A more sophisticated form of moderation.

[Stuart Smith]

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In article <199507111845.AA16926 at uxa.cso.uiuc.edu> you write:
>Specifically, I was thinking along the lines of a newsgroup where only
>selected individuals are able to post, but anybody who wants to can read
>the group.  However, the "selected individuals" could fall into several
>categories.
<snip>

I think this is the wrong direction to go - I mean certainly, if a given
newsgroup or mailing list wants to have a secret decoder ring that one needs
to be in possession of to be allowed to post, they're more than welcome -
but viewer/reader/receiver level filtering is the way to go.  Most
newsreaders have kill files, a newsreader called strn (Scoring Threaded Read
News) takes it a step further.

In strn you have "score files" for hierarchies, groups, or certain topics,
and within these files you specify rules by which each article is given a
score.  You can then have all the articles below a certain score auto-killed
or you can just be presented with a list of articles, sorted highest score
to lowest.  This lets you not only, select you who *don't* want to read, as
a killfile does, but it also lets you choose who you *do* want to read, even
though every idiot can post.  This gets around the messy censorship
questions.

I use a program that takes a mailing list and posts it to a local newsgroup,
so I can read cypherpunks like I read news.  I tried to select the more
intelligent posters by giving them high scores, but I found it became rather
pointless, as most of the posters (with a few notable exceptions) are
worthwhile reading.  It is still useful for subject filtering however.

In any case, the concepts implemented in strn could easily be expanded and
coded into other popular newsreaders and mail agents.  I think this is a
much better solution.

Just a quick add-on thought - this whole discussion started from people
talking about moderation - the above is my answer to those who say we (or
any group) *needs* moderation.  If any group nonetheless *chooses* to
moderate, I have no quibble, but it cannot be said that it is necessary to
extract signal from noise.  I enjoy several moderated newsgroups and
mailing lists, and wouldn't give them up for the world, but it's not for
everyone.  I think this is a good example of repuations at work, in good
cypherpunk form.  I read moderated groups and lists where the moderater in
question has shown good form and judgement and thus has a good reputation -
I would avoid groups moderated by those who demonstrate otherwise.

It was pointed out that there is a moderated cypherpunks list (I don't know
anything about - I'm assuming its some one who gets the list and forwards
some part of it, the signal, to the smaller "moderated" list)  This is
really good example of moderation in that the unmoderated raw feed is still
available.  Imagine if there were two groups, rec.arts.erotica and
rec.arts.erotica.moderated or somesuch, the latter being a subset of the
former.  That way everybody gets to have their cake and eat it too.

- --
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E7 E3 90 7E 16 2E F3 45  *   Stuart Smith  *  28 24 2E C6 03 02 37 5C 
     <stu at nemesis.wimsey.com>  *  http://www.wimsey.com/~ssmith/

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