From: tcmay@netcom.com (Timothy C. May) The longterm solution is to use "positive reputations" and not just "negative reputations" (as in Kill files). This is something Dean Tribble just talked about at our last physical meeting of the Cypherpunks ("Bay Area Branch" :-} ).
Think of like a credit rating. People _earn_ trust, they don't just get assigned a credit rating until they do something bad.
From: pmetzger@shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger) Indeed, in the long run, when there are billions of people in the nets, even UseNet newsgroups devoted to people who use musical instruments as sex toys would have thousands of posts a day because given billions of possible subscribers, finding a few tens of thousands with a particularly obscure interest wouldn't be hard. Thus, in the long run, the nets will move to "closed" newsgroups and mailing lists in which to be a subscriber one will have to be explicitly subscribed to a list and will only be able to read with one's private key and post by digitally signing messages. In such an environment, anonymous abusers will simply be incapable of annoying people.
Yes, but there will still need to be a way for new people to join the lists, (and the net in general) before they've had a chance to "prove themselves." Allowing all new id's to post to the whole group on a probationary basis is unacceptable; as soon as someone proves obnoxious enough to kick off they could just start over with a new id. The obvious answer is that a moderator will be necessary for all closed lists that require a positive rep for posting and that don't wish to be forever limited to their founding members. After a few lucid posts passed by the moderator, an individual would gain enough of a reputation not to be filtered out any longer. Of course, anyone who's heard Howard Stern fans invade political call-in shows will realize there's not much that can be done with those weird people who will spend a lot of time and energy to appear credible, only to annoy people. Joe
A conscious being, Joe Thomas, wrote in a previous message:
Yes, but there will still need to be a way for new people to join the lists, (and the net in general) before they've had a chance to "prove themselves."
There will always be the Sear credit cards of news groups. Those that will let almost anyone in - just so they can prove themselves. -- habs@acf3.NYU.EDU habs@gnu.ai.mit.edu habs@well.sf.ca.us habs@panix.com
Go read Ender's Game. They had a seriously electronic society. There were public message boards, and positive-reputation-based boards. Basically, if you demonstrated a clue on the public boards, then someone already reputable could recommend you for "membership" in the reputation-based boards. One of the characters did so anonymously. She even got paid for writing editorials, etc. Anybody could watch the proceeedings of the reputeable boards. In time, she was competing in debates with major politicians, et. al. Sci-fi? or Reality? I believe we could move from the former to the latter. (And I just avoided any sort of spoiler about the plot ;-) Imagine a system where spaf distributed the public key of the moderator(s) of a moderated newgroup. News servers would make sure that the message was signed by the moderator, or that the poster included some sort of certificate, signed by the moderator, indicating that he could post without having to go through the moderator first. Expirations and/or revocation lists would be needed to do things right, but these are problems with fairly good solutions. Marc
Marc writes:
Go read Ender's Game. They had a seriously electronic society. There were public message boards, and positive-reputation-based boards. Basically, if you demonstrated a clue on the public boards, then someone already reputable could recommend you for "membership" in the reputation-based boards. One of the characters did so anonymously. She even got paid for writing editorials, etc. Anybody could watch the proceeedings of the reputeable boards. In time, she was competing in debates with major politicians, et. al. Sci-fi? or Reality? I believe we could move from the former to the latter. (And I just avoided any sort of spoiler about the plot ;-)
Exactly! "Ender's Game," by Orson Scott Card, and "True Names," by Vernor Vinge, are the two books I've been recommending since I coined the term "crypto anarchy" in 1987. I held these books up in a couple of talks I gave at BayCon (SF convention) and the Hackers Conference and said "Read these books!" A couple of folks have said that newcomers will never be listened to, will never "get in" to positive reputation systems. This simply isn't true, even with today's "manual" reputation management systems. On the two main lists I subscribe to, this list and the Extropians list (send request to Extropians-request@gnu.ai,mit.edu if interested in future stuff, anarchocapitalism, nanotech, cryonics, etc....about a dozen folks on this list are also on Extropians, I would guess), newcomers start making posts and gradually the list gets to know their name, what to expect of them, etc. This is their "rep." Serious flamers or abusers see their rep torn down. (A list I just joined is the Pynchon list...actually, one of them saw my "W.A.S.T.E. line in my .sig and _invited_ me to join. As a newcomer to that list, I have no reputation. What I say and how reasonably I say it will establish my rep. This is as it should be.) If people want to see the posts and comments of newcomers, even those without extensive history on the list or glowing reps, then they will likely set their "agents" to allow the new stuff through. Lots of variations are possible and will be tried. Think about positive reputations and you'll see them in action all around you...where you shop, what you read, who you associate with, etc. The Net will ultimately be no different. --Tim May -- .......................................................................... Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@netcom.com | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero 408-688-5409 | knowledge, reputations, information markets, W.A.S.T.E.: Aptos, CA | black markets, collapse of governments. Higher Power: 2^756839 | PGP Public Key: by arrangement.
participants (4)
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habs＠acf3.NYU.EDU -
jthomas＠kolanut.mitre.org -
Marc Horowitz -
tcmay＠netcom.com