Secret Rabbit's Journal: Reasons for getting called a troll.

Recently, I decided to get a new /. account as I've been away from this site for a number of years. Now, more mature, cultured and aged I have some critisism for the /. community.

Apparently, to get moderated a troll here, you just have to mention a couple facts that someone doesn't like.

See:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=170139&cid=14179134

and

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168186&cid=14021891

All I did in these post is mention a couple facts and I get nailed as a troll. It is the first above the motivated me to create this journal entry.

The whole idea of a community moderating itself is in theory, a good idea. A good idea that is, if people are willing to think about what they are doing and willing to let other opinions aside from there own, especially if they disagree with the opinion, stay viewable for others to see.

But, in practice what we have here, is people taking it among themselves to filter other opinions, and mark them as troll. Even if the opinions represent the rest of the world (read: basically all non-US countries). See for instance, the first link above.

Another problem is the conformist mentality. See a reply off the second link for this. For convenience:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168186&threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=99&mode=thread&pid=14022237#14030153

and my reply: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=168186&threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=99&mode=thread&pid=14030153#14083385

Are we all just drones not even willing to entertain ideas other than what we "know" to be true? Because this is certainly what seems to be happening. When did the /. community start acting like the intellegent design community? Because it certainly wasn't like this last time I was here.