I'm not sure whether this is a good or bad thing, but most sites (including HN) with partially-automated moderation systems make the same assumption:
*You only need one "karma" variable, for both posting and moderation*.
That is, users who post popular content (i.e. comments that get a lot of upvotes) and those who moderate well (i.e. votes strongly-correlated with those of the admins) are rewarded in exactly the same way, that is by increasing the value that unified "karma" variable.
IMHO this is not the best approach. For every prolific poster (who probably has decent karma already) you probably have 10 "lurkers" who have read most stories posted in the last month, know what they do (and don't) want to read, and are just as well-qualified to vote on stories and comments as those who regularly post comments (and earn karma from them.)
So what would happen if you made "posting karma" and "moderation karma" independent of each other?
(sort of a trick question, since it has been done.)
IMHO this is not the best approach. For every prolific poster (who probably has decent karma already) you probably have 10 "lurkers" who have read most stories posted in the last month, know what they do (and don't) want to read, and are just as well-qualified to vote on stories and comments as those who regularly post comments (and earn karma from them.)
So what would happen if you made "posting karma" and "moderation karma" independent of each other?
(sort of a trick question, since it has been done.)