Note that the above figure that it takes 3.5 times more towers to operate GSM than CDMA is based on the cited page's metric named "maximum talk range from a tower (pls. note you will need a carkit for both to achieve these numbers)". I doubt carkit ranges are an effective measure of number of towers needed to cover an area.
More important limiting factors on tower coverage are issues like how many channels can be used per slice of radio spectrum, and how many slices of spectrum are created out of a provider's licensed spectrum bands (at least in America), which is affected by relative size of the provider's licensed spectrum are in a given market, etc etc.
To provide enough coverage in non-rural areas, a provider puts up more cells in an area with a smaller transmission radius, no matter which technology. So, the limiting factors become how many towers (cells) in an area, and how efficiently the technology uses however much radio spectrum it has.
As far as I have heard, CDMA made a great many promises on its future abilities, but has not grown as much as GSM has. I'm sure that can be disputed, but my main point here is that the above post is incorrect in its main point. It's also funny in that the link cited seems to be much more in favor of GSM than CDMA. And I can definitely say from experience that CDMA voice quality leaves a lot to be desired in what I've heard.
As an alternative value to moderation scores for all the anarchists out there, a "voting" box could be set up, such that, if a person doesn't have moderation privilege, s/he could still vote his/her (dis)pleasure with a post. This could be a good gauge of how the "plebian majority" feels, which might mean that the moderator class might somehow become disconnected from the plebes. Of course, one puts into effect auto-promotion and auto-demotion of moderators, this probably couldn't happen if it was properly thought out. (Oops, just jinxed it all!) Auto-promotion and auto-demotion could *possibly* be linked tenuously to voting, but more so to statistics gathered by each moderator's moderations, and finally to the moderation applied to the candidate's posts.
This could also be applied to articles, in the same way that someone else suggested. (Sorry, can't remember.)
Of course, voting's main value would probably just be in comparing how the majority feels, compared to the moderators. Its value versus CPU time could be questioned...
I know that once I read through an article on Slashdot, it gets more and more tedious to go back and comb the comments for interesting bits. A very useful stat to display both on the main page and the side column would be the number of +3 or +4 posts, so that you could get an "at-a-glance" indicator of whether it would be worthwhile to take another look.
If score were simply to be kept as a total of all moderation points, aging would be simple -- just subtract an amount per week from the poster's total equal to his/her "average" score, as well as subtract one post from the post count for the user. Thus, the user's score would be aged, AND his/her average would be preserved. Or, if you feel like being gentler in the aging process, you could subtract.5 or.25 or some other fraction of the average score from the total, as well as the corresponding amount from the post count. (Face it, averaging the score will make it a float anyway.)
I don't know if it would be a good idea or a bad idea to put in some mechanism to also "protect" good posters during periods of inactivity. Sure, if someone posts 8 +4's, but then takes two months off, they're back where they started (if the weekly aging value = 1 * average), but hey, I don't know... They can always rebuild their score if they're still valuable (ie, they didn't get grouchy in the time off). Of course, ranking might be good for that.
(I chopped this up into four parts, because I'm verbose, and they're not all really connected, except that 2 is dependent on 1, but not vice versa.)
SCORE:
A person's score is the total of all moderation points assigned to him/her. Thus, the longterm value of a poster would be easy to gauge -- a score of 400 means that over the course of posting, s/he has been moderated up 400 times. An average of his/her scores could also be generated to determine the poster's relative value -- if a random lurker makes 1 +4 post, then that poster has more "relative" value than the poster who makes 100 +3 posts; it's obvious, though, that the poster with 100 +3's is more valuable to Slashdot in the longterm. And this only really requires the storing of two values per poster: total, and number of posts. The rest is simple arithmetic.
Of course, if you want to get really into a whole "ranking" system, you could create a situation where the either number of +3 & +4 or just +4 posts are stored for each poster. (I'm assuming max val of 5 for a post means that a named poster can only get +4 added to his/her score.) Thus, the poster of 10 +4's would rank at 10, while the poster of 20 +2's would be lowly zero.
OTOH, ranking or simply showing a person's score and average could cause either statistically-bad Heisenberg effects like snowballing around recognized good posters or overcorrectional down-moderation against known argumentative persons with high scores. I guess that's where meta-moderators or auto-promotion/demotion of moderators comes in.
The maximal usage of these values would be to place them next to the poster's name and comment score, so that you would know right away the longterm value of the poster.
Also, putting up an article or getting a mention into Slashdot that spawns an article should also either figure into that person's score, or into a separate statistic.
Slashdot Mirror
Note that the above figure that it takes 3.5 times more towers to operate GSM than CDMA is based on the cited page's metric named "maximum talk range from a tower (pls. note you will need a carkit for both to achieve these numbers)". I doubt carkit ranges are an effective measure of number of towers needed to cover an area.
More important limiting factors on tower coverage are issues like how many channels can be used per slice of radio spectrum, and how many slices of spectrum are created out of a provider's licensed spectrum bands (at least in America), which is affected by relative size of the provider's licensed spectrum are in a given market, etc etc.
To provide enough coverage in non-rural areas, a provider puts up more cells in an area with a smaller transmission radius, no matter which technology. So, the limiting factors become how many towers (cells) in an area, and how efficiently the technology uses however much radio spectrum it has.
As far as I have heard, CDMA made a great many promises on its future abilities, but has not grown as much as GSM has. I'm sure that can be disputed, but my main point here is that the above post is incorrect in its main point. It's also funny in that the link cited seems to be much more in favor of GSM than CDMA. And I can definitely say from experience that CDMA voice quality leaves a lot to be desired in what I've heard.
--Jim
VOTING:
As an alternative value to moderation scores for all the anarchists out there, a "voting" box could be set up, such that, if a person doesn't have moderation privilege, s/he could still vote his/her (dis)pleasure with a post. This could be a good gauge of how the "plebian majority" feels, which might mean that the moderator class might somehow become disconnected from the plebes. Of course, one puts into effect auto-promotion and auto-demotion of moderators, this probably couldn't happen if it was properly thought out. (Oops, just jinxed it all!) Auto-promotion and auto-demotion could *possibly* be linked tenuously to voting, but more so to statistics gathered by each moderator's moderations, and finally to the moderation applied to the candidate's posts.
This could also be applied to articles, in the same way that someone else suggested. (Sorry, can't remember.)
Of course, voting's main value would probably just be in comparing how the majority feels, compared to the moderators. Its value versus CPU time could be questioned...
--Jim
AUTO-REPORTING +4 POSTS:
I know that once I read through an article on Slashdot, it gets more and more tedious to go back and comb the comments for interesting bits. A very useful stat to display both on the main page and the side column would be the number of +3 or +4 posts, so that you could get an "at-a-glance" indicator of whether it would be worthwhile to take another look.
--Jim
If score were simply to be kept as a total of all moderation points, aging would be simple -- just subtract an amount per week from the poster's total equal to his/her "average" score, as well as subtract one post from the post count for the user. Thus, the user's score would be aged, AND his/her average would be preserved. Or, if you feel like being gentler in the aging process, you could subtract .5 or .25 or some other fraction of the average score from the total, as well as the corresponding amount from the post count. (Face it, averaging the score will make it a float anyway.)
I don't know if it would be a good idea or a bad idea to put in some mechanism to also "protect" good posters during periods of inactivity. Sure, if someone posts 8 +4's, but then takes two months off, they're back where they started (if the weekly aging value = 1 * average), but hey, I don't know... They can always rebuild their score if they're still valuable (ie, they didn't get grouchy in the time off). Of course, ranking might be good for that.
--Jim
SCORE:
A person's score is the total of all moderation points assigned to him/her. Thus, the longterm value of a poster would be easy to gauge -- a score of 400 means that over the course of posting, s/he has been moderated up 400 times. An average of his/her scores could also be generated to determine the poster's relative value -- if a random lurker makes 1 +4 post, then that poster has more "relative" value than the poster who makes 100 +3 posts; it's obvious, though, that the poster with 100 +3's is more valuable to Slashdot in the longterm. And this only really requires the storing of two values per poster: total, and number of posts. The rest is simple arithmetic.
Of course, if you want to get really into a whole "ranking" system, you could create a situation where the either number of +3 & +4 or just +4 posts are stored for each poster. (I'm assuming max val of 5 for a post means that a named poster can only get +4 added to his/her score.) Thus, the poster of 10 +4's would rank at 10, while the poster of 20 +2's would be lowly zero.
OTOH, ranking or simply showing a person's score and average could cause either statistically-bad Heisenberg effects like snowballing around recognized good posters or overcorrectional down-moderation against known argumentative persons with high scores. I guess that's where meta-moderators or auto-promotion/demotion of moderators comes in.
The maximal usage of these values would be to place them next to the poster's name and comment score, so that you would know right away the longterm value of the poster.
Also, putting up an article or getting a mention into Slashdot that spawns an article should also either figure into that person's score, or into a separate statistic.
--Jim