Smalltalk & Squeak featured on Slashdot

Andrew C. Greenberg werdna at mucow.com
Thu Apr 19 11:35:17 UTC 2001


This has not been my experience.  For me, at least, the system appears 
to work quite differently.  At any rate, the Slashdot moderation scheme 
is quite interesting.  It is described in detail at

	http://www.slashdot.com/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm600

Not everyone can moderate.  Associated with every logged-in member is a 
number relating to postings, called "Karma," which roughly correlates to 
the net aggregation of up- versus down- moderations, which is capped at 
50.  Members with relatively high Karma are periodically given a small 
number of moderator points (usually 5) to "throw around."  When you are 
with points, the pages appear slightly different, adding a button at the 
end of each post to record a moderation score.  You hit a "moderate it" 
button at the bottom of a page to apply them.  Each moderation costs one 
point, and when your poi\nts are up, you can't moderate any more.  You 
cannot moderate on any thread to which you have replied or posted a 
comment yourself, and you cannot post to a thread which you had 
previously moderated.

No one is obliged to moderate, but its a use it or lose it 
proposition -- after a day or so, the points dissolve into a gas.

On the other hand, any member who wants to do so can metamoderate by 
clicking a button at the top of the page.  When you metamoderate, you 
are given a handful of excepts and the moderations attributed to them, 
and then asked to pass on whether each was fair or unfair.  This is used 
as a check on moderation to determine the moderator's suitability to be 
made a moderator again.

My impression is that it works surprisingly well, and the grades 
attributed to postings has made Slashdot quite useful to read.

On Thursday, April 19, 2001, at 06:12 AM, Christopher Sawtell wrote:

> On Thursday 19 April 2001 16:41, Doug Way wrote:
>> Simon Michael wrote:
>>> Tim Rowledge <tim at sumeru.stanford.edu> writes:
>>>> Ridiculous, don't you think? Slashdot has become the 'National
>>>> Enquirer' of the web world.
>>>
>>> I respectfully disagree. The key is to skim it at level 3, 4 or 5.
>>> I'm a long-time slashdotter and still learn a lot there.
>>
>> I'm probably missing something obvious, but how are these levels 
>> assigned
>> to postings on Slashdot?  Are there moderators?  I didn't notice any 
>> sort
>> of option to let me vote on whether a particular posting was helpful...
>
> It's quite complicated; First you have to have login so that you are a 
> member
> of the Slashdot Community, thus getting your name on the displayed home 
> page.
> Then you volunteer to be a moderator via customizing your user 
> settings. Next
> they give you a whole series of  test moderations in order to test that 
> your
> judgemant is more or less along the politically correct road. Once that
> hurdle has been overcome, you are suddenly let loose on real live 
> moderating.
> It is an extreamly time consuming process as one is supposed to read 
> at a
> threshold of -1 so you see, read and moderate _absolutely everything_. 
> I did
> a shift for a couple of months and then a more active "real life" 
> compelled
> me to flag it away. Taken overall it's not onerous, but when your turn 
> comes
> up it's a time consuming PITA.
>
> --
> Sincerely etc.,
>
>  NAME       Christopher Sawtell
>  CELL PHONE 021 257 4451
>  ICQ UIN    45863470
>  EMAIL      csawtell @ xtra . co . nz
>  CNOTES     
> ftp://ftp.funet.fi/pub/languages/C/tutorials/sawtell_C.tar.gz
>
>  -->> Please refrain from using HTML or WORD attachments in e-mails to 
> me <<--
>





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