aardvarkjoe claims that The over/underrated moderations are for weak-opinioned fools who are abusing the mod system.

I had mod points the day he wrote that and wanted to mod the post down as overrated just as a silly joke. Couldn't do that, of course, because it would have been deservedly metamoderated as a bad mod. I settled on posting an AC reply because I wanted to preserve my mod points for well written stuff that deserved points but still wanted to tease him a bit. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that it is time I explored the economics/game theory of /.'s moderation system. Specifically, is the "Can't post if you've moderated" rule + the anonymous nature of the moderations really lead to the best of breed floating to the top?

Here is my new personal best. Everytime it was modded down -1 Troll, someone else kicked it back up as +1 Funny.

Previous best was a post modded +1 Informative, +1 Interesting, and +1 Funny.

It happens, don't take it personally.

Except that one would think that the death of a pioneer computer scientist and Turing Award winner is worthy of News for Nerds.