At 7:49 AM -0800 1/4/97, Peter Hendrickson wrote:
The moderator keeps the cash. The moderator is pulled in several directions. He or she wants to keep the money but also wants people ...blah blah blah....
All of these schemes--some of them pretty clever--for posting tokens, reputation-based killfiles, buying and selling reputation futures, etc., are almost certainly far too complicated to deploy on a list like ours. I have some direct evidence. The "Extropians" mailing list, beset with similar perceived S/N problems several years ago, tried some of these approaches. I've mentioned this before, and strongly urge those contemplating such schemes to find some archives of this time period (I don't know if they exist) and see what some of these real world experiments did. (Granted, there was no PGP encryption being used, but this is not really central at this point to most of the proposed schemes.) Here are some of the main Extropians list experiments I recall from the 1992-4 period, and some comments: 1. List-server-maintained filters. Subscribers could request that mail from "Joe Doe" not be sent to them. Subscribers could request only certain topics, or only certain subscribers, etc. Specific messages could be requested (e.g., of someone being filtered). 2. A reputation market, with share prices for the repuations of specific individuals, specific claims about the future, or even general topics. For example, the shares of "crypto anarchy" might have started trading at 15 thornes, and later reached 110 thornes. (Thorne was the guy who eventually got the code running, mostly.) 3. Private justice was tried, using the notion of "polycentric law." Those with beefs with others could "file suit" with some entity. "Tim's Protection League" could serve up certain kinds of justice, including forcing his own clients to not post, for example. (Readers will note the influence of Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" on some of the ideas, along with the ideas of Bruce Benson, David Friedman, and others.) What were the results? First, much list bandwidth was consumed discussing the design of these systems, the limitations of simple scalar measurements, and what real ratings systems and reputation-based killfiles ought to have. (Sasha Chislenko, now affiliated with Firefly, the distant grandchild of such schemes, was involved.) Second, there was an actual increase, in my opinion, in off-topic posts, as the weaknesses of these systems were probed, and workarounds found. Third, the aforementioned weaknesses were just too obvious. Here are some examples: * The reputation market was incredibly easy to manipulate. I used my initially distributed "thornes" to drive up the share prices in my own "tcmay" share prices. I also spent $15 of "real world" money to buy the thornes of a guy who was not interested in using them...this $15 translated into a _lot_ of thornes, which I could then use to buy lots of shares, and see the share prices increase. (I left the Extropians list in January of 1994, and at the time had the largest portfolio...no big deal, but it shows how such markets are not exactly very grounded in underlying reality!) * The killfiles at the host consumed a fair amount of CPU cycles...partly to pay for the increased services, a subscription fee for the Extropians list was initiated....this apparently drove the membership in the list down to much lower levels. (Which some may think is a good thing, but I understand from friends who remained on the list after 1/94 that posting rates dropped to such a low level that the list became much less interesting to read...I heard a few days ago that volume is back up to about 40 messages a day, and that the subscription fee has been dropped.) * The private adjudication of disputes was the most absurd of all. There was little or no incentive for "rational" judgements, and anyone could form their own "protection" justice system. I created my own, with myelf as the only member. This was not forbidden by the list meta-rules on such things, so I became de facto my own justice system, not bound by any other systems. Now, don't get me wrong....these "experiments" were interesting in their own right. And eventually such experiments may actually work out. Certainly many of us believe in the importance of individuals and groups setting up similar institutions on their own intiative. The problems, however, are apparent. (It would be nice to see a much longer article on the results of these experiments. It could even get published, in my opinion, as the issues are interesting. Emergent organizational principles, polycentric law, etc. Perhaps someone still on the Extropians list could suggest that this would make a nice article.) A lack of richness of interactions is part of the problem. The lack of accountability is another. The loopholes in the meta-rules compounds other problems. And a _lot_ of list bandwidth got consumed. The flame wars also got even more vitriolic. So, rather than do similar tinkering with the Cypherpunks list--not that either Hugh Daniel or John Gilmore have given any hint they are willing to do such tinkering--I suggest those who want to try token-based posting, or information markets in reputation capital, or herd-consensus killfiles, etc., set up a separate mailing list and implement whatever they wish. While such schemes may turn out to be imortant, I'm here on this list to discuss various ideas, not to be guinea pigs in somebody's pet idea (not to mix my pet metaphors, or my pet peeves). Cheers, --Tim May Just say "No" to "Big Brother Inside" We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^1398269 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."