Slashdot is a popular target for trolls, spammers and others who generally interact with the site for purposes other than engaging in discussion about stories/articles/reviews/etc that are posted everyday. Taco and Hemos have set up moderation to let the 'serious' users of slashdot filter out most of this 'noise', and meta-moderation is there to allow users to 'police' moderation activity. Apparently, once a user has moderated and users have meta-moderated the moderator's scoring, Taco and Hemos review the M2 results and then can disable accounts which appear to be abusing moderation. This has come to be known as the "Bitchslap".
I've been reading and posting to slashdot for well over a year now (since before the first public moderation system was put in) and it has become a daily ritual for me to read the linked articles, post comments along with others, check my user page for replies to my comments, participate in moderation and meta-moderation and otherwise enjoy this really good site. I've submitted stories to slashdot and even had two get posted on the front page (one about Carmack and the other about wireless messaging spam).
On May 10th I loaded up slashdot like I do every morning, checked the new articles, voted in the poll and then started posting on an interesting story. Since I have been posting on slashdot for quite a while, I've accumulated a bit of 'karma' and so my posts defaulted to a score of +2, but I have the option of omitting the bonus and posting at +1. First thing I noticed was that the 'omit +1 bonus' was no longer on the 'submit comment' screen. When I posted my comment, I was surprised to see it at -1. I went to my user page and saw that every comment I had posted over the last few weeks was now rated -1 offtopic and by karma was -10.I had no idea what this was about so I e-mailed Taco:
> On 10 May 00 10:33:05 CDT, Jeff Burkholder said:
>
>Maybe it was something I said (or did)...
>
>
> My account had a 40+ karma until just today. Every one of my past posts that
> are still visible on my user page have meen moderated to -1, even those that
> are quite a bit old (example
> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=00/04/27/124227&cid=28 ) and result is
> now that i'm at -7 and my comments default to -1. I'm not sure if this is
> legit so I thought I'd bring it up in case it's not.
>
> regards,
>
> jburkholder http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=userinfo&nick=Jburkholder
> jeffburkholder@netscape.net
>
Taco replied:
> "Rob 'CmdrTaco' Malda" <malda@slashdot.org> wrote:
> This is the result of very bad moderation.
>I didn't fully grasp what this meant at the time, but it was obvious that something I did in moderation had caused this to happen to my account.
As I went back to reading slashdot later in the day, I came across a post by Signal 11 which had a reply which said something like 'don't moderate down signal 11's posts or you will lose all your karma'. I started to find numerous mentions of users getting 'bitchslapped' for moderating down Signal 11's posts.
I did vaguely remember getting 5 moderator points over the previous weekend and maybe using some of them on Signal 11. I brought up his user page and started to open links to his comments looking for anything familiar. I found a couple that I remembered, so I tried posting a reply to one to see if it was one I had moderated (posting in a thread you have previously moderated causes the moderation to be reversed). Sure enough, after posting a reply, slashdot informed me that a -1 troll moderation was being reversed.
Apparently, this post is one that I moderated and may be the cause of the bitchslap:
Yeah, well, us computer geeks have known about black holes for a long time. What eats the other sock in your dryer? What causes packet loss in your quake game? Where do we all wish Jon Katz would go? There's a reason the IETF drafted some RFCs to deal with TCP/IP in space - they knew about black holes long before the astronomers and they're taking steps to counteract them now. As a sidenote, Cisco is going to one-up Lucent this week by unveiling a wormhole router - apparently they got miffed that they were being limited to the speed of light.This comment shows moderating totals as: Offtopic=1, Troll=2, Total=3. The article was Black Hole searching in the Australian Outback. I guess this isn't so much a blatant troll as it is a weak attempt at humor. I think my -1 troll is subtracted from this total as I posted a reply to it to see if it was one I moderated. If so, three other moderators agreed with me that this didn't deserve to be +2 since it was not informative, interesting or even funny.
Also, there was this post that I moderated, but I'm pretty sure I marked it offtopic:
I'll agree with you that I'm underappreciated, but disagree on everything else. I'm not knowledgable on everything. I happen to hold an opinion on most things, and be knowledgable in a very few areas.. suprisingly like most geeks. I rarely hit +5, nor do I really try. I'm no genius, intelligent.. yes, genius.. that's debatable. And I don't have 3 jobs at various "major IT companies" - I have 1. The last part of that sentence makes no sense, so I'll skip it.This appears to be in response to a flame. Can't hardly be considered on-topic for a discussion about the ILOVEYOU worm, can it?In short.. I'm just a normal geek who happens to like slashdot.
So, I had moderated down a Signal 11 post as troll, and my account had been 'bitchslapped'. My first reaction was to be pissed. It appeared to me that what was done to my account was far out of proportion to any abuse that I may have committed. I then decided to just forget about it and create a new user account and start over. But, it nagged at me.
Eventually I e-mailed Taco again:
>On 13 May 00 10:36:51 CDT, Jeff Burkholder said:
>Rob,
>
> I went back and tried to figure out what I did that was 'very bad
> moderation'.
> Near as I can figure it was because I modded down posts by Signal 11. If
> this constitutes moderation abuse, I can accept having my moderation
> priviledge taken away (and a subtraction of karma).
>
> But what I am bothered by is the fact that my previous posts were all marked
> as offtopic and my default post is -1. I can't really think of a reason for
> my entire account to be crippled like this as a result of bad moderation
> (maybe this is the only method you have to disable an account from moderating
> ever again?). Looking at my previous posting history, it seems clear (to me)
> that I tried to contribute to slashdot in good faith and virtually none of my
> posts were moderated down as offtopic, trolls or flamebait.
>
> Obviously you run slashdot as you feel is appropriate [blatant ass-kissing snipped].
> I do feel like I should let
> you know how disappointed I am that you felt you had to take this action against
> my account because of moderation abuse.
>
> Well, I don't know if you'll even get this far in my note or even be
> interested in the opinion of one slashdot reader/poster. If you did, thank
> you for your attention.
>
> regards,
>
> Jeff Burkholder
I wasn't really expecting a reply but was surprised by this:
>"Rob 'CmdrTaco' Malda" <malda@slashdot.org> wrote:
>Pater, this guy was another victim of the too-powerful-bitchslap
>punishing comment posters for bad moderation. Give him back his
>defaultstatus.
>
>Jeff: we were using one script to solve 2 problems: Bots autoposting
>comments to Slashdot (moderating down all comments to -1 and
>setting defaultpoints to -1) and invalid moderation (karma -1 and
>remove all moderator points).
>
>We just didn't have a better tool. You mismoderated, and I caught
>you. Signal 11 posts a lot of dull uninterested uninspired crap, but
>that doesn't make his stuff a troll. Moderating that way is an abuse
>of the moderation system: you moderated him as a troll because he
>writes dull posts and is a karma whore. Those are different problems,
>but they aren't trolling.
>
>You can get your karma back and you'll regain moderator access
>again, but think hard in the future...
Well, this seems reasonable to me. I don't really agree that it was moderation abuse, but I'll just deal with it. I was impressed that Taco replied to my mail and is willing to restore my account.
As for Signal 11...
A lot of people really hate him, I'm not one of them. Tell the truth, I get more annoyed with the constant comments calling him a 'karmawhore' and other trolls and flames that he seems to attract than I really do with anything he posts himself. Some of his stuff can be kind of weak, obvious or trite and doesn't seem to deserve the moderation it gets, but he is always there with something to say on almost every article. Indeed, it does look like sometimes he is just posting to get modded up to get karma, but like Taco said, that isn't the same as trolling. And how much karma does someone really want/need? Once you get enough points, you can have a default +2 posting score, and I think it plays into getting moderator points. Beyond that, no amount of karma really does anything for you (no one else can even see it).
To be honest, I'm not sure what to make of him. He doesn't really seem to add that much to the discussions, some of his information appears to come right out of his ass and he comes off with a real superiority attitude sometimes. Maybe he is just a subtle troll that likes getting under everyone's skin and likes getting attention (good or bad). It's pretty subjective, but the moderators do love him.
He makes mention on his user page that he is aware of the bitchslapping:
UPDATE: It has come to my attention that moderation abusers
have had a new response from Cmdrtaco lately - -1'ing all
their posts and putting their karma to -10. If this has
happened to you, please e-mail me with the details. I have
found atleast two people, slashdot-terminal and blogan, who
have had this happen to them. If you believe you have been
"bitchslapped" unfairly, please let me know - I may not be
able to do anything about it, but I would like to start
journalling this kind of thing as it does say something profound
about the moderation system.. and that is kindof what
I'm famous for around here... :\So, I've e-mailed him about this... not sure why. Guess I'm just curious what he'll say.
As of Sunday night, my account is still 'slapped' and I haven't heard back from Signal_11.
Mm-K, got a note from CowboyNeal that the mail server was down and he didn't get to doing anything about my account until just now (Monday morning). Now my posts are +1 by default, good enough. My old posts are still at -1 so it doesn't look like that will change. Interestingly, some moderators decided to up my -1 posts, so now my -10 karma is in positive territory. Thanks guys!At this point I am pretty much satisfied at the outcome of this. I will probably leave this page up and link it from my .sig for a while yet in the case that the bitchslap is of interest to anyone. I'm still not sure if meta-moderation automatically invokes the script that cripples the account once enough users 'disagree' with your moderation of a comment, or if the script is manually run by slashdot staff once they become aware of abuse (either looking through M2 results or someone complaining). If it is automatic, Taco might update the moderation guidelines to spell out how slashdot handles moderation abuse.
Signal 11 updated his slash bio:
Another slashdot reader has this to say about bitchslapping. For
the record, I have replied to him and we have exchanged
several e-mails about this. Those e-mails will remain in
confidence however unless he gives me permission to post them.I haven't received any e-mail from Signal 11 as of Monday afternoon. I think maybe he has confused me with another user. In any case, Signal 11 has my permission to do whatever he wants with any e-mail I've sent him. For the record, my slashdot account is Jburkholder (28127) and my e-mail address for slashdot replies is jeffburkholder@netscape.net.
Ok, guess it's time for a final update (June 6th) now that this whole ugly business seems to be over. Even though Taco restored my account, I stopped using it. I had created a new account, "Fishstick" during this and started using it and for some reason I just kept using it even after my original account was un-bitchslapped.I'm still not sure about Signal 11. I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he had me confused with someone else when he claimed to have exchanged e-mail with me. After I e-mailed him again and he eventually replied, he changed his slashdot page to say that he had replied, where he originally said that he had exchanged several e-mails with me.
I wasn't too happy about this and decided to move this page to another address and replace the original URL with a page featureing George W. Bush. I have no idea why I chose that, I was originally going to just 404 it but instead linked to a reuters news photo. Well, reuters doesn't leave files in place for very long so after a couple days the image in the page didn't load anymore so I decided to change it to something a little more permanent.
It was that day that I was poking around in comments in the slash poll and came across a mention of stinkymeat.net where a couple of guys had left a plate of raw hamburger out on the neighbor's lawn and were posting pictures everyday of the state of decay of the meat. Dunno, I just decided to link an image off stinkymeat.net and say something like "got to be more appetizing than what you were just reading" referring to signal 11's slashdit user page where he left the link up to my page still claiming to have exchanged e-mail.
Sig 11 obviously figured out what I had done and posted the new link to this page in addition to a comment about the original page, something to the effect that it was hard to take anyone serious who acted as juvenile as to link to a page of rotting meat. Ok, well -- not my finest moment, but a) being taken serious by him was not a priority and b) he still appeared to be sidestepping the issue (wait, what was the issue again?) In any case, I ammended the page to get rid of the maggot-infested decomposing ground chuck on a styrofoam plate, and replaced it with my reply.
I'm still a little confused by what happened. Did Taco or Hemos single me and a few others out because of this one guy, Signal 11? It does seem a little odd. I'm inclined to think it was bad timing. A bunch of moderators got fed up with Sig's crap and went on the warpath. Maybe someone e-mailed Taco after seeing all Sig's posts at -1 and he just found everyone that had moderated his comments down and ran the script to cripple the accounts. I got caught up in the crackdown because I happened to moderate during whatever time this happened. I haven't heard about anyone else being bitchslapped, so maybe it was a one-time deal to fight-off some abuse. I don't know.
In any case, it's time to move on.