[Slashcode-general] Unintended Consequences

[Michael W. <mfw...@gm...>]

I just spent a significant portion of my life trying to improve
the Slashdot community by contributing a tediously constructed
comment on a technical subject. 

Once I had finished, I pasted my results into the comment text
field and pressed `Preview', only to be greeted vacuously with
the following message:

  Filter error: Please use fewer 'junk' characters.

After a few moments of playing around, I discovered that this is
yet another sour outcome of Slashdot's baroque commenting system;
it turns out that my pre-formatted ASCII diagrams, though small,
are being flagged as unwanted content.

A little googling later, and I came across a number of comments
to the effect of "I would post a code example, but Slashdot's filter
thinks it's junk".

So, good going! You've succeeded in stifling meaningful dialog.

My immediate response at this point was to give up and get on with
my life, but then roughly 2 words crystalized violently in my mind:

  NO, GODDAMNIT!

I'm not going to be silenced by this overengineered monstrosity.

The next idea I had was to use some service like `pastie.org' in
order `to host' my ASCII diagrams, and then I would link to those
diagrams from my Slashdot comment.

However, I can't stand the thought of these links being broken
over time, thereby rendering my comment into mostly useless ruins;
I needed to find a solution that more strongly couples my comment
with the diagrams.

Moreover, I wanted to make a loud complaint about this nonsense.

Hence, I've come to this mailing list to say the following:

  * Your commenting system sucks ass.

    For all of the effort that you've put into making it as
    intricately moderated as possible (and I've tried to spend
    my moderation points properly!), it not only doesn't improve
    the quality of the comments beyond what a simpler system can
    achieve, but it also actively diminishes the quality (not
    to say that my comment in particular is of high quality;
    however, others have no doubt been quashed).

    If you want an example of a commenting system that consistently
    yields excellent comment threads with decent fomatting and linking
    and moderation, then look to copying something like that of
    Reddit.

  * As an unintended consequence of Slashdot's nonsensical system,
    I have decided to post my code examples and ascii diagrams here
    to this list and then embed into my comment a link to the archived
    email as a reference.
    
    I will do this whenever I find the need.

    I figure that as long as Slashdot is around to host my comments,
    then this mailing list is also going to be around to host my
    content, thereby providing the stable coupling that I desire.

Sincerely,
Michael Witten