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Journal RobertB-DC's Journal: Waiting to moderate... 22

Journal by RobertB-DC

It's been over two weeks now, and no mod points yet. When do I get to moderate?

There are some hints. The FAQ entry How Did The Moderation System Develop says that "the newest few thousand accounts" aren't eligible, so that newbies have been around "for a few weeks" before they get to start using a complex system.

Alright, so two weeks isn't "a few". Darn.

There's another hint, though. The Meta-Moderation (M2) FAQ question Who Can M2? states that only "the oldest 90% of accounts on the system" can M2. Since M1 (regular moderation) would seem to be a prerequisite for M2, it should be pretty easy to determine the upper bound. Am I at the 90% level yet?

My user number is 622190. How much of a newbie am I? That depends... what's the highest user number? Let's hack a bit, shall we?

URL to "my page":
http://slashdot.org/users.pl

Go ahead, click it... it'll take you to your page. Oops!

URL to any user's page:
http://slashdot.org/~[username]

But that doesn't tell me the user's number until I click it. Hmmm... where have I seen my number displayed in a more accessible form?

On the Subscriptions Page! After one step that is left to the student, there's a confirmation that the user number is yours, with a numeric link to your profile.

URL to my page, with numeric reference:
http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=userinfo&uid=622190

Now for a little math. I'm eligible to M2 when I'm in the bottom 90%, right? That would mean that once there's a user number 691322 (.9x = 622190), I'm in.

Hello? Are you there?

The UID 691322 could not be found.

Crud. Ok, how much longer?

The UID 691300 could not be found.
The UID 691000 could not be found.
The UID 690000 could not be found.
The UID 680000 could not be found.
The UID 650000 could not be found.
The UID 630000 could not be found.

Great. Not even 10,000 users after me. How bad is it?

complusory (628051) has posted 0 comments.

In the 15 days since I joined, 628,051 - 622,190 = 5,861 new members have come on board... 390 a day. With 69,132 members between "newbie" and "M2", that means that I'll get M2 access in about 177 days... almost six freaking months.

Conclusions

Meta-moderation access is a choice plum that requires a significant committment to the Slashdot community. This is by design.

Whining about it won't do any darn good, since the current system works just fine, thank you.

I didn't sign up for Slashdot just for mod points, did I? (Read the first entry in my journal for details)

M1 is probably easier to get than M2, so maybe I'll only have to wait... three months.

Well, at least I can stop holding my breath waiting for mod points, and concentrate on my Karma Whoring instead. [smirk]

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Waiting to moderate... More

Waiting to moderate...

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  • I created an account initially to make it easier to read Slashdot, primarily reading so I could read it in sparse mode and set my default threshhold to 2. Therefore I didn't even post for about two weeks or so after creating my account. Reverse-engineering from my first posting on July 3, that means my account was created around June 20th. And I was first selected to moderate on the 14th of November.

    This is probably a fair bit more of a gap than you will experience, however. As I already noted, I didn't start posting right away, so I sat at around 3 or 4 karma for a long time. (They only recently switched Karma to being a descriptive word. However, when they did switch, I was rated 'Good'. Never knew 'Positive' was an option.) I believe frequency of moderation is primarily effected by how often you're logged in, assisted by a high karma rating, and improved by being metamoderated as "Fair". Myself, I'm only semi-frequently logged in since I keep myself mostly occupied with class all day and I don't post terribly much, so my karma still hovers somewhere in the 'good' range. (My wager is that 25 is 'Excellent', since the karma cap was 50, and probably still is.)

    Worth noting is that metamoderation is reported in messages similar to comment moderation, but apparently it's cumulative. Individual M2s aren't reported, but rather the overall M2 after several people get to see it. As such, I saw M2 messages about 5 days after I actually moderated. Go figure.

    • I'm number 548339, and I received access to M1 and M2 probably about two months ago or so. I had access to M2 well before M1, and I probably had sufficient Karma (I'm at excellent) before getting access. I actually emailed CmdrTaco about this at a point, and he indicated that nothing was wrong with my account - but I hadn't hit the threshold yet. I'm guessing it will be about six months before you will have access.

      My guess is that the system was designed when /. had a much smaller user group. I imagine that the 90% rule would have given you access more quickly back when there were only 100k users.

      M1 and M2 are nice ways to give back to the community - but don't lose any sleep waiting for them. I probably get access to M1 every few weeks now, and that obviously has the bigger impact. You'll find that if you are a big contributor you'll find yourself being torn between wanting to respond to a comment or wanting to mod the topic...
      • I wouldn't have suspected that M2 would come before M1, but I guess it makes sense... somehow. I guess they're not as directly related as they would seem.

        So at least 6 months for M2, and M1 is anyone's guess. Thanks for the info!
    • Great info... as much as I love to blab, I have nothing to add! +5, Informative

      Too bad I won't be able to mod-up posts in my own journal... seems like that would be a cool feature, since you're the "owner" of the discussion. Maybe after I install the Slashcode [slashcode.com] someday, I'll be qualified to suggest the idea (with implementation details, of course).
      • Too bad I won't be able to mod-up posts in my own journal... seems like that would be a cool feature, since you're the "owner" of the discussion.

        Never having had a comment in my journal, I can't speak from experience. However, I've seen comments that stated one has unlimited ability to moderate his own journal. Perhaps the same (5%?) new user moderation ban which prevented you from moderating on Brak also prevents new users from even moderating their own journals. Seems queer that it would be set up like that, however. If it is indeed the case, that would indeed be a good modification to ths slash code.

      • It seemed that one could, at one point, moderate one's own journal as much as one pleased. However, being a fully-eligible M1 and M2'er, I nonetheless have never been able to moderate in my own journal.

        Perhaps the feature was removed at some point?

        Jouster
  • I have yet to earn moderation points, well, except for when I tried out the "new" /. and everyone had 30 mod points and (s)excellent karma.

    Things are really going to change around here once I get mod points. ;o)
    • It's cool that you mentioned the Slashdot-on-acid and its 30 moderation points... that experience was what got me to go ahead and become an official Slashdot newbie! See my first journal entry, "From n00b to Karma Whore in 10 easy steps" [slashdot.org].

      Unfortunately, even brak.slashdot.org didn't give mod points to new accounts. But I was hooked anyway.
  • Just promise me that when you get M2, you'll ignore the scary warnings and ALWAYS click "See Context".

    If you had, and you'd been my metamoderator, you wouldn't have M2'd my "redundant" mod of this gem [slashdot.org] (answered in the story, as the comment below it points out) as unfair.

    Jouster
    • I'd have to agree that your "redundant" mod was fair, but I'd think you'd want to use those precious 5 mod points more sparingly... after all, aren't *most* of the comments to any particular story somewhat redundant, if you read the article? But you're right, the M2 of "unfair" was unfair, and if I had M3, I'd meta-meta-moderate the M2 of your M1 as "unfair". But then, someone might argue that I was "unfair", and I'd lose Karma when I got M4'd. Hmmm... wonder if there's an INFINITE_METAMODERATION variable in the Slashcode [slashcode.org]?
  • Hey, just to let you know - I'm 590071, and still waiting for my first mod points... and I went to excellent karma in my first week.

    -T

    • If my math is correct (no guarantees, of course), then you're anxiously awaiting the arrival of user #655635. You're almost there... Just ~30,000 to go! At 390 a day, you're less than 80 days away.

      Thanks for the Instant Karma info, too! I got there in 8 days (see other journal entries for details), and I was wondering how unusual that was. Of course, maybe we're the only two... :)

  • Hm.. (Score:2)

    by mstyne ( 133363 )
    Strangely enough, I'm given mod points every other week. (Give or take, of course.) I'm old, I guess.
    • At 133363, you're in the top (bottom?) 25% of Slashdotters. Congratulations!

      But I bet when you signed up, you thought "Six digits! What a newbie user number!" I'm just glad I got in before the 7th digit kicked in.
      • Yeah... I actually had an older account, too, but I came back to /. after two years of non-posting and have completely forgotten the name of that other account. This was my backup account (since I tended to be rather flamey with my primary). 144775 ain't too bad, though.

        I'm also ludicrously proud of my ICQ number, 5577050. I also have one in the low three-millions that I use to talk with my family; it shames me a little to admit that I have seriously considered creating a new account to talk to my family just so I can show how 31337 I am by having a three-million-and-some ICQ number. *grin*

        Jouster
        • My ICQ number is in the 7-millions... but my brother-in-law takes the cake. His ICQ # is less than 543,000!

          I guess we all need to take Slashdot's old Karma Score policy to heart: "It's just an integer in a database". It's just that some of us require a few extra bits to store that integer...
  • I always find it annoying when I get given moderation points... as the only articles I feel truly qualified to moderate on, are ones that I will want to comment on if I'm going to take the time to read them well enough to moderate :)

    I always end up trying to moderate in some thread that I have only the vaguest of knowledge/interest in, so I don't feel cheated of the opportunity to argue a point somewhere...

    Regards,
    Denny
    • I think I'm going to moderate in discussions where it would be useless for me to post.

      I can't spend 24 hours a day on Slashdot -- after all, I'm employed! So there are plenty of interesting discussions that already have 200+ comments, and the chances of my post getting noticed by the moderators is slim to none.

      I will be the Champion of the Late but Worthwhile Poster! Ph33r n0t, c1t1z3n! I am h33r to h31p!
      • I can't spend 24 hours a day on Slashdot -- after all, I'm employed!

        Time for someone to get a job with internet access! FWIW, moderating kinda sucks. Like jury duty. I prefer metamod where I can knock down shitty mods. Every time I use a mod point I end up replying to someone in the same thread without thinking (which undoes the moderation) anyways, so I might as well just check the 'not willing' box.

        Also, the 90% bit is pretty accurate, but your usage stats I think might make up a larger part. Don't read/participate too much, don't read/participate too little - I usually don't get mod points if I've been hanging around too much.
  • As you can tell by my UID, I'm a fairly "old" Slashdot user by current standards (although I still think of myself as a later-comer - and of course, everyone with a UID over 200000 is obviously a troll :P). However, after joining back in January 2000, I had to wait about a year (until sometime around November 2000) before I could moderate.

    I think that at one point, there was a six month waiting period before an account could access M2, which is a prerequisit for moderating. (One way to tell if you've been $rtbled is checking to see if you're allowed to M2. For those who missed people bitching about it, Slashcode has a $rtbl variable that stands for "Real Time Black List" used to prevent specific users from moderating. I forget if the $rtbl is specifically choosen by the administrators or just the generic list of people who have managed to get themselves removed from the moderator pool, but people inelligible to moderate also are inelligible to meta-moderate.)

    Anyway, after around six months, you should see an annoying link at the top of the home page asking: "Have you Meta Moderated [slashdot.org] recently?" Once you see this link, it means you're probably elligible to moderate. (Even if you don't see it yet, traversing that link if you aren't eligible yet will get Slashcode to indicate that to you, and present some information about what it takes to become elligible. I think.)

    To actually get the points, stop posting for about a week (seriously, posting seems to reduce the chance of becoming a moderator) and then stop reading Slashdot for a day or two. (Or just log out if you can't get enough of it.) Reading Slashdot "too frequently" will also reduce your chance of receiving mod points. Once eligible for moderation, just ignoring Slashdot for a week will almost guarentee you moderator points when you return.

    • I think that at one point, there was a six month waiting period before an account could access M2, which is a prerequisit for moderating.

      I have gotten mod points about four times now, but I am still not eligable to meta-moderate. Not that I particularily care. I had another account before this one. I only meta-moderated once with that account.

      Getting mod points really isn't a big deal. On the rare occassions that I actually want to use them, I don't have them. When I do have them, it's a burdon to seek out posts worthy of moderation.

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