Karma is the Slashdot moderation system. Slashdot (often abbreviated to /.) is a popular technology-related website/Forum updated many times daily, with articles that are often short summaries of stories on other websites, links to those stories, and provisions for readers to comment on each story. ...

To prevent abusive comments, a moderation system has been implemented whereby every comment posted (including those posted anonymously) can be "moderated" up or down by semi-randomly chosen moderators, changing the post's score likewise. Moderation points added to a comment are also added to a user's karma score. Having high karma gives added bonuses to users, such as the ability to autopost at higher starting values. Conversely, users with low karma have penalties imposed on them. People that post comments designed to get more karma, for example mirroring a linked article or presenting a banal groupthink opinion or lame joke, are referred to as karma whores. Those who can moderate are selected by their karma score and number of meta moderations (and maybe other criteria). Slashdot editors, including Rob Malda ("CmdrTaco"), can moderate limitlessly. Moderator access for non-editors is time limited (to a few days) and the number of 'mod points' one gets is limited (to a max of 5 points at the time of this writing). On Internet websites which invite users to post comments, a moderation system is the method the webmaster chooses to sort contributions which are irrelevant, obscene, illegal or insulting from contributions which are useful or informative. ... Sortition is the method of random selection, particularly in relation to the selection of decision makers also known as allotment. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Pluralistic ignorance. ... Slashdot trolling phenomena make up a large subset of the bizarre and complex subculture found on the popular technology website Slashdot. ... Rob Malda Rob Malda (born May 10, 1976), also known as CmdrTaco, is the founder of the website Slashdot. ...

A given comment can have any integer score from −1 to +5, and Slashdot users can set a personal threshold where no comments with a lesser score are displayed. A person browsing the comments at a threshold of 1 will not see comments with a score of −1 or 0 but will see all others. A meta-moderation system was implemented to moderate the moderators and help contain abuses. A meta-moderation system is an arrangement used on some Internet websites (such as internet forums, blogs and news websites) which invite user comments. ...

Karma is implemented in the Slash Content management system and hence is generally used by all the sites that use this software. Slash (a backronym for Slashdot Like Automated Story-telling Homepage) is the open source collection of Perl scripts which runs Slashdot, one of the oldest and most popular collaborative weblogs around. ... A content management system is a computer software system for organizing and facilitating collaborative creation of documents and other content. ...