inri's Journal: Slashdot moderation

Ow! I posted a comment to the Airspeed Velocity of an Unladen Swallow story, and some people found it insightful and helpful, and it got moderated up a bit, but it's now sitting at 2, while a comment that provided no insight into the topic and just said "You're an asshole" is at 5. IE, Slashdot moderation tends to reward, not topical comments, but metacomments. Presumably this is well-known among those who post regularly, or who look at moderation with care, but it's a shock to me, and helps explain why /. discussion veers incestuously off-topic so quickly (or at least reflects the same tendancy)

Didn't mean to offend

[gfrege]

Hey, inri, I didn't mean to be sending the message "You're an asshole" with my comment, or the follow-up to your follow-up. Maybe I expressed myself too impersonally. I've been reading Slashdot a long time, but haven't commented on much. Maybe I need more practice. I guess I just felt like you took a shot at the guy based on a misunderstanding of what he was trying to do. If I had stuck to that point, instead of taking a shot at you about a secondary complaint (coming on the scene after the work is done and

Not much (offense) taken

[inri]

Hey gfrege:
just posted another follow-up: essentially I say "the author succeeded in his narrowly construed goal, but failed (or didn't do as well) in the (implicit) broader goal", only in more words ;-).

Regarding my journal entry (my first!), it was aimed not so much as you as at the slashbots reaction to it: a topical (if perhaps haughty: it certainly rubbed some others the wrong way) remark gets modded down, while a meta-remark gets modded up (this isn't a great example, as your remark actually was rel