This title belongs to the cut and pasted post below. It was the most moderated post ever.
After a month of metamoderation it's been archived and now sits at 158 moderations, mostly Offtopics, and 40-something interestings, insightfuls and informatives. At its peak before metamoderation started there was a total of 851 moderations, yes EIGHT HUNDRED and fifty one:
Moderation Totals: Offtopic=377, Flamebait=4, Troll=27, Redundant=5, Insightful=98, Interesting=205, Informative=49, Funny=12, Overrated=11, Underrated=63, Total=851

Consider this mind-boggling event: Once a post hits the +5 or -1 limit it can no longer be moderated in that direction. This means that it was systematically up and down voted in a /\/\/\/\/\ pattern. An oscillating, harmonically tuned wave of upvotes and downvotes lasting several days. It's simply incredible that this would go on for such a long time.

Truly, an amazing feat.

Update: It sprang a controversy about Slashdot gods silently removing those who upvoted off the moderation list (http://slashdot.org/journal.pl?op=display&uid=442574&id=4236).

Posted under the topic Technology / Oracle breakable after all: (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=26315&cid=2850660)


The first Slashdot troll post investigation (Score:0, Flamebait)
by negativekarmanow tm on 2002.01.16 16:29 (#2850660)
(User #518080 Info | http://slashdot.org/ | Last Journal: 2002.01.18 12:14)

The last few months I have been doing some research into the trolling phenomenon on slashdot.org. In order to do this as thoroughly as possible, I have written both normal and troll posts, 1st posts, etc., both logged in and anonymously, and I have found these rather shocking results:

  • More moderator points are being used to mod posts down than up. Furthermore, when modding a post up, every moderator seems to follow previous moderators in their choices, even when it's not a particularly interesting or clever post slashdot.org. There are a LOT more +5 posts than +3 or +4.
  • Logged in people are modded down faster than anonymous cowards. Presumably these Nazi Moderators think it's more important to burn a user's existing karma, to silence that individual for the future, than to use the moderation system for what it's meant for : identifying "good" and "bad" posts (Notice how nearly all oppressive governments in the past and present do the same thing : marking individuals as bad and untrustworthy because they have conflicting opinions, instead of engaging in a public discussion about these opinions)
  • Once you have a karma of -4 or -5, your posts have a score of -1 by default. When this is the case, no-one bothers to mod you down anymore. This means a logged in user can keep on trolling as much as he (or she) likes, without risking a ban to post on slashdot. When trolling as an anonymous user, every post starts at score 0, and you will be modded down to -1 ON EVERY POST. When you are modded down a certain number of times in 24 hour, you cannot post anymore from your current IP for a day or so. So, for successful trolling, ALWAYS log in.
  • A lot of the modded down posts are actually quite clever, funny, etc., and they are only modded down because they are offtopic. Now, on a news site like slashdot, where the number of different topics of discussion can be counted on 1 hand, I must say I quite like the distraction these posts offer. But no, when the topic is yet another minor version change of the Linux kernel, they only expect ooohs and aaahs about this great feat of engineering. Look at the moderation done in this thread to see what I mean.
  • Digging deep into the history of slashdot, I found this poll, which clearly indicates the vast majority does NOT want the moderation we have here today. 'nuff said.
Feel free to use this information to your advantage. I thank you for your time.

Anonymous cowards are... well, cowards.