now were they?
Those are the people who supply us with most of our world view.
Scary, ain't it?
I am somewhat surprised that a longtime editor would make such an absolutely ridiculous statement. Apparently, the journalist (OK, editor) did not do much research before publishing his view. It is pretty common knowledge that comments on a story are not a cross section of the readers views. Most readers are passive, and do not comment on every story they read. They will only respond to those which strike at their sense of values, or that the reader strongly oppose as false (obviously, this is my reason for commenting now). If everyone who read a Slashdot story commented on it, Slashdot would need far more storage space than they use now. Almost any Blog or News Site would have ample material to reference from their comments section to demonstrate the fact that the fringes of the audience's views are echoed in the majority if the responses, and that only an exceptionally striking article will receive more of a balanced response (yes, Virginia, there is an audience).
Sounds like he learned something from slashdot.
-proudly anonymous!
By definition the world is mostly made up of average people. For those of us that were products of public schools and other institutions that accepted everyone regardless of their abilities or backgrounds we can probably think back on groups that showed exactly what "average" means.
This combines with the most common failure of unfettered democracy, the tyranny of the loud (and perhaps underemployed/bored/obsessed), to create a perfect storm of vitriol, ignorance, and selfishness in places like an open forum online.
Quite simply, people without knowledge or experience in a field deserve less speaking time than those with knowledge and experience. If those people that are excluded from a discussion because they are ignorant or inexperienced want to participate than they should take the time to become knowledgeable and experienced in the field.
I always like to see open discussions but I also like to see comments rated and organized so that I can sift through the crap to get to the gold, something that guyminuslife mentions is missing from the Post's website system.
And to speak directly to a comment from the original article, the fact that the comments show the true feelings of the citizens of this country is interesting from a polling/election point of view but the details of those comments don't add much, if anything to the discussion at hand. This is especially true of indefensible positions like racist or sexist comments.
Like trees blowing in the wind.
Journalists should report the news as objectively as they can. Paying attention to their readers is pandering, and it results in a feedback loop with predictable consequences. We need a thoughtful critical press capable of asking hard questions and not settling for non-answers from those in the news. We need a system in which the President (and others in power) cannot exclude a journalist because he/she asks those hard questions.
Anonymity is an interesting concept, but we should recognize that the guy up on his soapbox in Hyde Park is not anonymous even if we do not know his name.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
You'd think someone with such a low UID would get that. Just shows that simply because you've been around for a long time it doesn't mean you actually understand things any better.
What puzzled me was that other than them missing the point completely, they seem to have a pretty good grasp of English as far as the rest of the post shows.
Can I leave this box empty?
I disagree to you then. "First Post" in essence opens it up for everyone. It's when it's an "NGAA" or whatever troll that there's no value.
Maybe hang around some more, you'll get the drift.
I'm sorry, but I am finding it really hard to see how you could confuse:
"There is no value in 'First Post!'"
for:
"The first post has no value."
Can I leave this box empty?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I am not a cAt...I aM not a caT...i Am n0t a cat!
Comparing that to a racist, white supremacist organization staffed by neo-Nazis... not the same thing at all.
How exactly is it different? Both groups feel themselves victims. Both groups want justice for themselves.
Frankly, I think people need to stop all the victim-hood mentality. If you don't want to be a victim, be a victimizer! Yay!
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Saying racist and/or sexist positions are indefensible doesn't make it so. How are they indefensible? I've heard a lot of arguments in defense of those positions.
You're going to have to do better than, "I don't agree" to convince the people who are making those arguments that their positions are indefensible.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
In relation to this, it is amazing to me how many sites are able to set the tone for the conversation without having a forum/comment section on their own site.
Pitchfork Media has some of the most controversial music reviews. I still don't think you can leave a comment directly on their pages. Compare that to NME, where the first review I opened had a comment section.
From the political isle: Instapundit Glenn Reynolds and Matt Drudge's Druge Report. These two pages set the tone for many (not all) conversations in the conservative blogosphere, yet no direct comment section. Same for the conservative magazine National Review. I'm wearing my political beliefs on my sleeve here. I invite someone to post a liberal site sans comments, I can't think of one on the top of my head.
The effect of removing a comment section forces the reader to search out if someone has a counterpoint to your opinion, which while it may not be terribly difficult via google, is something people simply are not accustomed to doing. This has two effects. It protects your reputation, since it is possible that someone reading your page would never know an opposing opinion. As an extension of that, since your reputation is far cleaner than a page with potential detracting comments, your message is securely delivered - whether it is that pitchfork thinks band x is good and they are also sponsoring a music festival featuring band x that you should purchase tickets for (no direct conflict of interest there!), or that you think policy y position is a good one and that you have friends that would benefit if policy y is advanced (Larry Kudlow at NRO here).
It may not necessarily be a mark of cowardice to not have direct comments on your site, but the inclusion of it is definitely a mark of bravery.
This is about money. It's not enough that news be reported accurately from reliable sources, vetted and checked for accuracy. These days it is paramount that the news outlet must show a profit to the parent company that owns the news outlet.
Trying to make this into "I'm now open minded" or "I've rethought my position" isn't the full story.
The business is "show a profit". Not "reporting news" or journalism.
"Give a woman two glasses of wine and some pad thai, and they'll agree to just about anything." the Sports Guy
Journalists are learning that listening to people might be newsworthy. Or, at the least, indicate where the news might be.
I can handle censors editing out the most obscene language. I might handle censors deleting or editing calls for unlawful actions. I can even handle censorship of the most obscene pornographic material on a public forum.
Otherwise, unmoderated forums are a valuable tool to society, the journalists themselves, and even to government. Anonymous posts have been acceptable since the days when we revolted against England.
And, the Post is just figuring that out?
Now, if they would just improve the format of their stupid page, they might be worth reading.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Used to have good karma, got totally modded down by people who simply disagree with an opinion different from their own.
Oh well.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I'm never posting anything anonymously ever!
We in the Asia-Pacific region have just seen Fiji's coup-lead gov't impose restrictions on what can appear in its media...
One newspaper has left space for all the articles that got cut by coup's censors, with words like (from memory): "This article cut by order of the Government."
A letter went out to all media organisations, advising them not to publish anything negative about the sacking of judges, etc.
and I couldn't help thinking of all the signs of censorship to be found (last time we checked) in Australian Whirlpool.net.au's forums
Read through any longer thread in their forum section (ie: forums.Whirlpool.net.au) and count all the places where a moderator has removed a post; the poster's name remains, with time of the (now removed) post, but the ideas &/or points of debate are lost by the community, with no way to check up on moderators' levels of fairness.
People who post in forums.Whirlpool.net.au can also be placed a form of intellectual isolation, called being "in the penalty box," eg, for too many posts, that "had to be removed" by Whirlpool.net.au's over-zealous moderators.
Look at the language: "[put] in the penalty box"
Who would design a system, that throws so many of its users into a "penalty box" (by such a term).
You've got to wonder how the [faceless, nameless] designers of that system was raised...
As an Aussie, myself, I feel embarrassed & offended each time I see the remains of a removed post.
Has the person written something that offends one of Whirlpool.net.au's [hidden] sponsors? (Very likely ISPs, whose services can't be scrutinized too much.)
There ought to be a law (as there seems to be, in Sweden) to protect Freedom of Speech, even in such private would-be communities.
But, as it is, a sizable [but unnamed & faceless] gang of moderators continue to pick & choose posts for removal from the blinkered (if not sacred) halls of Whirlpool.net.au and - even if we can't know (for sure) that they are gov't bureaucrats, it feels the same as if they were.
Faceless, unnamed, hidden behind nicknames... even their removals are hidden from the community.
Also interesting is that there are hidden forums, that one has to "wait for access to" - eg:
Politics, Odd Stuff, etc. are things that Whirlpool moderators can't tolerate from newcomers...
and, of course, newcomers can't even read the mysterious threads that are hidden there.
Politics behind closed doors (newcomers not welcome) seems both undemocratic and indicative of the low level of democracy available in AU itself, at least compared to other Western lands.
Electoral boundaries are "adjusted" to make elections outcomes more random, just as extra weigh is carried by faster horses, to insure that it's not as easy to pick a winner.
An undemocratic "preference-based" voting system is forced on voters:
ie, if my chosen party doesn't win, my vote can go - even against my wishes - to a very different party, according to the deals that parties make, again behind the scenes)
as is voting itself.
(Shock-horrors if we weren't compelled to vote in large % numbers! It might reveal what we feel about the electoral system! And that system might be changed!)
It feels just as insulting & wrong that these anonymous post-snatchers do what they do as it seems (at this distance) what Fiji's coup / pseudo-gov't is doing to its media's reporting.
To me, feels like living in a colony... vigorous debate falls away, when one finds their vote is misdirected in some elections (due to the "preference" system).
I ask: What does each of these gangs need to hide or suppress?
People will NOT stop thinking & expressing their ideas, just because they find such ungracious responses to them.
Sanitized news (in Fiji) is like the sanitized threads in forums.Whirlpool.net.au's
signs of a blinkered mindset that has no place in a connected world.
It's time to see both of these "blockers" lose their wars against freedom to express/report/discuss (as we wish to express ourselves).
I started using the Internet when it was the ARPANET. Nice place. Interesting people. Cool projects. Then it became the Internet, then AOL hooked in, and suddenly I discovered that a large percentage of my fellow countrymen are ignorant, illogical, paranoid, quasi-literate, parochial, xenophobic, homophobic, sexist, racist, anti-intellectual believers in UFOs.
I mean I knew they existed, but not in such numbers. The Internet is democratizing, and it sure as hell shows what's wrong with democracy.
I piss off bigots.
Online media, unless operating purely on subscription basis, needs ads. Ads are priced according to unique clicks and time spent on that page by readers (reader's interest). A lot of posts indicate interest. Controversial, or even flamebait articles frequently generate the longest comment trails. Scholarly, analytical articles go with scarcely a comment. Thus the tendency of some online media to adjust their content downward.
This is not a new phenomenon. TV has learned it a while ago - witness daytime shows, Ricki Lakes, Montel Williamses, Jerry Springers, and other tabloid trash programs. The difference now is with the immediacy of feedback, hence this spiral happens much faster. Anonymous posts (and to a lesser degree even nicknamed posts, like mine), only add an accelerant to this process.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
So not only does a First Post not necessarily deliver information, the same goes for a First Poster.
Both metamoderation and moderation are a 100% waste of time on Slashdot.
Great posts are often lost at low ratings, and terrible posts get modded up. Slashdot editors pursue vendettas against various posters, and anonymous posts, regardless of content, are rarely modded at all.
This is a great site, with great content, but the only way to really experience that is to read at -1 and completely ignore the moderation, which simply does not work.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
If the only nationalism in the world that is racist is white nationalism, then you're anti-white.
Most other nations are made up of (mostly) mono-cultures of specific ethnic and linguist backgrounds. The only countries that are not based on this are the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, which were founded on immigrants (and pushing aside the Native indigenous populations). There are some elements of immigration to South America as well, but not as the first series of countries listed.
Now even four listed, the first immigrants were Anglo-Saxon, and in later decades the "dirty Italians", etc. came along, but these countries have generally made immigration work by telling people they have to give up some part of your previous culture to become one of "us". The USA generally asked people to do this more, and the Canada somewhat less.
AFAIK, all other countries have a more "us vs. them" stance. So, to that extent you can say that most types of nationalism are based on race.
The fundamental problem with moderation is that it inevitably slows and stifles conversation. Often it actually loses creative contributions which really discourages contributors.
Sometimes the slowing might be a good thing. More often, it is thought to be a good thing by people who are more annoyed by undesireable postings than worried about postings that might have been dropped. The underappreciated "false postive" problem.
Makes me think about the moderation (and meta-moderation) process. I've thought sometimes about trying to get an "ask slashdot" post on just how moderators (and meta-m's) rate things.
And I'm guessing you weren't a statistics major.
Bollocks!
This comment isn't valuable AT ALL.
The BBC has it's own reader's comments section called "Have Your Say". It's moderated by a BBC team and it's notorious for censoring completely valid and non-abusive opinion. For example, when they had a topic on Google's participation in censorship in China, some posters pointed out that the BBC also censors things. The BBC responded to this by removing their posts (the topic that day had pre-moderation switched off, something that virtually never happens now). This prompted other people to point out the irony of the BBC removing posted about BBC censorship on a topic about censorship. The BBC then quickly pulled those posts. This prompted more similar responses and eventually the BBC gave up.
These days all of the topics are premoderated and if they don't like your opinion, it won't go up. Those posts pointing out cases of BBC censorship would never have made it onto the website. For example, I made a recent post on the topic of How should the police handle protests? (coming after a protester died after being assaulted by the riot police). I pointed out that assaults on unarmed and non-violent protesters are routine, that the media knows it and that they are only writing about it this time because someone died. The post was rejected without explanation (as all rejections are).
I firmly believe that members of the public should be able to make posts on news stories without being pre-moderated by some faceless team of people with rather nebulous posting rules. I think if we could make posts on any news topic (e.g. each news item could have a discuss button) on the BBC (or any other outlet) it could really affect the way they report. For example, during the massive Israeli military assault on Gaza earlier in the year, the BBC website was plastered with images clearly showing the use of white Phosphorus. The problem was that despite these clear images, and despite people writing in and pointing it out, the BBC refused to use the term "white phosphorus" for a whole week. Would they have been able to get away with that if the top-rated post under their Gaza news stories was about White Phosphorus being used?
He must have gotten word from Karl Rove. Those guys love anonymous web comments.
By the way, have you guys seen this one? Clumsy British Centipede Stings Itself To Death In Public
with apologies to "Apocalypse Now"
Since when I've been here, I've posted anonimously. I don't have a political agenda (tough I have harsh opinions), I don't want anybody dead -- it even disturbs how US people abuse the words "love" and "hate" instead of using the often more adequate "like" and "dislike". This leads to frequent idiotic insulting...
Back on-topic, year after year there has been a decay in respect to anonymous posters. This is my first comment after along time -- for practical reasons, I gave up posting here: nobody ever reads anonymous comments, AND THIS IS INTENTIONAL.
Noise in the comments has gone up, too. Where there were may insightful unnamed posts some 14-10 years ago, we now have people battling for karma and at the same time striving for the most useless post.
I'm surprised, as per /. invisible anonymous comment policy, that this newsstory is not invisible itself!
...at the paucity of AC comments for this article!
The lack of hot grits and beowulf cluster-related content is also troublesome.
...when I'm trolling I'm actually performing a public service! Who knew?
"The Internet is democratizing, and it sure as hell shows what's wrong with democracy."
The banking institutions are not run as democracies and the recent financial mess clearly shows what happens when you don't have a democracy. Either everything collapses or it requires an expensive bailout. Perhaps a little criticism is not too high of a price to pay for stability.
Hi:
My spouse has decades years working for The AP, and I grew up in a newspaper household too.
Back then, from the late 1950s to the end of the '60s, there were newspapers you could count on to be accurate to the most possible degree, and a few that would say anything that might support their editorial position.
Think about the coverage of 'Nam, if that's not too historical. The mainstream media hated those DFH protestors, even though their own reporters were telling them that the war wasn't going well. After a few years of "End of the tunnel is in sight" predictions failing to come true, things changed.
Reporters really worked hard to dig up true news facts, like Woodward and Bernstein covering Watergate.
Now Judith whats-her-name [not to give her any more fame points] at the NY Times can report total BS about the WMD capabilities of Iraq - stories that were patently crazed off-target, and never get in trouble.
I personally think it's because there are very few family-owned newspapers any more, and the management of the chains is accountants and financial types, instead of people who knew how to run a newsroom.
The AP is sinking because their board was convinced to put a former Gannett manager named Tom Curley in charge. He knows nothing about running a non-profit wire service, and damm little about running any kind of new operation.
So the world's oldest and most respectable wire service is reduced to suing their own members for using the services they pay for, because members of one "business unit" don't understand the business rules of other business units. This was a big story just the other day.
So the quality of newspapers and Network TV has fallen far far beneath where it was 30 years ago. The fall is caused by greed, mostly. The profit margin for print newspapers was around 20% while the rest of the economy was delighted to get 5%!!! Let's put a little more space into adverts, and make more!! Wheee!
We're all doomed! Unless the web stays out of the control of our dear leaders, and we know how much they like freedom of the press, don't we?
J
Greenwald's commentary on our gov's violation of our Civil Rights is very excellent.
juancole.com is very excellent in covering Middle Eastern affairs, providing summaries of news and blogs in that area.
There are half a dozen free-lancers I have read recently providing on-site reporting around the world. Lots of bloggers in any area you wish to mention.
I agree with the original poster: The MSM has been producing CRAP for a long time.
I'm sorry, but I am finding it really hard to see how you could confuse: "There is no value in 'First Post!'" for: "The first post has no value."
By making a mistake and being too proud to admit it, of course! You didn't think sortius_nod was actually going to reply to this, do you? He'll just pretend *cough* to have not seen it *cough*.
She was too optimistic. I would paraphrase that to read: "Never doubt that a small group of vicious, ruthless, bigoted bastards motivated by religious zealotry can change the world; it happens all too often." Applies equally well to Al Qaeda and the Bush administration, although the relative scales of their crimes are different.
I piss off bigots.
The Air Force has these secret radars that can tell the difference between a mosquito and a gnat, and right now they're using them to track all the alien spacecraft that they're not telling us about, because of course you know that the Air Force is really run by a bunch of nigger lesbian feminist illegal immigrants who are secretly in the pay of the international Jewish banking conspiracy. See, if the international Jewish banking conspiracy ever let honest God-fearing white Americans find out just how many aliens are visiting the Earth each day, the banks might collapse and...
Uh-oh.
I piss off bigots.
I'm guessing you weren't a math major either, given the strawman with hardly any variability of data you've created, and also the statistical fallacy you've committed (using the word "most" in conjunction with statistical data, then failing to define most numerically, is a sweeping generalization).
The OP is correct and you are wrong. Intelligence is a bell curve. The mass of people are in the middle somewhere.
I am shocked at my moderation of the parent comment disappearing (before this post). I modded it +1 interesting, commented in another thread as anonymous coward and poof -- the point is now gone.
I am not particularly happy with that, seeing as the system didn't say the point would disappear into oblivion and I could have used another machine to post AC to retain the point.
Dugg!
for example, there are people out there who imagine themselves better than the common man according to arbitrary standards
and they believe that this gives them the rationale to not trust the common man, that the common man is not deserving of the means to decide his own fate
its ok though, these elitists with anti-democratic instincts are in power in various countries around the world
perhaps you'd like to move there, asshole
you have quite a list of losers you've assembled there
please add your ivory tower sense of superiority to that list
thanks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is crazy. Listening to what people say? Isn't it the media's job to tell me what to think? Shouldn't my opinions be provided by angry lesbians who feel that equality means that their favored groups should get preferred treatment? (i.e. equality means 10 = 3.) Who else would filter all the stories so that only incidents that negatively affect minorities are shown and incidents that affect us all are cast as a racist attack? Who would remind us every day about the evil sexual preditors lurking in our internet tubes waiting to jump out and molest everyone in site like a tentacle monster from japanese anime? Where would we go to find out what kind of jungle music we should be wiggling our asses to or what injustice should be making us outraged?
The idea that people should be allowed to think for themselves, let alone express those evil, demented, sexually deviant ideas in public is crazy. THINK OF THE CHILDREN!! We should have small groups of unknown, unaccountable people using social engineering to tell us how to think and act. We need people who ensure there are the proper number of minorities in every pepsi commercial and that the stories we read conform to the thoughts we are told to have in order to be concidered normal. After all, we are free and freedom means acting free in exactly the way you are told to. If not then you are a racist, deviant, communist, nazi and we will inform the world about your deeds with a made for TV movie.
Can't capitalize, can't punctuate. The shift key is just there for decoration, isn't it?
People like you were extremely few and far between when it was just the ARPANET.
I piss off bigots.
I am anonymous, Hear Me Roar.
trusts democracy, bad punctuation
exhibitB:elitist, antidemocratic
you tell me who is superior
xoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is a great site, with great content, but the only way to really experience that is to read at -1 and completely ignore the moderation, which simply does not work.
In my personal opinion, there's no other way to experience Slashdot.
You could read the articles. I tried that a few times.
while a flaimbait may generate more "interest" (traffic) on short timescales, It can be difficult to create one which is "timeless" or has some enduring draw.
A scholarly (interesting/informative) piece may generate more interest than a flaimbait on a longer timescale, especially if it is of very high quality.
With easily persisted web pages, the long view may end up the better one.
Can forced-anonymous commenting focus writers' attention on substance and quality, instead of flame wars or other personal one-upsmanship?
-- John S. James www.RepliCounts.org
The Air Force has these secret radars that can tell the difference between a mosquito and a gnat...
Heh. You don't need a secret radar to determine that. Any old radar can distinguish between the two... a gnat's radar return is *much* smaller than a mosquito's. The *really* tricky part is distinguishing between a gnat's return and that of the wind-blown trees outside!