Editing Plastic.com (section)

===Karma and moderation===
Plastic's moderation system was modeled on the one established by [[Slashdot]], and very similar to it.<ref name=bruns>{{Cite book| publisher = Peter Lang| isbn = 0820474320| last = Bruns| first = Axel| title = Gatewatching: Collaborative Online News Production| location = New York| date = June 2005| pages=150&ndash;154}}</ref> Commenting plastic members were randomly awarded moderation points which could be given out as they saw fit. In any discussion thread, a person with moderation points was able to moderate a post up or down, based on the content, with a descriptive tag, such as 'compelling', 'scholarly', 'astute', 'disingenuous', 'obnoxious', etc.  It cost one point to moderate a post up, and two to mod a post down.  A given comment could have a score between –1 and 5 inclusive at half point intervals, and Plastic users were able to set a personal threshold where no comments with a lesser score were displayed. (For example, a person with a score threshold of 1 would not see comments with a score of –1 or 0 but would see all others.)  Non-registered users were allowed to post anonymously. Plastic members had the option to block anonymous postings. Additionally, anonymous posts started with a karma score of 0, below the default moderation threshold of 1.  Registered Plastic members also had the option to post anonymously, which allowed them to make controversial or offensive comments without fear of losing karma. This practice was generally frowned upon.

*0 karma or higher was required to post comments in stories and submit stories to the subQ
*5 karma or higher was required to post QuickLinks
*50 karma or higher was required to vote in the subQ
*The members with the highest karma had access to other tools, including the list of all other users in the "Top Karma" group and a list of all members currently logged in. The "Top Karma" page stated that this list was limited to the top 250 members, "give or take", but in reality the list contained 566 members as of 12 August 2005. The minimum karma required to be on this list was 120.5.  At 120.5, members were able to see the list of all members currently logged in, and at 121, members had access to the "Top Karma" list. Previously the list showed the karma totals for all members on the list, but at some point this was changed so that karma details are accessible only in "bands"—higher-karma members can see details of all lower scoring members' karma scores, but lower-scoring members were able to see higher rankings only in bands such as +1500, +2500, +5000, etc.

As with the story submission queue, some Plastic members complained that many comments were moderated (especially down) based on political motivations, usually to aid liberal posts or downgrade conservative posts. As with most member-moderated sites, many downmods were motivated by personal feuds. The moderation system did not encourage these practices, and the top karma bands typically included several self-described conservative members.