bons's Journal: Rant: how much things have changed.

I'll find the time to moderate. To read at the lower levels. To promote the good...

Oh Lord. What has become of Slashdot?

A while back I set my threshold at 4. I see now what a wise choice this was. The things that were at 3 already cause me to shudder. The things at 2... I had seen better posts at -1. The things at 1 still give me nightmares.

I think there is no longer a reason to moderate a post down to level 2 or lower. Even the old "first post" threads were better than some of these.

"News for Nerds?" These people aren't nerds. There were people who didn't know how to change the security settings on their browser. These were people who didn't know the difference between DHTML and Flash, and thought that Flash was to blame for it's content. (Does that make Linux to blame for Geocities?)

What was missing? Factual references, links to relevent pages, humor that was crafted instead of slammed out there quickly before the 100th post clogged the arteries of the article. How hard is it to actually take the time and write something worth reading?

You would think that with the number of people who were constantly upset at the author's ability to craft a blurb, there would be some that lit up the world with intelligent witty reasoning....

You would be wrong.

Just wading through the number of people with an axe to grind against slashdot amazed me. Why do these people keep coming here if they hate it so? They would rant against the author, completely oblivious to the fact that their preference pages includes a checkbox to exclude stories by author or by anything else.

To whomever you were who posted late and had a rating of 1. I'm sorry, but the horror I endured before I reached your post took it's tool on my sanity. I tried to find the best 5 underrated posts I could and sift them through the verbal debris that is now Slashdot level 3 and below.

I once wondered why so many lame jokes were rated 5: funny. I now know. Sometimes as a moderator, a decent joke at level 4 must look like gold.

I love Slashdot, and the concept of open source, but I'm not sure I love the people it attracts. There's way to many people out there who care more about their rights than their responsibilities. There's way to many people out there who see Open Source as a way to get everything they want for free (as in beer). They see peer to peer as a method to not pay for what they want, not as a way to distribute their own creations. They see Open Source as a way to fufill their greed, not their generosity. And they see Slashdot as a way to enforce their opinions, not share their knowledge.

"They called it paradise, I don't know why.
Call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye."
- The Eagles.

Good Job

[Iron Chef Japan]

Man that is the best way I have ever seen it put, you are more than true.