On Sunday, we launched our new Community Moderated Comments functionality.  How does it work?  In the past, comments were automatically posted and there was no recourse for comments that weren’t up the the standards of the community.  With the new functionality, all comments are still posted automatically, but now readers are able to rate each others comments “up” or “down”.  If too many “down” ratings are posted, the comment will be collapsed and grayed out as an indication of it’s poor ratings.  Don’t worry, you can still read it by clicking the “view comment” link.  This is for folks who want to read the comments but have the lesser quality content hidden from view.  Also, if enough people come in and rate a collapsed comment up, it can regain a normal status.  If you want to insure your comment will remain up, make sure to have as many people as possible rate this up.  Obviously, the opposite is true for comments you would like to rate “down”.  Have fun!

How do we prevent abuse of the rating system?  This is accomplished in 2 ways.  The first is by maintaining a karma value for the commenter which is based on a number of factors.  The higher your karma value, the harder it is for negative ratings to collapse your comment.  The second way we limit abuse of the system is to limit how many times you can rate the same comment.  Sorry, you can only rate once per comment.

Let us know what you think of this new functionality!