GeekMod 
OverviewGeekMod is a community driven system to pass judgement on images, reviews, session reports, representative images and the like. GeekMod users also have a say on how much GeekGold reviews and session reports should receive, if they are accepted.
GeekMod was made public on January 12, 2006, to speed up the verdict on content submissions to BoardGameGeek while lessening the load on the admins.
You can earn some GeekGold by participating in GeekMod if your votes match the ultimate result of the voting.
The link to GeekMod can be found under the Misc menu.
How To Use GeekModGo to the https://boardgamegeek.com/geekmod page, and choose one of the items listed in a horizontal row at the top of the screen (Images, Videos, Links, Articles, Data). The number next to the link tells how many items are in that queue.
Images: What should I be looking for?
Reasons to decline an image include:Too small: Images should be at least 320 x 200 pixels. Company logos are an exception.
Too big: Scans and copy-photography images of components, such as counter sheets, cards, and other flat materials, may have a maximum resolution of 200ppi, or a maximum size of 1900 pixels on the long side, whichever is less.
Image is an advertisement or promotional image for a new release.
Duplicate image: Image is already in the database.
Image is watermarked: image contains a visible watermark, company logo, url, or any other branding not original to the image.
Badly rotated: Image is sideways or upside-down.
Badly cropped: Image has too much white space.
Corrupt: Image does not display correctly.
Similar: Image is too similar to other images uploaded by the same user or to an existing image and is not of significantly better quality.
Wrong game.
Which pictures belong in each category?
- Game - Images of the game, the box, and/or unaltered components. (Digital representations of a cover, cards, cardboard chits, a game board, and other relatively flat components belong in the GAME gallery on the assumption that they represent the game as it will appear in print; however, if such an image is labeled, say, "non-final" or "preliminary", then the image should be placed in the CREATIVE gallery.)
- Creative — Images of the game that contain creative elements such as modified components (including custom painted miniatures), fun situations, storage solutions, screenshots of online implementations, advertisements, prototypes, or artwork. (Digital representations of miniatures and dice belong in the CREATIVE gallery since they tend to differ from how the manufactured items actually look.)
- People - Is the focal point of the image — its central reason for existing — one or more persons? If so, then the image goes in the PEOPLE gallery. (Random hands and parts of faces and bodies don't qualify an image for the PEOPLE gallery.)
For more information, please see Image_submissions.
Approval Process OverviewIn a nutshell there are four actions that you can take with Geekmod:
- Vote to Approve - You approve this image for inclusion into the database.
- Vote to Approve and Recommend - You approve this image for inclusion into the database, and give it a Thumb when it clears GeekMod.
- Vote to Decline - Reject the item for inclusion (Please give some feedback as to why you rejected the item to help guide the submitter's future submissions.)
- Skip - You skip this item without approving or disapproving.
Effectiveness
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.
HistoryRejection used to be rewarded more heavily than acceptance, which encouraged users panning for geekgold to jump on the slightest opportunity to reject images. This system has now been adjusted so that acceptances are rewarded more than rejections, by a much smaller margin than when the reverse was true.
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