/. Moderator Points!!

Every morning I login to Slashdot and meta moderate (rate someone else's moderation). So, here I was, in my normal morning excursion to /. ready to do my part in the community when I saw that today I had Moderator Points. All 5 of them. I don't know why, my first thought is always to warn all my friends to go and post in Slashdot, but I don't think that's the purpose of the system...

If you don't know how the moderation system works in /. (or any other site based on the SlashCode), well, it's basically a random selection of users that access the site regularly and are registered for a minimum of 1,5 years (I think). I'm a member of /. for at least some 3 years, so, in average, about once every 3 months I get to play God online and say who's smart and who's not. But playing god in /. is not really the same thing as playing SimCity or WarCraft III.
As a guideline, you should read all the posts (including ACs) and read the stories that people are talking about before moderating. This seems pretty normal. But I would say that there is a very good reason why, by default, new users only see posts with a moderation => 1 - you just can't believe the trash that people post in /. - well, I for one can't.
It ranges from the standard "You Linux lame f*cks, Windows Rules" to "You can't appreciate OS X if you don't appreciate Gay Sex" and links to the most weird web sites you would imagine (I say that from the URLs posted, not that I have followed any of the links) ;-)).

Cutting a long story short, I've ran out of moderator points now, so am back to being just a normal /. reader and I now miss the divine power to label people as Flamebaits, Trolls, etc...

My director just arrived. I think I'm going to moderate him for a while... ;-))