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Among the lineage of web comment sites I'm familiar with, I'm pretty certain it was Slashdot. They definitely had it in 1999. Might have been 1998.

It definitely wasn't Digg. According to Wikipedia, that wasn't even founded until 2004.

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I don’t remember it before Slashdot either, and the founders sometimes talked about it as if it were their own innovation. Not sure if there was any “prior art” they were working from or not.

Interesting, yes Slashdot is a bit before my time but I think you're right, they seem to be referenced in the [1] Wikipedia article about moderation too.

It also warns about large communities developing a Groupthink mentality. Which is something I've always wondered but could never quite describe, the way communities form a single consensus around what's a good/bad opinion...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moderation_system

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