Slashdot Mirror
Assorted Slashdot Updates
As the dust is settling around my recent coding frenzy, here is a bunch of updates to the system:I've added a field for users to store their Public Keys on their User Info page. The M2 page is now linked into the system (if you have access anyway). The Comments on the M2
page also link the story that the comment is attached to (and please read the notes on the page: duplicate comments are not a bug!). I
removed the sig from Logged in AC previews (it only affected previews,
but it was scaring people). Both the FAQ and the Moderation Guidelines have been updated. And the grand Slashbox Poo-Bah
CowboyNeal reports that
AuctionBeagle, Security Focus, TheNextLevel, Gnotices, and WomenGamers are the latest additions to the SlashBoxes. Enjoy.
Here's my observation on what happens with the Karma:
Recently, the Karma cap was reset at 30 points for those who had a fortune stashed.
Meta moderating yet does not seem to affect Karma; however, you can check your users page before and after metamoderate.
Personaly, I'd like to see a one time bonus point for registering your public pgp key as privacy is a worthwhile promotion and privacy awareness is important.
So, I've been leaking karma since MetaModeration kicked in. I've lost three points over the last two days, which (assuming this is a linear curve) should shoot me into the red in a week or two. Apparently one or more of my moderations was deemed unfair. If I click "Will Not Moderate" and somehow ban myself from ever moderating again, can I stop from being MetaModerated?
Moderation Karma MetaModeration... bah. Could you guys take yourselves any mmore seriously?
I email Rob about this, and his reply (if anyone cares) was:
> Just don't moderate!
>
> Or moderate wiser I guess.
>
> But the reality is don't sweat it. Its not
> anything important, its just
> a friggin field in a database. Don't let it
> guide your life!
>
> Your existing moderation will be in the system
> for a few weeks but it all
> slides out after a few weeks and then it won't be
> an issue any more.
Just make sure you have cookies enables in your preferences. Should work correctly then.
If enough people think that the comment *ISN'T* a troll, the karma of the people who moderate it will be blasted to HELL and back, and perhaps they won't do it again.
I wouldn't call it a troll, but I couldn't really blame someone for marking down a "Karma sucks because I have so karma, so mark this post up!" post.
Perhaps a better waste of time would be to fix all the ugly bits, like the sections box, or the post comment page.
--Somebody who appreciates what Rob and the guys have done, but thinks they might be losing the plot slightly.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
O QlE8nHamIpgAoPsx
Hash: SHA1
I moderated so I can't post logged in, but this is a simple example
of a pgp key in use. This is a signed post. If you have PGP you can verify that this message is from the user that owns this key. I decided since no-one I saw (notice the phrasing) had done a demonstration I would.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGPfreeware 6.5.1 for non-commercial use
iQA/AwUBN9eCTta2+kuMjp8jEQIwjwCeOZViJPUq4pqy8jx
iQSj/3zwXZQlWKcKGyHOK7Uq
=G1A+
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
I believe the considered sum of points should decrease by 10% every n months... but then, it's better to keep a fractional value :-)
You bring up an important point as it would be unerving to post on occasion at the wrong time with an unpopular opinion and months later discover my account has defaulted to -1. Then again, it saves us from the barrage of trolls. Stomp on one and two more pop up in its place. Karma may be a necessary evil. That's why its always a good idea to promote more than demote when handed the tools of moderation. It can be both encouraging and discouraging. Best bet is to reward good and realize some people could be absent minded at times.
Hmmm, is this a flame, or a joke. If I said /. should ignore the one's from redhat.com for example, would I get flamed, or would it be a joke? The smiley face implies a joke, but maybe it's a clevarly hidden flame. I mean, do you really want to neglect a part of the techie community just becuase you disagree with them? Of course, if it was a joke, then it wouldn't really matter. So, flame, or joke?
I have to agree the M$ haters on /. have become irrational...Whether you like them or not, any move M$ makes is significant to the computer world...There would not be an OSS movement if M$ was not such a shithead company but that is beside the point. Apple's business practices are as BAD if NOT WORSE yet there is no random bashing here....BTW I AM NOT a M$ employee and have no affiliation with said company...PS I HAVE AN ID but I refuse to login. I am protesting the SNOBS at /. and their views of AC's...Half the valid info comes from people who do not or can not reveal their names, that does not de-value the info...'oh well i've vented'
I have seen several forged keys out there for various software developers like the "offical" RedHat RPM key... Because the slashdot login is passed over the network in the clear, it is very easy to snake the user/pass or cookie, login as someone, and replace their key. The big problem is when a bunch of people decide they want to sign the fake key and distribute it on other sites...
P.S. I HAVE AN ID but I refuse to log in. I am protesting the SNOBS at /. and their views of AC's...
Hmmm... I've been frequenting this site since January, and until now I've seen it as open, fun, and interesting. But since the deal with trolls and the W. Richard Stevens story, this place has become rather elitist.
It seems now that if you're an Anonymous Coward, you're somehow "bad," your posts aren't worth reading, and you don't deserve any respect. But if you have an account, people listen to you, moderators look favourably on you, and you're "part of the club." In fact, that's the way it seems. Slashdot is becoming a sort of exclusive club.
Now, on the other hand, requiring an account to post messages is not asking a lot. On many other website discussion groups, you need an account (like on MP3.com, for instance). An even better example would be this: In my city, we have a "FreeNet," where people can get free email and newsgroup access. There are also private newsgroups, exclusive to the FreeNet, in a variety of topics, where you can chat with local residents, post want ads, etc. It's actually a very nice service. But you need an account to post messages on the newsgroups and use the service to its fullest. Without an account, you can log in as a guest and read the newsgroups, but you can't post. Membership is free. (Though they beg you for money like mad...)
But having Anonymous Coward posting on Slashdot does have its advantages -- like inside information employees of a company could give that would get them fired if their identities were revealed. Even showing their IP address would be dangerous in this case. There is also the fact that it prevents newbies from feeling alienated when they first use the site, and it allows them to get a feel for it before getting an account.
Now, I read some of the offending W. Richard Stevens comments. That stuff is disgusting. But if you feel so strongly about this, why didn't you delete the obscene comments? How hard is that?
But back to my original point -- this is starting to become an exclusive club, of sorts. I've started to see less and less Anonymous Coward posts lately. Maybe you won't have to remove anonymous posting -- it'll die out by itself.
But then again... I'm just an Anonymous Coward -- what in the world do I know?
Well I tried the MetaModeration today and I liked it. I think it should be made clearer that:
People are NOT Moderating the comment, rather the Moderation it recieved.
On the same moderation issue, one of the most important things to do is to know who anonymous posters are. (for Rob)
Here is an example of a way to do it:
Like many newspapers, the New York Times publishes anonymous letters to the editor, however the editors of the paper verify the identity of the writer, they just don't publish it. Rob has moved in that direction and I applaud it.
Think about this:
1) Rob never needs to look at who posts anonymously, but he can if a problem arrises.
2) It leaves the possibility to change cowards karma despite being anonymous. (not sure how that would work out)
just my $.02,
-Davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
I meant a directory of the registered users. obviously anonymous users wouldn't be involved. This doesn't necessarily have anything to do with comments, just user registrations.
/. just by knowing their username.
And yeah, I guess being able to opt out would be nice. I just think it'd be nice to write an email to anybody who's registered at
Perhaps this would be true because it's so targeted (given the readership of /.) but there's obviously a way to stop this, whether it's through a terms-of-service or whatever. After all, I'm listed in the Netcenter directory, and I get maybe 1 spam a month, if that. And that's usually through mailing lists that I'm subscribed to.
What does everybody think of an LDAP directory of all registered slashdot users ala the Netscape Directory? I, personally, think it'd be kinda useful, and neat!
Seeing you mention your user number prompted me to think, "what is mine?"
So I checked and I'm Official Slashdot Addict #132.. I didn't know I was that far up.. but now that I think about it I think I signed up the first day the user system was available.
As for deleting, there is no way I know of.
---
Damn, I hate to gush, but this is cool. I just had a go of the M2 (after working hard over the last couple of days to overcome a mysterious -1 karma I'd somehow acquired, despite never having been moderated in either direction, to my knowledge), and it was good fun. And Security Focus and Gnotices are two very welcome additions to the Slashbox collection!
Three cheers for Slashdot!
Having the User info box for your public keys is nice, but please, if you use PGP, use the key servers! That way automated PGP systems like "metamail" (which also supports GPG) can look up your key when you send email and even, if necessary, fetch other keys used to sign it. Ideally, do both. BAL's PGP Public Key Server is a good place to start - all the servers mirror each other's content, so any should work.
--
Xenu loves you!
I never expected such quick service from Rob. *big grin*
Anyhow, the above comment is exactly what I was hoping would happen.
The people who were a bit hesitant about the idea yesterday have a very good point: you should use keyservers. I have had my keys up on keyservers for some time.
But I still think that having a Public Key display on Slashdot is a useful thing, and am glad Rob thought so, too, if only for further publicity of PGP and GnuPG.
Thanks, Rob!
--
Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page
I have one desire: could we have an option to sort responses by the author's karma rather than the post's rating? I think that would be, in the very least, an interesting option with which to play.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
I'm seeing something similar. I thought that it first reported at 40, then it was 30, then 29, 28, now 26 . . . all without any of my posts being moderated . . .
Taking yesterday's 26, and adding 3 points for a lawyerly post, I now have 30 . . .
:)
Hmm, is a penta-thingy handling this?
It sucks to be stuck at -8 man, feel your pain and all but I don't really want to see my old karma fade.. not positive karma anyway. We could make this into a fun game, let's have that highscore list for the most karmic slashdotters and really give the ACs something to bitch at!
On my PC I had to resort to Internet Explorer 5 to be able to click a parent link and then use the back button to come back to the same 10 questions, with Netscape Communicator 4.51 I'd get a new set every time. I am using Windows NT *duck*. I was waiting around for others to report this, but I haven't seen mention in any of the discussions about M2 so.. anyone else?
Flo
Hi,
I have tried two days of meta moderating now and I came up with a couple of observations and questions about the process.
First of all, I must admit that I hit the back button and rehit the meta moderate link a couple of times until I got a batch of moderations I felt comfortable with. There were always one or two questions I didn't feel sure about, and I feel that leaving them unrated is just a third choice indicating neutrality. Like when you feel a moderation isn't really unfair, but perhaps just unnecessary. Maybe I gave the whole thing too much thought in general, I looked at the parent link 7 out of 10 times or so.
I proceeded carefully, I just didn't want to ruin my chance at getting normal moderator status. In a way, the whole meta moderation worries me a bit.. it seems, you can lose eligibility to moderate if you do badly, but you don't win anything noticeable for doing well. Or do you? The way I see it, now, it seems best to do it just once and try to do it best you can.
At times I wasn't sure about distinctions between several positive or several negative moderations. Unfortunately I can't go back to the moderation page to get the link for an example because I've already done a meta moderation today. But I'll try to describe it.
For instance the question would be "is this +1 for 'insightful' a good moderation" and although the article moderated on provided an anecdote that I would certainly have qualified as 'interesting' or maybe 'informative', it was not an article that provided a good overview of or new insight into the larger topic, i.e. what I would call an 'insightful' article. It was just a description of a real life example implementation of something that was being discussed.
I did agree with the positive moderation in general, and I might have rewarded the article with moderation myself if I'd had points, but I would not have put it in the category 'insightful'. For that reason I should've judged the moderation 'unfair', but I agreed with the general sentiment and didn't want to be overly critical so I left them unrated.
Am I taking things too seriously? Maybe I'm just not a good meta moderator. I don't find it to be an easy thing to do. Often I'm not satisfied with just clicking the buttons and I want to add a commentary of my thoughts on the moderation. But that's probably taking the moderation issue too far, it's really more interesting to just discuss a real article instead.
Flo
Public keys are a part of PGP(or GPG). The way it works, when you use PGP you first generate a keypair. This consists of a private key, and a public key.
The private key you keep for yourself, and don't allow anyone else access to. This is what you use when signing something, or when decrypting something that is encrypted with your public key.
Your public key you can post on a website, publish to a keyserver, or even send via e-mail. This is what is used by other people to encrypt things. Something encrypted to your public key can only be decrypted by your private key.
I know this is a really basic explanation, but for information, check out http://www.pgp.com, http://www.gnupg.org, or do a search on your favorite search engine for PGP or public key cryptology.
Topher
hi!
I think, you get Karma, if a comment of yours is moderated up and if your moderation of a comment is meta-moderated as "Fair".
--
bye, Frank!
Never argue with an idiot. He will lower you to his level and then beat you with experience.
"can your karma dwindle (i.e. expire)? "
I do not think so. I really hope not. However, that FAQ and the Moderator Guidelines are less than illuminating.
The FAQ says:
Many people look at the comments they have posted and don't see anything with a negative score, but yet they have negative karma. Remember that slashdot is only showing you a few weeks worth of comments on your user info page: that negative karma could have come from 6 months ago.
I'd say, this means, that Karma doesn't expire, at least for a long time :)
--
bye, Frank!
Never argue with an idiot. He will lower you to his level and then beat you with experience.
Try not to worry about the total Score of the comment, but concern yourself with the individual moderation at hand.
Rob's wording is too weak: try not to worry, but it's still clear enough.
There's already a robust and well-supported infrastrucure in place for the network storage and retrieval of PGP/GPG public keys with the existing public keyserver network. The most compelling feature of the keyserver network is that it promotes the web-of-trust model of key trust, allowing users to sign and update trusted keys. This means that the web of trust continues to spread and become ultimately more useful.
The collection of pgp keys is not static data and should not be treated as such. It's a corpulent, growing, interrelated lattice of identies and trust relationships that changes continuously.
A redundant, and static storage of public keys in slashdot is nice and geeky, but not as useful as the public key networks. Key storage will not be beneficial without update capabilities, and I think we all can agree that such function is well beyond the scope of the slashdot engine. There is already a tool in place which is nearly ubiquitious for retreiving public keys on the net -- let's support that and not try to re-invent the wheel.
Rather, I think what would be useful would be a way for slashdot users to store and display their PGP Fingerprint and Key ID. Not the key itself, but simply the unique fingerprint of the key.
This is, I think, much closer to the usage philosophies of the public keyserver system. In fact, with a more rigid entry format (i.e. a field for just the key ID), Rob could even code links to the public keyservers to retreive a users current key in a dynamic manner.
For instance, if there were a place in my profile to enter my key ID: 0xE43C5FC3 there could easily be a link in the header above my comments linking to a keyserver using the url: http://pgp5.ai.mit .edu:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xE43C5FC3
Plus a line for verification of my fingerprint:
D50C 1ABB 0D80 CC78 2939 FBE4 B379 C4A5 E43C 5FC3
to add yet another datapoint in people's ability to evaluate whether the key 0xE43C5FC3 really belongs to me.
A much more useful solution, I think. It Still allows slashdot to further promote the use of encryption while not attempting to address problems which are already solved.
Incidentally, I was surprised by Rob's statement that he thinks 2-3 of 10 comments are mis-moderated. Personally, I think the system works superbly, except when it gets swamped with trolls. My greatest difficulty when moderating is that everything I go to mark up has already been promoted.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Anyone had a look at Rob's Karma lately?
Or Hemos's, for that matter?
Hrm...
(This is meant to be funny, kiddos...)
Do you have a
I mean, it just popped up at the top of my /. page when I came to read this afternoon.
/.er seeing this? Every day? Only for a testing period?
/. comment? Right now, very few. How many will see the effect of a given moderation? A whole lot more... right now. But for how long?
/.'s (fairly) new moderation system to a friend, he commented, "That's sort of oddly big-brother, isn't it?"
Does this have the same selection criteria as regular moderation, or is every (logged-in)
Also, as I've just been reading what Hofstadter has to say about recursion and meta-stuff in Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (meta-genies in his case, Chapter V and thereabouts), how long before there's meta-meta-moderation, and so forth?
How deeply into this self-checking are we going to go before the moderation is really no more effectual than the posting? I mean, how many people actually read any given
On a separate-but-related note, when I explained
My only response was "Well, yeah, in a publicly-held sort of way."
Hrm.
Do you have a
So true! Those comments get moderated up, generate most of the replies, and get the most attention. So this is one of the drawbacks to a scoring/moderation system, you can miss out on some good stuff that just didn't get posted in time.
I've been making a concious effort to read the newest, lowest scored posts when I have points to try and promote articles that others missed. But even then, I only hit new articles. And if the M2 system means anything, other moderators are much worse than me.
Bleh!
Bleh!
Could we have a way to specify the order our Slashboxes appear? I was thinking instead of checkboxes to pick them, we could enter a number indicating where in our sequence we wanted that Slashbox. That way I wouldn't have to spend a bunch of time re-ordering them when I add new ones or my preferences get lost.
On a side note, anyone notice that the ArsTechnica box is always well behind the site? Other Slashboxes maintain concurrency a bit better, can the ArsBox be made to do so also?
Bleh!
It looked like my karma was bumped up when I meta-moderated yesterday, but not today. Maybe it's some fraction of a point (rounded up), maybe he changed it, or maybe I hallucinated.
What I didn't get is, he said the reward for meta-moderating would never put you over the top for (I assume he meant) moderator access or the initial 2. In that case, what's it good for? Unless karma has some additional meaning, I don't get it. If this reward is not counted toward the things that karma is good for, then it doesn't serve any real purpose. Just seeing a bigger number on your profile page would be a psychological reward, but it would also cause confusion if the number stopped corresponding to the actual value used to calculate the other things.
I think having it count is fine. Moderating and meta-moderating are really "community service", since they are activities that take time and thought and aren't as rewarding as posting. This is even more true of meta-moderation, since its results are not as visible and it cannot be done as part of ordinary reading, but requires going to a special page. However, it's right that the reward should be small, since otherwise it would be too easy -- it's hard to get unearned karma by having one's posts upgraded, since someone else's decision is involved, but this would be easier to abuse.
It also wasn't quite clear (or maybe I missed it) what effect meta-moderation has. If a moderator's decisions are found to be unfair, is his access revoked, or does he lose karma (eventually making him ineligible), or what? Such punishments should not be on a hair-trigger, but it makes sense to have some such system. (What else is the point, right?)
How do these sound for karma awards:
Using all granted moderator points: +1
Since it's perfoming a service, and you had to refrain from posting in order to do it.
Meta-moderating for a particular day: +1/3
Also a service, and takes extra time, but easier to do, and hence easier to abuse, so smaller amount.
Having one's moderations judged ("fair"/"unfair"): (+/-)1/10
I assume this is the whole point of meta-moderation. For symmetry, there should be both a reward and a punishment. They should both be small to keep the total effect reasonable.
I'm not so sure about having karma expire -- the problem is that it is unfair to infrequent posters, who might always make good comments, but never enough within the time window. Of course, I recognize that the alternative greatly favors longtime members, Maybe the best would be to use the average score, or base the expiration on "the most recent n comments", instead of "the past m months." Plus, I like the idea of having it be a cumulative history of one's participation. It would be better for the threshold to be incrementally increased for older members, instead.
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
Thank you Rob and all other Slashdot editors.
--
Why can't I moderate something "Wrong" or at least "Grossly Misinformed"?
well, one thing you could do would be to delete (er, if possible) and create a new account. this would reset your karma to 0. true, you wouldnt *gain* any karma for a couple months, but depending on how negative yours is now, that may be less time than it would take to get your current account up to >0.
incidentally, one of the reasons a new account doesnt start accumulating karma immediately is probably to avoid situations like yours...you just happened to have bad timing i guess...
--siva
Keyboard not found.
Keyboard not found.
Press F1 to continue.
Does anyone else think it would be useful to make downward moderation more expensive than upward moderation? Most of the malicious moderation horror stories are related to downgrading good material rather than rewarding crap.
-- Jeff Paulsen
I'm on mac os using netscape 4.61 and keep getting this 'eek you've found a nasty bug - blasting your preferences reset them' message at the to of the right column... is this related to recent changes? i didn't see this during the day- is anyone else getting this?
Yeah, they're set and it hasn't happened today. I'm at work and on a linux box and everything is going smooth (well except for the fact that images don't seem to want to come up ;(). Sometimes the cookies work, sometimes they don't. Not bitching- just an observation.
So, offtopic, eh? I thought that maybe what I was expriencing had to do with the topic, maybe not. H'mm, I wonder if it had to do with me breathing the evil words 'mac os'.
I'm not going to risk moderating anymore, because meta-moderation has all the potential for abuse as moderation without the built-in correction.
Why? If somebody M2's all positive moderation on pro-microsoft remarks and all negative moderation on pro-Linux remarks as unfair, while M2ing all positive moderation on pro-Linux remarks and all negative moderation on pro-Microsoft remarks as fair, it may very well not get caught by whatever heuristics Rob is using.
Thus, this M2er is unfairly zapping good moderators in the pursuit of his biases, while the moderator doesn't even know for what he's being zapped. And there isn't even the corrective of the M2 being flagged in disco threads like moderation is. At least unfair moderation could be reported as an abuse to Rob, but you don't even have that option for unfair M2, because you don't even know when or to what it happened!
It was my understanding that the moderators can't delete now. When /. was just a wee little thing, just those that worked on the site with CmdrTaco and Hemos had the ability to delete posts that were in appropriate or offensive.
/.er's, then to 400 /.'er's then to the current form of MetaModeration, moderators lost the ability to delete posts. Now they only have the ability to reduce the score of an article. Useful or insightful comments are likewise boosted.
/. account owner, to set their scope higher or lower to include or disclude those comments deemed poor.
/. community is able to determine for itself, which comments are the most important and which are the most distracting.
When moderation was introduced first to 25
It is up
Thus, the
Baggio
Time flies like an arrow;
Time flies like an arrow;
Fruit flies like a bananna
I just did my civic duty and meta-moderated, but I came across one slight problem. I noticed a post that had been moderated as "redundant". Since these are random postings to random stories, I have no way of telling if they were really redundant. That could leave a loophole if anyone wanted to abuse the system.
"Unfair" seems to imply that you feel there was undue bias in the moderation. Is it also meant to include moderations that you think are just plain wrong? ie. something not funny being rated as Funny.
"You can purchase the amazing CD of emails addresses of nerds for only $19.99. Over 500 000 email addresses! Compiled from sites like slashdot, .... We retrieved all the entries and now you don't have to do all the work.
These geeks will guy anything if it looks like it might be a cool gadget..."
I think you get the idea.
Its getting to the point where I need to operate in both "News For Nerds" AND "Cheesy Portal" mode. I was really excited by Slashboxes but now there are so many I want the regular page looks... well... odd if I include them all. I think once the massive M2 frenzy is settled you guys should really ponder some improvements to the Slashboxes. I for one think they are a *great* feature and bear as much of a think-through as anything else. Kudos, all.
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
... I concur.
My Karma has gone down alarmingly, from 36 to 25.
It makes me wonder what I've done wrong. Ouch!
D
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Is this the same thing as the "fingerprint"?
RateVegas.com - Vegas Reviews
Public keys are part of PGP and GPG encryption. In fact, GPG encryption was covered in this story just yesterday.
The public key is what you give to others so that they can encrypt something that only you can read. It also allows others to verify stuff that you've signed.
There is also a private key, which, as you might have guessed remains private. This allows you to decrypt and sign stuff. It is also passphrase protected.
Now that /. has a spot to put your public key, I may just have to get GPG and start using encruption again.
-Brent--
I got rotated into moderation recently and am seeing how it really does work. With only 5 points it really makes sense to boost good posts rather than flaming them. I also like the 3 day term; I already ready /. too much and as much as I'd like to contribute I initially groaned at the idea of spending time reading un-moderated posts. I never used to read comments because they were useless before moderation; afterwards it has so much value.
Amusing that those most interested in moderation will post to this topic, meaning that they can't moderate it; lol
That last paragraph is a totally kick-ass idea!!!
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Add a pref so we can select whether the "No Score +1 Bonus" is, by default, checked off or not. I have some karma, but I feel pretty guilty when I post a flame at an accidental score of 2. ;-)
Oh, better yet, get rid of the +1 Bonus checkbox, and give us a .. um .. (I don't know the name of the widget) a menu-thingie so we can select our own score from the range of -1 through the karma default. i.e. In a situation where I know I'm going off topic, instead of getting to pick a starting score of 1 or 2, lemme pick -1, 0, 1, or 2. Then give us a pref so we can pick the default setting.
---
Have a Sloppy day!
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I too have a terribly negative karma, mainly due to, I think, the first very few posts I made, which I accidentally reposted as I learned the system, and were thus hypermoderated into the ground as off-topic. Now my karma is so low I'll probably never get out.
--
Make mine methylphenidate.
In case anyone reads this, is there any way at all to search for all the comments written by a user, or at least by myself? I can't find any way that pulls up the old comments, so I can't even find out why my karma is so low. (Note the lovely end run on on-topic-ity (yes, ontopicity is not a word, and if it did, it probably would mean the general study of imagery; but why use the correct word (relevancy) when you can use nested parentheses (in honor of the short story Kappa Nu Nexus (by Avram Davidson (et al.)?)).
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Make mine methylphenidate.
Exactly. I'd upmoderate you, but my karma blows (see above) and thus can't. I really believe in networked info like the public key servers, CPAN, and other mirrors (e.g. Linux); it's the only way that the little guys can really hope to fight the big guys (corps). Of course, it's not implementable in a lot of cases: hard for there to be independent /. mirrors and such, with current tech; in other cases, copyright makes such mirroring difficult. But the big guys are already getting together to do mirroring for their own crap (see Akamai ); why can't we do it too?
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Make mine methylphenidate.
Crap; I didn't nest my parentheses correctly. I deserve to be smacked (but not by downmoderation, please! I can't afford that blow to my karma).
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Make mine methylphenidate.
As you can see from checking my user info, I'm at -8. Restarting is certainly one possibility; another would be to write such scintillatingly good posts that they get wildly up-moderated. The problem with that is that you have to write a scintillatingly good comment pretty quickly; posts written after the first hour or two of a /. posting, I think, are largely ignored. More, I'm not a Linux guru, so my posts are generally only of moderate interest to the mean /.er. My user number isn't massively low (15267) but just think what it would be if I made a new account. The horrors.
Is there any way to delete an account? There isn't an obvious one. And it's not mentioned in the FAQ.
Taco talks a bit in the FAQ about there not being Karma tracking implemented. I sure would appreciate it. He even almost admits that it's kind of crappy to only show recent posts but count old posts in your Karma. I really think there should be a statute of limitations on karma...after a while, old posts stop contributing to karma, and it fades. Yes, I know that doesn't really follow what real karma would do, but this ain't really karma.
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Make mine methylphenidate.
Most of the downward moderation I've seen is related to "first posts", completely offtopic posts, spam, and other such Dangers of Public Message Boards.
/. without logging in, and those who filter by score when logged in.
The MetaModeration system should take care of the odd misguided moderator who downs something for arbitrary or malicious reasons. I think it's a pretty good idea. Making downward moderation more expensive would make junk posts even more noticeable for those who read
...is probably dependent on someone updating the "channel" or .rdf files that /. pulls from each site.
.rdf file doesn't do it at quite the same time the rest of the site is updated. You may want to contact them about it, or ask CowboyNeal here at /. about how the boxes are updated, just in case it really is a /. issue.
I'm assuming the person at Ars Technica who is supposed to update the
I have to admit I've been guilty more than thrice of updating my main site without putting anything on the Updates page. It happens, people get busy.
If you don't post for a while, can your karma dwindle (i.e. expire)?
I hope not. Personally, I think it should work like an uncursed luckstone in NetHack -- negative karma will expire (at a rate of, say, 1 point every two weeks), but positive karma will not expire.
Justification: once someone has negative karma, there are two possibilities -- (a) the person is a troll, or (b) the person is actively disliked by one or more moderators. Now, the M2 system will (at least theoretically) discourage bad moderation, but there are probably a few people out there who fall into category (b) due to moderator activity long ago. But in either case, people tend to mature over time -- and on the Internet, they tend to mature rather more quickly than in real life. (Or maybe I'm just naive or optimistic....) But anyway, I think that people who have misbehaved in the past shouldn't be punished forever -- by being stuck with bad karma for a while, they're "paying their dues", and when the "sentence" is over, they should be back to normal.
Does this mean that we should start clear-signing our posts?
I'd do it -- but only if I could hook external programs into my web browser's textareas. I wrote a "Mozilla wishlist" item in another slashdot post a few weeks back -- I want to be able to use an external text editor instead of the built-in text editor when writing in a textarea. If we extend this into a generic external program hook, then we could bind keystrokes to clear-sign textarea contents, or spell-check it with ispell, or invoke a real text editor (one that's more than 50x10..), etc.
Maybe I'll look into adding this into Bugzilla. They must have some sort of wishlist section. At least I think it would be an incredibly useful feature.
Personaly, I'd like to see a one time bonus point for registering your public pgp key
It's impossible to confirm that the PGP key is valid. Someone who wants that point could fill in random text.
(The key validation issue is actually a deeply important one. If you download my PGP key from my home page, how far do you trust its accuracy? How do you know my web page/account hasn't been cracked? That my Slashdot account hasn't been cracked? These are deep issues.)
How do I enecrypt emails and stuff
For e-mail: use a mailer that supports PGP (I use mutt) if you can. If not, then you can save the message as a file and then encrypt it manually.
For general use: pgp -ea filname will create filename.asc which is a PGP-encrypted version of the file. You will be prompted for the recipient -- i.e., who will be able to read the file. Now, this is for PGP 2.6.3 -- I can't help with the other ones. You could try reading the manuals which came with the software....
how can I add a public key i got from someones webpage or something?
If the public key is in a file called key.asc then type pgp -ka key.asc . That's "key add".
everything is in PDF format and i HATE acrobat reader
PGP 2.6.3 predates PDF. The documentation that accompanies PGP 2.6.3 is in ASCII text format.
the network associates one
I recommend against using this. PGP 2.6.3 is the de facto standard -- the newer versions can read PGP 2.6.3 keys, but not vice versa (PGP 2.6.3 cannot read PGP 5 keys). If you don't want to use PGP 2.6.3, I recommend GnuPG.
Of course, you might want to create a PGP 2.6.3 key pair, but actually use the PGP 5 (or newer) software -- that way you can handle keys from both versions, and people who only have the older version can still handle your key. Last time I checked, PGP 5 could not create a PGP-2.6.3-compatible key pair -- you actually had to download and run the old software if you wanted to generate a PGP 2.6.3 key.
GnuPG can't create PGP-2.6.3-compatible key pairs, either, but that's because of patent restrictions on the RSA algorithm.
And i'm talking about the traditional moderation here. Attaching a score to an article is a fair idea - however all these various ratings that go along with it are pointless, confusing and redundant.
What is different between 'interesting' and 'insightful'? 'troll' and 'off-topic'? Is 'over-rated' a -1, 'under-rated' a +1?
Why not drop the meaningless ratings and just go with hard scores (+1, -1)?
Public keys are used for encryption programs so that other users can, by using your public key, read things that you send them or confirm you digital signature... A search on this would surely turn up many interesting and helpful pages.
-- atomly
I just went to metamoderate, and it looks like a nice setup. One thing I found hard, tho, was that a LOT of the moderations I was supposed to rate were "Overrated." Could CmdrTaco add something to the code so we can tell what the rating was before the moderation was put in place? In fact, it would be useful if in general it displayed the score either immediately before, or immediately after the moderation in question, instead of the total score as of now (an up moderation that's fair from 1 to 2 may not be fair from 4 to 5). Keep up the good work!
Visit me on #weirdness on the Galaxynet.
I would only support this if it were added separately, so that a user would have to turn on a preference to see it (sort of like the signature, but defaulting to off instead of on). Otherwise it would get annoying really fast. But if it could be turned off it might be rather cool (tho I doubt many would bother to use it).
Visit me on #weirdness on the Galaxynet.
How about a "New slashboxes" slashbox?
Visit me on #weirdness on the Galaxynet.
The problem is, you don't know which moderation you're looking at. You could be looking at the person who first changed it from 1 to 2, instead of from 4 to 5. Rob, PLEASE give us before and after scores for the moderation we're moderating.
Visit me on #weirdness on the Galaxynet.
I agree that "fair vs. unfair" seems like the wrong distinction to make for meta-moderation. If I understand what Rob's trying to achieve, "appropriate vs. inappropriate" or "accurate vs. inaccurate" would be a better distinction.
It's still difficult to know how to respond. For example, one of the posts I was asked to meta was a totally pointless, homophobic racist rant. The moderation that I was asked to comment on was "-1; Offtopic." That was weird: do I say it was "fair" because it was a negative moderation point, or "unfair" because "Flamebait" was more accurate than "Offtopic"?
Is the purpose of M2 to comment just on whether a piece should have gotten positive or negative moderation? In that case "fair/unfair" may be okay.
I do like it, and it's a very clever solution to a tricky problem. But if the metamoderators don't fully understand what they're being asked to do then it may be very bad.
MetaModeration, so far, seems like a great idea. To moderate the moderation seems to be both fair and wise, and it should help potential moderators realize when it's prudent to moderate.
I found that, as I was reading the posts moderated up to +4 and +5, most of them didn't really deserve to be there. For quite a few of the +5s (almost all, in fact) I had to say the rating was unfair, since it is my belief that Rob intended +4 and +5 to basically include information that the post left out, so when comments were sorted by score the reader could see any last-minute additions. For that reason, pretty much every +5 "Insightful" post or +5 "Funny" post seemed like an unfair raise to me, like the moderators were too lazy to look for the other gems deep in the comment page and so merely moderated already-high posts up. I also noticed that, of the ones I said were unfair, a large percentage were in the first 20 posts of that thread. In one of the rare instances where this didn't seem to be as true (the story about black figures in technology, for instance) quite a few very good posts had very high id numbers. Still, many of these were rated to +4 or +5, but I only found one that was so truly "Insightful" and which so beautifully incorporated the basic arguments inherent in the story that it deserved a +4 or +5, and I gave it a very hearty "Fair" moderation rating.
My general feeling, as well, is that +3 is fine for "Funny", but it sometimes seems that I'd like to filter them out. Some stories get funny posts moderated up, but the content of the story doesn't really lend itself easily to humor. A way for users to select which moderation reasons to view would be very good.. sometimes I'd like to just not see the "flamebait" or "troll" posts.. or just a few others. But enough personal choices.
Anyway, I think it'd be more than interesting to see a graph of the results of at least the past two days of MetaModeration, because I would be truly interested in seeing whether M^2ers agree with me that most +4 and +5 posts deserve to be also deemed "Overrated"..
Regards,
-efisher
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this
Good idea SEWilco. For myself, I would like to see multiple 'comment viewing modes' and a facility to easily switch between viewing modes. You could have a "moderator mode" (-1, newest first, flat), "weed out the dross mode" (2, highest first, threaded) and more that I can't think of right now :(
Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
That is a great idea! Then all CmdrTaco has to do is offer a free web based e-mail service and give out addresses to devout slashdotters(sp?) Just think, me@slashdot.org :) Mmmm, I'm having wet dreams just thinking about it. You could let registered users hack at an off-line copy of the system in time honoured open source fashion. The tag line could be "Go on Evolve yourself". Then onto a Mozilla /. plugin, on-line collaborative moderated bookmarks, strong crypto discussions, automatic web-form filling, IPO and then then buy Yahoo! with the change.
Oops, I think I should reduce my caffiene intake.
Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
The Cunctator wrote /. posting, I think, are largely ignored.
/. processes reoccurs (the metaphorical smack around the head with a cluebat).
/. as quickly as possible so they can begin to contribute useful posts and maintain the high editorial and reflective level (fervent hope here!).
/.
As you can see from checking my user info, I'm at -8. Restarting is certainly one possibility; another would be to write such scintillatingly good posts that they get wildly up-moderated. The problem with that is that you have to write a scintillatingly good comment pretty quickly; posts written after the first hour or two of a
Now this is an area where "tribal elders" come in useful. Often there are topics which have been heaviliy debated in a past thread and as a result, Rob may have modified (as in this case) the moderation process. But whenever new readers/users enter the community, they are unaware of this history and a similar process of education of
In corporations, this is called tacit knowledge and when enough natural migration or significant downsizing of the smartest people occur, can lead to a significant loss of "know-how" and resulting dysfunctional decline. For example, by reading previous threads on moderation, repeated posts that could occur periodically would be minimised (and thus avoid boring and eventually driving away the regulars).
Perhaps as a service, for the people who are new (ie in their grace period), if they attempt to submit a comment, as part of the preview process a couple of links to related threads (based on keywords?) could be supplied with a request to check and see whether they are actually adding anything new to the topic. Hopefully this would bring newcomers up to speed on the jargon and dynamics of
The other thing that may help is that over time, some people would be recognised as designated specialists (in say RedHat or SGI) due to consistently high insights (algorithmically, perform a cluster analysis on topic components) and they get to maintain sub-FAQs/mini-whythis and perhaps the responsibility of contributing a historical context and wrapup session to each thread. Not to deprecate Rob's efforts but it would reduce his workload allowing him to concentrate on selecting the topics and working on the high level structure of
LL
How about a user preference to allow those humorless hackers amongst us to ignore posts flaged as funny? Perhaps something that just ignores any points assigned to a comment under the catagory of "funny".
It seems like one of the top posts is always a joke of some kind. While they might be relevent and even amusing sometimes, I hate consistantly seeing them among the very top posts.
Taking that idea one step further, why not allow us to select the adjustment in points for each catagory? e.g. Offtopic: -1, Flamebait: -2, Insightful: +2, Funny: 0, Informative: +1, etc.
lwn.net/daily
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Put Hemos through English 101!
"An armed society is a polite society" -- Robert Heinlein
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Perhaps there should be a scale for M^2:
-5, -3, -1, 0, +1, +3, +5
Problems are:
- Fair/Unfair works well for negative moderation, but not for positive moderation. (Appropriate/Inappropriate would be better).
- Negative moderation should be more important to M2 than positive moderation, but, at least in the sample of 10 I had, it was mostly positive moderation I was meta moderating. Should be 80/20, I think.
- I may feel that moderating a post to +2 was appropriate, pass on the moderation to +3 and +4, and feel that +5 was entirely inappropriate. That's the only sort of decision that really makes sense for M2ing positive moderation, but you currently don't have the information to do that. Having the effect of the moderation visible (+4->+5, e.g.) would be helpful.
- I have personally used my moderation points to moderate up posts I felt were inappropriately moderated down, but I would hate to see an M2er M2 me down because of that. Again, having some indication of the effects and context of moderation would be helpful.
Whew..., the meta discussion gets difficult to phrase. I like M2, but I do think it needs the tweaks suggested.User Info shows only comments from the last few weeks (and even says so). Karma includes older comments. That's the whole thing.
I still think the Slashboxes section of Preferences needs the Newest Boxes in a separate section for easier decision making.
Public keys are distributed to encrypt messages. The Distributer of the public key has a private key which is the only key which can decrypt a message.
The system: Public key can encrypt but not decrypt
Private key can decrypt and is not distributed.
Have a look at PGP. (or GPG:)
J:)
Oh well, no point in steering now.
Does this mean that we should start clear-signing our posts? I think it might be a good idea, except we already have to use a password to get into the system. Also, it might make the posts longer than they need to be (with the signature). Anyhow, I think adding public keys to the user profile was a great idea. (Thanks, Rob!)
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The DMCA--for corporations, the best copyright law money can buy.
2. Is there any way to specify what order Slashboxes appear in? I decided to try adding a few more Slashboxes, but the poll is no longer at the top of the page, and that's annoying. If it's NOT possible, it really should be.
I assume you mean besides moving them up and down in bubble-sort fashion, by clicking the 'up' or 'down' arrows on the top-right corner of each slashbox. That is annoying, especially when you try moving the top slashbox up, or the bottom slashbox down -- what I expect to happen doesn't seem to happen. Maybe that's me, though.
At any rate, I agree that it would be nice to be able to specify their order beforehand in our preferences (leaving the up and down arrows for 'fine-tuning' of position). I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to implement -- instead of selecting slashboxes by clicking the boxes next to the ones you want, simply give each slashbox a number, and have the user put in an ordered list of numbers, denoting which slashboxes they want, and in what order they want them, e.g.
Of course, the string should be checked for unallowable (and possibly duplicate) values. This seems easy enough, no? It sure would be nice, especially for those who have a large number of slashboxes... who wants to use an O(n^2) sort anyway?-jason
"If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate."
Your post was moderated up.
You're well on your way to competing with the best in the SlashDome.
I sense much power in you, young one.
Looking at the user info page for Hemos I can see that one of his posts was moderated down as a troll (an inappropriate moderation IMO, the post he responded to was about something he wrote in the article).
:-)*
Hmmm, I wonder if anybody has the balls to moderate down Rob's posts. Those "test" posts were waaay offtopic.
I think that happens when an article gets archived.
/25/046231.shtml. It looks static to me, note how comments are displayed flat and display settings cannot be changed.
I think the comments are moved out of the main comment database to keep the size of it down. The articles we can post to have "comments.pl" in the name. An article which has been archived cannot be posted to and is not served via comments.pl. Check this out: http://slashdot.org/articles/99/08
Usually, I referee papers for a conference or a journal to which I may have a submission. This is not taken as a conflict of interest in research; /.
on the contrary it is an indication that you will probably do a good job of peer review. Obviously, I won't kill a paper that comes to me because I need to get my paper in. But I find it very strange when this exclusivity is applied on
So long as we do not moderate our posting up, which is obviously unethical, most of us would be able to contribute meaningfully to the discussion and moderate as well.
The other problem is that a post can catch an eye of a moderator in the first hour or so and then it dwindles for obvious reasons. To alleviate this difficulty, the moderator must have some mechanism to be able to view sections of comments based on time intervals. ("give me the discussions in the last half an hour.")
Finally, "funny" is used rather funnily by many moderators. No "funny" commment should raise above a score of 2 if it has no other intrinsic merit.
What I think need to be added to this feature is pretty simple to explain, but probably quite a bit of trouble to code.
For normal comments, it should show the score the comment had before the moderation, and after. As it is now, you can be looking at a 5 point comment marked overrated. You don't have a clue whether it was called overrated at 2/3, and bumped down one, which would be Unfair, or whether the comment was at 5, bumped down, then marked up again.
Same thing goes for Underrated.
Redundant has been discussed by other people, funny is subjective... It's harder to be able to give good answers than you may think.
As to normal comments:
I had one show up three times on my list of ten... Two times for interesting, once for overrated. If at all possible, give us before and after scores. Please. This would make for much more confidence in the process. (For anyone who cares, I think I left all three in the middle.)
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If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
Don't know about all your questions, but karma can in fact dwindle; it only counts the last few months of moderation (longer than the amount of time your comments show up on your user page).
At least, that's the way I understand it. Someone might be able to correct me.
"You can never have too many elephants on your team."
I use a email service called msgto.com check them out. It an awsome way to avoid ALL SPAM from your life.
War is necrophilia.
Cool. If you get karma for M2 and M1 and posting, I'll be at 20 tomorrow.
;-)
But for posting articles, it should only be if the article is actually approved.
Will in Seattle
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So what are public keys? I've never heard that term before on Slashdot.
Do you receive karma for using moderator points (when you're given them) or when you meta-moderate? (Should you?) Also, karma is listed as being the sum of the points given to your posts by moderators (more or less). What other factors can/should contribute to your karma? Contributing stories? Other stuff? If you don't post for a while, can your karma dwindle (i.e. expire)?
Just wondering.
In case anyone reads this, is there any way at all to search for all the comments written by a user, or at least by myself?
Just click the "User Info" link on any of the user's posts.
As the page states, that only keeps track of comments from the past few weeks.. other than that, I don't believe there's any way to search for a user's comments.
Check the post yesterday about meta-moderation for exact requirements, however here they are as I remember them:
1. Most have an account.
2. Non-negative karma
3. Moderator access hasn't been revoked
4. Hasn't already meta-moderated today (I'm not sure if it goes by the calender day, or by number of hours since you last meta-moderated)
5. Account must be in the oldest 75% of Slashdot accounts.
Those are all I remember.
On another note:
1. It would be nice to see HOW our moderation is fairng (i.e. how many times posts we've moderated have been marked fair/unfair), because I've gotten 8 points of karma in 2 days from this, and I'm wondering what I did right.
2. Is there any way to specify what order Slashboxes appear in? I decided to try adding a few more Slashboxes, but the poll is no longer at the top of the page, and that's annoying. If it's NOT possible, it really should be.
Nifty, isn't it? There's a lot of positive karma flowing around.
See yesterday's post for qualifications, however here they are as I remember them:
1. Logged in, of course
2. Non-negative karma
3. Willing to moderate
4. Moderation rights haven't been revoked
5. Haven't already moderated today
6. Account is in the 75% oldest Slashdot accounts
Being someone who likes to have thousands of pages with preferences to set I especially like the last idea. (Shouldn't be too hard to code) Would be nice to have that. (Maybe with an aditionnal value which determines that all those posts should be excluded and inversely one that makes all the posts show up regardless of their scores)
Oh, MAN.
/. is watching.
You are just trying SO hard for an off-topic. Gotta watch that Karma, now that Big Brother
Whats the M2 page, and what is the deal with only some people being able to access it ???? As in is it for the posters only, or is it for all non anonymous cowards... ??
The Reality in which we choose to live in really sucks
I really hate karma, only because mine is negative, but otherwise I think it's a really cool idea. It's only slightly unfair, for me, because I posted a couple of comments that were moderated +1, a while back, and they weren't factored into my karma, therefore leaving mine negative. So the solution here is for the moderators to moderate this comment to +6 so I can feel like I am among the socially elite among /. readers.
Go to church.
SuPz.orG
Argh! Just think how many man-hours of work time is already lost to the behemoth Slashdot! How much worse will it be if users are encouraged to compete for karma, having to read and reply to articles as soon as they appear to accumulate the best high score?
All over the world, productivity will slump, causing a global stock exchange crisis! Unattended nuclear power plants will go critical! The moon will blow up! And the French will take over the world!
Or something.
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I guess that there will allways be a risk of things like this happening. But if M2's would start m2'ing biasly like that I can't help thinking someone would notice. The moderations will allways be something like judiging 2 major subjects and leaving the rest out.
I hope that I didn't miss anything but after reading the article I don't see the threat of one single biased m2 inflicting as much damage on a moderator like that. An article is m2't but afaik there are more than one m2'er me'ing.
...hmm, perhaps I should be a bit less lazy and type out the whole 'meta moderator' word next time.
I agree with you that some articles are hard to meta-moderate, if you want to be fair about it. For example; I allways tend to skip articles which are moderated 'offtopic' if I'm not 100% sure what the main story featured (in a rough way). If I don't know the main story I can't judge if something is, or is not, offtopic. Like you stated; going to the article again doesn't help because if you do you can be sure the 'meta moderation questions for the day' are altered (I used lynx during my very first meta-moderating).
The point I fail to see is that someone would act different because he/she doesn't want to loose the change to get moderator status.
Perhaps I'm missing something but to me /. isn't a certain way to gain more power in the swirling world of Linux. The ability to gain power by the root; a form of "Linux media" itself. IMVHO its crap to act differently because you want to become a moderator someday.
Slashdot is about news gathering and about discussing topics with other people and last but not least; having fun doing so. Moderation is only a necesary to make it harder for some idiots to spoil our fun we're having in reading/writing at slashdot.
Anyway, thats how I feel about this whole moderation thingie.
Yeah, I had the same problem with the language when I tried M2. I personally think that a lot of posts are marked too generously or inaccurately (especially the "funny" ones), but moderation using the terms "fair" or "unfair" doesn't quite make sense.
/. moderators?
Comments on moderation are probably going to go on for a while, and once something's set, there will be some bemoaning about the final version anyway, so here's my feedback before it goes out of alpha and into, ahem, 'bayta'.
I agree with the suggestion that fair/unfair be relabeled accurate/inaccurate, and if you disagree with the moderation, you should be able to specify that you thought the moderation comment was wrong, or if you thought the comment was over/underrated.
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Perhaps I skimmed the M2 article a little too quickly, but exactly what is the point of moderating the moderators? Does it simply alter the scores for comments on *old* stories? Does a poster getting bad treatment gain karma (which of course does not affect AC's)? Does the feedback come back to
My fault for not catching on if some of the answers are already out there -- I should RTFM, but I wouldn't want anyone getting the wrong idea about me reading "man pages"...
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E2 IN2 IE?