tomhudson's Journal: New license plate - "My Other Account Has 15 Mod Points"

15 mod points? We were discussing user moderation and tagging systems at work, and I'm in favour of "less is better", as it encourages people to "spend them wisely."

Certainly in the case of slashdot, 15 mod points, without raising the karma cap accordingly, will allow people to be mod-bombed out of exstence quicker. Expect an increase in sock puppets, since they will now be worth 3x as much.

And let's face it - it's only human nature to devalue that which we have more of. We value items that are scarce. From rare comic books to rare coins to rare paintings, the thing that helps give them value is their scarecity (so if you wnat to make money, buy a bunch of paintings and then shoot the painter). If there were an unlimited supply of original Mona Lisas, you wouldn't be able to GIVE them away today.

We've gone from 5 mod points to 10 to 15. Expect to see more "mods on crack" comments in the future.

Instead of tripling the # of mod points, it would have been better to just add a short text field so you can explain your mod. This would also help both mods and metamods who may not catch an obscure reference, don't "get" the joke, etc.

Rendering a custom version of each page with moderation options takes more resources on the server. Adding a column to the database for "mod_explanation", and an edit box, for 5 mod points, is less resource-intensive than rendering pages for 15 mod points, all other things being equal. The only offset I can see is that people are more likely to use more than 1 mod point per story, so maybe the total number of page renderings won't increase by all that much.

Of course, while we're at it, anyone unfairly sitting in the karma cellar need a leg up?

signal11

[themusicgod1]

15 mod points? I wonder if I'll even *get* mod-points; I haven't had mod-points in almost as long as I've been on slashdot at this point.

Re:

[tomhudson]

This account hasn't seen mod points in years either. Grab yourself a secondary account (I got one so I cold post from work under a different name ...)

I've already got a few folks

[smittyoneeach]

...who go through and blow my posts away with "Overrated" mods, which are conveniently free of meta-moderation, thus affording a fine vehicle for character assassination.
Oh, wait: it's just /.
If I provide some little worm a brief feeling of empowerment, then maybe I've helped.
Downmods are for stuff like GNAA trolls and goatsce, IMHO.

Math

[Shadow Wrought]

And yet... metamodding is still only done 10 at a time...

Odd

[OctaneZ]

Just a couple days ago I was allotted 10 points. Maybe the number of points awarded is variable now.

I have yet to see 15

[damn_registrars]

Though I think I've had 10 twice now. And I've been given 5 on almost a weekly basis for the past month and a half. I suspect this all makes sense to someone... but not me.

Though I'm not complaining. I enjoy the opportunity to bump up some of the underrated comments from time to time. I tend to wonder if my high rate of mod points may be partially related to how seldom I bother moderating anything down.

Re:

[tomhudson]

I find the 15 point thing to be odd also - maybe it's to make up for the paucity of mod points on this account. If there's any account that has a perma-ban on receiving mod points, it's this one.

Re:

[damn_registrars]

Out of curiosity, can you moderate up posts that are replies to your journal articles?

I've posted journal articles before, but since nobody ever replies to my journal, I've never had a chance to mod up a reply.

Re:

[tomhudson]

I've never thought of that ... after all, the general thinking is that spending mod points on journal entries is sort of a waste. And of course if you then reply to any other posts, the mod points are burned.

Re:

[damn_registrars]

Well, I didn't say that one actually should mod up or down replies on their own journal, but the option is given when reading someone else's journal while having mod points.

Which just left me to wonder whether or not the option even exists, or if it is automatically not given since the journal is really a post of your own.

Really, just more ramblings, like my journal itself, I suppose.

15? 10?

[dave-tx]

I get mod points generally every week or every other week, but have never had anything other than the standard five. I rarely use all five, either.

Removed myself from the moderation system

[Ruzty]

I clicked the preference to not be involved in moderation. I got sick of having my very valid up-mods being meta-moderated retardedly, costing me karma. I wanted to be able to rate the meta-mod.

I even let cmdrtaco know exactly why a long time community member was no longer willing to volunteer time toward policing his company's comments system. I included specific examples which drove me to the choice. I was rather shocked to get a real response from Rob that actually showed he looked into the issue. H

Re:

[tomhudson]

I've found a way around the mod-bombing - post early, post often, and the good mods will keep your karma up there despite all the bad mods. Of course, there's still the "pink page of death" when you get too many downmods (funny how you can get banned while still having excellent karma ...)

It's not perfect, but it works better than a lot of other systems, and I give them credit for trying. Then again, haven't gotten mod points on this account in I don't know how many years ...

Need to make per. comment max higher, IMO

[Nevyn]

I'm not sure that the mod points thing being low helps, my comparison (for a long time now) has been against perlmonks ... they moved in almost the opposite direction from /. everyone gets a lot of points per. day, and you are "rewarded" for using the points ... and you can use the points in a discussion you are in (just not on yourself). They also prominently show the "best" daily/weekly/monthly comments.

IME this always provided significantly better output than the /. version, and while I think I understand why the /. is done the way it is (to "stop" abuse) I think the /. fails at that. It's just too easy for someone to open multiple accounts and abuse the system. In the perlmonks system if 100 mark a comment as good and then 3 days later someone marks it as -1 with 5 accounts that's 95+ comment (and a lot of people can still fight back) ... in the /. system with the same thing the comment is now at 0 (having just got +5 and then -5).

So, I don't think going from 5 to 15 per. person is a big win ... but I don't think it's a problem either.

Re:

[tomhudson]

That's an interesting way to look at it. I'll check it out. Thanks.