" Nothing much you can do about it -- simply a property of the numbers involved. "
In my opinion there was a time when Slashdot coped quite well with their randomly assigned mod points and metamoderation. Then their UI became unusable, so I cannot tell how it works now.
Re:Tell HN: A Recent Rise in Downvoting
by anonymous236 on Sunday October 17, 2010 @11:09AM
(#1800485)
As of two-three years ago Slashdot moderation guaranteed that "In Soviet Russia" jokes were always +5 Funny, anything with Linux in it were +5 Interesting and a post with a Beowulf cluster plug was both Funny and Informative.
Meta-moderation was supposed to cure that, but it didn't make much difference. So, no, overall it did not work. Submissions were good, but discussions sucked.
Judging from your nick here, and slashdot allowing anonymous comments, I'm guessing you didn't have a user account on slashdot. I say that because you had to do was give 'funny' posts a -10, which would preclude you from seeing so-called funny posts. Though far from perfect, still consider the /. moderation system the gold standard for commenting and have yet to see anything come close. (Also, +1 funny mod got you no karma)
Re:Tell HN: A Recent Rise in Downvoting
by anonymous236 on Sunday October 17, 2010 @12:59PM
(#1800781)
Slashdot ID 3xxxxx, first post - Sep '01... but thanks for the info ;)
I have a four digit Slashdot UID. Those features didn't exist in the beginning. I have mine set to default settings, with "show only posts with a score of 5" on.
Tends to keep out most of the usual Slashdot bullshit without requiring me to take Slashdot out of my RSS reader altogether.
I would post something like "hey, you know f=ma" (a statement of fact in a non-hot-topic conversation that advanced the discussion) and see it get downvotes almost instantly. Then later the score would pop back up.
What can I tell you, Lionhearted? The board has gone to shit.
:)
I think the problem is that, in any group of people, 1% are probably not going to like you (for arbitrary reasons) or have some emtional hangup about any random piece of information. But most of the time it's a passive dislike. Only about 1% of that number would take any direct action against you (like downvoting an innocuous comment)
However when the daily numbers creep up past 40 or 50K, that 1% of 1% becomes a big enough number to start seeing some kindergarten voting games going on. Nothing much you can do about it -- simply a property of the numbers involved. We probably all do it, but because it's only a 1 in 10K experience, it's so extremely rare in ourselves that we don't even notice it.