Discovery

[andrewducker]

Having realised that life is just too damn short I have switched to reading Slashdot at 3. Suddenly the world seems a happier, shinier place. If only life had a similar function.

Brief explanation - comments on Slashdot are rated by other users (moderated up or down). They start at 0 (for anonymous people) 1 (for people with accounts) and 2 (for people who have been moderated up enough times to be considered trustworthy) and then can be moderated up as far as 5. Reading at 0 is akin to plunging your head repeatedly into a large bucket full of particularly stupid squid, reading at 2 means that you get to read everything that anyone at all thinks is a vaguely sensible thing to say, reading at 5 means you never get to see discussion, just statements, 3 seems to be a reasonable compromise. What I'd really like is for it to set it to a level that gives me the top-rated 50-ish comments, but that would be far too sensible.

Comments

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

I like that system.

I'm curious - how is it possible to get a -1?

[andrewducker]

There are these things called integers which consist of the set of all numbers which can be reached by either subtracting or adding 1 to another integer. The number -1 can be reached by subtracting 1 from 0.

[davidcook.livejournal.com]

And the serious answer is that posts can be rated downwards - for being off-topic, trolls, redundant, or "overrated" (nice subjective one there). Each of those subtracts one point from the overall score for a comment, and they can take it down to -1. Also, if a commenter has sufficiently bad "karma" (that is, they've posted lots of comments which have attracted negative moderation), their comments can start out rated at 0 or -1, rather than the default 1 for people with normal karma.

[lilitufire.livejournal.com]

Ahh :) Thanks!

Nice to meet you today, by the way :)

[davidcook.livejournal.com]

Likewise ! Always good to match LJs and "real people" :-)

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

Ah - that helps.

Good on you for the tip!

[drplokta]

+1 Informative

[broin.livejournal.com]

+drplokta

[themongkey.livejournal.com]

You could always switch to not reading it at all.

[andrewducker]

But I occasionally find it interesting/useful for knowing what's going on in the tech-world.

[azalemeth.livejournal.com]

I read at -1 ^_^.

Now that *is* like washing your hair in sodium hydroxide. I have it like that mainly as I get so many blasted modpoints....meta-modding is much more fun.

For a moment I thought you mean /. at 3pm!

[terminalmalaise.livejournal.com]

Life is too damn short. I switched to AlterSlash and only hop over to Slashdot if it's something that really interests me. There's no reason someone couldn't make a version that screen-scraped the top 50 instead of just the top 5...

[cruft.livejournal.com]

I started reading at 6 and had to strangle like 100000 fewer people per day because of it! yay!

[whumpdotcom.livejournal.com]

Anita Rowland says she reads it at 5.

I don't read it.

Now if I can figure out how to keep wingnuts from using Blogger...

[heron61.livejournal.com]

Reading at 0 is akin to plunging your head repeatedly into a large bucket full of particularly stupid squid

That is one of the best (and most vivid) statements of what far too much of the internet is like.