Sorry I misunderstood your earlier post, Chris. People are welcome to come in, post, and leave, but that's not nearly as valuable to the site as people who stay, answer questions, and share knowledge.
We're glad you all feel as strongly about this as we do, regardless of what your opinion is about the topic.
Here's the system we'd like to copy parts from.
http://slashdot.org/moderation.shtml
Here's the problems with the system. Basically, the fatal flaws in the system (all systems have them) only begin appear after significant pressure is applied.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slashdot_trolling_phenomena
Both are very interesting reads.
Basically, random people get a chance every so often to influence what content is displayed. Not "control", just "influence". Then, the rest of us determine how fair those random mods were being in a blind review. Mods determined by the community to be generally fair have a greater chance to do it again.
This determines what remains on the home page. I think people like seeing their updates on the home page and it clearly does drive more traffic to their sites. I have only 2500 visitors to my gallery, and I wrote the site -- it's because I never update.
Our currents mods and I will maintain perma-mod status and naturally we'll be the only ones allowed to ban people, etc.
The big caveat is that there may not be enough people on the site for the benefits to be apparent. Also, the learning curve may be steep.
It's an experiment. We feel like a self-moderating community that selects its own content is the best solution, but we'll have to work out the specifics. We'll keep the latest-post-first listing as an alternative.
Timeline on the moderation system is no time soon as it'll take quite a bit of work. We'll restore weblogs in the new version of the home page.
