garett_spencley's Journal: Overrated

When I present an argument, and others do not agree with me, I love to know why. If there is an error in my logic, or if I did not present my case adequately then I want to know it.

If I post something off topic, or if a post of mine comes across like a troll then I like knowing that too. I try not to post off topic. When I do so knowingly I'll check the 'no karma bonus'. And I never deliberately troll. Sometimes I get those moderations and I can always learn from them. They provide some kind of feedback that can be used for self-improvement.

The overrated modifier really bugs me. They provide me with no possible conclusions other than the moderator simply dislikes or disagrees with what I am saying. I have not posted very much recently. I've been spending most of my time working or reading. When I do post I take the time to post something that's important to me and that I think will be useful to others. Lately I've been getting a lot of "overrated" mods and it's extremely disheartening. It provides me with absolutely no feedback. I have no way of knowing why I was modded as such and thus there is absolutely no way for me to profit from the experience. It's basically a big "fuck you Garett!"

People have complained about the overrated mod before. I think it's time for /. to get rid of it (and the underrated mod). These mods are entirely void of thought and contrary to discussion or debate. Perhaps all mods are subjective, but at least the others have some criteria other than "I disagree / I agree". Or "I like this person / I hate this person".

Examples?

[SL Baur]

Can you link some specific examples that you think were marked overrated unfairly?

Political threads and the endless Microsoft Windows -vs- Linux threads are the most likely places you'll be moderated -1 Overrated(I disagree with you). It usually takes careful wording to avoid it.

Re:

[garett_spencley]

Yeah it's always the political or philosophical discussions. Like these:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1253027&cid=28181617 [slashdot.org]
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1231593&cid=27936867 [slashdot.org]

And it shouldn't be. I don't post to incite heated emotional arguments. I post to discuss and debate. If there's holes in my logic or arguments then I'd like to hear them. If someone disagrees the intelligent course of action would be to offer a refutation or at the very least provide some links to information that ref

Re:

[SL Baur]

This first one is a TL;DR for most people. Probably moderated down for "-1 screw you" or "-1 incomprehensible". Dumb.

The second one is definitely moderated down for the Dr. Paul link. He is not appreciated here (or oddly on conservative web sites either).

Modding someone overrated amounts to blind censorship IMO.

Not at all. I read at -1, anything higher than that is self moderation.

Censorship would be if your posts were deleted; they were not. Minority opinions in threads tend to get moderated down. No biggie.