From the horse's mouth:
"We're going to build the next generation of moderation on top of tags. That means we're going to poach your namespace. Some tags will have a substantive effect on the system right from the start (or very soon). Our article tagger will know about tags like "dupe" or "typo". When we roll out tagging on comments, we will teach it "troll" and "informative". These tags can have a meaning in the system. And when you come up with ways of using tags that we haven't anticipated, we will bring them into the system.
Currently open only to Slashdot subscribers, these tags are apparently going to be observed closely for any emerging behaviours, which could be integrated in to the Slashdot system! Slashdot, perhaps due to its popularity, is subjected to frequent complaints about its moderation system. I personally find that in the right topics (i.e. non-flame topics) the moderation system is fairly robust. But to see where they take this, using tagging to influence and augment content moderation, will be pretty exciting.
CmrdTaco goes out of his way to spell out that this is highly experimental and he doesn't know what direction it will take. But he states in no uncertain terms that the tags will be used meaningfully, as opposed to other systems where anything goes.
The full blurb: http://slashdot.org/faq/tags.shtml
