Forum Overview :: Rants
 
Heh by Senor Barborito 05/18/2003, 7:01pm PDT
Jhoh Creexul wrote:

Senor Barborito wrote:

Whoa.

Anyway I laughed and everyone in the room just kind of looked at me oddly

. . . yeah.
--SB


Nice message boards. Some posts are in "2 REPLIES TO THIS" and some are right below the post and then some are in completely seperate links. Apparently it's some kind of complex thread collapsing randomizing script.


Slashdot's boards are famous. I'm surprised you haven't been there before.

Slashdot has a moderation system whereby anybody with an account may randomly be selected to moderate the messageboards (and they go to very great lengths to prevent abuse, but trolls are endlessly inventive). Default 'able to see message' theshold is 1, and that's also the default value for any post. As a post gets moderated up or down, it gets shoved further and further into '115 replies below your threshold' territory or towards +4/+5 territory. If a post is +4 or +5 you automatically see the full text of the post unless you're viewing at a +5 theshhold.

I usually find +3 to be about right, unless I'm really interested in the story in which case +2 works.

If you post under your account name rather than Anonymous Coward, you accumulate 1 point for every moderation done to your posts. Max is 50 points, which I have purely from my comments in various OpenBSD stories, and the result is that I get moderation rights about once a week (when you get rights you have 5 points to burn in three days, use 'em or lose 'em), which is really, really often.

It's a weird system, and it doesn't quite work, but if you browse Slashdot at +4 you're almost always guaranteed a few good quips and some interesting technical insight or refutations to the story. Obviously some topics immediately dive into shit, since this is a Linux crowd (saying anything good about Microsoft without making a very long-winded even-handed-approach post will get you into -1 territory so fast it'll hurt), so you have to read the boards intelligently.

It's like one of the biggest webpages on the 'net, though - almost every server that hosts the target of a Slashdot story is immediately crushed by the weight of the traffic.

If you want a condensed, smarter version of Slashdot, check out AlterSlash, which does a great job of filtering out most of the crap.

--SB
PREVIOUS NEXT REPLY QUOTE
 
(Slashdot link, please kill me) Trinity's Reloaded hack was a legit SSH vuln. by Senor Barborito 05/18/2003, 5:33pm PDT NEW
    Re: (Slashdot link, please kill me) Trinity's Reloaded hack was a legit SSH vuln. by Jhoh Creexul 05/18/2003, 6:34pm PDT NEW
        Heh by Senor Barborito 05/18/2003, 7:01pm PDT NEW
            Re: Heh by Jhoh Creexul 05/18/2003, 8:09pm PDT NEW
        Slashdot explained (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Lufteufel 05/18/2003, 7:01pm PDT NEW
            new moderation -> (Score: -1, Redundant) NT by Lufteufel 05/18/2003, 7:04pm PDT NEW
            Re: Slashdot explained (Score: -1, Offtopic) by Jhoh Creexul 05/18/2003, 8:10pm PDT NEW
                They don't just vote, they vote on the voting (meta-moderation). No joke. NT by Senor Barborito 05/18/2003, 10:11pm PDT NEW
 
powered by pointy