CmdrTaco's Journal: Mod Point Grants, "Rock Stars", HDTV Tivo

One of my most frequent questions from readers is pretty amusing: They complain that they get mod points to often! Actually, they aren't complaining as much as they are worrying that something is broken and they think they are reporting a bug.

This is how the system works. We have many controls in the system that are designed to give good moderators mod points more often. There are a variety of tests, but in short... the more deserving a comment is of the mod you gave it, the faster you will get mod points. Moderating a Score:0 to -1 or a Score:1 to 2 has FAR more effect than moderating a Score:4 to 5. We figure you're working harder if you are moderating in the middle of the bell curve, and that deserves to be rewarded. Of course, these rewards are dependant on fair m2, and other factors as well, so its reasonably controlled. A good moderator can get mod points every 48 to 72 hours. And thats exactly what we want.

The opposite is also true, certain activities reduce your likelihood of being granted mod points. Like, letting your points expire unused... or having several mods being rated unfair. Or if all you ever do is moderate Score:4 comments "Funny".

But this leads me to another point... when we revise the system, more points is better. Right now we're using 7 to 8k mod points every day... 7 or 8 mods for every 10 or 11 comments. This is a reasonable balance. We're limited because more points really only dilutes the value of Score:5 comments... plus this is about as many mods as we can meta moderate.

The new system removes the absolute scoring... so now putting 20 or 30k moderation points into the system will actually improve the quality of the discussion. The trick is of course figuring out how to put these points in. Do we give more users access? Do we give users more points when they get access? Or do we pick certain users... we've nicknamed them 'Rock Stars' and give them many many mod points... 50 points per day? 100 points?

There are tons of risks and tons of benefits associated with this... we've thought pretty extensively about them. There would need to be certain controls to prevent abuse... like if a Rock Star moderated his own IP, that would be an obviously suspicious activity... or if a Rock Star spent 25 points on a single user account. Right now I can pick a dozen moderators that are great. These guys use perhaps 50 mod points a month... they do the things I mentioned above, and maintain extremely high % of Fairness in M2. Keeping an eye on a dozen users isn't that hard... especially because serious abuse becomes VERY obvious very quickly. A moderator who has 5 points might not be doing anything obviously wrong... but you look at his account 3 weeks later and see that in his 3 turns as a moderator, he has used all his points on 4 different users... well, something suspicious is happening there. We could definitely have a few rules keep good controls on these users.

The upside is that these users wouldn't feel the need to save their points for the 'best' comments... these dozen users could produce as many moderations as 100 other users... and provided they were able to maintain the % of fairness and not abuse the system, the whole system benefits.

In the early days of Slashdot moderation, we had a few hundred users with unlimited moderation powers. The difference here is that this pool of Rock Stars is dynamic... sellected algorithmically from the cream of the crop of our moderation pool.

Anyway, it's just a thought. As always, if you can reply here, feel free. Else email me.

The HDTV Tivo's are out of stock or back ordered everywhere. Apparently a few hundred actually made it. There's even one on eBay. It doens't close for another 6 days... I guess I can be patient... I'm just annoyed that they are hard to come by. I want HDTV CSI!