I agree that 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 often I'll actually ask to be downmodded (response to an offtopic comment, etc). But I'd make one change -- bring the old metamoderation system back. It was far superior IMO.
From what I've seen, those comments are unpopular comments that are well thought out and well written, and the poster incorrectly thinks he's going to be modded down because it's an unpopular opinion. Since he knows these are unpopular, he most likely takes extra effort NOT to be baiting flames or trolling.
Getting +5 is pretty easy, actually. All you have to do is be polite, informative, insightful, and accurate. Contrary to popular opinion, few insightful or interesting comments are modded down unless they're poorly written.
I think the ones complaining that "unpopular" opinions are modded down have made incredibly ignorant comments and been modded down. Your "global warming is a myth" and your "open source is a job killer" and "DRM is necessary" type comments -- unpopular because they're untrue.
I agree with you, I haven't seen a better moderation system. I did read a research paper by a grad student on slashdot's moderation system, and his paper had little but praise for slashdot's mod system. I'd link to it if I could find it.
I find that with Slashdot, the key to getting a high score really has everything to do with posting shortly after a submission is out.
Well, if the story is posted today and you comment tomorrow, then no, you won't get moded. However, this +5 informative comment in this very thread isn't anywhere near the top. And all I had to do to find this example is to look at the list of my own comments from this morning. Do you have a counter example?
You could argue that negative points about Linux are flamebait though
"Flamebait" is how you put it. If you make an interesting, insightful, informative comment that is also insulting, it's flamebait. And come on, Nothing's perfect. If Linux were perfect they wouldn't need to upgrade it, would they? Now, if you say "Linux sucks" that's flamebait. If you say "Linux is free only if your time is valueless" that's inaccurate (Windows takes far more time to do anything) and should be modded "overrated". If you say "Windows is prettier than Linux", well, that's true.
I've seen quite intelligent, insightful postings modded to 0 or -1 because the person was taking an unpopular stand on an issue.
Yes, it happens occasionally. There are also people who will mod you down because they're your freaks. And people mod down due to ignorance. But I've seen very few interesting or insightful comments at 0 or -1. Yes, it happens, but it isn't as bad as folks make it out to be.
Suppressing opposing views in a discussion forum does not improve the forum or raise the level of the discussion.
That's an abuse of the moderation system. Now, if the opposing view is misinformed it needs to be corrected by a response, not a moderation.
I try to meta-moderate when I can (weird how they don't have a permanent meta-mod link on the home page, though--sometimes I have to search for it if I don't see the "Have you meta-moderated lately?" link at the top).
They apparently need them so badly, they are willing to work for $134 per month.
More likely, $134 will on average buy as much stuff in China as $1,340 in the US. If your rent is $500 and rent in China is $50, a meal at a nice restaurant there is $5 while it's $50 here, the Chinese worker is doing well indeed and it's not exactly "I'm taking this shitty $134 a month job" it's "Wow! $134 a month! Honey, lets but a new couch!"
That's not the answer. People forget that third world economies are different from first world economies. You can pay a third worlder less. When I was stationed in Thailand in 1974, it was a third world country with a median income of $1,000 per year. But you could rent a bungalow (woman included) for $30, feed four at a nice restaraunt for under a dollar (including expensive American soda), take a bus anywhere in the country for a nickle. They weren't really that poor. Likewise, I'm twice as rich as someone living 200 miles away in Chicago who earns the same wage as me, because verything cost twice as much up there.
What the world needs is for these people to be unionized. Management bargains collectively with you alone, you have no power. They bargain collectively with your own collective, now you have power.
Do you like your 40 hour workweek, sick time, vacations? Thank the unions.
Yep. The world is connected by the intertubes.
That always makes me laugh. Computers haven't had tubes for over fifty years! And to us geezers, and innertube was inside a car's tire.
Clark Howard (born June 20, 1955), is a popular U.S. talk radio host of the nationally syndicated consumer advocate program The Clark Howard Show. The show covers consumer and financial news, with advice on how to spend less, save more and avoid rip-offs. The show airs from flagship radio station WSB AM in Atlanta, Georgia.
Clark Howard is a nationally syndicated consumer advocate who advises consumers how to save more, spend less and avoid getting ripped off. His radio show is heard every day on more than 200 radio stations throughout North America. The Clark Howard Show show on HLN runs every Saturday and Sunday at 6am, noon and 4pm ET. He is a frequent guest on many other talk, variety and news programs.
Clark Howard's first career was in the travel agency business. Howard attended the Westminster Schools in Atlanta before graduating from the American University in 1976 with a B.A. in Urban Government. He went on to receive his Master of Business Administration degree from Central Michigan University in 1977. In 1987, he retired from the travel agency business he founded in 1981 and began giving travel advice in guest appearances on Atlanta radio. His segments were so popular that he was soon given his own radio show.[1]
He has an MBA, which tells me that yes, he doesn't have a fucking clue.
You know, when I see someone referencing "chicken and egg" I see someone who doesnt think much. The funny answer:
The egg came first. Who has chicken for breakfast?
The rational answer:
Chickens were decended from dinasaurs. Dinasaurs layed eggs. Any more stupid questions?
And buying stock does NOT create jobs, it merely finances them. Demand for product creates jobs (and the people who create that product create wealth for the stockholder).
Yup, and now that the $1B construction job is done, do we just ship the construction workers off to "somewhere else"?
My dad is a retired lineman, and he spent half his career doing electrical construction. Yes, shipping construction workers somewhere else is exactly how it's done. I didn't see much of my dad as a teeneger when he was tramping around the country building towers and stringing cable.
The convenience of a digital world will likely destroy the American Dream. How many people lost their jobs in the music CD industry because of iTunes?
That was the result of idiots, coke fiends, and incompetents in the major labels. When kids started sharing files on Napster, that was an opportunity for the RIAA to sell more CDs, using P2P as advertising. But they saw it as a threat rather than a benefit, as P2P is as helpful to the indies as it is to the RIAA, and the RIAA has radio, TV, and movies. They're not just idiots, they're evil idiots.
People like collecting "stuff". They always have. Books, records, tapes, stamps, butterflies... these are the folks the RIAA should be going for -- people who like tangible objcts. You can't hold an iTune in your hand or put it on your bookshelf, nor resell it. It is valueless.
How about books? How many people are already losing their jobs (Borders?), and all the printers, delivery trucks, etc.
Do you have a link to where it says they're selling fewer tangible books, and not simply one where it says eBooks are gaining? Borders went out of business as a result of Amazon, and Border's own failures.
What we need is for the entire patent system to be thrown out since only the big companies have enough patents to be ALLOWED to innovate without fear of a lawsuit crushing their company out of existence.
You want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, the patent system is in bad need of reform. Make it so a patent is as easy and inexpensive as registering a copyright ($30 iinm), and don't allow trivial or obvious patents.
As to lawsuits, perhaps they could replace that with some sort of board, like many union-management contracts use rather than suing.
Let's face it, the slashdot moderation system has been broken for a long time.
Can you point to a site with a better system? Google is flat out incorrect (from TFS, didn't read TFA). It assumes that anybody and their brother can moderate, but that just isn't the case.
Now, metamoderation is a different story entirely. The old metamods worked. You moderated moderations as "fair" or "unfair", and if you got too many "unfairs" you got fewer or no mod points. I'm not sure how (or even if) the new system works.
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.
Links needed. Downmodding a comment you disagree with is an abuse of mod points. I don't know how many times I've undone moderations to respond to some facist corporate whore.
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.
Anyone against free speech is a troll. There are a lot of comments wanting to do away with copyright, but I can't remember any that were highly modded. How the suits don't get it? Well DUH, I'd mod that one redundant, unless there was additional commentary that needed to be seen (IMO).
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.
OK, now that's just rank bullshit. I've posted comments pointing out things I don't like about Linux (I'm a fan, but nothing's perfect), and these comments are generally modded up. Now, "Linux SuXOrs" is going to be modded lamebait or troll, and rightly so. I've responded to "get rid of copyright" posts with a response that doing away with it is not the thing to do, but that copyright does need reform, and these comments have never been modded down and many times are highly modded. And, be reasonable about DRM? DRM is a rights stripping abomination that cannot accomplish what it intends to and harms the paying customer. You're damned right pro-DRM is downmodded, pro-DRM is simply a shill or a troll or an incredibly ignorant, non-tech savvy remark.
Every user are given some amount of moderation points
Incorrect.
If they are on your friend lists, their moderation carries more value.
Only if that's what you specify in your preferences. I don't.
If they have moderated similarly to you, their moderation weights more to you.
Any money for your retiremnt will be taken out of the pockets of your children and grandchildren
And their retirements will be paid for by their children and grandchildren. That's how the system was designed. The problem is, as you say, government stole SS money to put in the general revenue. There is the additional problem of the "pig in the python", the boomer generation. But that problem is a temporary one and will solve itself in time, but meanwhile the 1%ers (aka Tea Party) use it to try to dismatle the system.
the more wealth the government takes, the less incentive there is to create more.
Huh? When the price of gas and groceries rises, I pressure my boss for a raise -- my incentive is even greater to earn more money. To suggest that having less money lessens your incentive to earn more is absurd.
You are correct, with one minor detail not everyone knows (it's obsolete knowledge), but it was ferriers, not blacksmiths, who made horse shoes. A blacksmith would make anything out of steel or iron, like hinges and other ironwork. If it was steel or iron, it was made by a blacksmith, except horse shoes, which were made by ferriers.
New industries have combined the two changes. They aren't merely replacing old jobs, they're replacing them with much more efficient new jobs, reducing the total workforce.
And what will happen when robotics gets advanced enough that workers aren't needed at all?
And then there's the irony of outsourcing, in which one local job is replaced by 2 or 3 or 5 ultra-cheap foreign jobs.
That should not have been allowed to happen, but business runs government in the US.
It's real mass unemployment, and the concentration of income and wealth in the hands of people who never actually used their hands to make a living in the first place.
The biggest fuckup of all was letting business brainwash workers that unions were evil. Note that wage disparity rose while union membership fell?
Well, in that context every game is a skinner box, whether baseball, football, chess, checkers, tiddly winks, or Call of Duty. We should outlaw football? I think the NFL would object to that.
There's a lot of wisdom in the old book, and poetry. Psalms, Solomon, Proverbs, etc. But even some Christian preachers forget that Jesus brought a new covenant. And like Monday, I need more coffee and don't have spell check.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree that 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 often I'll actually ask to be downmodded (response to an offtopic comment, etc). But I'd make one change -- bring the old metamoderation system back. It was far superior IMO.
From what I've seen, those comments are unpopular comments that are well thought out and well written, and the poster incorrectly thinks he's going to be modded down because it's an unpopular opinion. Since he knows these are unpopular, he most likely takes extra effort NOT to be baiting flames or trolling.
Getting +5 is pretty easy, actually. All you have to do is be polite, informative, insightful, and accurate. Contrary to popular opinion, few insightful or interesting comments are modded down unless they're poorly written.
I think the ones complaining that "unpopular" opinions are modded down have made incredibly ignorant comments and been modded down. Your "global warming is a myth" and your "open source is a job killer" and "DRM is necessary" type comments -- unpopular because they're untrue.
I agree with you, I haven't seen a better moderation system. I did read a research paper by a grad student on slashdot's moderation system, and his paper had little but praise for slashdot's mod system. I'd link to it if I could find it.
Naither, actually. It doesn't strike sixty miles up, and if it doesn't strike, no shock.
Yeah, yeah, woosh, I know...
I find that with Slashdot, the key to getting a high score really has everything to do with posting shortly after a submission is out.
Well, if the story is posted today and you comment tomorrow, then no, you won't get moded. However, this +5 informative comment in this very thread isn't anywhere near the top. And all I had to do to find this example is to look at the list of my own comments from this morning. Do you have a counter example?
You could argue that negative points about Linux are flamebait though
"Flamebait" is how you put it. If you make an interesting, insightful, informative comment that is also insulting, it's flamebait. And come on, Nothing's perfect. If Linux were perfect they wouldn't need to upgrade it, would they? Now, if you say "Linux sucks" that's flamebait. If you say "Linux is free only if your time is valueless" that's inaccurate (Windows takes far more time to do anything) and should be modded "overrated". If you say "Windows is prettier than Linux", well, that's true.
Fanboys are indeed a problem. Hell, you can get downmodded for bashing Satan himself (or at least his second in command, the Sony corporation).
Also most items end up at +5 or -1.
You must be new here, AC. Most comments I make range from 1 to 4, with the occasional 5 and 0 and once in a while a -1.
If that's true, why is he at a 4 and you're at a 5?
I've seen quite intelligent, insightful postings modded to 0 or -1 because the person was taking an unpopular stand on an issue.
Yes, it happens occasionally. There are also people who will mod you down because they're your freaks. And people mod down due to ignorance. But I've seen very few interesting or insightful comments at 0 or -1. Yes, it happens, but it isn't as bad as folks make it out to be.
Suppressing opposing views in a discussion forum does not improve the forum or raise the level of the discussion.
That's an abuse of the moderation system. Now, if the opposing view is misinformed it needs to be corrected by a response, not a moderation.
I try to meta-moderate when I can (weird how they don't have a permanent meta-mod link on the home page, though--sometimes I have to search for it if I don't see the "Have you meta-moderated lately?" link at the top).
http://slashdot.org/metamod. Just bookmark it.
I wish they'd bring the old system back, it seemed to work much better.
They apparently need them so badly, they are willing to work for $134 per month.
More likely, $134 will on average buy as much stuff in China as $1,340 in the US. If your rent is $500 and rent in China is $50, a meal at a nice restaurant there is $5 while it's $50 here, the Chinese worker is doing well indeed and it's not exactly "I'm taking this shitty $134 a month job" it's "Wow! $134 a month! Honey, lets but a new couch!"
Yep. The world needs a minimum wage.
That's not the answer. People forget that third world economies are different from first world economies. You can pay a third worlder less. When I was stationed in Thailand in 1974, it was a third world country with a median income of $1,000 per year. But you could rent a bungalow (woman included) for $30, feed four at a nice restaraunt for under a dollar (including expensive American soda), take a bus anywhere in the country for a nickle. They weren't really that poor. Likewise, I'm twice as rich as someone living 200 miles away in Chicago who earns the same wage as me, because verything cost twice as much up there.
What the world needs is for these people to be unionized. Management bargains collectively with you alone, you have no power. They bargain collectively with your own collective, now you have power.
Do you like your 40 hour workweek, sick time, vacations? Thank the unions.
Yep. The world is connected by the intertubes.
That always makes me laugh. Computers haven't had tubes for over fifty years! And to us geezers, and innertube was inside a car's tire.
Clark Howard (born June 20, 1955), is a popular U.S. talk radio host of the nationally syndicated consumer advocate program The Clark Howard Show. The show covers consumer and financial news, with advice on how to spend less, save more and avoid rip-offs. The show airs from flagship radio station WSB AM in Atlanta, Georgia.
Clark Howard is a nationally syndicated consumer advocate who advises consumers how to save more, spend less and avoid getting ripped off. His radio show is heard every day on more than 200 radio stations throughout North America. The Clark Howard Show show on HLN runs every Saturday and Sunday at 6am, noon and 4pm ET. He is a frequent guest on many other talk, variety and news programs.
Clark Howard's first career was in the travel agency business. Howard attended the Westminster Schools in Atlanta before graduating from the American University in 1976 with a B.A. in Urban Government. He went on to receive his Master of Business Administration degree from Central Michigan University in 1977. In 1987, he retired from the travel agency business he founded in 1981 and began giving travel advice in guest appearances on Atlanta radio. His segments were so popular that he was soon given his own radio show.[1]
He has an MBA, which tells me that yes, he doesn't have a fucking clue.
Besides the chicken and egg problem
You know, when I see someone referencing "chicken and egg" I see someone who doesnt think much. The funny answer:
The egg came first. Who has chicken for breakfast?
The rational answer:
Chickens were decended from dinasaurs. Dinasaurs layed eggs. Any more stupid questions?
And buying stock does NOT create jobs, it merely finances them. Demand for product creates jobs (and the people who create that product create wealth for the stockholder).
Yup, and now that the $1B construction job is done, do we just ship the construction workers off to "somewhere else"?
My dad is a retired lineman, and he spent half his career doing electrical construction. Yes, shipping construction workers somewhere else is exactly how it's done. I didn't see much of my dad as a teeneger when he was tramping around the country building towers and stringing cable.
The convenience of a digital world will likely destroy the American Dream. How many people lost their jobs in the music CD industry because of iTunes?
That was the result of idiots, coke fiends, and incompetents in the major labels. When kids started sharing files on Napster, that was an opportunity for the RIAA to sell more CDs, using P2P as advertising. But they saw it as a threat rather than a benefit, as P2P is as helpful to the indies as it is to the RIAA, and the RIAA has radio, TV, and movies. They're not just idiots, they're evil idiots.
People like collecting "stuff". They always have. Books, records, tapes, stamps, butterflies... these are the folks the RIAA should be going for -- people who like tangible objcts. You can't hold an iTune in your hand or put it on your bookshelf, nor resell it. It is valueless.
How about books? How many people are already losing their jobs (Borders?), and all the printers, delivery trucks, etc.
Do you have a link to where it says they're selling fewer tangible books, and not simply one where it says eBooks are gaining? Borders went out of business as a result of Amazon, and Border's own failures.
What we need is for the entire patent system to be thrown out since only the big companies have enough patents to be ALLOWED to innovate without fear of a lawsuit crushing their company out of existence.
You want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Yes, the patent system is in bad need of reform. Make it so a patent is as easy and inexpensive as registering a copyright ($30 iinm), and don't allow trivial or obvious patents.
As to lawsuits, perhaps they could replace that with some sort of board, like many union-management contracts use rather than suing.
Let's face it, the slashdot moderation system has been broken for a long time.
Can you point to a site with a better system? Google is flat out incorrect (from TFS, didn't read TFA). It assumes that anybody and their brother can moderate, but that just isn't the case.
Now, metamoderation is a different story entirely. The old metamods worked. You moderated moderations as "fair" or "unfair", and if you got too many "unfairs" you got fewer or no mod points. I'm not sure how (or even if) the new system works.
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.
Links needed. Downmodding a comment you disagree with is an abuse of mod points. I don't know how many times I've undone moderations to respond to some facist corporate whore.
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.
Anyone against free speech is a troll. There are a lot of comments wanting to do away with copyright, but I can't remember any that were highly modded. How the suits don't get it? Well DUH, I'd mod that one redundant, unless there was additional commentary that needed to be seen (IMO).
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.
OK, now that's just rank bullshit. I've posted comments pointing out things I don't like about Linux (I'm a fan, but nothing's perfect), and these comments are generally modded up. Now, "Linux SuXOrs" is going to be modded lamebait or troll, and rightly so. I've responded to "get rid of copyright" posts with a response that doing away with it is not the thing to do, but that copyright does need reform, and these comments have never been modded down and many times are highly modded. And, be reasonable about DRM? DRM is a rights stripping abomination that cannot accomplish what it intends to and harms the paying customer. You're damned right pro-DRM is downmodded, pro-DRM is simply a shill or a troll or an incredibly ignorant, non-tech savvy remark.
Every user are given some amount of moderation points
Incorrect.
If they are on your friend lists, their moderation carries more value.
Only if that's what you specify in your preferences. I don't.
If they have moderated similarly to you, their moderation weights more to you.
I don't think I understand that sentence.
Any money for your retiremnt will be taken out of the pockets of your children and grandchildren
And their retirements will be paid for by their children and grandchildren. That's how the system was designed. The problem is, as you say, government stole SS money to put in the general revenue. There is the additional problem of the "pig in the python", the boomer generation. But that problem is a temporary one and will solve itself in time, but meanwhile the 1%ers (aka Tea Party) use it to try to dismatle the system.
the more wealth the government takes, the less incentive there is to create more.
Huh? When the price of gas and groceries rises, I pressure my boss for a raise -- my incentive is even greater to earn more money. To suggest that having less money lessens your incentive to earn more is absurd.
You are correct, with one minor detail not everyone knows (it's obsolete knowledge), but it was ferriers, not blacksmiths, who made horse shoes. A blacksmith would make anything out of steel or iron, like hinges and other ironwork. If it was steel or iron, it was made by a blacksmith, except horse shoes, which were made by ferriers.
The past is not the future.
It was once, and the future will be the past.
New industries have combined the two changes. They aren't merely replacing old jobs, they're replacing them with much more efficient new jobs, reducing the total workforce.
And what will happen when robotics gets advanced enough that workers aren't needed at all?
And then there's the irony of outsourcing, in which one local job is replaced by 2 or 3 or 5 ultra-cheap foreign jobs.
That should not have been allowed to happen, but business runs government in the US.
It's real mass unemployment, and the concentration of income and wealth in the hands of people who never actually used their hands to make a living in the first place.
The biggest fuckup of all was letting business brainwash workers that unions were evil. Note that wage disparity rose while union membership fell?
A debit card is even riskier than a credit card.
Slippier slope? To where and from where? There was no such thing as as even a driver's license before about 100 years ago, and everything worked out.
Well, in that context every game is a skinner box, whether baseball, football, chess, checkers, tiddly winks, or Call of Duty. We should outlaw football? I think the NFL would object to that.
There's a lot of wisdom in the old book, and poetry. Psalms, Solomon, Proverbs, etc. But even some Christian preachers forget that Jesus brought a new covenant. And like Monday, I need more coffee and don't have spell check.