[Musings] My issues with /.
I have been an avid reader/supporter (yes I pay $5/1000 pages to help support them and keep away ads from my view [yes I know I can use ad-block as well]), but over the last few years the value I take from them has been declining. I enjoy things like the slashboxes (that allow me to quick link other places) and I do find some articles and authors interesting, but I am growing more and more tired of the idiocy. For example, take this post (the person posted Anonymously so I cannot name the guilty):
(from the discussion thread: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/21/0143223&tid=95)
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Overcome this.(Score:3, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on 02-21-05 3:37 #11734421
javascript.enabled = false
My favourite way of blocking bullshit. If the site doesn't work this way I'll either bitch the webmaster for writing buggy pages or simply vote with my feet. In most cases don't even need to waste my precious brainpower in deciding what to boycott. If it doesn't work, it's probably broken -> neext please.
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I am really starting to hate ignorant comments like this. This comment should not have been moderated 3, Interesting. This is a perfect illustration of how /. is going to hell, one moderator at a time. Ok I know I am being a bit over-sensitive about this, but this person (and by extension every moderator who modded up this person) has no concept of reality. While it would be nice to be able to do this, in an ideal capitalist utopia (which we do NOT have, and never will), this would work. However in the real world such as in my job with all things *nix, we have only one or two vendors who will have support for product X, or hell even at home I will have something (say a game) that is only available from a certain vendor. They program in javascript and hence you need to have it enabled to properly access their site. This sucks and I cannot move on.
This post should have been modded -1 Idiot.
5 comments:
I also realize the irony of my post.
Blogs that allow anyone to post (like Slashdot, or even this one....) have the problem that a lot of 'forums' in life have, online or IRL. Many, many people have opinions. Often these opinions are quite strong. The problem with an egalitarian and open system of comment is that often people are under the delusion that their opinion has equal weight to any other. This gets particularily problematic when it comes to technical or niche subjects, when 'a little knowldge can be a dangerous thing'. Ad hominem is always a problem, but the fact is that not all source of information are equal. Usually you have a few people who REALLY know what they are talking about, more people who know kinda what they are talking about, many many people who think they know what they are talking about but don't, and then just the dosage of the usual mouths that can't stop flapping and chime in on everything and anything (wait, irony is creeping into my post as well...) The big problem is sorting through which ones are valuable (i.e. weighty) comments, which are to be verified and taken with a grain of salt, and which are to be ignore altogether. This is where modding helps, but obviously it is an imperfect system - otherwise only qualified biologists and chemists and genetecists would be talkihng about evolutionary theory, instead of every fundie who has listened to a few marginal critiques of it on talk-radio and suddenly thinks they are qualified to form an opinion regarding policy. In regards to this particular example, it sounds like someone just spouting off their opinion and their chosen behaviour. This is 'grain of salt' at best, and 'ignore' most of the time. While people talking about the substance of ideas always has some interest for me, it is the substance of knowlegde that is truly useful, and what is worth seeking out. The rest is just flavor, which while interesting, is not always what one wants to sort through. This behaviour exists in many blogs, like Plastic, Kuro5hin, even Wikipedia. Sorting through the chaff sucks, but its sometimes the only way to get to the wheat.
Personally, I just surf most of the time at 3 modpoints and up, unless I'm moderating.
Boy did this response go off on a tangent.
I guess to finish that thought, the idea that modpoints themselves aren't really based on any major criterion makes that system weak (since the post you mentioned was modded 3).
Slashdot is a tool, a weak and messy tool at that, but sometimes useful. Thats pretty good praise for most things online.
Did you have any particular solution in general? Some way blogs (or Slash specifically) could slant the content in a more useful way, aside from not allowing people to post anonymously, or limiting posting rights to a slect few?
Education is the only solution, education on the whole.
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