Overview

GeekMod was first introduced to the public community on January 12, 2006. It is a system designed to speed up the verdict on content submissions to BoardGameGeek, and also to lessen the load on the admins.

The GeekMod functions as a community driven system to pass judgement on images, reviews, session reports, plus representative images and the like. On reviews and session reports, users are also given the chance to have a say in how much Geekgold the submitter should receive for their work - if the submission is accepted.

You can earn some GeekGold by participating in GeekMod. If you vote to approve an image and it is approved you will receive .01 geekgold. If you vote to decline an image and it is declined you will receive .05 geekgold.

The link to GeekMod can be found under the Misc menu.

Advantages

• Image approval/denial happens incredibly more quickly.
• Reasons can be selected for denial, giving the uploader a sense of what is considered "wrong" with their photo.
• [Hopefully] It's less work for the admins.
• The Community has a say in keeping blurry and uncropped photos out of the database.
• It's something constructive you can do when you're bored, but just want to be on the 'Geek for a bit longer.

Disadvantages

• An incorrect image may get approved by people who also know absolutely nothing about the game, and - for example - don't realize it's a photo of another game with the same name.
• A correct and appropriate image may get denied by people who know absolutely nothing about the game, and - for example - think that it's not showing anything meaningful.
  • This isn't a common problem.
  • The uploader can get around it by altering the image slightly, and uploading it again. It's almost a certainty that the set of people GeekModding your second upload will be different than the first set.
• A single denial message will often have several wildly different reasons to justify it - sometimes so different that they make the denial seem unjustified.
• An incorrect image can get paired with a game, and approved as a Representative Image by people who know nothing about the game.
• If the Representative Image is a photo of the wrong game, and someone tries to submit a correct image as the Representative Image, but the correct one gets denied, then the correct image is banned from being recommended again.
• Since geekmod is one of the easiest ways for new users to scrabble for geekgold without getting out of their seats, there may be more new users (and thus possibly less aware of what photos are relevant for a given game) geekmodding than there are experienced ones.
• Since rejection is rewarded more heavily than acceptance, users panning for geekgold will probably jump on the slightest opportunity to reject images.
  • See Declined images.
  • See Your best rejected images- Win GG!!.
  • See Declined images for zefquaavius.

How To Use GeekMod

(work in progress)
As for what pictures belong in each category, the following guidelines were given by Octavian in this thread:

• Game - Images where the focus is on the game, the box, and/or unaltered components.
• People - Images where people are prominently featured with the game
• Creative - Images of the game that contain creative elements such as modified components or fun situations.