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I browse /. at +5 (and see only very good comments) except for the once a month or so when I get given mod points. 15 minutes a month of moderation per person

I browse /. at +5 (and see only very good comments) except for the once a month or so when I get given mod points. 15 minutes a month of moderation per person seems to be sustainable/scalable, because it's been working for ages and I have noticed no real change in Slashdot's +5 comment quality. Where that fails with HN is that we have infinite mod points all the time, which: - Encourages point inflation as the community grows. - Discourages people from taking moderation seriously as if it was a big deal you wouldn't be able to do it all the time.

JadeNB 17y ago
> Discourages people from taking moderation seriously as if it was a big deal you wouldn't be able to do it all the time. I'm not sure I agree with this. I really like the HN system whereby upvotes are free, but downvotes are restricted. (Well, I assume that's the way it is --at least, it's easy for me to see how to do one, but not the other.) This makes it easy for me to give a post a tiny bump up, so that I don't think much of it, but emphasises the cost of giving it the equivalent tiny bump down; and isn't that a good attitude to instill in a commenting community? Certainly I think the culture here is notably friendlier than just about anywhere public-facing site (LtU (http://lambdatheultimate.org http://lambdatheultimate.org) being perhaps a notable exception). EDIT: I saw a mention of Metafilter elsewhere. I forgot it as an example of another site with a novel approach to the commenting problem; namely, make commenting not free by imposing a small, one-time cost.