From Vladimir Z. Nuri (just when I thought it was over):
".......PICS is a very flexible architecture and I hope it will be "used in many ingenious ways not previously foreseen." Guess so. . How long do "cool sites" stay "hot"? . How long would web pages rated "sexual content" keep that rating? . Many sites are casually rated as "cool" for the fun of it. . Why are controversial pages rated? . What motivated Yahoo to begin featuring Top 5 Sites of the Week? . What motivates those who are calling for mandatory rating? "but in a sense, this is what you do whenever you read a book or a newspaper. you are reading information screened by someone else." You could say that *all* communication is a rating, then. All evaluations are ratings (as are all emotions, and all modifying terms in grammar. Art is a rating on life, as love is a rating on others). But an individual must decide how much screening they can tolerate before they become useless to themselves (or: *whose* rating is important?) Many things help us to make judgements, to aid us in arriving at conclusions. Ratings present the conclusion itself: rather than assisting, by reasoning and discussion (or argument) in the development of judgement, they present a final evaluation. They leave out the middle, where the work of thought takes place. "ratings are not a substitute for personal judgement. they are meant to be a method to aid thinking, not to replace it, imho." They can do that, in a very reduced, limited way. I myself think that even short descriptions are more informative and useful. You can reduce communication to such constricted labels that it loses all meaning. Or as Beavis n Butthead would posit: uh - uh; uh - uh (hee-hee. It just occurred to me how dogs mark their territory. You could call *that* a rating, too. THIS site is MINE, honey!!) .. Blanc