Ha Ha!

I dont care.

Its the first step on the path to enlightenemt...

Ha Ha!

Live free.

Die Happy.

I would welcome Hothgar back.

I will make a note to ping you lots of greenies.

And yes, as TOD becomes more 'professional' expect more thought control and thereby self - censorship.

... after all , who could face life in the morning with negative greenies? - the shame!

Or worse still : no response whatsoever?

Gadzooks! Peak must truly have arrived: TOD is becoming professional.

I bumped you up for your post although I would presume you don't care. And, yes, I feel a bit guilty for being part of the system. This is an experiment and may actually result in "better" posts whatever that means. Some or maybe many posters here will try harder to have their posts appreciated by other posters. Accordingly, they will be more careful in the way they express themselves. This is a testament to our educational and work system which encourages behavior whereby we learn to play well with others. Many of the low scorers will be either banned or will wander off elsewhere to the nether regions of the internet.

Personally, I don't mind the people I perceive as dickheads because this forces me to confront the opinions of dickheads, that is, the possible majority of people out there. Alternatively, even stupid opinions are welcome and I fear that this experiment will be too successful.

I assume we are all being watched by the government; I feel this system is kind of piling on. And,hey, a number system might even help the government more efficiently monitor our activities.

And anyone who thinks I am being paranoid hasn't been paying attention to the news for the last several years.

Why would I want to be so sad as to visit a tech news site?

Why would I want to discriminate?

Some are brilliant, some are weird, some are off the wall, some are geeky, some are plainsong, some are exotic.

All are the last bastion of free speech.

Millbrook, perhaps it has not occured to you that if we wanted to hang out at Slashdot that we would already be there? Just possibly, some of us like TOD? I have been to Slashdot and it sucks.

No need to react with such hostility, River, and no need to be sarcastic, Mudlogger.

I was recommending neither Slashdot nor the comment rating system, just answering Mudlogger's question about what the green numbers are.

I can see it was a mistake to actually answer the question -- Mudlogger is out to bash the ratings system, not to understand the intent of the moderators in testing it.

And, therefore, I conclude that we should let others decide what is irrelevant. The system, admittedly, is very useful for those who do not choose think for themselves.

I just cannnot imagine looking at a number, such a your number (-1 at this writing) by the way, and then, based on that, skip over it. And how negative does the number be before I should choose to skip the comment?

Although you had a negative number, I found your post useful, as it told me just how truly insane this idea is.