Slashdot Mirror
Google Throws /. Under Bus To Snag Patent
theodp writes "Before Danny Hillis and Bran Ferren invented Google's newly-patented system for 'Delegating Authority to Evaluate Content', Google says users looking for content evaluation websites were condemned to the likes of Amazon.com and Slashdot. From the patent: 'Many sites found on the World Wide Web allow users to evaluate content found within the site. The Slashdot Web site (www.slashdot.org) allows users to "mod" comments recently posted by other users. Based on this information obtained from the users, the system determines a numerical score for each comment ranging from 1 to 5.' The problem with sites like Slashdot, Google told the USPTO, is that 'because there is no restriction on the users that may participate, the reliability of the ratings is correspondingly diminished.' Commissioning a small number of trusted evaluators or editors would increase the reliability of the evaluations, Google notes, but wouldn't allow nearly as much content to be evaluated. Google's solution? Allow trusted evaluators to transfer a 'quantity of authority' to like-minded 'contributing authorities', who in turn designate and delegate authority to additional like-minded contributing authorities. Think Microsoft Outlook 97 Delegate Access meets Slashdot Karma Points, and you've got the general idea!"
3... 2... 1... Go!
Meh. This is more like "We think we can improve on the best thing." I believe we actually had a thread about this here recently.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Let's face it, the slashdot moderation system has been broken for a long time. That's where the term slashthink/slashdot group think comes from. If you post a comment that general user base of slashdot likes, it will be modded up. If you post a comment, even a really insightful and interesting one that the general user base doesn't like, it will be modded down. Comments that rank up? Promote free speech, removing copyrights, getting rids of patents, point out how "suits" just don't get us geeks and so on. Comments that go immediately down? Tell informative, but bad points about the current state of Linux, dislike Google, try to be reasonable about copyrights and DRM or say that Microsoft's Visual Studio still kicks ass any other IDE out there.
I can't find the old post now because it was long time ago, but it went something like this. Every user are given some amount of moderation points, that affect the moderation as a whole. In addition to that, it affects the moderation you see favorable to the likes of you. If they are on your friend lists, their moderation carries more value. If they have moderated similarly to you, their moderation weights more to you. Of course, this should be balanced so that you don't get fully one viewed comments - if some comment is generally modded very high (and forget the -1-5 scale now), it would be displayed to you anyway. If you add to that that comments where you, or similar persons to you have commented, will be fully displayed regardless of their moderation (or some adjustation of that), it would work out really well. Of course, it needs a lot more computation power on the server side.
For me, personally? I like Reddit's comment system. It has it's faults, but it's better than Slashdot. Interesting posts are on top, and you can just scroll down for more.
Still, I browse Slashdot at -1 and read what interests me. I come here for the comments, jokes and all that. I like to see it all when the subject is interesting. No moderating system can ever beat your own judgement (even if it's wrong one).
Allow trusted evaluators to transfer a 'quantity of authority' to like-minded 'contributing authorities', who in turn designate and delegate authority to additional like-minded contributing authorities.
Um, isn't this exactly what would promote the problem of politically active users donating time to keep adverse stories repressed?
...
Quality can be controlled to some extent but biases are much harder to determine
My work here is dung.
doesn't the meta-moderation system essentially do what Google is talking about - I always assumed that if your mods got marked as appropriate in metamod, your chances of modding again improved, and vice-versa.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Seriously? So many patents these days are "we took idea X and added Y, so now we have a patent on X with Y." Where X and Y were both existing concepts. (As poster says, think /. karma + outlook delegates). I have no problem with Google developing their own software implementation, and I have no problem with google receiving protection for that IP Itself, the software. That should be protected. But that Google or anybody else can just go "FIRST!" and grab a monopoly for the foreseeable future... Uggh.
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
Are they planning to implement a web of trust like in OpenPGP and what monkeysphere is trying to do?
I actually agree, the way comments are moderated is very poor overall on /.
I believe this delegation is a direct copy of how trusted access on pirate-networks work.
Can you simply patent a method invented by someone else for illicit and clandestant activities?
Isn't this just the same PageRank algorithm applied to a different domain?
kinda nice when the weak-minded don't have an easy way to tell what the popular/unpopular thought is on a particular subject.
moderation systems within a community are great in theory, except humans aren't logical creatures. a logically valid yet unpopular comment and its author can easily be marginalized within such a system, to the detriment of the overall intellectual value of the discussion
I can't see Google trying to assert a patent claim against a site that they cited as prior art for continuing to use its groupthink enforcement system. You'd have to be a patent troll of Intellectual Venturian proportions to even contemplate anything so Quixotic.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Oh so long ago when it sold itself for $$$ to whoever that company was. The bus has been running it over ever since.
So who trusts the "trusted evaluators" in the first place? This could easily be abused into more of a group-think than slashdot, if indeed /. is guilty of group-think. I'm thinking more like a personal blog, where moderators must approve all comments. If the mod doesn't like it, the comment doesn't exist for the general public. Do we trust google to moderate our content for us?
I mean, I guess we (as a corporate whole) already do, based on their share of the search market, but seriously. How far should we let this go?
Unless you consider that strengthening copyrights, protections for corporations and so forth are ALSO part of slashdot groupthink.
Of course two other ways of getting posted up are:
1) say you're going to get modded down
2) whine about slashdot groupthink
Let's face it, the slashdot moderation system has been broken for a long time. That's where the term slashthink/slashdot group think comes from. If you post a comment that general user base of slashdot likes, it will be modded up. If you post a comment, even a really insightful and interesting one that the general user base doesn't like, it will be modded down. Comments that rank up? Promote free speech, removing copyrights, getting rids of patents, point out how "suits" just don't get us geeks and so on. Comments that go immediately down? Tell informative, but bad points about the current state of Linux, dislike Google, try to be reasonable about copyrights and DRM or say that Microsoft's Visual Studio still kicks ass any other IDE out there.
There's a difference between being "unpopular" and "wrong." I disagree with you and find that well written -- though unpopular -- posts will be moderated highly. I, myself, have participated in receiving such moderation. You can make valid points about the current state of Linux (without having to be apologetic) as long as you know what you are talking about. Here's one of my own posts where I rip on Google's tax evasion and it's moderated +4. That's just a quick one, if you need more, I'd be happy to spend some time to provide you counter examples do your claims. As a developer, however, I must say that your Visual Studio statement is completely without merit and will always be modded down. I come to Slashdot not because I'm afraid of debate but because I thirst for it. The most valuable comments are those that put me in my place.
I can't find the old post now because it was long time ago, but it went something like this. Every user are given some amount of moderation points, that affect the moderation as a whole. In addition to that, it affects the moderation you see favorable to the likes of you. If they are on your friend lists, their moderation carries more value. If they have moderated similarly to you, their moderation weights more to you. Of course, this should be balanced so that you don't get fully one viewed comments - if some comment is generally modded very high (and forget the -1-5 scale now), it would be displayed to you anyway. If you add to that that comments where you, or similar persons to you have commented, will be fully displayed regardless of their moderation (or some adjustation of that), it would work out really well. Of course, it needs a lot more computation power on the server side.
That sounds like a really sheltered solution. All I can think about as a comparison is people who live in -- and I'm not picking on them specifically -- a Mormon community only holding their immediate relatives as valid sources of comments. This can be said for any number of things, however, but this proposed "lensing" of Slashdot would just allow people to turtle into their sheltered bubbles. Eventually any contradictory points that I might have been exposed to are safely locked away and I am never challenged. What a horrible, repressed, unenlightened, biased, polarized existence! The website will be a therapist -- telling you only what you want to hear. Disagree with something? Delete the offending friend.
For me, personally? I like Reddit's comment system. It has it's faults, but it's better than Slashdot. Interesting posts are on top, and you can just scroll down for more.
Then go back to Reddit. Why are you here? Go back there where you can delete or modify what you just said when someone wants to engage in a debate with you! Never have I been so exasperated as with my brief foray on Reddit. Valid counterpoint? Deletes his post. Now what?
No moderating system can ever beat your own judgement (even if it's wrong one).
I think you're hung up on wrong/right versus unpopular/popular opinion. It's not so black and white and there is a blur there but I feel that Slashdot 1) presents a decent mix of stories and 2) the subsequent moderation gives you a good idea of what is popular and generally correct/informed.
My work here is dung.
Prior art - thousands of peer reviewed journals. Nothing new in that.
The Nobel Prize nominations must be hard to overturn. Only prior winners and a few others may nominate.
Someone with brains AND A VOICE finally speaks up against Slashdot's miserable organization, wait.....what.....hold on a sec:
Okay, so what am I missing here? Where's the article? I see a link to a patent, a link to a pointless JPEG, and some kid's anecdotal evidence (if even that) that Google hates Slashdot. C'mon, theodp. This is the Internets. If you're going to make some absurd comment, at least have the wherewithal to link to someone else's page where someone else actually came up with or cited the idea. Even if it is completely bogus. It looks to me as though you waved your hands, threw some pixie dust, and declared that Google just insulted Slashdot. Where's the beef, sir?
--TSP
captcha: smoked
Users have been known to delegate authority to moderate by either selling their accounts or giving the password to another user. There are also a few troll accounts that are "groupware".
.
1 - Why is this patentable?
2 - Doesn't /.'s meta-mod system help to correct the issue raised?
I think the /. community mods accurately, the good out weighs the bad, and I have had more than one of my comments modded out of existence, and frankly some of my comments deserved to be (we all have bad days) but the thing to keep in mind here is we, we being the members of /., aren't modding for the outside World we mod for the community here on /. so it works well even with the trolls and hopeless pontificates.
No changes needed in my view.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
So, Google is legitimizing and patenting the bury brigade.
w00t!
I think Slashdot eds are being a little too sensitive. They didn't sue Slashdot or harm it, they simply claimed in a patent that they devised a better system. While I think software patents are dumb, I don't think creating a different system and saying why you think it's better is much of a problem.
Democracy Now! - your daily, uncensored, corporate-free
The minute /. starts to "Allow trusted evaluators to transfer a 'quantity of authority' to like-minded 'contributing authorities', who in turn designate and delegate authority to additional like-minded contributing authorities." because that is too much like the current system of media control and politics, or in other words go with the flow or fuck off.
Again, leave it alone it has worked just dandy all these years.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
It was only a matter of time...
Anyone who thinks that an an Unknown Lamer and not the Slashdot overlords submitted this story, then placed it on the front page, is a lamer.
End Transmission....
I mean, I haven't had mod points here in like, forever.
Wait, is google just making fun of the patent system, showing how it is flawed?
More likely they're just adding something innovative like forum moderators to google groups+ or something or the sort, though...
It sounds spot on target to me.
I just wonder if this is going to speed up the end of treating Google like they're gods around here. While it's not as bad as before, there was a time when someone at Google would fart and it would get modded up by some fanboi. Now Google is getting real. Their innovations are old hat and they need to start pulling their business together. This is doubtlessly part of the reason that Slashdot has turned on them a bit but this just might be a mark of a faster decline. We need that to happen.
Administration of IIRC, online game servers like America's Army... come on Google, what? you forget about not being evil or something? pft
Did they come up with a catchy name for this Delegated Content Evaluation Authority? Might I suggest "whuffie?"
....)
(Yes, I was reading Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom last night
Where's the bus? Google says Slashdot's mod system has flaws. It does. They're proposing something else that they think will fix those flaws. Until we see it in action, I can't say whether it actually does address those flaws.
Such a think is patentable ? my my.
Read radical news here
As an insider source, Slashdot gets to inject ideas into the mainstream of computer evolution, but by staying invisible, does not become a target in itself.
This is not an advocacy of hipster elitism, which likes to hide the good stuff away for insiders. It's a way of saying that Slashdot has influenced all parts of this industry, and rarely gets credit, which allows it to continue in its role as influence.
Like Open Source software, open source "ideas" spread more quickly than ideas which are owned or defended by moneyed interests.
Futurist Traditionalism
The delegate authority must authorize the delegation of authority delegations so each authority delegation has authorized delegation of authority so it can then be delegated to each contributing authority delegatory delegation. I hereby delegate this contribution to the authority delegating the authority to Google such to authorize Google to form a delegatory system of authority delegation as long as it delegates said authority to other delegating authorities like Slashdot.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Flashback to George Orwell.
Here is the problem. Either you believe in the law of large numbers and equality and democracy that says that everyone is involved or your have select inner groups with the authority. Give them more power and lo and behold some special interest group will find its way in and leverage that power for their own agenda, then get entrenched and build more walls to protect their positions. We have seen it with governments and political parties. That is why we have elections, to clean the slate and reset that group on a regular basis.
Google posits that you get better scoring. I would claim that they are confusing consistant scoring with better scoring.
What they are describing IS slashdot. When you mod someone up or down, you are adding/removing from their chance to get mod points. You are delegating authority to them.
What happened to kuro5hin.org? Not only did they have the original moderation system but they actually went from a 1-10 scale to a 1-5 scale to a 0-3 scale and managed to do it gracefully. K5 today persists as a vibrant community and the graceful handling of the moderation system and watchful eye afforded by it's founder shows us how to correctly build a community.
This sounds like the Gawker media method where they create starred commentators who can approve/reject posts from the masses.
"Google mentions Slashdot moderation in patent" would be accurate. Hey, Unknown Lamer: WTF?
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
A patent on duplicate stories!
"A method and procedure for placing the same content, with a slightly different summary and headline on the front page, sometimes within mere hours of each other."
There may be prior art, but I've never seen it done better or more frequently than here.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
say that Microsoft's Visual Studio still kicks ass any other IDE out there.
Okay let's keep in mind that this is the original quote. "Kicks ass" is a simple stupid absolute. Some IDEs do some things better than others. The plugins I use in Eclipse are simply not available in Visual Studio. Are you now going to tell me that I should disregard this information and just always select Visual Studio?
How about this little scenario: my boss tells me that I am to be using headless virtual machines running Linux and Ruby to do my development since that's what we deploy on. Do you really think I'm going to try to use Visual Studio?
It is wrong to say "Microsoft's Visual Studio still kicks ass any other IDE out there" unless you scope your needs! You clearly have limited development experience and do not realize that there are many tools for all jobs and some jobs require one tool over another!
I agree with some of your post, but seriously, don't drop your own opinion in the middle of a comment about how things get modded down because they are "wrong" not because they are "unpopular". It mostly just makes you look stupid and like a dick.
Hey thanks for calling me a "stupid dick" I love you too!
My work here is dung.
Why is something like this patentable? This is similar to patenting how auctions work, or a betting system, a voting system, or card counting. It isn't software, it isn't hardware, it isn't really even an algorithm.
Google can have its fun, but somehow this seems more like the Wikipedia model, where trusted editors both create content and ratify it.
Prior art all over this. Rotsa ruck, Roogle.
But moderation isn't so broken on /. compared to OTHER problems.
- On my phone, /. renders fairly well, but when I moderate, it jumps around the screen. Annoying.
- Again, on my phone, commenting on /. is fubar. The comments editing screen appears, but then the screen is refocused to the bottom of the page. I can type blind and it is in there. If I scroll up and display the comment screen, touching it scrolls the page to the bottom again. Arg. Android 2.3.4 HTC Sense browser. This is a pisser, something just doesn't like this Android browser.
- At work, I can't moderate, the button just never responds. Probably security settings here, so I'll give /code a pass on this.
- depending on what settings I have, /. renders on my phone with the floating bar trying to tell me something about how many comments are displayed, or how many I'm missing, or something, but it's so badly rendered I can't tell, and it floats to obscure comments. Annoying.
I'm venting, yes, but it's been a long time since I've posted a complaint about these issues, and previous responses were inadequate, as in zero. Youse gets what youse pays for, so I'm just venting. I don't expect it to be fixed.
And there is worse out there, like our state retirement system, where the enrollment process is not just broken, it's institutionalized as broken. The help desk pretends you're an idiot while they proceed to take you through the workarounds to solve the problems - like failing to save the password accurately, presenting you with the predetermined security question instead of the one you selected, and saving a user ID that is not the same as the one you entered, since they require you to use a particular format for user ID while presenting you with an enrollment screen that lets you enter whatever you want there. Interesting. Annoying. Worse than /. by a mile.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
By being modded up... so the system is self reinforcing. Also it's self perpetuating, to get modded you need to conform to Slashdot decorum... once indoctrinated into the Slashdot culture most users enjoy it and conform.
I know I used some scary words there but what I'm saying is that Slashdot has developed a system for their site to stay focused, discourage maleficence, and grow. All in all a brilliant system and one I'd like to see copied on other parts of the internet.
Google is just saying "All your content is belong to us." which is what they've always said. Now that's something I don't like much.
And just so I don't come across as a fanboy, the search functionality needs to work, there's no valid reason to lock old stories for editing (just don't archive the newer additions), the new layout SUCKS SUCKS SUCKS (why can't I see the comments I want, I've noticed several times that comments I've posted [at +2] aren't available to users who aren't logged in) and most importantly WHY CAN'T I ACCESS OR DOWNLOAD ALL MY PREVIOUS COMMENTS?!
Since quite some time /. has been infested by accounts that are always bashing Google and Apple and, simultaneously, suddenly Windows started getting praise posts and "zomg but it had ACL since forever so it's the most secure OS ever" posts.
It's also known for a fact that some companies are either using shills or paying astroturfers to "talk dirty" about Google etc. (FaceBook admitted guilty of doing it).
So I'm no Apple fanboy (Linux here) and although I do use FB I'd really wish we could go back to the old /., when it was not infested by shills/astroturfers +5 insightfully modding comments praising FB+MS and bashing Google+Apple.
I find it quite the coincidence that this is the first Slashdot article I've looked at today, and lo and behold, I have mod points!!
Nothing to see here
One slip of the mouse and the thing you meant to mark as "informative" is unfortunately marked as "redundant" instead. I've only done it once out of the hundreds of mod points I've handed out, but I am going to feel guilty about that for a long time. The only known workaround for this is posting in the thread, nullifying all your moderation for that thread, but if it was the fifth post you've modded you don't always want to take back the first four... If Google has a means of fixing that, then maybe it's an improvement. As it stands, to me the moderation here is the best we're going to get. Like democracy, it's a terrible form of goverment and never really works, but it's still better than any other system anyone has come up with.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
Slashdot is a cyber-democracy in many ways.
Especially the moderating- it is far from perfect- but it is better than most of the alternative methods.
(my time travel machine reveals that someone will quote Churchill).
Sure the moderating system is flawed. If I have an idea that is contrary to popular opinion it will receive an unfair down mod just because someone disagrees.
If my opinion is agreed upon by the masses- it will be modded higher than someone who has a better post but a non-popular opinion.
That's the same problem, on a political parallel, to democracy though.
Democracy centres around the general publics opinion and voices that are not mainstream don't get heard as much.
As slashdotters we should recongnise the faults- and try to be aware of them- mod someone on the quality of their post- not so much because you agree with them.
I will say- of all the discussion sites and forums I have been a part of- Slashdots simply works better.
It isn't perfect- but it works. (even better than forums I have run and operated)
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If you ever applied for a patent you'll know it's just a standard procedure in patent application.
Basically, you list all known prior art to the best of your knowledge, and then state the advantages of your invention over prior art. In fact Google wouldn't be doing a good job (and risk having the patent application rejected) if they didn't mention the Slashdot mod system and its perceived shortcomings.
Of course, whether the whole idea is patentable to begin with is another story.
What a pity it's completely insane!
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Tried to post first, but Google slashdotted slashdot.
said more accurately: How to make sure that only people who think like me can express themselves publicly. Hope these guys stay out of politics.
This is so true....I would log in with my usual name, but I've been modded down to the point i have no voice.....so much for diversity.
My thought is that users would have survey or over time the system would record there responses to certain comments and stories. Over time a bias off set would be computed for different types of story tags and comments. I haven't thought about it too much , rather hard to figure out bias in software , maybe an initial survey.
Survey of different comment tags, stories.
In this survey rate you initial reaction to the technology or comment.
-1 dislike, 0 neutral, 1 positive
Linux
Apple
Android
Microsoft
Facebook
Slashdot Editors
It is a confirmation of the bankruptcy of the legal IP system that this could be patented. First, it is an algorithm and should not be patent-able. Second,.cascading delegation is well known and not innovative. And third, it is trivial.
Next thing you know, they'll try to patent recall of delegation.
--
SOPA/PIPA delenda est!
The conversation wasn't about Visual Studio, it was just about one of the examples, hence the dumping down to "kicks ass". I could go on and list why and features I like, what features other IDE's miss or have wrong, but that is completely not relevant to the discussion. It was a generalization, because it fitted.
Maybe if you had "dumped down" to just "Visual Studio is a great IDE" instead of implying that it always blows all competition out of the water all the time. Your comment wouldn't have been interpreted as so vapid?
basically to create moderators that can themselves create moderators in a never-ending fractal like pyramid.
Seems to me in a lot of situations either you would get the same, only one type of opinion is wanted, because the moderators are careful to only award that that group and revoke if they see otherwise, or simply everyone eventually becomes a moderator.
And many communities are not really geared towards knowing the other members well, sure you see lots of interesting insightful posts by people but that does not guarantee that they would make a good moderator.
I have been commenting here longer then my adult life and know of no one that I have particular reason to believe that they would be a better moderator then anyone else. And on the other hand if you simply went my insightful/professional posts well then I could compile a list of a thousand people.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
You can patent anything these days, it is ridiculous... Patenting stuff people did with software in the 80's in the BBS world already just shows how retarded our system has become.
'We' know what you meant better than 'you.' We will take care to let you know what you can read and see...
Ah... No thanks 'daddy-0'...
Furthermore, where/what is the bus, and how did slashdot get thrown under it? If you're going to use an analogy involving a bus (large heavy moving vehicle presumably unable to avoid the incident), a victim (person obviously within range of the bus, and presumably the target of attempted murder), and a perpetrator (second person who deliberately sabatoges the first as the bus incidentally passes by), then for christ's sake, think about it first.
I've been a big supporter of Google in the past, but I've been getting very weary of their decisions over the past several months. I think 2012 may be the year I stop using their services if they don't get back to normal. I feel like they're turning on their supporters a little here & a little there... and it ain't stopping yet.
Nothing against the hive mind gets upvoted.
Moderators are selected based on past moderations, and the layers are circular. If others have moderated you nicely, you get to moderate yourself.
There has to be something else Slashdot is doing other than this. My account's karma has been Excellent for years, yet I've never had mod points on Slashdot even once. What might I be doing wrong?
What Google is suggesting sounds like a feudal system for moderation. And we all know how well the feudal system worked, don't we?
Hate to burst anyone's bubble (not really), but people tend to hang out with like-minded people, even on the internet. If you don't like some of the -bashing that you perceive on /. or the political bias you perceive, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE! The internet is a pretty big place. I'm sure you can find some politically and technology oriented site that better matches your POV. If not, you can always create one. This isn't a human rights issue.
Anyone who thinks a site with the name, slashdot (/.), isn't going to have some *NIX bias is too stupid to come here anyway.
it can never do wrong. forever and ever. the slashdot bias has been cast. everything it does that is questionable must be rationalized away. it's not like google's actions should be evaluated impartially on these forums, right?
(now comes the posts defending google against all claims of impropriety. no! not our darling google!)
Here is a great example of the issue. This parent post may have some underlying good points hidden there if it were said with a hint of empathy. But it is worded with a kinda dickish tone. So if u mod it down because of its tone or at least choose to mod up someone else, which I think is not unreasonable given the tone, then this person will be all "I'm being kept down by the groupthink; I'm a victim" rather than "could I have been more straightforwardly insightful and less aggressively sarcastic and strawman-y???". Tone matters.
From the looks of everything, Google has become envious of /.
Maybe if some of those that still wear super hero underwear are looking for a new project? How about this, "create a chat-bot that can debate on point?" Think WATSON, only it doesn't know where the Daily Doubles are.
A headline like this is why I rarely click the /. links on my rss feed anymore. It's like they bought the Roger Ailes Headline Generator, available for only $24.99 at foxnews.com.
So can /. expect a C&D on its supposedly inferior mod system? Or does the prior art citation allow /. to continue(I don't get the concept here).
"The primary authority, as well as the contributing authorities, may add authorities to the evaluation system by designating and delegating authority to new contributing authorities. Correspondingly, contributing authorities may be removed from the evaluation system through the revocation of authority. By delegating additional authority to, or revoking existing authority from, previously designated contributing authorities, a primary authority or a contributing authority may alter the relative authority of the contributing authorities within the evaluation system."
This sounds like a shit-ton of work to moderate our own drivel that has a realistic TTL of what, 4-6 hours. Seems like the system would need to balance bias of a few authorities vs. popular trends of group-think authorities.
I think I may want to contest this patent.
The patent cites Slashdot comment moderation as an example of how not to assign importance to user actions. Its authors were apparently unaware that the algorithm they described in November 2010 is virtually identical to the way Slashdot has actually assigned importance to user voting on Firehose stories since May 2008 (give or take). I know because I wrote it.
What this patent calls "authority," we call user "clout."
Multiple clouts, actually. Each Slashdot user has a number that describes how valuable the system believes their up/down votes in the firehose are, and it's separate from how valuable their descriptive tags applied to stories are. (Up/down votes are simply tags with special names, making vote-scoring and description-determination very similar under the hood.)
It's been a while since I looked at this code -- I work for sister company ThinkGeek now -- but scanning over our public repository here are some of the interesting parts:
plugs/Tags/tags_updateclouts.pl - the tags_peerclout table is the way that each type of clout is built. It has fixed entries at gen=0, the zeroth generation, which would typically be the Slashdot editors or other users considered reliable and definitive. To build gen=1, the code looks at how many users tagged or voted on the same objects as the gen=0 users did, and assigns the gen=1 users scores based on similarity (or difference). Then from the gen=1 users, gen=2 users are assigned scores similarly, and so on.
The gen=0 entries in that table "designate one or more contributing authorities by delegating to each a specific quantity of authority." I don't think I could describe that better myself.
plugins/Tags/Clout/Vote.pm process_nextgen() - here's where each new generation of user clout is successively determined, for firehose votes in particular. Line 194 invokes the algorithm and line 203 assigns that user their new voting clout. This iterative process is the automated method through which "each contributing authority may in turn designate and delegate authority to one or more additional contributing authorities."
plugins/Tags/Clout/Vote.pm init() - sum_weight_vectors totals the change in clout for each generation, and possible weight decreases exponentially. If you're in gen=1 the maximum weight you can have is only 60% of the maximum from gen=0, etc. The fraction is smaller than 100%, which helps ensure "that the total quantity of authority delegated does not exceed the quantity of authority the contributing authority was itself delegated." When the clouts are used to determine firehose item ratings, "the ratings are combined in a manner that affords a higher priority to the ratings provided by contributing authorities to which a greater quantity of authority was delegated."
All this may have changed since it was written. I don't actually know what's running on Slashdot at this moment. I'm just going by the public repository that I knew was on sf.net, and I don't even know if there's a later version of the code available anywhere.
But I suspect that this system would constitute prior art.
Also, looking over my code from 2008, boy, I really wish I'd put in more comments.
People realise that when adults sit behind a computer on a forum/community site they act like they're still in high school with their clique mentality.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Get lost.
Negativity is always more powerful than positivity on positions. What plus only systems do, such as on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ is rank things purely on their positive ratings, though Twitter's ranking is obscured through the Trending Topics system.
Plus only systems don't let anyone actively destroy content, but simply choose to promote or not. Slashdot could use the same system using uncapped mod points per post, and allowing to see top X posts, instead of setting which score to see. Of course, this doesn't change the fact that only random users can mod.
I8-D
Besides, it seems to me that the secret sauce is in how mod points are allocated, looking at UIDs there seem to be enough slashdot participants to share the moderation workload without needing to delegate, and the quality of moderation issue can easily be handled by allocating modpoints appropriately and trying to spot people with multiple UIDs
.
Moderation may frustrate many here, but I don't think it is the most important reason people choose to use or not use slashdot. For me the reason to tune in is to read the great comments that I see here, I learn something new and worthwhile every day.
Nullius in verba
There's absolutely no way around it in any forum or publication. Either you have no censorship at all (in which case things quickly become a mess because of trolls and such), or you have censorship that censors opinions that some group of people doesn't like. In Slashdot's case, the group of people is the entire membership of the site, as moderation points are assigned randomly, so you get groupthink. In the case of something like Wikipedia, or better yet Encyclopaedia Brittanica, the "moderators" (or editors in the case of a professional publication) are a small group of people who follow some official policy set out by the top leadership, and moderate according to that.
So, you have two choices: you can either have "tyranny of the majority" or "groupthink", or you can have an "elitist" system where a few people at the top of an organization have the power to make that publication/forum look the way they want to. Each has its advantages and disadvantages: in the former, if you generally agree with the group and their groupthink, you'll probably be happy there, whereas if you usually disagree with the group, you won't and you'll probably get sick of it and leave after a while, looking for another place with "birds of a feather". In the latter, if you like the way the top leadership runs its forum/publication, you'll be happy there, otherwise you'll look for a different one. In the case of the latter, just like the way a benevolent dictatorship is a far superior form of government to a democracy/republic, if the leadership is good, you'll get a quality forum/publication. Of course, if that leadership gets old and retires and is replaced with bad leadership, the whole thing goes to shit very quickly (which is the whole problem with benevolent dictatorships). Luckily, with web forums and websites like Wikipedia, it's a lot easier to start a new web forum when one goes south than to start a new country when a bad dictator takes over. And with something like Wikipedia where you're able to download the information and are free to "fork" the site, if you don't like Wikipedia's leadership, you're free to take all their articles and start a competing site under your own leadership, something that's obviously impossible with countries and governments.
Hasn't Perlmonks done something close to what they describe for a long time?
so you agreed with my message, you just have to mod me down because the messenger is ugly. i guess i'll never be a politician, people prefer placid lies over ugly truths
sorry for being ugly. and right
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
But how can google patent their approach? It is just an idea. An idea is not supposed to be patentable.
The hierarchical nature of the system could be advantageous in certain applications. In a general content system like Slashdot it wouldn't make much of a difference, but in something like Wikipedia you could have a top-level moderator in each of several disciplines (history, art, physics, medicine, etc) who would have the expertise to evaluate sub-moderators in those disciplines (or perhaps in sub-disciplines if the sub-moderator's expertise is more specialized).
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
That idea is obvious to a 7-year-old. It's hard to believe the USPTO issues patents on trivial concepts like that.
It's true. I'm a cheap date.
There are editors too stupid for BoingBoing? You want to talk about groupthink, look over there. Host a steampunk convention at the moveon.org headquarters and they'd all be there... Oh shit, the slashdot groupthink is going to mod me down now, because I made fun of steampunky liberals. Shit.
I think that the title of the article is wrong, it looks to me like Google improperly cited slashdot's moderation system as prior art, but it sounds a lot like they are patenting something pretty close to the same thing. Perhaps the title should be Google Patents Slashdot Moderation System.
Good luck suing them. If they really have absconded with CmdrTaco's idea, maybe the folks at Groklaw might be interested.
there are 3 kinds of people:
* those who can count
* those who can't
You aren't a subscriber
Occasionally, users with Excellent karma will see Mysterious Future articles after subscribers have seen them but before they go live. Or perhaps one has read the real Mysterious Future, namely the site on which an article was posted. I suspect that someone might have read the article somewhere else, thought it likely to make the front page of Slashdot, and typed out a reply to paste once the article did show up on Slashdot.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I learn nothing from commenting
Unless you're commenting in hopes of learning something from the replies.
Each post starts at a neutral value, 0. Options are to Agree*, +1 [reasons], -1 [reasons]. The Agree option takes no mod points but adds a numerical weight to the comment to prevent it from being modded down, but doesn't affect the comment's ability to be modded up. For instance, if an otherwise factually accurate but unpopular comment is modded to -1 Troll because of an attempt to manipulate the course of the discussion, a set proportion of received Agrees will "counteract" the downvotes without expending the upvotes, preventing it from falling out of view but not increasing the comment's rating. The actual Agree value will not be visible to anyone and thus can't be systematically overridden or abused.
* Approve? Support?
Also, as the total number of mod points expended increases, their value could be adjusted logarithmically to fill reserves that determine whether the comment's value is increased or decreased. So if the votes a comment receives are 10 +1, 9 -1, and 20 Agree and the first bank needs +/- 5 to change the comment value, if the ratio of Agree to -1 is set at, say, 4:1, then 10 + -(9 - 20/4) = +6, and the comment's value is increased, to scale logarithmically as mod points are expended.
I know this is ./, which while a haven for philosophizing new rhetoric and talking points is no bastion of applied reason, so I don't expect anyone to read, let alone discuss, a few ideas about what to change beyond coming up with more powerful synonyms for 'broken'. Or maybe all of the other discussions about it have just been modded too low for me to see?
How about if every comment / response was score itself to responded post. For any post show it's received total score and score given with this particular post. Simple three score negative,neutral,positive system could be enough.
This way you would need to give more insight about why you scored better or worse. Also bury brigades and fanboy wars would be easy to mod out.
Any ideas?
Citation needed. Would you care to definitively tell me that Slashdot's moderation system wasn't this way in 2002? If so, describe and please also justify your allegation that the filers of the patent were acting in avarice rather than incompetence.
This moderation choice always works.
whats up with the others?
A quick Google search for google blog yields the official google blog, which doesn't even allow comments. I've seen Google-based blogs here and there with comment sections, but have never found them very useful or interesting. Maybe /. comment moderation isn't perfect, especially for politically charged or anti-Google posts, but it's as good or better than any other blog I read. I wonder what Steve Yegge would say about this...
He once inserted random mutations into his code, just so he could have the experience of debugging.
Well at least we don't have to worry about Google sending Slashdot a takedown notice for violating their patent!
Average Intelligence is a Scary Thing
Yeah, because that went so well...
Trust is personal and relative. It can't be transferred. Let alone to everyone else on the planet. It has to be earned.. For everyone separately.
"Authority" is somebody you have no reason to trust, but who tells you who to trust and what to do. It is a logical fallacy, used to get you to trust and believe something you should not trust or believe.
If a person starts out with a concept of absolute "authority" (which weirdly [well, actually obviously] always happens to be that person and his friends), he fails before he has begun.
I'd've been okay with more comments as well. ;-)
Why can't a comment be modded "Wrong"?
If the moderator posts a reply, he wastes whatever mod points he's already used. This discourages moderators from moderating articles about subjects in which they are likely to be interested, and actually knowledgeable about the subject matter. Instead, they moderate posts on subjects of casual interest, often modding up a well-articulated post in spite of the fact that it may contain factual problems.
What I'd rather see is a feedback mechanism where a moderator could moderate a post and issue a response to the poster. And give the poster an opportunity to edit their post in response to the moderators input. Not as in a reply to the points made, but rather something along the lines of, "Break this up into paragraphs", or "This fact is no longer true", or "try to avoid insinuating the OP is an idiot". Such a response need not be posted publicly, as the idea is not to refute a post, but to assist in clarifying the poster's original points.
As it stands, the only option is Troll or Flamebait, which don't accurately capture the possibility that a poster is honestly misinformed. Someone who relies on factually incorrect statements may be able to make a broader overall point, or at least be able to represent that even articulate and thoughtful people are occasionally misinformed. To lump it in with the trolls tends to end the discussion rather than increasing the understanding between posters of opposing positions.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I've done all of the above popular/unpopular, except for lauding Visual Studio. I lived through the Commander Sonak incident in its early support for C++ templates. I'm not stepping into that beam ever goddamn ever again. It might at this point be positively stupendous, but I couldn't give an elephant's asshole. Don't mistake eternal bitterness for groupthink.
From time to time I try to burn off some karma with little success. I guess I try too hard. It's simple: if you're going to post against the grain, you have to do some work. You can't just post "Well I think Microsoft rocks!" and not get voted off the island. Try handing out "God sucks!" pamphlets in front of a peace-loving Baptist church on any given Sunday. Any worthwhile community nurses its fragile bonds, even if some tolerate exceptionally harsh internal criticism if voiced in the proper manner.
Moderation systems tend to be imperfect because humans are imperfect. If there's no objective standard to optimize towards, all that's left is popularity, no matter how cleverly you echo diffract.
On the other point--which made LOL--it is pretty stupid how quickly the early posts attract karma points. It would be a good idea if moderation points awarded in the first few hours on a fresh topic wore off and expired. If the comment was that great, it will be repeat moderated against the full complement of early opinion. You can't suppress moderation at the outset or it would turn into an instant free for all, but the early mods could be made provisional, and that would certainly help.
People on /. have been complaining about this for *years*. Back in the day some /.-ers complained about Jon Katz. Then others complained about anything Stallman related. Still others complained about anything remotely redolent of Microsoft astroturfing.
The years have rolled on, and the biases editors and community members are accused of have changed too, but you know what? I can still read the comments on any given article here and expect to find insightful information from at least 1-2 actual experts modded high. So, if I want to read about the latest Mars mission, I'm 80% sure to see a comment about it from someone who works *on that actual mission*. Where else can you find that? Digg? I don't think so.
Knock /. if you will. It's still better than anything else out there. I miss CmdrTaco and Hemos and CowboyNeal and all the others; when CmdrTaco left I was truly sad like a member of my family had died. But the ethos they created lives on, and I hope it never dies.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
I find it interesting that I have mod points at the time of writing this post, it's my first time having mod points. I've used one so far, but find it difficult to use them. It's because of one or more of the following:
A - I can see the post has some flaws in its statements
B - I can see the intent, but also see the other side of the argument
C - Most of what I see is already modded up (I'd rather find 2's/3's/4's that should stand out).
D - It's not THAT big of a deal to me...
That simply cannot be expressed on slashdot. There are also certain topics on which an intelligent discussion simply cannot happen, largely due to mods such as troll and flamebait.
Let me give you a few examples:
A "WRONG" mod would allow the education of the poster and reader alike. Sometimes it is very helpful to the general discussion to respond to common misconceptions on a particular topic, rather than simply erasing certain viewpoints from existence. There's a certain irony in that while a great number of /. posters value free speech, they are quite content to drown out unpopular speech, so long as the censoring is done by neither the government or corporations.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
You could have a descriptive moderation system rather than a judgemental one. What if I want to see the posts with strong emotion? What if I want to read the posts expressing an unpopular view?
The current moderation system rewards popular opinions well expressed. Some debate happens as a result of that. However, I could often care less about the popular view, because I've heard it already. I'd rather hear views that haven't been expressed before, are unpopular, or point out flaws in the popular viewpoint. How do I filter for that when /. only has troll and flamebait?
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
This application was filed in April of 2002. It needs to have been publically disclosed then to constitute prior art.
Even google thinks slashdot is shit, and they're not wrong.
Hmm. Well, there's also 7844610 which was filed in 2004 and does seem pretty similar. In fact their abstracts are identical. That's a little deflating.
The patent whose application was filed in April 2002 is this related one, 7502770, which isn't very similar. I think that's the one you meant.
... it's still better then 99% of the websites you find on the internet. Slashdot is really for off-the cuff discussion anyway, there's only so much energy people have and are willing to commit to any kind of discussion and the more complicated the discussion the longer time it takes to digest even reading multiple times. Discussion forums optimize talking about rather low energy and lower effort topics because complexity naturally limits your audience and the points of view. The higher you go the less peers you have, it's just the nature of intelligence, genetics, experience and luck of how your particular mind works and where you ended up born on planet earth.
We have to remember the internet reflects the demographics that visits the site. Slashdot typically attracts americans and so is filled with americanized bias. I've seen forums suggesting slashdot has a leftwing bias, which couldn't be further from the truth.
If anything over the last few years slashdot is if anything a highly pro-free market forum that is highly critical and cynical of ANYTHING in general in which concentrated power acts unethically and without sophistication. You tend to see unintelligent right wing types talk about slashdots 'leftwing bias' if anything slashdot is more libertarian free-market but with a general trend for protecting civil rights and especially open discourse. Intellectual types tend to value open-ness and freedom from oppressive government and the corporate forces that control the congress and the government then anything else.
I especially hate those people who are pro DRM and pro removing of our rights and then go on to whine about 'entitlement' if anything today the vast majority of the citizenry is so brainwashed and intellectually bankrupt they would vote in a dictatorship just to remove people who offend their sensibilities either morally, politically or otherwise. Despite my own misgivings about the more misinformed members of slashdot regarding the history of capitalism. I'm still disturbed at how illiterate typical internet commenters are about history and what most little people had to go through to gain any amount of protection from both corporations and government.
But I'm glad that at least here I see there is a deep cynicism against all forms of concentrated power. "Business" and "government" are just labels for groups of people with power, one rules through force of property and price and the threat of joblessness and deprivation and the other rules by force and law protecting the corporate social order. Unfortunately they've always been in bed together throughout history commerce and men of wealth have always been intertwined with government, the fact that americans can be so brainwashed to be 'anti government' instead of 'anti-bad government' is a testament the effectiveness of corporate marketing.
Many governments were originally instituted to protect the weak from the strong to begin with, over time all human institutions decay or become corrupted because the quality of human beings that enter those positions can't be guaranteed through the randomness of human breeding and the fact that good people tend to out number bad people on planet earth by a large margin and as is reflected in the history of mankind.
There is also the problem of generational gaps and change. There is I imagine a lot of age skew, young people tend to be more clueless then older people in areas of history and so depending on their inborn temperament they will adopt a political ideology that is appealing to their nature whether that be aggressively egotistical (libertarian free market types) or those who lean towards kindness and selflessness, who learn the hardway through bullying and being on the end of severe behavior either from family or school which ends up directing their politics to become more moderate when it comes to trade and having strong views based on protecting the weak from the strong and who are historically unaware and clueless of all bloodshed in capitalism name.
Slashdot has become a steaming pile of shit. It has become irrelevant on the web and you guys haven't moved with the times.
Google is right. The slashdot moderation system has always been terrible. It forces conformity rather than individual thinking. It forces staleness rather than freshness.
Delegating authority goes back to IIRC programs like Perch a long time ago.
I don't know if anyone will even get to see this post, but we'll see.
How good is the idea of automatically detecting controversial posts, then letting those rise to the top no matter their current score? These posts would then have [Controversial] added to the subject line. Controversial posts could then also provide their author with a degree of protection against negative karma.
After reading some of the above comments, particularly in regard to a post being down-voted in regard to being controversial or against the grain, I noticed something that may tend to distinguish troll-posts (that should be modded down because they're bad) from controversial but insightful posts (that should be modded up even though /.ers disagree): the ratio of upmods to downmods, and the total quantity of each.
In particular, controversial but insightful posts will be downmodded by those who disagree, but modded up by well-meaning moderators, which slashdot does have. They may also tend to accumulate lots of mods in total, as the upvoters and downvoters play tug-of-war.
Genuinely bad posts would have overwhelmingly negative mods because the only people who'll upmod them are the sockpuppetters that made the post in the first place.
I don't know if giving sockpuppetters this extra defense is a good tradeoff against giving those smart-but-unpopular posters that degree of protection. That's up to the editors and community to decide. I just wanted to throw this idea out there.
Too funny. So many slashdot haters... with accounts on slashdot! Oh well.
The system may or may not be broken, but at least it fosters more comment creativity than say, CNN
The 'discussion' ensuing on a political summary are particularly revealing as to the problem with Slashdot's moderation techniques. Very rarely does anyone argue the opposite point of view, and when they do, they are usually modded to oblivion by the majority for one reason or another. Most of these comments and posts end up being a series of very similar ideas of how to fix a problem, or lots of repetitive anger towards a politician or a decision.
Everyone is afraid to be the devil's advocate.
Similarly, if someone moderates a comment up, it gains visibility, creating a feedback loop.
Maybe we need a logarithmic moderation point system. That is, going from 1 to 2 requires 1 mod point, 2 to 3 requires 2 points, 3 to 4 requires 4 points, and 4 to 5 requires 8 points. This allows for more dynamic range in differentiating a 3 from a 5, but doesn't make the apparent value skyrocket, like it would in a linear system. A 5 would still look like a 5, but be spaced out 12 points from a 3 instead of 2 points. It also would make it harder to "bury" a post. Once thing many have noticed, myself included, is that there are more +5 posts than +4 or +3, so this system would (potentially) curtail that somewhat.
I'm sure this idea has its own flaws, but it's worth something.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
I propose that it cumulatively costs mod points to mod up or down. Mod points can be accumulated from a number of different accounts working together to mod a post. E.g.
Mod is at 1 - going to cost 1 to mod it up or down Mod is at 2 - going to cost 2 to mod it 1 point up or down Mod is at 3 - going to cost 3 to mod it 1 point up or down. Mod is at 2 - going to cost 2 to mod it 1 point up or down. Mod is at 1, 0, -1 - going to cost 1 to mod it 1 point up or down.
Karma is still deducted a point at a time. Makes it much more expensive to karma bomb people. At the moment, if a post is at +5 and you want to bomb to -1, no worries, 6 accounts. Under the new system, 5 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 1 = 15 accounts to bomb a post down to -1 from 5. GNAA, goatse etc will still only cost 1 to mod into oblivion because nobody ever takes that up to 5 in the first place. It will make factually inaccurate posts harder to mod down, but at some point you need to make a choice - what's better, factually inaccurate (which may never go away), or antisocial behaviour (karma bombing, gnaa etc)?
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
We don't really discuss here on Slashdot, we debate. The big difference is that nobody asks questions, they just make statements.
You really think so? What makes you say that?
;-)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I hate "Funny" comments as well. That's why I set "Funny" mods to have a negative impact on the overall score in my preferences.
Half the reason I still come to Slashdot is for the "Funny" comments. I've got Funny set +3 in my options.
Just goes to show you, different strokes for different folks.
"When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth." (George Bernard Shaw)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
There's something missing - a downmod of "you are factually incorrect". Not "I disagree", but you make a statement that is provably (in a binary fashion) wrong.
The problem with that is that it's very hard to find objective truth. I won't go so far as to say it's impossible (although there are those who believe that, too), but it's very hard. Sources are found to be faulty all the time. Things we "know" to be "true" we later change our thinking on. Things supposed to be "facts" are later learned to be wrong. This occurs even in things like physical science. (The world was seen quite differently before quantum mechanics was accepted.) For something like a "soft" science, or art, or politics, or religion -- finding objective truth is damn near impossible.
So how do you, as a moderator, know your truth is better than the commentator's truth?
Indeed, this is the very sort of situation moderation where should not be used. If you know something is wrong -- reply and give your take! If your sources are so obviously better, other moderators will mod you up and the other guy down. If people are split, you'll both be mod'ed up, and other readers can see both posts and make up their own mind.
To paraphrase a famous quote: You can't fight incorrect information by hiding it. The only way to fight misinformation is to present better information.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Some posts are both funny and insightful. Some are modded troll then insightful, implying that they're probably contentious points.
I'd like to see all mod points awarded to a post. The overall scoring for the filters is fine, but I'd still prefer to see (Score: 4 Insightful, 4 Funny) rather than just (Score: 4) or (Score: 4 Funny).
So, does this mean that Google can potentially sue slashdot.. or is this patent going to be used in defence?
In another attempt at sanity.. how can this be granted at all... given that they stated how a similar idea already exists and is in use in the wild?
You have a sick, twisted mind. Please subscribe me to your newsletter.
"Slashdot is the worst implementation of moderation except all the others that have been tried."
Personally, there are things I would tinker with. Google's idea seems interesting. I don't like the fact that mod points expire so soon, I would like to have them when I have the time to read through comments at 0 or even -1. I don't know what the algorithm is but positive votes should have much more weight than negative votes. If a minority vote something interesting or insightful it's worth reading, even if a majority has modded it down. Pure flamebait or trolling would get no positive votes at all.
Subtle humour or sarcasm often gets modded down.
There is too much twitch moderation - skimming a comment for a couple of seconds and modding based on that.
People who do more modding down than modding up shouldn't get points (I don't know if this already happens).
There needs to be a forking system, so that interesting discussions can persist, not disappear off the page.
All that being said, slashdot is the only website I have ever seen where I want to read comments. It still baffles me how news websites for example provide a platform for utter stupidity just below a quality article.
The /. community is also not exactly very easy to swamp out or talk down. Google shills have too much time on their hands. Tell them to go do something socially responsible against Tuoblasfemo. They're in the same league - so to speak.
I was listening to Bruce talking about federated trust systems last week. Handing out username and passwords seems a little antiquated. Giving privileges to anybody with a Facebook logon is stupid (I now have two facebook accounts...) Giving privileges to a group I trust does seem to be a sensible compromise. Academic networks are the most obvious example but there's no reason a certain trust level can't be established for any network you might belong to, professional or social.
Wasn't this once solved, years ago, by the original meta-moderation? I remember being asked to determine whether a moderation was accurate by reading the comment in question and answering whether the moderation in question was fair or unfair. That was unlike today, where I'm just asked to moderate the comment again, with the full range of moderation choices. The former is a control on moderators, while the latter just remoderates comments.
With the old system, a sockpuppet that was used to unfairly moderate comments would eventually be meta-modded and lose its moderator points.
Why was the old system abandoned? Am I missing something?
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
For years I have browsed with Funny set to -1 so they won't score higher than 4 and Interesting/Informative 5s will be higher.
But yes, I do think /. has gone downhill over the years. Almost makes me wonder if we should start a Slashold or Oldslash site and repost stories that had truly interesting discussions, kind of like "mining the old gold."
"Those who consume the bulk of goods are those who make them. We must never forget this secret of our prosperity."
Doesn't Tupperware already have a patent, or at least "prior art", on something like this?