- This site is a kook magnet. No doubt about it. It can be charming at times, but can also be a problem when the content to noise ratio gets too low. The last thing we need is for the kooks to see who downmodded them so they can go on a vendetta. They do that enough as is with people who try to talk sense to them.
Hey new owners,
You thought you were buying a tech website, not Reddit light with a shitter commenting and moderation system.
1) As far as the commenting system, everybody has mentioned unicode. Not being able to include images? Tres lame!
As far as the mod system, I get mod points when there are a lot of crap articles, when there are cool articles I have none available. When I run into a particularly good comment I have no mod points available.
Why do mod points expire? Why can't old timers like me, still hanging around in spite of this site being a pale shadow of its former self, not get a permanent pool of mod points to use in these situations?
If the old timers abuse this then you can remove their permanent mod points, but I have no axe to grind it will not happen in my case. I just get tired of having to scroll down through the 100s of racist, sexist, anti-gay posts without being able to do something to do something about them in order to make this a better site for all.
2) If you want to make this a great tech site why don't you test the users on their IT knowledge and give them privileges accordingly? A 15 minute test with 60 randomized questions about OSes, networking, databases, cloud, etc. If you do well you get a Ferrari license, if not you get a Yugo license.
Those with the Ferrari licenses will drive better and will tend to have more important things to say, those with the Yugo licenses can at least be identified more easily so us Ferrari drivers do not have to waste our time and energy on all the loony racist, sexist, and anti-gay trolls.
A new user with a Ferrari license should also get a permanent mod points unless they abuse the privilege. So together all those with the Ferrari licenses could collectively mod down the trash and up mod the gems.
But like socialism in the US this will never happen because it would mean Slashdot would need to get a better class of users. Which totally goes against Market-Droid 101 more is better than less, which implies that quality should not matter at all at least when it comes to stuff like ad impressions.