Mr. Nuri wrote:
in the scientific arena. a paper that is pivotal and influential is referred to ad infinitum. obscure papers are forgotten and never referred to in subsequent literature. taking this idea to the cyberspace arena, the application is immediately obvious-- pages that are linked to by a lot of other pages are valuable, those that are not are not as valuable.
I'd bet that there are more links to playboy.com or "xxx.sex.com" than to thomas.loc.gov. This suffers from the fatal flaw of democracy, the assumption that one million people are smarter than 10. Who was it that said "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the average american"? Petro, Christopher C. petro@suba.com <prefered for any non-list stuff> snow@smoke.suba.com