I hold the power of the moderators. Fear me!

I got a new allocation of Slashdot moderator points today. Moderator points are the popular tech news site's method of crowd sourcing quality control of their post comments. As a regular reader and occasional contributor in good standing I get randomly allocated five moderator points every few months. Each point allows me to mod a comment up or down using descriptive titles such as "insightful" or "flamebait". Slashdot readers can set a threshold below which they don't see comments (the default is +1 think) so the moderator system works pretty well to filter out spam for most readers.

Today I not only get mod points but I was also asked to meta-moderate! This involves viewing a random selection of comments and voting them up or down and seems to be a way of keeping track on the quality of moderation. I wonder how many layers this system has. Is there a meta-meta moderation?

Anyway whenever I get mod points I do my best to pick out comments on less popular posts or to late posted comments that are usually buried under hundred of earlier ones. I reckon early comments made to popular posts get seen by plenty of people anyway where as hidden gems that are buried further down could do with a bit of love.

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