What do you mean "moderated"? Are you suggesting that pre-judge system you suggested before? I really fail to see how that's any different than the system we have now: all you'd do is shunt it off to a select group of people. The way things are now, everyone can establish the legitimacy of a submission the way they establish the quality of a movie and help the judges do their job. We shouldn't take that help away from them for any reason.
For starters, a select group wouldn't have felt the need to start this thread. That, by itself, should speak volumes. More importantly, it's less appealing for a troll if their audience consists of a small group of known individuals instead of the entire forum. The troll gets no response, instead of "OMG TROLL!!" and threads like this one. Disincentivization of misbehavior is always easier than the Sisyphean task of constantly cleaning it up.
Most importantly, a constant stream of garbage will adversely affect an internet community in exactly the same way as it does in a real community. If there are houses with broken windows and garbage in the streets, crime will follow. No matter how hard people work behind the scenes, if the outward appearance of the community is of decay then things will begin to spiral downward. When it happens, it carries an inertia that's hard to overcome.
Edit: Though, I did think of what I consider a better solution than what's been considered so far: if a submission gets an overwhelmingly negative response just after being posted, it gets automatically deleted and the submitter gets a notification that their submission didn't follow the rules or somesuch. Trash is dealt with speedily, the judges aren't made into janitors, and well-meaning but ignorant runners don't get verbally abused. Everybody wins.
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1977
Location: Making an escape
If the goal is to deprive a troll an audience on the workbench, forcing some forum activity does the same thing. Besides, once a troll is deprived of an audience on the workbench, they'll just take it to the rest of the forums anyway.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
