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I was going to post this to a particular story, but thought this might generate more attention and discussion as a general submission.
Seriously, what is going on with all these troll mods? Just because you disagree with someone, thus earning a "disagree" mod, does not mean that person is a "troll." To steal a definition from Urban Dictionary:
An Internet troll, or simply troll in Internet slang, is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum or chat room, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response or to generally disrupt normal on-topic discussion.
Just because you disagree with someone, does not mean they are trying to do the above. Be faster on the "disagree" and slower on the "troll." Under such abuse, it is hard to have a good discussion and, in itself, is trollish behavior by "generally disrupt[ing] normal on-topic discussion." Other than people disciplining themselves, a concerted effort to police such abuses, or making moderation logs public on the bottom of a comment where the score is shown now, I'm unsure of what to do about. As it stands, it is getting increasingly ridiculous to read what discussion is here on any topic remotely controversial, and is expanding outside of even those. It is starting to drive me away from the site, and I'm somewhat confident it is doing the same for others. I'd be interested to see what others think about the depth of the problem, if they even believe it even exists at all, and what solutions you all have for it.
[Ed note. This story is published exactly as received. First off, it bears repeating that complaining about moderations in the comments often leads (rightly) to an off-topic moderation. That is a contributing factor to my decision to run this story. Secondly, moderation is something that I on occasion have found I've fat-fingered and given a different moderation than expected. Thirdly, in the grand scheme of things, a comment's moderation is — relatively speaking — small potatoes. It is NOT a measure of your IQ or value as a human being. or standing in the community. Just accept that stuff happens and that as likely as not, someone will be along to moderate it the other way. Which is a good opportunity to say: PLEASE USE YOUR MOD POINTS! Lastly, if you think a comment was moderated in error, then send the CID (Comment ID) link e.g. "(#876543)" in an email to admin (at) soylentnews (dot) org. Keep in mind however that we are all volunteers here and there most likely will be a delay between when you send out an email and when we can get around to it. --martyb]
[Updated: 20190823_111312 UTC See comment from JR who far more precisely and eloquently expressed the idea I was attempting to. I concur with his assessment. If I want people to upmod a comment of mine that I believe was unfairly downmodded, then I need to be willing to upmod other's mis-modded comments. For perspective, so far this month, anywhere from ~150-~350 mod points were used in any given day. It bears repeating: use your mod points!]
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 24 2019, @05:00PM
Aristarchus is a known troll. While I appreciate his good moments, it's clear he's a troll a lot of the time. I sincerely hope that my post history here demonstrates that I am not. While I admit to very rarely losing my temper (literally like half a dozen times over the past three years), and perhaps in another dozen or so posts over the years, I may have gone overboard in responding to a person acting like a jerk by acting too much like a jerk in return, 99% of my thousands of posts here have been trying to support the community, to be informative and offer facts, and to promote quality discourse.
So, yet another rant from Aristarchus is unlikely to garner much concern. Maybe a journal entry from me might have been perceived as carrying more weight and seemed more threatening or sowing more dissent. I don't know.
To me, it does seem a stupid thing to TMB to do, but the last time I "took a break" from this site, I didn't come back even to read comments on my post for a week, and then I did take a break for several months. Maybe he didn't expect me to show up again this morning. Which I wasn't planning on doing -- I logged out last night and navigated to the site this morning without logging in, just curious to see what comments may have appeared on my journal. Except it wasn't there. I tried searching. No dice. I thought maybe there was something that determined which journal entries could appear in the "list," so I logged in, and it was gone. Hence my posts in this thread.