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Slashdot's Disagree MailComments:202
from the well-here's-your-problem dept.
On Wed Sept 6, 2006 ********* wrote:
"I can't help but notice the huge amount of trolls posting comments the past few days. I know you guys work hard to keep them down but it's a losing battle. You should make people post comments in groups to get rid of the trolls. Everyone would have a "comment buddy" that has to agree that your comment is worth posting. You could make it part of the preview process. This way trolls wouldn't be able to post because nobody else would mark their comment as worth posting. Maybe if two trolls got together they would be able to defeat the "buddy" process but that seems unlikely to me as I don't think they work in groups do they? Maybe this isn't as good an idea as I think for working against large groups but it might work for lone trolls."
I love the idea of a comment buddy. It reminds me of "Posture Pals" from the famous MST3K short. The next mail comes from a lady who doesn't mind clicking on things, in fact she loves it. If she had her way, everyone would have carpal tunnel syndrome.
On Mon May 7, 2007 ******* wrote
"Instead of a confusing bunch of numbers and some adjectives that don't mean anything why not just have a list of everyone who has posted a comment that a user can go through. That way you could click on a name and then click on their comments until you decided if you liked what they had to say. You could then click on them again and click on a ACCEPT COMMENTS link. Then you could click on them again and let them know that you like what they write so they will probably like what you write. That way it would save some clicking. After a bit you will have clicked on enough people that you could see a dozen or so comments in a story because you can't read much more than that anywy. You'd just have to click on a dozen people for a dozen or so stories and you will have your own little community with only the people who were worth clicking on. Just a thought."
Finally we have someone who thinks speech should cost something. In this case, a nominal fee on an upsliding scale.
On Fri Jan 5, 2007 ******* wrote:
"I have a suggestion to help solve the flame problem you seem to have here. It's simple and will make you enough money that you can get rid of ads. You charge 1 cent for the first 2 comments in a day 3-10 comments cost 5 cents and anything over 10 comments cost 25 cents (nobody but flamers post more than 10 times in a day). People would probably complain at first but they'd get used to it just like I'm sure people complained about stamps but accept it now. I don't think people would be willing to flame if it cost a couple $. keep up the good work."
Comments
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For the Non-Mysties (Score:5, Funny)
"I love the idea of a comment buddy. It reminds me of "Posture Pals" from the famous MST3K short. The next mail comes from a lady who doesn't mind clicking on things, in fact she loves it. If she had her way, everyone would have carpal tunnel syndrome."
"Ms. Martin! Tommy drew a bong! [youtube.com]"
Non-Obvious & Novel? (Score:5, Funny)
"Instead of a confusing bunch of numbers and some adjectives that don't mean anything why not just have a list of everyone who has posted a comment that a user can go through. That way you could click on a name and then click on their comments until you decided if you liked what they had to say. You could then click on them again and click on a ACCEPT COMMENTS link. Then you could click on them again and let them know that you like what they write so they will probably like what you write. That way it would save some clicking. After a bit you will have clicked on enough people that you could see a dozen or so comments in a story because you can't read much more than that anywy. You'd just have to click on a dozen people for a dozen or so stories and you will have your own little community with only the people who were worth clicking on. Just a thought."
Has she approached Amazon with a draft for a 9-click patent?
Re: (Score:2)
And for this comment I'm getting a narrow window which is about 24 characters wide. Maybe that's another way to limit comments, although it was not in the above suggestions.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
What i find funny about that suggestion... is if
you dont browse all the thread only your
favorites posters how can you add your favorites
posters in the first place ?
UID (Score:5, Funny)
I suggest capping the comment abilities of posters with a UID over #56.
Re:UID (Score:5, Funny)
No offense, but aren't you the guy who bought his Slashdot account on eBay or somewhere?
Re:UID (Score:5, Informative)
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=118075&cid=9980688 [slashdot.org]
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:UID (Score:5, Funny)
Good, I made it.
costly words (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The buddy system would bring a tyranny of the majority to slashdot.
Re:costly words (Score:5, Funny)
The buddy system would bring a tyranny of the majority to slashdot.
Agreed! The letter mentioned that trolls work alone, but...
Imagine the discord if suddenly all Slashdotters were required to have a friend!
Re:costly words (Score:5, Funny)
Poppycock. Trolls never abuse multiple accounts.
Re: (Score:2)
So that's what they call it these days.
Re:costly words (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you should be tired of suggestions about the mod system, but anyway....
About each six/twelve months I read a comment that compulsively deserves to be modded (and nobody cared.) I think you may provide anyone (or maybe anyone who ever cared to mod) with a single extra *persistent* and non-renewable mod point... call it your semestral "gold mod point", just for those cases of flagrant urgency. This also may avoid the redundant (and ubiquitous) sentence "If I had mod points!..."
Re: it wouldn't work (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
The mod system is good enough, IMHO.
Speaking as someone who thinks the mod system is horribly broken (no mod points in over 5 years), your opinion is not only humble, it sucks.
IMO, of course.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
"Charging for comments??! that's one of the worst ideas i have heard in a while. i don't think this comment is worth a penny! and i bet a lot of people would agree with me!"
It could work, but that's just my two cents. ;-)
Some suggestions that made it? (Score:4, Insightful)
The Firehose (and by extension, Index v2), came about from people saying that they wanted to vote down stories. But that's the only one I can think of, can you think of any others?
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As for paying to post, well that would rule me out. I don't even have a credit card (the two times I've tried to get one, the bank in each case refused, I think due to the lack of sufficient income on my part). Not to mention, I'm not about to hand over my details for a few cents a day. (And PayPal doesn't like me for some reason, something to do with my combination of NoScript, not accepting cookies and FireFox?)
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I don't even understand the second suggestion.
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And I just don't think the first suggestion could work. There are enough trolls who would vote each others posts up, even if they don't know each other. And of course, one person's flame is another's insightful post.
Re: (Score:2)
There are enough trolls who would vote each others posts up, even if they don't know each other
The troll group would quickly grow to be the largest group in /.
Or do you know of any other particular subject that draws so much interest from so many people here?
Trolls do not work in groups (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly he has not heard of Something Awful. Yes, we^H^H they do work in groups.
Idea for improving Slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
idle comment box wider. One
can barely type more than
half a sentence in it the
way it is set up now.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Really? You sure that isn't only you? For me the comment box ends around--Filter error: Please use fewer 'junk' characters"---"Filter error: Please use fewer 'junk' characters"-------"Filter error: Please use fewer 'junk' characters"------------here
Heres a picture to prove it: http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p149/warll/Wide-eh.jpg [photobucket.com]
another idea: anti-threadjacking (Score:4, Funny)
Amen on the comment box, bro.
One way to improve slashdot and reduce comment clutter would be to have a way for the reader to collapse entire threads which have drifted off topic, without changing the comment threshhold. Does anyone have a greasemonkey script that does this?
The best example I can think of where this would be necessary, are the articles about evolution, fossils and such related stuff. Early in the discussion the evolutionist, creationist, and intelligent design trolls post, stirring up a whole hornets nest of other trolls and genuinely earnest posters, all of which get modded to +5 insightful. Then you have pages of meaningless comments obscurring any real discussion.
If I could collapse entire threads when they veer off topic, I can then see the two or three comments which might have something meaningful to say.
In the meantime, I just skip those articles entirely because other articles go off topic, but nowhere nearly as badly.
Also, sorry for the offtopic/threadjack, Dave.
Re: (Score:2)
Good suggestion (Score:3, Informative)
I like the idea.
Just my 2c, literally.
re Comment Buddy (Score:5, Funny)
Stupid (Score:2)
"I can't help but notice the huge amount of trolls posting comments the past few days. I know you guys work hard to keep them down but it's a losing battle. You should make people post comments in groups to get rid of the trolls. Everyone would have a "comment buddy" that has to agree that your comment is worth posting. You could make it part of the preview process. This way trolls wouldn't be able to post because nobody else would mark their comment as worth posting. Maybe if two trolls got together they would be able to defeat the "buddy" process but that seems unlikely to me as I don't think they work in groups do they? Maybe this isn't as good an idea as I think for working against large groups but it might work for lone trolls."
Or it will do nothing but squash unpopular opinions.
Re: (Score:2)
Trolls (Score:5, Informative)
Does the first writer really mean "trolls" or something else? I thought a troll was someone who intentionally posted an unpopular comment to get a frenzy of reactions. A good troll actually requires intelligence and creativity. It's the humorless automatons who reply to trolls that really clog up message boards. But I don't think that writer meant trolls at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I thought that was flamebait. Are you some kind of moron?
Re: (Score:2)
I'd settle for a '-1 Troll Feeder' mod.
Make it tastier (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Dang, I wish I got mod points.
Trolls are creatures that live under bridges (Score:2)
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type0122e.html#gruff [pitt.edu]
As Someone with Experience.... (Score:2)
As one who has been on both the receiving of mods and moderating sides: Trolls are often in the eye of the beholder. There are a lot of modders who mod down opinions they simply disagree with--especially political ones--as trolls, flamebait and overrated.
I think there needs to be someone modding the modders. Can the overseers not discover who's consistently moderating unfairly and just not give them moderating points? I know meta-modding sometimes helps correct unfair mods. But is anything done if a person
How about... (Score:2)
Huh?! (Score:4, Interesting)
Slashdot has one of the best discussion systems there is.
I say again, huh?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ditch under/overrated as mods (Score:4, Insightful)
Over and under rated also don't affect a person's karma.
A person might think that a post is interesting, just not the current +5 interesting (and thus the overrated). Or, alternatively, they might think it is errm, interesting, but aren't willing to mod it interesting. Maybe underrated isn't needed.
Perhaps it could be made that overrated can not be used to push a post below 2 (or 1, depending on who you ask), which would mean that it can't push a post to oblivion, but a mod can still express the opinion that it isn't such a great post (though not a troll or flame).
Since when does Overrated not affect karma? (Score:3, Interesting)
"Over and under rated also don't affect a person's karma."
Since when? Or do I just not see the effect of a modreasons change because I've had this account pegged at Excellent for years? (Slashdot has changed the modreasons from Slash's preset "slashcode/slash/plugins/Moderation/mysql_dump.sql"; for one thing, Funny differs.)
Re:Ditch under/overrated as mods (Score:5, Informative)
Maybe it's changed, but I know a while back there was a stink about the fact that +1 Funny doesn't affect karma, but -1 Overrated did; so if you posted something which was controversially funny, you could end up losing a lot of karma as you got repeated karma hits from the overrated's, and no bonuses from the funny's which were being down-modded.
If it's the way you describe, you could get a lot of bonus karma by posting an insightful yet controversial opinion (lots of +1's boosting your karma, and lots of -1 Overrated's raising the cap of how many +1's you can get).
Re: (Score:2)
how about, say, a +3/-3 karma cap per comment?
(+1 alliteration)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"Over and under rated also don't affect a person's karma."
Nope. They do affect a person's karma. They don't get meta-modded either. That's why they get used. If someone has a vendetta against you because you said something mean about their favorite toy or their favorite superhero or whatever and they have mod points, they can mod you down by modding you overrated, but metamods can't "fix" it, because under and overrated are not subject to metamod. So, the person with the vendetta can hurt your karma,
Re: (Score:2)
They are kind of weird mods, and I tend not to use them because it seems like it would make meta-moderating a mess. If something is modded +5 Insightful, and I think it only deserves a +4 Insightful, then I can mod it overrated. But once I do that, then it's no longer overrated, which makes my mod unjust!
I do wish there were antonyms for each mod. But then I'd probably end wasting all my mod poi
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, how about "Dumb" or "Pointless"?
Those are affirmative statements.
Re:This is horrible (Score:4, Funny)
I used to wonder if a comment could be both flamebait, and 100% correct at the same time.
Now I know.