Slashdot Mirror
Slashdot Notes
Several notes attached below regarding the system in general,
but also regarding minor changes to moderation.
If you have ever had moderator access, or ever expect to
get it, please read the link below to read a few comments
on minor changes to the system, plus answers to faqs that
keep flooding my inbox. Never fear, I'll be rewriting the
moderator guidelines just as soon as I have a few hours of
peace and quiet.
- System has been unstable lately. Its a cranky 2.2.x kernel that likes to crash every few days (a known bug relating to the ether controller). 2.2.8 was having troubles with my SCSI adapter, so I gotta try 2.2.9. The problem is that with the machine 3 time zones away, so if I make a mistake, it is a pain to get it back up. Fortunately the coloc is installing a remote power toggle for us, so hopefully we can at least get it back up. We've been having troubles at home too with our local ISP dying (and this morning the power was out for like 2 hours). This makes it a real pain-in-the-butt for Hemos or I to post stories. Sorry about all this folks, but we're sorting each of those problems out as fast as we can.
- Moderator access is temporary. You get 5 points, and when you use them up, you're done until such time as you get more. Eligible moderators essentially take turns. On one hand, this restricts a good moderator from really doing a complete job, but it also restricts abusers from going hog wild.
- I replaced the + and - moderator control buttons with a drop down list containing reasons for moderation. These include Flamebait, Informative, Offtopic etc. The end result of these items is still the same, I'm simply trying to make moderators explain themselves just a tiny bit more- hopefully it will also make the system more self explanatory to new moderators.
- I have several things left on my "Shoulda been done weeks ago" list, most important of which is rewriting the moderator guidelines. They are hopelessly out of date. A few odds and ends after that and I hope to have a new Slash tarball out for those of you who keep asking and asking and forcing me to waste time replying instead of working on it (grin).
- Its good to be home. I had a great vacation (it was great to get away from all you guys for a bit *grin*), and LinuxExpo wasn't to bad either (as far as conferences go anyway). But thank god I'm home- I hopefully can be responsive to email again, and get cracking on the ever expanding TODO list. It feels good to be back.
- Redundant was supposed to be a -1 score but I messed up. It's fixed now.
- I thought about a humor indicator, but I'm wondering if it might be open to more abuse since humor is much more subjective than things like "Informative" or "Offtopic" (each of which are also subjective, but less so)
- Highly rated replies to low rated comments do get lost. I intend reparent them, I just haven't written that code yet.
- The moderator guidelines are comically out of date. Please read them when you get access, but don't worry about the letter as much as the spirit- they are months old, and the system has changed significantly since the days of 22 moderators hand picked by me... and parts of the guidelines haven't been rewritten to reflect that!
Vacation??? You mean you weren't getting paid to go to the expo... boy do I feel lucky :) (guess it helps that my company provides the fiber for the internet connection to the convention center.)
And.. you didn't get away from all of us, that's for sure.. remember the baby? *grin* Remember the camera? *even bigger grin*
I know I'm gonna hate myself for this shortly... but... everyone wanna see CmdrTaco blushing? Then here you go ;).
Now onto the moderator topic...
I personally have my settings to read all the way down to (-1) sometimes these comments are good to read, most of the time they aren't. My idea, since some people like to miss out on parts of the conversation by only picking the higher numbers, is to perhaps, in addition to the usual way of distributing moderator points is to have a select few, that you trust of course, to have a sort of permenant moderator status, it could be limited to 5 per day/week what have you, but still give the people who really want to moderate, and do so well, a chance to rate these postings.
The "PermMods" would of course have to base their moderation points on the guidlines, and not let their distaste for a subject, extreme liking of a certain subject, etc. get in the way of the journalism.
On to the crashing kernel. Good luck getting it fixed quickly, what would us geeks do without our slashdot? I for one detest the newspaper, and most journalism, but, with slashdot I get to see both sides of the story (usually), and most of the false "facts" are disclosed a few posts later (if not the next post)
Well... in closing... keep up the great work man!
---The proceeding comments were not paid for by the following advertisers.
Concern was brought up mentioning humor points since it is something that is particularily subjective. Perhaps a solution would be to allow points to be added, but not taken away? That way we can get a good indicator that someone thinks this post is funny, without the Vocal Minority Who Get Offended At Everything(tm) demoting a message just because they take a different stand on the KDE Vs. GNOME issue, or whatever.
you guys work way more hard and way more dedicated than i ever could ... if anyone gives you flack for having to take some time away from slashdot to do stuff like eat, sleep, and generally live life, forget about it ... you guys are great and if you can keep up 1/2 the job that you do every day i will continue to be impressed ... no i'm not kissing up ... i'm just telling it like it is ... if people want to nit pick and pout about 2 hours of down time, then let them ... if it wasn't for that, they would have to find something else to pick on ... you guys are the best
starr
--
if knowledge is power, the internet is god - me again
Well, that doesn't improve things. You merely shift the focus from the quality of the Linux kernel to the quality of other Free Software. MSSQL is not nearly as buggy as MySQL is.
That said, I'm still in favor of Free Software. I just think all these claims that Free Software development leads to bug-free software (or even less buggy software) are unfounded.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
No, that seems to be the general development pattern in general;
Release working software that *you* can't find any bugs in, and then fix the bugs people tell you about.
The Linux software model is special because if you find a bug, you are also able to fix it yourself!
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
I like the idea of slashdot running the latest stuff. Its great seeing the latest kernels and tools support the slashdot effect, survive, and expose any bugs quickly. Unlike the software from a certain evil company who charges for beta testers, Linux and tools has the source and can actually be fixed. Hopefully, this recent rash of downtime spats will be temporary and in the future only see bugs limited only to the added new features.
Its fun to watch a slashdotting newsite being hacked as much exciting technology is being tested. That is what life on the bleeding edge is all about.
I don't like them either as they are, but they're better than nothing.
I'd like to see something like a moderation history attached to each message via a link -- click on it to view the moderation history. Each time a message is moderated either up or down the moderator has to assign a reason for it, but with the full history you can see where and why a message with 5 points (for example) got to be a 5.
With the latest trend in auctioning virtual property and services, the "moderator for a day... or two" idea is going to keep "RARE: Slashdot Moderation Points!" off of eBay for a while. Thank goodness for at least THAT much!
Putting the slash engine into a CVS repository would kick ass, and save Rob some e-mail from people asking for it. If you look in Slash Code you will see the last update was Jan 15, 1999. We all know there has been quite a few changes since then.
The code is GPL see FAQ Question 27(What about the source code to this site?). Rob has put it under the GPL and is a supporter of Open Source/Free Software, why not set up a CVS? Even if Rob is the only one with write access we could send patchs in.
I'm sure Rob thinks of Slash as his baby (I know I would), but this is the Open Source Community. Why isn't our (probably) biggest forum's source open to us all? I'm sure Rob is busy, but putting it in CVS and letting a few good perl hackers fix some of the minor things, would probably free up some time for him.
?
Just going with the trolling flow.
But seriously, moderators rate up or down because of feelings that cannot be catogorized or quantified (sometimes anyway), having labels discourages good moderation, because people can't decide what catergory it goes under or rationalize a choice that would have been good.
-- d'arcy poirot
On the subject of replies with higher scores than parents:
If a parent's score is higher than the reader's threshold, treat it as normal. If a parent's score is lower than the reader's threshold, display it and all its children if the average score of all messages in the thread is above the threshold.
For instance, say the user's threshold was 2. There's a thread whose parent has a score of 1 but whose replies have scores of 0, 0, 1, 3, 4, 4, and 5, making the average score of that thread 2, therefore at least the parent and all replies above the threshold should be displayed.
An option would be to include an Average Thread Score Threshold as a user configurable option.
On the subject of moderation reasons:
I think the value you modify the post by and the reason should be in two separate boxes. Some people may think a post deserves +1 cause it's funny and made them laugh. Others may think a post deserves -1 cause it was funny while being inappropriate.
Statically linking a value to each reason is very subjective, and should be avoided. Possibly an "Other" input field should also be included.
On varied subjects:
If the decision is ever made to un-anonymize moderator status, it would be nice to see each moderation history entry include the value it was modified from and to, the reason given, the person who modified it, their moderator rating at the time of moderation, and their current moderator rating if it has changed since then. Maybe this is too much information, but I think it's neat.
That way if you know your comment's going to be worse than your normal ones, you can demote it yourself without making a moderator waste their posts on a comment you know is bad to begin with.
Anyway, I think that's enough suggestions for one post. I'll shut up now.
"Life is really fucked up. But the food's good."
Why not have an 'Other' option, which allows you to enter a word and a point option? I don't know how well this would jive with the current code, but it would still force moderators to justify their actions.
I can see lots of potential problems, though - for example, if I added an option "Humerous", and consider it a +1, what if someone else considers humerous a -1?
Moderators should not be forced to increment rather than decrement.
I didn't say they should be forced to increment - I said that they can
only decrement ONCE...
There are plenty of posts that are "wrongly" demoted
Yes, and why? Because there are people who (instead of posting a
reply) just moderate down. This is ABUSE. If these people were only
allowed to moderate down once, then this would happen a whole lot
less.
The stupid ASCII art posts WILL get moderated down (someone WILL do it
- there are enough moderators.) and the system will work a whole lot
better.
Where's the source, Rob?
I thought this site was about open source?
CVS?
something newer than 0.3?
Purty plz?!
(n.b. I'm being sarcastic here)
You know, there was one guy in the ancient history of the humongous application I work on (4+million lines of code) who used that notation (NB) all the time. He wrote crap for code, but that's neither here nor there.
I know it indicates an informative or descriptive block of commentary, but WHAT does it stand for? I've asked all the people I work with, they don't know either, and some of them have been working on the bloomin' system for 15 years.
Posted anonymously to protect me from embarrassment.
Thus the day has come when I can finally find out why answering someone's question can make my comment a 0. Rob, also, maybe in the future, make it available to you to be able to see what moderator did what, and for what reason, so when someone complain's to you about their comment being decreased, you can check who did it, and yank moderator access if needed. *grin*. No really though, this is a great way to have some answers for those ever nagging questions.
Maybe, but is this always a bad thing? There are frequently so many serious posts on /. that it gets nice to find a funny one, even if it is off topic. As long as the humor's not harmful, I think it should be possible to mark it up even if it isn't completely on topic.
Cheers,
Perrin.
-Perrin.
Now I want you to go in that bag and find my lightsaber. It's the one that says bad mother-fscker on it.
Why not go back to a 2.0.36 kernel then? A site like this can't really afford to have the kernel barf (well it CAN, but it's not ideal). I still think you should try FreeBSD Rob. :)
JB
Just because it was a kernel bug (as predicted) doesn't mean that the rest of the setup is stable. Some perl scripts (like posting HTML formatted text) are buggy as hell.
It works well for me when I sort by score, threaded, with a low spill. With that setup, my whatever-I-want-it-to-be threshold (I tend to be between 0 and 2 depending on time of day, etc.) will make the threaded view 'nested' to include the higher scored replies.
I see a lot of moderated replies with this setup, and sometimes the parent thread isn't to my threshold, which means I only see the informative replies without seeing the (perhaps) uninformative original post.
I do wish there was a way to 'up the thread to the parent' so that a thread with many worthy replies would get brought up higher than other posts.
Imagine two threads...
The first has this scoring:
parent: 3, child 1
The second had this scoring:
parent: 2, child 3, child 5, child 3
I'd want the second thread to be higher than the first when sorting by score.
Rob's original stated reasong for moderator secrecy was that he didn't want some fool going about bragging about his/her moderator status and getting an ego trip off of it. Although... a lot of people seem to be giving away their status in this topic, huh?
This is yet another good development in a site which is rapidly changing from a frustrating display of pettiness and stupidity into a remarkable meritocracy of ideas.
Unfortunately, however, the first thing I've learned from this new feature is that surprisingly few people know what the word "insightful" means. I see this tag being applied to many comments which are best described as "interesting".
Insight is the ability to understand the inner nature of a thing, or to gain an intuitive understanding of a situation. An insightful comment is one which reveals this understanding, and conveys it to others.
For example, if an editorial were posted which complained about the rise of bloated, slow applications, an insightful comment might explain why applications are larger and slower than they were several years ago. A comment which says, "I agree -- applications need to be smaller", would not be insightful.
The comment titled "'Redundant' selection on new moderator thingy" certainly raised an important point which deserved prominence, but there was certainly nothing insightful about it.
I read slashdot along with several other news sites, and I sorely miss it when it is down.
ok... I'm still confused as far as how moderator status is obtained... can someone explain this one to me? Also, how is the moderator status used? I've been trying to follow these slashnotes for a while... hopefully someone can clear this subject up for me...
thanks...
-----
"Be kind to your local milkman... you have his eyes." -Mother
A little while back Rob kindly provided us with a slashbox entitled 'slashdot stats' or something similar to that which gives hits/hr for previous 24 hours, loadavg and uptime. Keep up the great work Taco and Hemos.
What I meant to say on #1 was that with moderation points being rarer (since they aren't renewed), they won't be used for killing the bad posts. But, since I posted, I've gotten another mod point, so the points aren't as scarce as I feared. I'm not worried anymore.
If the internal score can go below -1, I'd personally like to see that score displayed, in conjunction with replacing the -1 threshold option with a "show all" or "-maxint" or something similar. But I don't care enough to argue for that.
You're right about "off-topic", upon further review, and I'll second your suggestion for a full adjective list.
--Amy
Hmmm...1984 had a good rating system.
Good, Plus good (?) and double plus good.
or how bout good++
There are WAAAY too many 5's in this discussion.
needless to say, these suggestions should probably go in the feedback area flagged as an enhancement.
I agree. I don't feel this will help much with deciding which comments to read. What I feel is needed is some clearer guidlines on what should be lowered, because people are scoring down comments that aren't off-topic, flamebait, or trolls at all. Anyway, I can't wait to see this code where comments are reparented (Is that a word?)
Obviously, moderators are more likely to read a thread about moderation, but still, this article is so over-moderated it's a joke!
--
RE: "...editorial policy."
/. and not "Portal.com."
/.bots and their human directors do as well a job as can be expected of a non-profit (and probably unprofitable) organization. We have seen the "death-by-burnout" of far too many sites to take this jewel for granted. The "moderation" method strives (at least from the vantage point of this old code-monkey) to automate what must be a laborious and sometimes labor-intensive job and bring some sense of sanity and human-size scale to this giant (24/7) job, in an artful and pleasing way so that we don't have to suffer the fools (gladly or otherwise) if we don't want to. It is to /.'s credit that they are asking us how they can improve this process and make it better still! Would the NYT, Wired, Yahoo!, Netscape/AOL or the other Portal.com sites even deign to notice us, let alone ask these questions of their customers? They haven't yet.
/. community!
Tough to do, especially if Rob and Co. "want a life," as expressed in the post. Think about what a community this is:
1. Lets folks post anonymously.
2. Allows us a single point of contact AND a healthy(?) sampling of the funky, the humourous and the genuinely interesting and intellectually stimulating sites that otherwise might not be seen in the "new" commercially dominated world of the Websphere.
3. Archives our thoughts responsibly and maintains them in an intelligent way.
4. Allows the new and the veteran of this space we are beginning to explore a place to experiment with new methods and processes of communication.
5. Advances the "New Media," while giving us a tailor-made and fully personally customizable interface that looks like PBS to some (All things nerdish considered...?) (television/radio metaphor, even has a "Cartoon Channel and MTV!) and a newspaper or magazine to others (Look, ma! The Funnies!)...
6. Succeeds where Netscape/AOL, DejaNews, Yahoo, and others of the "portal" ilk fail miserably...by creating individual and group spaces in which we can explore this new way of thinking and communicating without a constant barrage of ads, offers and spam-bait...in fact they go out of their way to defend us from the SpamLords.
7. Acts as a Fair Witness to the Revolution we are experiencing and helps those commercial interests who don't "get it" to join with us...in the process enriching all of us (even some of us monetarily)
8. Contributes to the demise of the PHB.
...and they do all this for 60K+ of us (and rising) with a system so well automated that it SEEMS PERSONAL!
This is not a flame, but I believe that the apparent "personal touch" of the system Rob and Co. have devised often masks their hard work and the human touch that makes Slashdot
"Editorial" policy takes people, not machines, I think the
Finally, I did not mean this to be such a long post, but I feel that so obvious a labor of love quite often today goes unappreciated until it is no more...as the song said:
"...Don't it always seem to go,
That you don't know what you've got
'Til it's gone..."
So, as is not too frequently said here, thanks Rob, and the rest of the "behind the scenes" Krewe...THANKS! We really do appreciate your work, your intellectual skills, your caring and the human touch that you strive to give us in the
THANKS!
(RANT_MODE=0)
I think the commander needs to put a LARGE DISCLAIMER up every time moderation is mentioned. It is easy, I would imagine, for a moderator to easily forget the "can't admit I'm a moderator" rule when the topic of moderation is directly discussed.
I've seen "Off Topic", "Troll", and now "Flamebait". That 1st comment post has already consumed at least 3 moderators' points so far.There's nothing more dangerous than a mortal given the powers of a god, and looking to try them out.Hello Mr. Moderator!
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon?
-- Give him Head? Be a Beacon? :P)
(If you can't figure out how to E-Mail me, Don't.
heh, maybe he was thinking redundancy like with power supplies or hard drives. this whay if you miss one post that was interesting you would be more likely to see another one that was almost the same further down because it got bumped up :)
You will be selected, apparently at random, some time in the near future. How does it work? You will be reading slashdot one day and discover that each post you look at has 3 radio buttons (or now, a drop-down?) underneath it, inviting you to moderate that post up or down one point.
Each post that you moderate uses one of your moderator points. When you use up your 5 points you won't see the moderating stuff any more (until next time anyway).
This moderation thing is getting out of hands. The post I am replying to is perfectly innocuous. Its a personal opinion not shared by the moderator. Stop the censorship!
testing... MODERATION SUX0RS!
Will that get me moderated down now?
in another article today a post was moderated down for questioning the new moderation labels..."not trying to promote their agendas" my fat backside
It doesn't make sense that the label given to a post is chosen by the last moderator. Especially when a "5" is downrated, or a non-anonymous post with a 0 score is promoted back to 1. What would provide much more value, if possible, is the last five ratings on a post. What one person sees as insightful another could see as informative. And what someone sees as a troll, another sees as flamebait.
If we're going to attach reasons for the moderation, I'd like to know more than what the last person who touched the message thought of it.
The reasons for moderations certainly give more of an idea of the moderation history. For example, the above post, when I responded to it (right now) had a score of 2 for Redundancy, so I know it was marked _down_ to a 2. I'm assuming that auto-moderation is still extant, so either smithdog has a high default score, or there's a moderation battle going on over his post. My opinion on /. moderation remains the same: the fewer controls on moderation, I think, the better. The recursivity of a tightly regulated moderation mechanism is too hard for my brain to parse intelligently, however. Reminiscent of Hofstadter's GOD (Genie over Djinn).
--
Make mine methylphenidate.
I'm a moderator also, so alas, I am logged out.
I seem to be the other side of the spectrum. I rarely ever post, yet I always seem to have moderator points. I read a lot of slashdot, but I lurk way more than I ever post.
It seems kind of odd that way, but I guess that brings a lot of variety to the moderator pool.
Try using the firewall as a proxy, or ask your network admins what you're supposed to use.
Why not keep a separate score for humour? I think someone mentioned :(
:)
this before, but after scanning about 75% of the way down the page,
my eyes hurt.
I noticed that someone suggested that points for humour should be
added, but not taken away. Seems like a good idea to me, and if the
humour score is kept separate from the normal moderation score
perhaps in future we'd all be able to search for humourous posts
regardless of their score?
Then again, I'm stuck at home sick today and my mind isn't firing on
all cylinders, so I've probably missed something important in all of
this. Ah well
So _this_ was the plot of that evil numerical guy... Geez...
As already mentioned, one may be a moderator one day and not the next. Maybe he only knows about what moderation is like because he was one a month ago. (Yup, if I was mentioning whether I am a moderator today or not I would first become an AC...)
It always bothers me when I see a comment with a score of 5 within a tree of comments rooted by a comment with a score of -1. I think if any comment receives a score of 2 or higher (maybe 3), then all of its parents should be automatically bumped up to at least 0 (to regain default visibility). Nothing that generates a score 5 comment truly deserves a score of -1 does it?
Either that or replace below-the-threshold comments with blanked out stubs.
People will want to save up their points for "important" posts, and won't moderate the 95% of useful, but not critical stuff. I generally prefer wide-spread statistical moderation. Thousands of people moderate posts, and it comes out sort of right in the end. Alternatively, fewer good moderators. Not a low of half-assed moderators with limited points.
A couple of points I'd like to make...
Is there any way to unmoderate? Like if you realize you accidentally marked a post down when you meant to mark it up? It's happened to me before, and the post in question then had no moderate thingie on it for me to reverse my mistake.
What about people who, like myself, keep their threshhold set to +1 or +2 or higher? They'll only see the posts that are higher-rated already, and not the lower ones that might be worth a promotion.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
You could use additional words as well, such as "very good", "sublime" for good words and "Bad Joke" and "inappropriate" for bad words.
If you really wanted to enrich the slashdot experience you could have the general reader rate the moderators decision, such as "agree" or "disagree". Thus the moderators could collect their own score. Because of the large volume of readers it would tend to be accurate. This also would provide for a more involved readership.
Because they have their own score, better moderators would float to the surface. You could award the moderator with more vote points. Or maybe if moderators agree on the same rating a comment should be given or descriptive moderator words, that would give more vote weight (i.g. two moderators agree, giving a score of three. Also, If the readership vote swings alot one way or another, they could undo a moderator vote.
Just some ideas.
It's not clear how I would affect the post in question. Maybe a +1, -1 after the word?
like:
Redundant -1
Funny + 1
Offtopic -1
Amazing +2
etc
Help achieve Liberty in your lifetime - join the Free State Project - http://www.freestateproject.org
I was just reading a few posts about readers being able to rate posts. How about take it one step further and have all moderation done by readers? I would leave some real moderators to sift out duplicates, but non-duplicates could stand on their own merit, or fall for their lack thereof. There already appears to be a way to make a "good" posts stand out -- expanding them inline and giving them headers. What if all messages started at some base state, their status derived from their deviation from the average quality of posts. The posts that readers like would score more points and automatically be raised up from the mean and made more presentable. Posts which fell from the mean might go into some thread-folding/overflow mode in which they were less visible (or invisible if they were really bad, according to user preference). Then the problem becomes, what to do with the original posts the the article, who all will be at a base state until people start reading them. The average state would then have to have some modicum of visibility. OR, one could just give the first posts highest state/visibility until some number of them occumulated, at which point they would revert to average visibility. Usually, it's the early posts which get replied to. You'd want this as visible as possible.
Using this sort of auto-moderation, moderators could just sift out duplicates, or really heinous posts. Of course, I do not know if the Slashdot engine can really handle maintaining ALL posts until they sink to a "auto-delete-me" level.
I would suggest
Quality of post: -5..5
and *perhaps* an
Extent to which I agree: -2..2
The second option would be there for people who don't realize that a post can be high quality yet they can still disagree. The quality of the post is more important than the extent to which people agree...in fact, the posts which more people disagree with generate the most discussion.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
So *that's* the Cmdr. Gee, I don't know, he looks so...so *normal*. Where's the wings? And the halo? And the voice like thunder? Perhaps this is just his don't-frighten-the-kiddies manifestation. Seriously, though, big props to you, Rob! For me, /. has gone from Cool Thing to Must Read Every Day. Great uncensored commentage on what's really up with the net. Keep up the excellent work! (Hey Squeaky: Power to the People -- Right on!)
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Have you read the moderator FAQ. Rob doesn't want us to moderate down anti-Linux posts. In fact, if it's a really good anti-Linux post with a lot of information and stinging details, he wants us to moderate UP! Remember that the moderation system is used to filter out the well-thought out posts from the everyday trash. And all anti-Linux posts don't fall into the category of midlessly worshiping the Gates' cult of personality.
--- "If a man speaks in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still wrong?"
Is moderator status based solely on how much you read /. now? I would think it would be better to also consider how a user's posts have been moderated and how much they've posted. Also, it might be better to find some way to 'score' moderators based on their actions than rotating through them.
/. than people who post their opinion regularly. Probably there's a silent majority and an outspoken minority. It would be quite unfair if only posters would be able to rate postings.
/.) should be eligible for moderator access. It's not just the posters but all of the people who should be able to make up their minds on the quality of postings *and* voice that opinion by moderating - IMHO.
/. readers!
AFAIK, there're more lurkers just reading
I think all of the audience (i.e. people who regularly visit and read
Some people just post to say something, anything, possibly getting moderator access for just an unrated (1) comment. Others who only post if a topic is especially interesting to them will rarely be moderators although they might be more educated than others who do get moderator status.
If it's kept track of date of registration, number and duration of visits, not just score and number of posts, some of the regular lurkers could be given moderator access as well. Maybe picking half of the moderators from the lurker group? At least *some* representation of this quiet but important group of
-- Eavy (: Linux Is Not UniX
At least according to Debian, mysql is not free (as in speech.) You should be able to find the mysql license at http://www.tcx.se
It would also be very nice to have a category for moderation adjustment. Sometimes, a moderator might feel it appropriate to moderate a 5 down to a 4 or a 2 up to a 3. An article that gets 5 status may look less and less like a 5 as time goes on. The reason for moderation downward shouldn't be "flamebait" or "offtopic," but rather something like "moderation tweak."
In principle, I agree with your argument. But the other concern I see would come from a natural tendency for moderators to score this way which could lead to an elitist culture. After all, how would a new user break into this group? The power of random selection is the likeliness of including people you would not normally give consideration to.
Sorry, missed and hit by mistake...
Really, though, with the postings/announcements recently from the commercial side, and this large a community, how about a Project to bring the "SLASH kernel" to fruition?
I would be willing to donate server space and time (say 10 hours a week) if someone(s) would help set up the CVS/RCS/Bugzilla/webtools to track the project...say SLASH 1.0 in 60 days?
We treat linux the same as microsoft in this respect. MS comes out with a new SP, we wait for a :)
few months till it appears the dust has settled and it appears to work. We do the same with linux, a new kernel appears we wait till its been tested. Just remember not every hardware combination can be tested. The stable label to me on the linux kernel means it runs on Linus's machine and more then likely will run with no problems on my machine
Southwest Arizona perhaps?
I've seen in a previous thread here that moderation is somewhat random just so long as you've been logged in for a while, and check back regularly.
Well, it occurs to me that perhaps moderation should be limited to people who regularly post high ranking articles. I had always been under the impression that the reason I got moderator points was because I posted 2 or 3 articles that got 5's. Now that I find out that it is completely arbitrary I'm rather disappointed. Of course I might have this wrong, this is based on a previous post.
Please CmdrTaco, Hemos, and the rest of the team, reward people that post intelligent posts, don't reward lurkers. Not only will it encourage people to write more intelligent posts, but it will also encourage people to continue to write intelligent posts later on. Generally speaking, the people who take the time to write a 4 or 5 scoring article are not the types who will demote an article because they disagree with it.
Controlling moderation based on points recieved by the poster seems to make a lot of sense to me in my own mind. Of course one post that scores 5 should be worth more than ten posts that score 1, so it should scale somehow, but I'm sure the home team here will figure out something that works for that. Please give this some thought, I think it might help the moderation system by improving the quality of moderators.
FYI: No, I didn't log out to post this, but I'm also not moderating this particular article either. Having points is reason more to contribute, not a reason to lurk.
-- Cysgod
(I use BSD and Linux, happy?)
There is a lot of moderation occuring within replies. The problem remains that a 5 reply to a 1 is still listed with the 1, behind all the 2's, when sorting. perhaps comments should sort by the highest value of itself & its children?
Don't worry so much. Remember you can always read at -1 like I do (at least until the moderators have the same thoughts as me about what "unwanted posts" are).
We should have an 'Anti-Linux' option: people who post negative remarks about Linux get their score taken down by -1
(n.b. I'm being sarcastic here)
Well, if that is the case, then things should be cleared up. 2.2.8 should *not* be named a "stable" kernel when it comes out. It should be considered a development kernel (hence mission-critical systems are warned not to use it) until it's out for a few weeks with no problems, then upgraded to "stable" status.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I think he means "Flame", not Flamebait. It's certainly true that Flamebait and Troll are nearly identical in meaning.
--
Make mine methylphenidate.
I seem to have moderation points around most of the times these days. And articles moderated to 4 or 5 do seem to usually result in another 5 points the next morning. Which makes sense, though . . .
.5 (or whatever) moderation points to someone each time they get moderated up . . .
I've also speculated about a "partial inheritance" of moderation points . . . it's not the current system, but perhaps add
Why? Abuse of the system.
supposed to moderate bad posts down when the posts are off-topic or
"First Message!" crap. Right now, many moderators are moderating
down because they just don't like what the author is saying. They
don't have the intelligence to post a comeback, so they moderate down
instead.
This is abuse of the system. And it must be stopped.
The post is two words long and adds NOTHING to the discussion; "word up" is a fresher way of saying "me too!". Unfortunately, there's not an option that says that.
>As of last friday, I noticed that posts starting
>at higher than one was still happening.
The post to which you were replying, for example, was up to 5 in less than 5 minuts, I believe.
It looks like an attempt to move static content to an apache server without mod_perl for lower resource requirements. The correct way is to bind another IP to the ethernet card and run the plain apache on port 80 of that IP. If there isn't another IP available, apache could run on port 8000 or something like that. Ports 1-1024 are reserved for system daemons and have services assigned to them. Picking random ports to use for services is usually a bad idea. Squid (and most other proxies) are attempting to block users from doing things they shouldn't be doing with programs like httptunnel.
Although I like the moderation system, it seems to me that the moderators are too focused on the heads of the threads and not enough on the comments underneath
If a reply doesn't quote whatever they're replying too, it's less likely to get moderated up. A moderator browsing comments at Flat and Newest first might not understand the comment out of its context, especially if the subject has changed.
Is moderator status based solely on how much you read /. now? I would think it would be better to also consider how a user's posts have been moderated and how much they've posted. Also, it might be better to find some way to 'score' moderators based on their actions than rotating through them. *shrug*
As far as posts starting with 2 or 3, how about allowing those users the option to 'demote' their post at the start, if they feel they're posting something that's not all that important.
Maybe this comment didn't deserve a -1 after all?
The entire content of the comment I was talking about -- actual subject "Give us a valid Login/PW" -- is "cypherpunks / cypherpunks doesn't work".
It's certainly possible to argue that compulsory registration is a bad thing. We're not talking about a warez site here but about the free availability of information.
It is possible in the overall scheme of things, but this specific post doesn't argue that. To me, it says, "I want to use the IEEE's web server set up for dues-paying members for free in order to make my life easier." That doesn't add anything to the thread; hence, -1 in my book.
. . .
OK, I changed my mind -- I'd leave it at 0. Negatives could/should be reserved from posts that detract from the thread. This doesn't, except for wasting a bit of space. I don't mourn its demotion to -1, tho.
--Amy
You're fooling yourself here. What you get when browsing the comments with scores of 4 or 5 are the politically correct posts. These opinions are mainstream and generally well known. Critical or just "different" views often remain at the very bottom of the scale.
I usually tend to concentrate on the comments with low scores, especially when Linux is involved in the discussion.
I just have to say that I love that kernel. I have a system that's currently been up for 347 days (plus another 160 if you count the uptime before the power outage ...) on 2.0.34.
I've found the 2.2 kernels to be good so far though -- the linux pool at work has been up for just over 64 days on 2.2.2-ac3. 2.2.5 on another box was over 45 days before I upgraded it to 2.2.9.
All in all, I think this is a great idea. But, here are some of the problems I've got with it as a moderator:
Anyway, great idea, good execution, just needs to be ironed out a bit.
-- Amy Kresse
Moderators should not be forced to increment rather than decrement. There are plenty of posts that are "wrongly" demoted because they are slightly off topic but there are plenty of other that deserve a -1 rating such as a half-page of ASCII art of LINUX SUX or Commander Taco Sucks. The limit on moderator points already limits moderators from decrementing the same story twice. The system works well in the sense that it separates the wheat from the chaff. The posts that are judged favorably such as a 5 are most likely insightful or at a minimum worth reading if one is interested in a particular subject.
It is not so much a problem that people use moderation access to promote their personal agendas as you imply. Unlike usenet some posters are given the right to review the material of others and theoretically in the future users can rank the stories by rank or as was previously addressed on slashdot a page could be tabulated of the best comments each week.
Thank you for creating this forum slashdot peoples.
So, given that everyone knows now how moderator points are limited, it seems to me that a malicious baddie could post lots and lots of useless flamebait-type postings. This would soak up a lot of the moderation points by being moderated down, and potentially sabotage the promotion of worthwhile postings.
It doesn't seem very likely if the moderators do a good job, but seeing the number of downgraded postings in this thread made me think. Of course, this moderation system is an order of magnitude better than anything else out there- it's really nice to be able to cruise at +2 or +3 when I'm really busy and don't have time to read everything.
How about emphasizing the bit that says "focus on increasing, not
decreasing"..
I'm sick of moderators "punishing" posts/posters that they just don't
like - I've seen this already in the Wcarchive story, someone had
thier post moderated down because it's "offtopic" - when the poster
specifically mentioned FreeBSD... (gee, seems like it's on topic to
me..) at worst, this most should have been left alone..
I suggest that "temp" moderators only be given the power to decrease
scores once, and increase four times... it would certainly help to
emphasize the afforementioned rule...
And I wouldn't be surprised if this post gets moderated down soon...
I have the same problem at work. can't see the images because of the firewall...I was unaware that the pics came in on port 81... interesting....
WHY ISNT LS WORKING ON MY PC?! well it's ls not LS LS IS NOT WORKING! turn caps off CAPS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH LS!
When I was briefly a moderator, and my points "worked" (didn't all vanish after moderating only 2 posts!), I knocked a couple down a hair on the grounds that they were redundant because they were reposts. In one case, the first post had a rating of 3. IMHO, a second post saying exactly the same thing did not deserve a 2.
My 2c.
We need an option for amusing posts. I've seen some that deserved +'s just for making me laugh, surely we don't have to ALWAYS be a smarty-pants to get positive points.
(Am I going to get moderator status taken away for this post? Are all the smarty-pantses going to revoke my privledges?)
-- First post (by a female living in a state that begins with M and does not end in a vowel with a birthday that falls
I think a good way of handling this would be to give each article 2 seperate value scores. 1 for humor value, another for informational value. That way, someone out for a laugh could adjust their sort options to put the humorous ones on top ... And the underloved, undersexed twits who always want to run everything could have an option to eliminate all signs of humanity. ;)
This kind of reconciles "classical" vs. "romantic" as described in zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance, too. (go quality!)
Oops! You're right. Wasn't looking at the src/dest columns right.
"shop smart:shop s-mart" ash
Perhaps now it should be possible for readers to filter based on post scores *and* moderator comments.
Just a thought...
Ah, let me post under this -1 so I won't waste too much of your time...
I found score description an interesting idea; however, I would be worried that it might incite flames when a post is tagged as "flaimbait." However, if I was a dumbass and posted something pointless and silly, hopefully I would get the hint. Getting flagged with "bandwidth waster" would be a good awakening clue.
Out of countless thousands of readers with pushbutton posting ability, there might be a few tortured souls who had the wrong cup of coffee and this could be the thing that could make an irritating person hold a grudge and set him off in a rampage of first posts or whatever. In the end, I'm thankful many people take the time to moderate. Sometimes there are dozens of one-liner random thought replies to just about everything that loose the humor value.
I figured "redundant" would lower a score, not increase it. Found out after I used it that it does indeed give them a +1.
I took redundant to mean "me toos" or "too stupid/lazy/whatever to read the other comments so i didn't realize my point had been made 500 times by other people". Am I wrong?
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
I agree, humanity has needs. I thought that was the purpose of BOOKMARKS. Would you want me to force my needs upon you? I personally do not come to slashdot for humor. If your bookmarks are a little thin on the humor category, email me and I will be glad to show you mine ;-).
One of the factors is how early you got a Slashdot account. Rob mentioned a couple months ago that the first 20,000 accounts were his candidate pool for moderator status, and that about 4000 of them would actually be selected. Of course, that may have changed by now, seeing as how moderator status has been switched to a "jury-selection" type of thing.
Another factor is how well your comments get scored. Commentors who consistently get scored up are more likely to get selected for moderator eligibility.
Also posting as AC to keep my moderator status.
It seems to me that I'm being granted moderator points after making posts that have been moderated up. I never got moderator points until I started posting regularly. One time, I posted two "good" articles within a day of each other, and I ended up with 10 moderator points. When I don't post for a while, I don't get any. Do others see the same thing? (I'm looking forward to Rob's new guidelines!)
sorry i just had to say it once.
nmarshall
#include "standard_disclaimer.h"
R.U. SIRIUS: THE ONLY POSSIBLE RESPONSE
nmarshall
The law is that which it boldly asserted and plausibly maintained..
--Colonel Burr 1783
LHZCt? What's that? Some sort of compressed version of Rob Malda? You're saying compressing Rob Malda is a bad idea...
It might be nice to see a "slashdot uptime" counter somewhere on the front page. That way I could tell what part of the internet is being flaky today. I must say that slashdot is beating www.microsoft.com and www.sun.com for stability in spite of the "beta? not even close!" warnings.
Thank you for not thinking.
I agree.
...?
I'm a moody person, prone to out-burst of insanity, and always thinking of shapes changing color and forms changing hue as relates to my environment, emotions, thought, and situation.
Sometimes I just want to read the fun and funny stuff, other ziet maybe the (on subject/related) weird/odd perspective/perception (maybe cultural/philosoph/religion bent), in the past I looked for the SCIENCE/MATH/FACT FILLED to read, now I think the Artistic maybe of interest, well in the future wasted and lost
Maybe, I hope, well be able sort and provide points on different catagories. A bunch of Humor on some days could really help my attitude at times.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Flamebait is saying something that you know will be offensive to many readers, with the intention of starting a flamewar. Basically, you do it because it amuses you to annoy people and then watch them spluttering indignantly.
Around here, people tend to use trolling to mean pretty much the same thing, which would make these designations redundant, but proper trolling is a lot more subtle: you say something that seems stupid or otherwise flameworthy, but in fact contains some sort of clever trick, so that anyone who flames you only makes himself look [more] stupid. See the Jargon File entry. It can be a real artform, and as such would not deserve to be deprecated, but there's not a lot of that sort around here. The closest example I can think of is when someone says something sarcastic that, if meant seriously, would be flamebait, and someone somehow misses the sarcasm and flames accordingly.
Another designation that might be appropriate in such cases is "Just Plain Stupid", since sometimes it's hard to tell whether a post is flamebait, trolling, or astroturf, and then you realize you're reading too much into it -- the writer is simply a moron. This would be pretty much interchangeable with the earlier suggestion "Waste Of Bandwidth".
David Gould
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
i'm not eteet? am i at least 31337?
I actually think an opinion/comment seperate from the moderation points would be useful...
Say moderators had unlimited comments but 5 comment points.
General consensus could raise funny, insightful, poor taste, boring, informational stuff(which is useful IMHO), without tying them too much with moderating; some people think off-topic is bad, and other's think it's good.
My 2 cents
-AS
-AS
*Pikachu*
Given that there's the single pushbutton at the bottom of the page, I tend to go through the whole list before pushing "moderate." However, it takes long enough to read, that there's a chance things have already been moderated. It would be useful to have an intermediate screen of "moderated to 3 from 2 since loading, still moderate?" or some such--a post that's worth moderating to 3 is not usually worth sending to 5 . . .
Horribly Green Moderator
I had this problem at home, where my masquerading/firewall system also runs a 750 meg Squid proxy to keep my poor 56k modem from getting too bogged down when I'm using a bunch of computers at once.
You just need to turn on or get someone to turn on port 81 as a valid proxy port. My assumption is you're running through a firewall, and there's a proxy that handles getting the data through it. That proxy probably has the common ones (80, 443, 8080) as acceptable ports. Using 81 is sort of wierd, but thats how to fix it.
Right click on the image, and say View Image (figuring you're in Netscape) -- you'll be able to see what the error message is. If you get an error page, you're probably hitting a proxy that needs to be fixed. If you don't connect -- ie, eventually you get a can't connect error -- then its probably a firewall.
Just do what I do to get peace and quiet. I do most of my programming for knowpost.com between the hours of midnight and 6AM. I find I can get twice as much done between those times as I can 9 to five, when the damn phone is ringing all the time.
I thought the point was that the Linux development style was supposed to be better than the Microsoft development style. This "we say it works but try it a while to see, there's always a few bugs" approach is one of the hallmarks of Microsoft software that I would hope to avoid. Oh well.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The requests go out over port 81, they come back to an unpriveleged port (ports greater than 1023) just like everything else. If you're going directly through the firewall, ask the admin to open 81 outgoing, to the pix server fqdn only, if need be. If you're using a proxy, they can tweak that to allow the pix as well.
Since I'm a bit of a newbie, I wonder, why not just have the pix server listen to 8080, since it seems like more firewalls would allow that port outgoing?
slashdot broke my sig
If you consider the nature of /., it becomes difficult to determine if a post is necessarily accurate. A Poster might SOUND correct, but be incorrect.
:)
However, if another user collaborates an earlier post, then it could be rated Verified, or Cross-Referenced, or, hey, even Redundant...
OTOH, I may be reading too much into this, and it might really be a typo.
--I hate people when they're not polite -"Psycho Killer", Talking Heads
This rule appears to be enforced but not stated. ( ie if you moderate a thread, then post under it, your moderation is undone ). The rule seems fair enough, but it certainly needs to be stated unambiguously in the moderation guidelines.
-- Posting as AC for fear of losing moderater status (-;
Grouch. Laugh a little.
but doesn't "interesting" or "insightful" cover it?
+&x
My Slashdot account is all munged up somehow...
I think the problem is that the UserLogin box the the right (which shows up when you're not logged in) sends me to slashdot.org/index.pl, while going to Preferences, logging out (apparently I am partially logged in?? I get some warning), and logging back in again sends me to slashdot.org/. I can't seem to remain logged in even though I am accept all cookies, etc. I am not behind a firewall or using a proxy or anything...
anybody experience this??
It's just annoying as I have to manually log in each and every time I come here...
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
What's the difference between the Flamebait and Troll categories? I thought they were basically the same thing? How about changing one of them to Derisive or something like that, to identify posts that are insulting to others.
You're pretty evil. Obviously, this is an attempt to get Slashdotters to use all their moderator points. TACO: You should have some code that looks that the 'moderation pool' to ensure that there are at least xxx moderation points floating around at any one time.
I guess this puts to rest all the arguments of those people who were saying that it's slashdot's setup, not the Linux kernel, that was causing the problem. Apparently it was a bug in the kernel itself. A known bug, but a bug nonetheless, and a serious one that caused the site to lose uptime at that.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Everybody complains over 2.2.x. I'm running 2.2.2 (which I've heard very much negative about) on a 486sx here, and we have over 80 days of uptime. Last (only) time we rebooted (after a 42 day uptime running 2.1.132) was because a teacher unplugged the power cable.
Perhaps there are some unstable parts of 2.2.x (like SCSI) that I'm not using?
/* Steinar */
(This comment is of course GPLed.)
Thanks for the support you loony flashers ....
...?
If we ever meet who brings Olive Oil
(%~> Cubist
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
I think most all of us know why a post gets moderated. I find the descriptions annoying -- it should be obvious why a post was moderated.
All in all, the old moderation system seemed pretty functional to me. If I'm away from my computer for a while, I like that I can pull up a day old story and browse a condensed version of the comments. The few posts that made it to 4 or 5 points do a good job of clearly presenting the important points made in that discussion. An excellent system.
I don't see what is gained by the moderation description. I like the simple "relevancy meter".
--Lenny
The candidate pool has expanded. I created a new account about a week before the new moderation stuff went into effect. I'd been reading for a while before that, but there's no way that the system could have known that. I've been a moderator several times since the mass moderation went into effect.
It could be a humorous post related to the topic ;)
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
Why should one waste time by explaining why he/she moderated a comment? I think it's pretty obvious: if a moderator likes a comment, he/she will moderate it up, really crappy comments go down. I just don't see any need for further explaining. Adding too many "bells and whistles" will ultimately make things too complicated
I especially dislike the offtopic-option. There is a great risk that some very good comments get moderated down just because they are just a tad offtopic.
Curiosity is healthy - it defines us. Besides, to get moderator points without knowing how to use them appropriately is hardly an improvement.
What is the difference between these options? Also, reading a previous post, why does Redundant give + points? Redundancy is a bad thing, why would I want to read the same thing over and over and over?
---
I would like to see several additions to pull down menu. First off, two clueless attractors:
Add "I agree" and "I disagree" to the menu but make them have zero effect.
Secondly, add "Unfairly punished" option. As well as incrementing the post (if it has been decremented) this option subtracts a point from the moderator who made the initial change. This would help counteract main problem with current moderation system - people who downgrade perfectly reasonable comments just because they disagree.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
Yes. But the fact is, if you take a look at posts moderated to -1, posts critical of Linux do tend to get moderated down.
They may not have been very good posts, but they would have been left alone had they not had been so-called 'anti-Linux' i.e. if you replaced every occurence of Linux with Windows in the message, those posts would have been left alone. This isn't Rob's fault of course, but the fault of a few mindless Linux loving moderators.
I've had this happen to me before, and I've had to write to Rob complaining about this, after which he moderated the post back up.
Now WHY is this trollbait? People are getting a little moderation-happy, methinks. He's just agreeing! Are "Me Too" posts trolls?
"It's OK, my sheet's got a hole in it!"
I'm posting as an AC. Which brings up my main comment: restricting moderators from posting is fair, I think, but there didn't seem to be a nice way to forfeit my moderation rights. When I have moderation points, I think I should be put in moderating mode by default, but the reply button should still be easily available. If you choose to post, you should be warned that doing so will forfeit your moderation rights on that thread. And you should then be given the option of backing out. If you do post, then your moderating rights on that thread will be lost.
Or you could have it work the other way. By default, you're not in moderating mode. If you want to moderate a thread, you hit a moderate button. Then you would lose posting privileges. Related to this, it might be a good idea to set the reading threshold to -1 automatically for moderators. That might help with the problem of getting deeper comments moderated, since they'd have to look at everything.
Jon
stew1
By the current method, it sounds like keeping moderator status secret is unnecessary for the purpose it was meant to serve (which I assume is to keep people from bugging you to increase their points). If anyone might be a moderator on a given "day" (where day is some arbitrary, short period of time), why bother keeping your current status a secret?
> I guess this puts to rest all the arguments of
/.'s lifetime.
/. is because Rob hasn't upgraded from 2.2.8 yet
> those people who were saying that it's
> slashdot's setup, not the Linux kernel, that was > causing the problem. Apparently it was a bug in
> the kernel itself. A known bug, but a bug
> nonetheless, and a serious one that caused the
> site to lose uptime at that.
If you're talking about the latest batch of downtimes, yes.
However, I should point out that most of the problems in the past (and Rob has announced the causes in a similar fashion to this in the past) have been due to mySQL crapping out, or more occasionally bugs in the particular patchlevel of mod_perl that Rob was running. Keep in mind, kernel 2.2.8 hasn't even existed for most of
The bug was stomped pretty quickly in 2.2.9 as I understand, too; the only reason it's not fixed for
It is dissapointing to have a stable kernel that's this flaky (although it is just the specific driver). I'm sure we'll have our share of 2.0.34s in the future, too.
I still think that _on the balance_ (and I think history bears out my point here), Linux does very well in terms of low bug rates and fast bug fixes.
DNA just wants to be free...
The new ratings don't seem to work. I see no relationship between the value of the posts and the numbers. Also, posts may have overlapping categories in which they are notable or notorious.
Please - no moderation. Extremely useless, offensive or potentially libelous posts should just not be shown - with a note to the poster that the content was not used as a matter of editorial policy - without necessarily explaining why unless there is some legal requirement to do that.
I think it would be better this way:
/. would be personal stories (aka Time For Another Harddisk ;-) ). This would allow people to post articles and have superuser status (i.e. Rob-like) in a special 'article area' that would be accessed wia the 'User Info' link. People who abuse it (like trying to fill up the whole /. HDD subsystem) would lose their privileges of creating new articles. This would allow every people to have his own slashdot, to post stories that wouldn't go through to the main page (no p0rn of course), but if popular enough could be linked to (or even appear directly) in the main site. Then we could add a 'Most Active Current User Stories' slashbox so people could read interesting threads other people liked (a bit like a daily-updated HOF).
1. Moderators receive moderation points as in the old system and use them in the score _only_.
2. Moderators (might be the same ones, or not) receive special pseudo-moderation points that are spent on the categories. Each category would have its "score". For example: moderator A votes +1 to 'Offtopic' and +1 to 'Troll' in one comment; moderator B votes -1 to 'Troll' and +1 to 'Insightful' in the same comment. Then they are combined and the result is (Score: whatever, Insightful) if the score is high and (Score: whatever, Offtopic) if the score is very low. Those categories would always be between -1 and +5, just like the normal moderation.
Also, another cool misfeature that would be worth adding to
Anyway, it's getting late here. Tomorrow I'll read the comments.
I have to say that this post is deliciously recursive. It is a "first post" so should be -1. However, once it is a -1, it shows its relevance, because it does an excellent job of demonstrating the moderation, making it very on-topic. But then again, it is a first post...