N3Roaster's Journal: Slashdot Score

The FAQ says that Karma is not a score in a video game. Fair enough, but what if you do want to play Slashdot like a video game? Here I propose rules for calculating such a score, a slashdot score.

Okay, so how do you earn points? You earn points by logging in and posting and by having others reply to your posts. The rules should be such as to encourage reasonable Slashdot behavior. Posts moderated to -1 are worth 0 points. Posts with higher scores are 1 point for 0, 2 for 1, 4 for 2, 8 for 3, 16 for 4, and 32 for 5. So, you don't get any points for trying to be incendiary (unless the mods are crazy (and mustn't they be?)) and you get lots of points for those score 5 posts.

Replies act something like a bonus modifier. To calculate this bonus, take the post score as outlined above and multiply that by the number of replies you get. So, if you get 0 points for a -1 post and get any number of replies, the whole thing is still worth 0 points. On the other hand, if you get a +5 post worth 32 points, 1 reply makes the whole thing worth 64 points, 10 replies makes it worth 352 points.

So, to maximize your score, you'd want to get moderated up to +5 and say something that gets lots of replies.

I don't intend to post paying any attention to the above, but I might periodically check in on that. Scores, as with most video games, don't go down. As of today, that score is 52. Not bad for three days. Years of posting as AC does nothing for the score.

On a side note, somebody understood my sig today. I'd befriend that person, but it was an AC, so I couldn't.

(2 December, 2005 update)

478 through Re: V-chips (July 22), might not count things that have gotten bumped into oblivion.

Was thinking moderation should count in the score, but decided against it. No handy record to check against.