- The moderation system is not perfect, but it is a heck of a lot better than most (if not all) other systems. Be very careful about changing it, lest you break an advantage that Slashdot has. Sure, it has problems, but I have not seen any better system. They all have flaws. By fixing one, you're likely to introduce another.
As someone who has been reading /. for over 15 years, and who rarely posts but always moderates when I get points, I wholeheartedly agree with this. I come here to see interesting and informative discussion about tech-related (broadly speaking) topics, and sometimes to get a tech point of view about other issues (like politics, though this is where /. discussions and moderation becomes least functional, which isn't surprising when comparing to similar discussions elsewhere on the internet). To me, the good of the current moderation system outweighs the bad. On the margins, there are changes to be made, but a complete overhaul is unnecessary.
Moderation doesn't have to be perfect. It's about generating a rough ranking of the comments on the question of "does this comment add to the discussion?". Back in the heyday of /., if I was busy, I could browse certain discussions at +4 or even +5 and get the highlights of the discussion. Now, I feel that there are fewer comments and less moderation, so there's more noise; I generally browse at +2. But the basic idea is to roughly separate the best from the worst comments. We don't need more than a -1 to +5 range to make those distinctions, and I don't think moderation abuse is so great that we need to significantly overhaul how it's done. If there are enough people commenting and enough people moderating, things tend to settle out. And that's why I come here -- the signal to noise ratio in the comments is still better than anywhere else.
If you want to "fix" Slashdot, you don't need to change the bones. I think there are two classes of changes to be made. First, attract people back with better content: more interesting stories rather than product placement and random editorials; fewer dupes; better and more clearly edited articles. Second, make it easier to comment and use Slashdot: fix the unicode and JS issues, clean up the UI, and so on. I think the /. herd has been on point so far.
