I believe that I'm a pretty smart person. I can certainly follow links and perform searches. But I still can't figure out the meta moderation system on this site.
Every now and then I log in and get a message Have you meta-moderated recently? I think "Nope, not ever" and follow the link. I get a boring page.
This page is so boring I can write all of the relevant text here:
Meta Moderation
No comments available for meta moderation!
What a shame, I was hoping to find some information on what I had to do to meta-moderate!
Today I posted a comment and got the following message:
For use Perl's moderation system to function properly, we need as many users as possible to
Meta-Moderate.
You are currently eligible... why not hop over and help?
Yay! Thought I, and hopped over to help. Only to find, again, the content I provided above.
Am I supposed to keep reloading that page just in case something which hasn't been meta-moderated appears? Sure, the quotes are amusing, but I've got better things to do with my day.
Am I missing something important? This is certainly a case where some more documentation could help. I'll even write it if someone tells me how it all works. I've searched use Perl for information on meta-moderation and got nothing (of use). Perhaps my user object is broken.
Me Too
Replying to one of pudge's posts would likely get the quickest response, but I didn't bother since I am mostly a lurker.
I vaguely remember something about the number of accounts that come after you has to reach a certain number before there something or other. IOW - I have no idea and just gave up on it.
Re:Me Too
mattriffle on 2005-03-31T13:48:54
I don't think it's the number of accounts after you in this case -- at least, I'm #357 and I see the same message whenever I click the meta-mod link.
-Matt
not much to moderate
jmm on 2005-03-31T14:51:01
The code that runs this site is the same code that is used for slashdot. (Well, sometimes it's at a different version level - pudge is one of the developers of slashcode and I seem to recall him running new releases here before they got used for the slashdot site.)
Moderation allows you to rate the discussion on news articles. However, this site only gets a few news articles per month and there are few discussion comments posted to them - having more than 5 comments is rare, 0 is more common; in contrast, slashdot usually gets hundreds and sometimes over a thousand comments on a signle article, and they post on the order of 20 or 30 articles per day.
Moderation is not applied to journal comments (such as the one I am writing here), which is where the bulk of the posting occurs on this site.
Moderation is invited from users who: (1) are long time participants - not one of the most recent 10% registrants (I think the number os 10%, but I may be wrong); (2) has no also written comments to the same article; (3) has not been downgraded by enough bad feedback from the meta-moderation process.
When there are no recent article comments, no moderation can be done, and no moderator cookies are handed out.
Meta-moderation is a feedback mechanism to provide a check on moderation (just as moderation provides a check on commentary). All users can offer to meta-moderate. They are shown a number of recent moderation actions and asked to judge whether the moderation was fairly done or inappropriate. Each moderation can be meta-moderated a few times.
When all recent moderation has been meta-moderated a few times, there is nothing available to be meta-moderated.
The whole moderation/meta-moderation process is designed for a high volume site with a number of people who misuse the site in their postings or their use of the moderation process. In that venue, it provides a huge benefit. On this site, it is essentially wasted.
