Slashdot Mirror
Leaving a Comment? That'll Be 99 Cents, and Your Name
netbuzz writes "Anxious to lift a ban on comments brought about by incessant trolling and anonymous slander, a Massachusetts newspaper has begun requiring two things of online readers who want to leave their thoughts on stories: a one-time fee of 99 cents and a willingness to use their real names. Says the publisher: 'This is a necessary step, in my opinion, if The Attleboro (MA) Sun Chronicle is going to continue to provide a forum for comments on our websites.'"
I guess speech is no longer free.
posting here is still free
The 99 cent one-time fee is a great way to verify user identity by using the banking / credit-card system.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Can I a pay a little extra to make my post all caps?
Slashdot doesn't filter them out very effectively, it's forever plagued by them. What it does have is ways for knowledgeable users (it's entire userbase) to reduce the noise and bring out the signal, all the while knowing full well what trolls are and how to ignore them. A local newspaper has a much smaller and much less savvy audience and needs to actually filter it out somehow, which can be exceedingly difficult if even possible at all.
http://publicvoidlife.blogspot.com
Slashdot's moderation system is terrible! The only thing worse is every other system out there.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
It's not filtering of different opinions, it's filtering of the trolls who post off-topic graffiti and goatse links rather than actually taking part in the discussion. OP was spot on. Slashdot's moderation system works because it has a huge army of visitors that can be tapped for mod duties. Most newspaper websites have nowhere near enough visitors to do this. Just look at the number of posts on a typical slashdot post and compare it to the most popular articles on a local newspaper: slashdot probably wins by an order of magnitude.
Getting downmodded (or upmodded) due to disagreement with the groupthink is typical when your comment is itself purely emotional, or, if factual, does not provide any proof for that. Basically, if you say "Linux sucks", you will be downmodded, and a large number of those downmods will be the "disagree" mods, but is it really a big issue?
But if your claims are factual, the overall tone of the post polite, and you back your points with references, you are much more likely to be upmodded even when advocating opinions that are unpopular here.
The real problem with the moderation system isn't with unreasonable downmods, IMO. It's with unreasonable "+1000" upmods. For example, in any RIAA story, you can post something along the lines of "RIAA can go suck my dick!" in response to some post detailing the abuses, and get heaps of Insightful mods. More generally, for any topic on which /. has a strong group opinion (Linux & OSS, SCO, MS, religion & creationism etc), purely emotional or unsubstantiated FUDish posts that go along with that opinion are upmodded just as fast as those that go against that opinion are downmodded.
I suspect the reason for this is the existence of "Insightful" mod, because it is really bordering on "+1 agree" by definition, and many people seem to use it pretty much that way.