One of the main features of my site will be Discourse-style trust levels, the higher your trust level, the more moderation privileges you gain. I’m also considering either a jury system, where multiple users collaborate on moderation decisions, or a meta-moderation system, where users can vote “fair” or “unfair” on moderation actions taken.
Someone mentioned to me in another post that Bluesky also has a very good moderation system, but the best one I’ve found so far is Discourse. What I really like about it is that you earn trust levels by reading posts, not by taking moderation actions. I definitely don’t want to gamify moderation the way Stack Overflow did, that was the worst I’ve ever seen.
I tend to like systems that give the user tools to moderate their own feed and content they see. Then it’s up to me to decide what I want in my timeline and what I don’t want. This can be a bit heavy on the system though, especially if you don’t have lot of metadata and have to rely on full-text search blocking. Seems to work on Mastodon though.
This then leaves only certain moderation tasks to the server admins (automating CSAM scanning/reporting) - and filtering out content that breaks the server ToS.
Back in the days, Slashdot had a system where you could “opt-in” as a moderator, and this would randomly give you “mod-points” every now and then. You could use your points to up- or downvote posts and comments. I quite enjoyed it and it didn’t feel like I had to apply for a 2nd job (which is the case with lot of other moderation systems)