Reply #45: Yeah, I'm familiar with Slashdot

[Lithos]

And digg, etc. Digg I think is better example of something approaching DU's level of new threads. Digg is also an example of a failure, mostly because the a few die hard members will bury stories making it hard for people to read. A small handful of people can easily bury a thread or a post which given the filters makes it extremely unlikely enough other people would find it which creates a case of censorship by mob.

But even so Slashdot sees an awful lot of moderation in that stories are picked by the editorial staff, heavy flamebait items seldom make it online. There may be disagreement, but usually this is over very geeky topics such as the Linux/M$ wars. Even so, the default threshold makes it hard for people to see threads which have been voted down which again makes it easy for a few early partisan readers to essentially kill any response from being read. The Karma system is also a bit over-rated in that a dedicated group of people (think cliques) can really mess up someone just "'cause".

L-