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 They are hopelessly out of date.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.
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.
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!
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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 always thought 'n.b.' meant 'note that', but checking the dictionary, I see that it means 'nota bene' which is latin for 'mark well'
... heh, I didn't know that either.
--- "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."
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...
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
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."
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?
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*
Where's the source, Rob?
I thought this site was about open source?
CVS?
something newer than 0.3?
Purty plz?!
I, pesonally, want to wait until he's got it a bit more stable. (Documented, too!)
At the same time -- Rob, maybe set a "feature freeze", finish tweaking the moderation, Slashboxes and stuff? Maybe some of us can help fix some of this stuff for you as well.
Jay (=
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.
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
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
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
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.
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!"
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...
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...