wikipedia | The administration of the site uses the Slash source code and database, a content management system available under the GNU General Public License.[39] Slashdot's editors are primarily responsible for selecting and editing the primary stories daily from submitters like Roland Piquepaille;
they provide a one-paragraph summary for each and a link to an external
site where the story originated. Each story becomes the topic for a
threaded discussion among the site's users.[40] A user-based moderation system is employed to filter out abusive comments.[41] Every comment is initially given a score of -1 to +2, with a default score of +1 for registered users, 0 for anonymous users (Anonymous Coward), +2 for users with high "karma", or −1 for users with low "karma". As moderators read comments attached to articles, they click to moderate the comment, either up (+1) or down (−1). Moderators may choose to attach a particular descriptor to the comments as well, such as normal, offtopic, flamebait, troll, redundant, insightful, interesting, informative, funny, overrated, or underrated, with each corresponding to a -1 or +1 rating. So a comment may be seen to have a rating of "+1 insightful" or "-1 troll".[36]
Moderation points add to a user's karma, and users with high "karma"
are eligible to become moderators themselves. The system does not
promote regular users as "moderators" and instead assigns five
moderation points at a time to users based on the number of comments
they have entered in the system – once a user's moderation points are
used up, they can no longer moderate articles (though they can be
assigned more moderation points at a later date). Paid staff editors
have an unlimited number of moderation points.[36][40][42]
A given comment can have any integer score from -1 to +5, and registered users of Slashdot can set a personal threshold so that no comments with a lesser score are displayed.[40][42] For instance, a user reading Slashdot at level +5 will only see the highest rated comments, while a user reading at level -1 will see a more "unfiltered, anarchic version".[36]
A meta-moderation system was implemented on September 7, 1999,[43]
to moderate the moderators and help contain abuses in the moderation
system. Meta-moderators are presented with a set of moderations that
they may rate as either fair or unfair. For each moderation, the meta-moderator sees the original comment and the reason assigned by the moderator (e.g. troll, funny), and the meta-moderator can click to see the context of comments surrounding the one that was moderated.[40][42]
