[Imc] Robert Meade "Bobby" "Israel" Deaf Messenger

[Clinton Popetz]

On Wed, Aug 22, 2001 at 11:29:23AM -0500, Brian Hagy wrote:
> 
> irritating people, perspectives, and writings are difficult to deal with,
> i agree.  however, which person, perspective, or writing doesn't get to
> have a public arena?  if we began to say this one is ok, but this one is
> not (due to whatever reason or reasons) how are we behaving any
> differently than any corporate media source (whose reasons for avoiding
> certain people, perspectives, writing are much more stringent than ours, i
> admit).  i consider intentionally hiding someone's posting to be
> intentionally silencing it (we want it to be there, but for no one to read
> it without difficulty).  useful perhaps (maybe even desirable), but
> definitely contrary to any open publishing format.
> 
> what will happen if conservatives decide to repeatedly post to the site?
> do we intentionally hide them too?

That was never suggested; it was only suggested that on a
case-per-case basis, a consensus decision could be made about whether
a person was violating the spirit of the newswire.  It was also
suggested that an attempt should be made to communicate the problem to
the poster, to allow him/her to explain themselves before action is
taken.

> an idea (which would require some programming work, i suspect):
> a rating system, which people who read the articles can rate the articles
> (higher the number, the more interesting someone finds the article, for
> example), thus things can be ordered by what the masses find interesting.
> a rating system maybe also for writers, in addition to articles.  dunno,
> still has that flavor of intentionally hiding something (but at least it's
> done by a much larger group, rather than us few folks).

Having spent a lot of time on such a system (slashdot.org) I'll make
the following comments:

(1) Moderation systems only work if you have a _lot_ of people
posting/reading daily.  Otherwise the laws of statistics don't work
for you.

(2) Moderation systems actually end up censoring a lot more than one
might expect.  You're at the mercy of coalitions of moderaters who
moderate up/down based on grudges and such.  Plus, many people will
read only posts that have been moderated _above_ neutral, i.e. "I just
want to read the stuff other people have found worth reading," which
means you'll get the moderators' slant on things.

I like slashdot's moderation system, but I don't think it would work
for the newswire, mainly because of point (1).

				-Clint