Historic talk:FeatureList

(Pardon my editing. If anyone is more familiar with wiki editing than I, maybe they would care to format this more appropriately. However, I would not appreciate any editing of my comments other than for format.)

MODDING

First: I recommend against allowing mods in any discussion in which you have taken part. Preventing mods only to "your comment chain" would be far too complicated to implement and there are too many potential holes to exploit if someone wants to cheat.

Second: I recommend against giving users the ability to mod ACs up. Why bother? They're ACs. Allow downmodding but not upmodding. That gives them incentive to create an account. (I realize this would penalize the occasional brilliant comment from an AC... still, I say: let them create an account.)

Third: I do not think fractional mod points is a good idea. It adds unnecessary complication, decimal numbers use up more space in the database and add performance penalties, etc. If you want to make some mods worth more than others, make them worth more than one point. E.g., 2 points and 1 point rather than 1 point and 0.5 points.

Fourth: I would give a lot of strong thought to some kind of means to limit sock-puppet accounts and especially sock-puppet mods. I doubt there is any perfect way to do it, but having many times been victim of sock-puppet mods, I think it should be harder than in the original version. It should also be made clear to users that sock-puppets are considered the lowest of the low by the community. (They already are, but it should be made explicitly clear.)

Fifth: I recommend adding an "I disagree" mod, which would be worth -1 point.  :)

Sixth: "What about not-posting in the thread where you moderated? Good or bad rule? Maybe if you really must post, allow cryptocoin paying for post?" HELL NO. People should not have more say just because they have more money. This is a very bad ides.

KARMA (CHOPS)

I really don't think mod points or karma should depend on user's customized point systems. Leaving it open to customized scoring could make your karma system vulnerable to cabals of users, unintended consequences, or a form of "elitism" (Good Old Boy Syndrome). It's been known to happen. There should be a clearly articulable standard that cannot be modified by users. Anything else is subject to chaos. If you don't give users a clearly defined standard, they won't know how to behave.

A Karma (or Chops) system needs to go above what the original system uses (only a few levels, with "Excellent" being the top). The current system allows people to receive massive numbers of positive mod points, but still remain at "Excellent" karma, which can be lost in a single day; they can find their karma at 0 if they are ganged up on by others. Yes, it does happen. Karma should be allowed to accumulate (negative OR positive) beyond just a few points on either side of zero. That way somebody with a few years of good karma won't find themselves below 0 due to a single flamewar. And vice versa.

Care should be taken to avoid multiplication of karma points, either positive or negative. I.e., you should not receive more positive points for having positive points.