Obscenely huge possible future exploit.

So, as we all know, the Image Moderation tool is a gigantic success. You never really see the image count get above 300 or so, and that's if nobody's around to do the moderating.

A downside to that is the possibility of rating your own images. Picture this:

1. Johnny submits image.
2. Johnny attaches image to 3+ galleries.
3. Johnny goes into the Image Moderation tool and keeps approving all his own images, receiving Mod Points as he does so.
4. Johnny receives points for both his image (which gets him at least 3, thanks to the galleries) and (in the future) the moderation part.
5. ???
6. Profit?

Oh shit, how did this get here? Meant for it to go to the Editing & Tools forum. Man, I need some coffee.

The image approval tool requires that multiple users vote for the approval of an image - so Jonny would need a bunch of people to accept his image before it gets approved.
So if our friend Jonny is just uploading junk images, they're not going to get through, but if he's taking the time to upload perfectly valid images - then the points are warranted!

You don't have a problem with him getting points for moderating his own images?

I never said they were junk images- but if he just sits there approving his own batch of screenshots for the Jeremy Shockey person/character/madden/giants pages and galleries, that's considered perfectly valid? Someone could upload 100 junk images to as many places as he can, just so he can vote on them and get points that way.

There are tons of different ways to totally mess with the system, should people be able to judge themselves o.0

Edit: and since you're a mod, can you please move this? It's not Off Topic.

Jonny could also just bump up his mod points by visiting the moderation queue and geniunely approving/denying other peoples submissions - which he'd likely end up doing anyway, as the images are selected at random - even though he might end up approving some of his own images.

People will, unfortunately, always try to find ways to circumvent a system, and no doubt the dev team know that - I'm sure they'll appreciate the help in pointing out such potential problems though.

Luckily, moderator points have no real significance as of yet - I'm sure once the system is fully in place and if these points ever have a meaning, there will be means to prevent exploitation.

I'm not an official voice on these things, so don't take what I say as the opinion of the staff - thanks for bringing the matter up though!