Journal OldMiner's Journal: Not sure where he came from, but he says it's his bridge 2
What follows is an overly obsessive analyzation of a minor part of Slashdot. I really am this geeky, but I'm not really lacking as much perspective as the time I took on this might make it appear.
Trolls seem to be popping up lately, and here I am with no mod points, so the best I can do is post to my journal. Observe what several found Funny.
Starting Score: 1 point
Moderation +4
80% Funny
20% Overrated
Extra 'Funny' Modifier -1 (Edit)
Foe Modifier -1 (Edit)
Total Score: 3
I've seen this same thing a couple dozen times before of course, normally posted by someone with a monicker such as "Anal Cox". Unfortunately, the article didn't have much of jack to do with Microsoft or its world dominance. Once more, the comment was posted in reply to another post currently scored -1. So the question is: Who was so dimwitted as to mod this guy up? And who are those other 3 dimwits? Do they have a club?
But before I get too ranty, my point -- I'm seeing a decided drop in the quality of moderation lately. And it seems to be caused a lot by unsophisticated moderation. Take this post by the same creature. It's a troll, as clearly and elegantly explained by an AC response. However, note the relative score of each. With my modifiers, they both result as 2, but that's because AC gets +1, long post gets +1.
This makes me long for a system where I can give half credit to moderation of people not on my friends list. Because, as observed above, even with my modifiers, that troll is still above my default +2 threshhold. I don't want to take the overboard step of making foes -2 because that makes a registered (1), high karma (+1) troll who gets modded up once (+1), drop below (1+1+1-2 == 1 < 2) my threshhold. And even trolls have something useful to say, sometimes. The key is that they only get modded up when they should be. Pardon me as I try to become even more subjective.
Example 2, a Mr. Samir Gupta. A fair bit more clever troll, who actually managed to convince one of my friends to befriend him. He provided this 'Insightful' comment which got him on my foes list. Yes, that comment is completely ludicrous for all sorts of obvious reasons, but he sure sounds convincing when he's BS'ing it. Check his history and you'll find a comment with a wonderful response detailing his long experience at trolling.
But the moderation system seems to blatantly fail in some cases. The mondane, popular comment. The clever troll. The confident, misinformed IANAL. In all of these cases, I would beg to be able to do metamoderation specific to myself so that I could increase the effect of intelligent moderators on my reading. And, yes, I realize the technical difficulties as well as the danger of creating a moderation that insures I only see opinions which I agree with. But there's been at least a few people on my friends list mainly because I disagreed with them, but still found their points well put together.
Therein lies the root of the problem (Score:1)