Slashdot.org is a technology oriented index of news and other information available on the internet. Articles featured on slashdot were submitted by readers, and then chosen by the slashdot editors from amongst hundreds of other submissions.

Comments and Relevance

In addition to these links, slashdot provides a space for users to leave their comments about the articles posted to slashdot. Depending on the popularity of the article,  it might be followed by over a thousand anonymous and pseudonymous comments.

To help users wade through this potential sea of comments, slashdot has implemented a comment rating system.  After a comment is posted, slashdot moderators can raise or lower it's rating from a base score. Particularly insightful comments have their ratings elevated, while flames and off topic posts will be left alone or rated down.  Readers can choose what level of relevance they want and comments with below that rating ar not shown.

Choosing The Moderators

When a slashdot users posts a comment and the comment's rating is raised, the user gains a point of "Karma."  The moderators are chosen randomly from slashdot users with high Karma ratings. Each moderator serves for a short period of time and then returns to being a normal user until that user is selected again.  Karma, then,  serves as an automatically calculated measure of the poster's ethos in the slashdot community.

Moderating the Moderators

In addition to a mechanism for rating user comments, slashdot also provides a means of rating the moderators.  A random selection of moderator decisions is available anonymously to all slashdot users. These users can then rate the moderation in question as 'fair' , 'unfair', or neutral. If a moderation is rated down sufficiently, the moderator in question looses karma, making it harder for them to become a moderator again. If a moderator consistently rates articles unfairly, then his Karma will drop repeatedly moving him out of eligibility to be a moderator.