I haven't visited Slashdot on a regular basis in the better part of ten years, but it tended to 15 years ago. Back then, it was the kind of place where you'd find people like John Carmack randomly chiming in on a thread.^1
And that's also entirely beside the point.
Does HN have the same level of comment quality as reddit? They both use simple up/down systems.
The point is that Slashdot's metamoderation system better leverages the community as a means of directing discussion. The initial upvote has a reason attached to it, and the meta level moderation allows the community to filter out people that are moderating inappropriately. What constitutes appropriate is going to depend on the standards in place for that community.
I wouldn't expect to see an option to moderate a comment +1, Funny on HN, for example. The system itself, however, is designed specifically to bring quality content to the top.
But I think you're making the mistake of conflating the design of a system that is meant to address one problem with the state of a site that declined for other reasons years ago.
> It baffles me that every site on the web keeps using simple up/down systems and then complains about how hard it is to generate quality discussion when this is hardly a new problem set.
It sounded like you were saying "if those sites just used a better moderation system, it would be easy to generate quality discussion". But the moderation system you propose does not generate quality discussion on slashdot.
If that's not what you're saying, then I'm not sure what particular benefit you think slashdot's sytem does have. What does it mean for a system to be good at directing discussion, but not at generating high-quality discussion? Why is it useful to be able to revoke mod privileges, if that doesn't generate high-quality discussion?
Or are you saying something like, it would be easy to generate quality discussion with slashdot's system given certain other factors (where simple +/- does not make this easy), but slashdot lacks those factors?
And that's also entirely beside the point.
Does HN have the same level of comment quality as reddit? They both use simple up/down systems.
The point is that Slashdot's metamoderation system better leverages the community as a means of directing discussion. The initial upvote has a reason attached to it, and the meta level moderation allows the community to filter out people that are moderating inappropriately. What constitutes appropriate is going to depend on the standards in place for that community.
I wouldn't expect to see an option to moderate a comment +1, Funny on HN, for example. The system itself, however, is designed specifically to bring quality content to the top.
But I think you're making the mistake of conflating the design of a system that is meant to address one problem with the state of a site that declined for other reasons years ago.
[1] - http://floodyberry.com/carmack/slashdot.html#s19991123x08382...