Google Throws /. Under Bus To Snag Patent
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theodp writes "Before Danny Hillis and Bran Ferren invented Google's newly-patented system for 'Delegating Authority to Evaluate Content', Google says users looking for content evaluation websites were condemned to the likes of Amazon.com and Slashdot. From the patent: 'Many sites found on the World Wide Web allow users to evaluate content found within the site. The Slashdot Web site (www.slashdot.org) allows users to "mod" comments recently posted by other users. Based on this information obtained from the users, the system determines a numerical score for each comment ranging from 1 to 5.' The problem with sites like Slashdot, Google told the USPTO, is that 'because there is no restriction on the users that may participate, the reliability of the ratings is correspondingly diminished.' Commissioning a small number of trusted evaluators or editors would increase the reliability of the evaluations, Google notes, but wouldn't allow nearly as much content to be evaluated. Google's solution? Allow trusted evaluators to transfer a 'quantity of authority' to like-minded 'contributing authorities', who in turn designate and delegate authority to additional like-minded contributing authorities. Think Microsoft Outlook 97 Delegate Access meets Slashdot Karma Points, and you've got the general idea!"
Let the Group-Think Flow! (Score:5, Interesting)
Allow trusted evaluators to transfer a 'quantity of authority' to like-minded 'contributing authorities', who in turn designate and delegate authority to additional like-minded contributing authorities.
Um, isn't this exactly what would promote the problem of politically active users donating time to keep adverse stories repressed [slashdot.org]?
...
Quality can be controlled to some extent but biases are much harder to determine
/. threw itself under the bus (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh so long ago when it sold itself for $$$ to whoever that company was. The bus has been running it over ever since.
Who trusts the trusteds? (Score:5, Interesting)
I Respectfully Disagree with You (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's face it, the slashdot moderation system has been broken for a long time. That's where the term slashthink/slashdot group think comes from. If you post a comment that general user base of slashdot likes, it will be modded up. If you post a comment, even a really insightful and interesting one that the general user base doesn't like, it will be modded down. Comments that rank up? Promote free speech, removing copyrights, getting rids of patents, point out how "suits" just don't get us geeks and so on. Comments that go immediately down? Tell informative, but bad points about the current state of Linux, dislike Google, try to be reasonable about copyrights and DRM or say that Microsoft's Visual Studio still kicks ass any other IDE out there.
There's a difference between being "unpopular" and "wrong." I disagree with you and find that well written -- though unpopular -- posts will be moderated highly. I, myself, have participated in receiving such moderation. You can make valid points about the current state of Linux (without having to be apologetic) as long as you know what you are talking about. Here's one of my own posts where I rip on Google's tax evasion [slashdot.org] and it's moderated +4. That's just a quick one, if you need more, I'd be happy to spend some time to provide you counter examples do your claims. As a developer, however, I must say that your Visual Studio statement is completely without merit and will always be modded down. I come to Slashdot not because I'm afraid of debate but because I thirst for it. The most valuable comments are those that put me in my place.
I can't find the old post now because it was long time ago, but it went something like this. Every user are given some amount of moderation points, that affect the moderation as a whole. In addition to that, it affects the moderation you see favorable to the likes of you. If they are on your friend lists, their moderation carries more value. If they have moderated similarly to you, their moderation weights more to you. Of course, this should be balanced so that you don't get fully one viewed comments - if some comment is generally modded very high (and forget the -1-5 scale now), it would be displayed to you anyway. If you add to that that comments where you, or similar persons to you have commented, will be fully displayed regardless of their moderation (or some adjustation of that), it would work out really well. Of course, it needs a lot more computation power on the server side.
That sounds like a really sheltered solution. All I can think about as a comparison is people who live in -- and I'm not picking on them specifically -- a Mormon community only holding their immediate relatives as valid sources of comments. This can be said for any number of things, however, but this proposed "lensing" of Slashdot would just allow people to turtle into their sheltered bubbles. Eventually any contradictory points that I might have been exposed to are safely locked away and I am never challenged. What a horrible, repressed, unenlightened, biased, polarized existence! The website will be a therapist -- telling you only what you want to hear. Disagree with something? Delete the offending friend.
For me, personally? I like Reddit's comment system. It has it's faults, but it's better than Slashdot. Interesting posts are on top, and you can just scroll down for more.
Then go back to Reddit. Why are you here? Go back there where you can delete or modify what you just said when someone wants to engage in a debate with you! Never have I been so exasperated as with my brief foray on Reddit. Valid counterpoint? Deletes his post. Now what?
No moderating system can ever beat your own judgement (even if it's wrong one).
I think you're hung up on wrong/right versus unpopular/popular opinion. It's not so black and white and there is a blur there but I feel that Slashdot 1) presents a decent mix of stories and 2) the subsequent moderation gives you a good idea of what is popular and generally correct/informed.
Slashdot users have prior art ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why is this patentable? (Score:5, Interesting)
.
1 - Why is this patentable?
2 - Doesn't /.'s meta-mod system help to correct the issue raised?
Re:Someone here actually suggested it before (Score:4, Interesting)
I like the slashdot modding idea, that random group of registered people are given a 15 points what they can spend to comments as they like. One point per comment and you have less biased system than giving a permanent group of people to mod. As everyone mod things judging the comment with their knowledge, was it insightful or then just "WOU!" effect without ever thinking it before what comment said.
There is always a biased opinions about topics and only real way to avoid is to give random people to vote.
We know already even among scientists that they can not agree with everything, they have personal bias toward some people and against someone.
The only real way to actually get the real information to come up is to write, read and actually discuss about the subject.
But people have started to be very lazy and they don't like to spend more than 10 seconds to read someones comment. Such people don't actually care others person opinions or conclusions how such person build that opinion, important thing for them is that person who wrote, is she/he with them or against them.
One thing what I always miss is newsgroups modding. And I actually mean the whole newsgroup system.
Every reader could give points to specific writers by their own taste. So when the person writes, the whole discussion root is going to be modded based those.
This way reader could set +5 to person A and -5 to person B, so the root where these two would be discussing, would be ranked as 0. If there is person C who reader has ranked as +15 and wrote a message, the root gets +15 points.
And the newsgroup threading was just awesome. I miss that from every HTML/Javascript/PHP forums today. As all the trolling, unrelated posts etc, got own branch (root) and they could be left outside (closed) by reader if wanted and focus only to the main topic.
But with those forums what just slaps new messages after each other, it just cause fights and blaming in the end.
That is one nice thing what Slashdot have maintained at least some manner, but still missing the clarity of newsgroups tree system.
Re:Someone here actually suggested it before (Score:4, Interesting)
I find that with Slashdot, the key to getting a high score really has everything to do with posting shortly after a submission is out. Wait until there are more than a handful of comments and your score will likely to be pretty low. This also happens on Reddit, but it doesn't seem like quite to the extent of Slashdot.
Reddit on the other hand tends to suffer more from being more of an echo chamber. On Slashdot, you can more often voice a dissenting opinion and still get modded up, opening up more discussion. On Reddit, you just get downvoted and then ignored. What is really needed is two separate controls: one for giving points for a good, well reasoned or stated (non-troll) post and another for whether you agree with the post or not.
Re:Google bashing thread! (Score:0, Interesting)
uh, that matches exactly what I was saying. Some people are better at filtering the 90% out than others. Most slashdotters can filter the 90% out quite well. What's your point?
Re:Someone here actually suggested it before (Score:3, Interesting)
Reddit's system is just as faulty as Digg's system. It gives everyone a vote, regardless of past behavior. The comments that tend get the highest scores are the ones with the largest group think or those that make witty quips. Attempting to find anything meaningful is an utter waste of time. Even worse, the articles that you're most likely to see are also a representation of this effect, and as bad as the Slashdot editors may be, the average Reddit submission is even more slanted and poorly written.
Re:Google bashing thread! (Score:4, Interesting)
What you're talking about, the tyranny of the majority. Is commonly known as group-think in discussions, where people try to ensure that there's one specific kind of information that people should know, and dissenting views shouldn't be heard at all, especially if they're unpopular.
The problem with /. is, if you have a pov, and it goes against the opinions of everyone else. You can expect to see yourself modded down, simply because it's unpopular even if true. I experience it often enough, if I cared, well I would. But I don't. "Shouting" someone down by moderation because you don't like what they say, is the mark of the intellectual coward.
Re:Google bashing thread! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes. It's quite amazing just how many comments get modded up to +4 or +5 very quickly for no apparent reason. The other big problem I have is it sometimes seems anyone can get modded up to +5 insightful or informative if they sound like they know what they're talking about, even if they're flat out wrong. I've seen so many comments that get modded all the way up and they're provably incorrect, sometimes even if I don't know the topic but take five minutes to read the article linked in the summary.
No means to unmod accidents? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Google bashing thread! (Score:5, Interesting)
"Tyranny of the majority" or mob rule/tragedy of the commons/etc. etc.
Indeed, before I became a permanent AC I had a user account on here and with tedious regularity would get modded down for expressing pro-copyright points of view (this was in the days of Napster). Once I even got modded down as "troll" for posting the definition of NP that is "problems whose solutions can be verified in P". Apparently, the simpler definition wasn't widely known back then; it's the definition we give everybody these days (see Wikipedia). But some bright spark said I was a troll in the comments, and rambled on about non-deterministic Turing machines, blithely unaware that the definitions are equivalent, and thus ignorance prevailed.
I also dabbled with karma-whoring, which is embarrassingly easy.
And of course I was accused of "shilling" for my employer (seriously, I posted a pro-copyright comment, someone looked up my IP, mapped it to a Sony range, and accused me of being some kind of astroturfer - apparently I believed in copyright back then because Sony paid me to believe in copyright. Ironic since within Sony I was a troublemaker that was constantly berating the management over email for the kinds of decisions that got them mentioned on Slashdot the whole time. Real irony is that within my part of Sony management agreed with me, and forwarded me the emails they'd sent to the idiots at Sony Music that got all the bad press.)
Great thing about posting AC is you only ever get modded up :)
What's interesting about the Google patent is it almost exactly matches my view on what our voting system should be. Everyone gets a vote on every issue, but to achieve practicality they can defer their vote to someone they trust, thus creating de-facto politicians whose position one trusts enough that one lets them vote for them. Each politician can thus issue N votes, and we have perfect proportional representation. Making this into an online system means we can shift our vote around, allocate it to different people on different issues, and elect to vote directly on things that really matter to us. Elections then choose which set of people we wish to govern us, not which set of people we allow to rule us.
But I acknowledge it's a flawed idea, because it does nothing to avoid tyranny of the majority. So I don't see Google's way as being a step change over Slashdot's way. Just a different permutation of the same concept.
Standard Procedure in Patent Application (Score:4, Interesting)
If you ever applied for a patent you'll know it's just a standard procedure in patent application.
Basically, you list all known prior art to the best of your knowledge, and then state the advantages of your invention over prior art. In fact Google wouldn't be doing a good job (and risk having the patent application rejected) if they didn't mention the Slashdot mod system and its perceived shortcomings.
Of course, whether the whole idea is patentable to begin with is another story.
Re:GO GOOGLE! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:GO GOOGLE! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, no kidding. The "bury brigade" problem [wired.com] is inherent to almost all "community modding" systems. Digg had it the worst because every account has a point to give, and users can trivially make a large number of accounts. Slashdot has the "higher percentage chance" for high-karma posters, but that's not really helpful for two reasons. First, because most high-karma posters would rather post something insightful on a particular topic of interest, and aren't allowed to mod on the same discussion where they comment - thus, most high-karma posters either never use their mod points, or wind up canceling their mods when they see something that makes them want to post instead. Second, because even if you run only one high-karma account, you mathematically have less chance of mod points and less modpoint-holding capacity than the bury-troll who's mining a couple hundred "default karma" accounts that never post (so never get downmodded to troll and lose the ability to receive modpoints) but simply mine for modpoints.
The underlying problem is that downmodding is simply not a useful tool. No matter what you call it, it's an attack on another poster. In the karma system, you do real damage to their future posts (in the term of "all future posts by this user are at -1 or -2 the previous threshold) if you can gather enough bury-brigadiers drive them from Excellent down to Good or below. Even absent a karma system, gathering a bury brigade allows you to do the equivalent of a shout-down attack, forcing anything you don't agree with below the viewing threshold of most people.
Excellent karma yet no mod points (Score:3, Interesting)
Moderators are selected based on past moderations, and the layers are circular. If others have moderated you nicely, you get to moderate yourself.
There has to be something else Slashdot is doing other than this. My account's karma has been Excellent for years, yet I've never had mod points on Slashdot even once. What might I be doing wrong?
Re:Google bashing thread! (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate "Funny" comments as well. That's why I set "Funny" mods to have a negative impact on the overall score in my preferences.
Unfortunately, I can't find that option anymore. It seems to have stuck, though. If I log in, funny comments have -1 scores whereas the same comment will have a higher score if I log out.
Re:Someone here actually suggested it before (Score:5, Interesting)
I do not disagree with you, but I read the first three comments you posted, and I don't think they are good examples of poor usage of down moderation.
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2550822&cid=38213206
A right wing advocate subverts the thread topic to blame the government. Thread topic: Tech giants don't create jobs. Poster: You can't be a tech giant! Too much regulation! This is all because of teh evil government! Blablabla.
http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2550750&cid=38212350
The poster makes a non sequitur, which is immediately picked on by the following replies. This may or may not be a troll, but it is false. There ought to be a moderation -1 False, but since there isn't, the post was modded troll.
http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2550440&cid=38210484
Another right wing poster talking out of his ass. It was modded flamebait, but it seems more like offtopic to me.
I did not bother reading the other comments, but I don't think the moderation in your examples is flat out wrong. As I said, I do not particularly disagree with you, but your examples do not support your point of view (in my opinion).
Re:GO GOOGLE! (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is, I don't see how you can possibly get anything different as long as random members of the group are allowed to have moderation ability. As long as the group in general is allowed to decide what is good or not good, you're going to get a system where ideas that conform to the group's thinking (in general) rise to the top, and ideas that don't are down-modded so they're effectively censored. These unpopular ideas can either be things that many members of the group simply don't like (such as anything that shows Microsoft in a bad light, or anything that challenges the reality and supremacy of The Invisible Hand), or they can be "trolls" and other off-topic crap like the goatse posts and the recent anilingus posts. Think about it: why are the goatse posts considered "trolls" and downmodded? Because they're unpopular and most people don't like them. Of course, this is for good reason; they're both tasteless and off-topic, but still, if we lived in a weird alternate universe where Slashdotters just couldn't stop laughing every time someone posted a goatse link, those posts wouldn't be downmodded, and probably would be modded "Funny" every time someone posted one.
I only see two ways to avoid this problem:
1) don't have any moderation at all. Of course, this has the very real problem that trolls, personal attacks, and other off-topic or bad posts wouldn't be filtered in any way. This is why they invented moderation of posts to begin with; without it, anyone could post anything, no matter how offensive or off-topic, and it'd be a pain trying to filter through all the crap looking for decent posts, and as a result, people eventually stop bothering to frequent that forum. It's like what happens to things like Yahoo Groups when they get filled with spam posts; all the regular people abandon it.
2) have a small group of trusted moderators who spend all their time moderating posts not according to their personal preferences, but rather according to certain editorial guidelines set out by an official policy, in a real attempt to be unbiased. This is what journalists are supposed to do (but don't any more), and this is similar to what things like the Encyclopaedia Brittanica do in their editing: they have professionals on staff whose job it is to make sure articles are unbiased as much as possible, rather than just catering to popular whims. Slashdot's metamoderation system is an attempt to achieve this, but it doesn't work at all, partially because the metamods are done by randomly picked members of the group too, just like the normal mods, so it further reinforces the groupthink. The metamoderation system would work much better if they took it away from regular members, and only allowed paid Slashdot staffers to do it, based on an official policy of what's a good moderation and what isn't. This would have the effect of Slashdot's leadership picking their favorite moderators (ones who moderate according to their policy), and giving them more mod points and giving less or none to people who don't moderate the way they like, so that the Slashdot staff doesn't have to spend so much time doing moderation themselves, while still having some control over the moderation process.
Re:GO GOOGLE! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:GO GOOGLE! (Score:2, Interesting)
I deal with this all the time because I often post from a position that is critical of Google. My karma goes from Excellent to Terrible to Excellent to Terrible, based entirely on how much I express my opinions on favored heroes like Google or Android.
The weirdest issue I've seen lately is a visible increase in the use of Overrated/Underrated moderations, which to my knowledge are not subject to metamoderation. I can't tell you how many +3 or +0 posts I see these days with no moderation adjective.
Of course, some of us still can't moderate because we replied to The Post nearly a decade ago. That's right, that flag is apparently permanent.
Plus only systems (Score:5, Interesting)
Negativity is always more powerful than positivity on positions. What plus only systems do, such as on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ is rank things purely on their positive ratings, though Twitter's ranking is obscured through the Trending Topics system.
Plus only systems don't let anyone actively destroy content, but simply choose to promote or not. Slashdot could use the same system using uncapped mod points per post, and allowing to see top X posts, instead of setting which score to see. Of course, this doesn't change the fact that only random users can mod.
Re:GO GOOGLE! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is a problem inherent with single-blind peer review. In the academic community, anonymous reviewers have the power to reject non-anonymous submissions simply because they don't like the author. Double blind reviews fix this, where both the reviewers and authors are unknown to each other, but it seems that most journals and conferences are single blind.
The solution to Slashdot would be to have a similar double blind system. If you wish to mod comments on a story, you shouldn't be able to see who the poster is. From the story link on the main page, you'll get an option to either comment on the story and see who the other commenters are or mod comments and not know who the authors are. If you choose the comment option, you won't be able to go back and mod later.
Re:Google bashing thread! (Score:4, Interesting)
Reddit? That cesspool? I tried it because someone mentioned it before. I couldn't read the comments for more than 5 minutes before getting nauseous. It's like Yahoo! story comments, only with more neckbeard and basement-dwelling.
Re:GO GOOGLE! (Score:4, Interesting)
And the sad thing is, it wouldn't even be hard to make a change that would drastically reduce those ocurrences.
And that is, force people to view comments at -1 when they have mod points. Most people view at +1 or higher all the time, so even if they may have corrected a bad negative mod, they won't because they won't see it.
Re:GO GOOGLE! (Score:4, Interesting)
If you think the problem is ANYTHING like Digg, your memory must be playing tricks on you. On occasion I see posts (some mine, some I disagree with) modded down simply because the view is unpopular, even if stated well and civilly. But it is nothing like digg where any kind of dissenting view would be dug to -250, never to see the light of day again. Notably, on digg, since anyone could mod at any time, there was nothing to stop someone from making 50 sock puppets all with full digg powers, whereas that simply does not work here.
If there is a complaint I have, it is the groupthink you tend to see on sites like this, but the mods for the most part do their job fairly well. I suppose the one other complaint would be that people mod up TOO much, modding things insightful when noone is even sure if the post in question has a shred of truth to it. You could, for example, get a +5 mod on some days just for making up credible lies about an unpopular politician.
All that said, the system here at slashdot is one of the better ones out there. The limit on how far something can be buried, as well as to who can do the burying, and the restriction from posting and modding in the same topic, do a great job of keeping the worst offenses to a minimum.
Re:GO GOOGLE! (Score:4, Interesting)
This actually matters to some people?!?
I use maybe half the moderator points I'm given, and I can't recall ever paying attention to the poster's identity when I was deciding whether to mod a comment up or down.
On the other hand, maybe I'm just a weirdo....
At least /. values comments (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:GO GOOGLE! (Score:5, Interesting)
The weirdest issue I've seen lately is a visible increase in the use of Overrated/Underrated moderations, which to my knowledge are not subject to metamoderation.
I can tell you why I do that. I used to have another account many years ago. This was a time where Slashdot was going nuts over-sensationalizing stories about Microsoft. It reached a point where virtually ANY article involving Microsoft had several +5's to the tune of "RTFA, the summary is wrong". I modded down a few high profile comments criticizing MS that were technically wrong and not long later I wasn't getting mod points anymore. For *years* I didn't get mod points.
Eventually a criticism I made of Apple earned me the wrath of the fanboys. My posts were downmodded a LOT. (I want to say something like 30 negative mods were used against me within a couple of days.) I was banned from posting from work for weeks. When I finally did post again, it was downmodded AGAIN. So I said fuggit and changed to a new account.
I hadn't moderated ANYTHING for years and eventually with the new account I started getting mod points again. I don't want to lose them again because they take too long to get back. So I use moderations that don't get meta-modded. I don't know if it still works that way anymore, but it's a hard-earned habit.
We don't really discuss here on Slashdot, we debate. The big difference is that nobody asks questions, they just make statements. Although that, in and of itself is fun, I do think this site is a perfect illustration to me of why it's a good thing law enforcement doesn't hand a badge to random citizens so they can be cops for a day. I've seen far better behavior on message forums where they talk about Star Trek vs. Star Wars.
Re:Plus only systems (Score:5, Interesting)
Say 4 of 5 people hold a majority view here. Say there are 400 posts representing the majority view, and 100 posts representing the minority view. Say on average there is 1 randomly selected moderator per 10 posters given one mod point, and the moderators' views have the same distribution. And pretend that Slashdot only allowed positive mods.
There are 40 mods giving +1 to 400 majority-view posts, for an average of 40/400 = +0.1 per post.
There are 10 mods giving +1 to the 100 minority-view posts, also for an average of +0.1 per post.
Note how the average rating within each position is the same. Also note that the number of up-mods is proportional to the number of posts supporting each viewpoint. So both viewpoints are represented in proportion to their popularity, and the sum total of their ratings are likewise proportional to their popularity. e.g. if 1 in 50 posts were worthy of a +5 ranking and the rest were +0, the majority view would have 8 +5 posts, the minority view would have 2 +5 posts. Exactly the same 4:1 ratio as the majority-to-minority ratio.
Now toss in negative mods. Say one in five mods gives a -1 to an opposing viewpoint rather than a +1 to their favored viewpoint.
The majority view gets 400 posts, 32 +1 mods, and 2 -1 mods, for an overall average score of 30/400 = +0.075 per post.
The minority view gets 100 posts, 8 +1 mods, and 8 -1 mods, for an overall average score of 0 per post.
If the ratio of negative to positive mods is greater than the ratio of minority to majority views, the posts representing the minority view actually end up with an average negative ranking. Algebraically:
p = % of positive moderations
n = % of negative moderations
A = majority population
B = minority population
Average majority view ranking = Ap - Bn
Average minority view ranking = Bp - An
It's pretty easy to see that if A > B, this skews the majority rankings to be higher than the minority rankings. And if A >> B, B basically has no say in the rankings, and the rankings are almost entirely determined by A's opinions.
In practical terms, this means that if Google allowed user-controlled negative votes on their search rankings, unpopular topics like Linux would be modded down to oblivion by the much larger number of Windows users. Within the scope of Linux, a particular Linux site might be very useful and worthy of a high ranking. But the number of Windows users who accidentally got the site as a search result would probably outnumber the number of Linux users actually looking for the site. Consequently the negative mods from those Windows users who saw it as an irrelevant search result, would outnumber the positive mods from Linux users, and the useful site would wind up with a negative ranking.
Re:GO GOOGLE! (Score:5, Interesting)
I had a similar idea long time ago - I'm not sure if I posted it on Slashdot or elsewhere.
Basically the idea is to allow everyone to mod/review whatever they want - that includes posts, urls, items and even other users. Then you do a lot of crunching (based on math created by long dead people
Using the results you create public "Points of Views" (POVs). Any user can choose to use (aka "see the world" using) any of these public POVs.
Users can also make public their own POVs for other users to use.
The POVs themselves can also be modded up and down depending on which POV you pick to view them
Once you have that, people can gradually find a POV or two that they are OK with. It doesn't have to be Google Blessed POV.
Of course the biggest problem with this is that people may be so comfy with a POV that they may be unlikely to see ever see an opposing though correct/insightful post/user. But hey, I think you can make money by giving people what they want even if it's bad for them
The other problem is I might have overestimated the capability of modern computing power and known math
But if it works, at least you might be able to shop for gifts using someone else's POV (not necessarily the actual recipient's POV - if you want to give a gift that the person would like, but doesn't know they like
Re:GO GOOGLE! (Score:4, Interesting)
Jesus, we're at two million now? I feel old....
First, let's get this out of the way - fuck Google for patenting a goddamn forum mod system.
That said, it's telling that most of the posts here are bashing Slashdot's mod system. As a longtime user, I heartily agree. /.'s mod system has sucked for a really long time.
It incentivises early posters so later posters get less views even if their posts are more useful; stories with post counts that are high get split into multiple pages but if one thread has too many posts it can break that; the fact that you are judging on a one-dimentional scale where 'funny' is mutually exclusive with 'insightful'...
I could go on, but I think the bigger problems are more with story selection and the general lack of transparency on this site.