Annual Fee For Your Comment?

CaptainThunderbolt writes "Imagine this: you read an interesting story on Slashdot and you have a comment to make, so you login only to be greeted with a message saying you will need to pay a fee in order to make your comment. Seems ridiculous, doesn't it? Why on earth would you pay just to make a comment? Well, that is exactly how thousands of Aussies feel right now. AtomicMPC is an Australian PC Magazine with a fiercely loyal readership and an equally loyal online community. Yesterday it was announced that access to the most popular sections of the forum will soon attract a $20/year fee unless you are a magazine subscriber or a high-ranking forum member. The reaction to this announcement triggered the most vicious backlash I have ever witnessed as the website feedback forum went beserk. Users baulked at the idea of having to pay to access a community which the feel they are responsible for creating and I must say I understand how they feel. Is this a trend I should worry about? Will I one day have to pay a membership fee to access other popular forums?"

Comments

Re:SomethingAwful proves it works

[maxpublic]

Slashdot could easily fix the 'idiot moderator' problem, like this:

- award mod points as they do now. However, these mod points can only be used to mod comments *up*, not down.

- anyone at all can mod a comment down, by one point. However, every time you mod a comment down *it also subtracts a point from your own karma*.

What does this do? It keeps the random karma infusion system intact, but effectively castrates the trolls and idiots from slamming the people they don't like because most of the trolls and idiots don't have the karma to spare to mod other folks down. Or they're too invested in increasing their own karma to use it in this fashion.

If someone who isn't a troll or an idiot wants to mod a comment down and has karma to burn they can do so. But my guess is that either a) most high-karma users probably don't bother to negatively moderate anyway, or b) they really care about their karma scores and will only mod down if they're really, really pissed off about something.

Problem solved. Fools are declawed but the moderation system remains intact.

Max

Re:Let Capitalism run its course.

[Some Random Username]

Just when exactly do you need to be born to be a Scorporio? Or is this a new version of the zodiac and I am a Tauraurus?