Need PGP-awareness in common utilities

Sat Jul 6 18:04:32 PDT 1996

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An Igor-like entity wrote something like this:
>
> Yes, it can be. When I was writing it I had in mind that I want
> to write a general moderation bot that can be _applied_ to USENET.
> 
> There is a script processApproved which is called when a message 
> should get posted. If you replace the usenet version of processApproved
> to mailing list version, you will be done.

Nice design.  :-)

> > Anybody wanna hack a perl
> > script or two to produce/consume content/author ratings for
> > cypherpunks (it could surely use some!).  We can use my dormant
> > mailing list, c2punks at c2.net, as a parallel channel to transmit
> > cypherpunk (and maybe other) ratings.
> 
> So, what you want is a tool that accepts "unmoderated" cpunks list,
> selects messages by authors with high ratings, and forwards only
> these into the "filtered" list? That's neat _if_ ratings are done
> by people whose tastes are similar to mine..

Hm.  That might be an interesting addition to my plan, but the 
first step is to generate ratings and to consume them at each
individual's mail-handling site.  So I, for example, would run a
script every time I received mail (or every hour, or every day,
etc) which looked for ratings certificates, PGP-verified them,
and saved the rating in a database.  Then I would run another
script (every time I received mail, or every hour, etc.) which
identified incoming messages and _did_ something to them if 
there were sufficient ratings in the database to merit _doing_
something to them (e.g. delete, promote to a "well-rated"
folder, demote to a "poorly-rated" folder, forward to my
friends, forward to my enemies, etc.).

Now as you astutely note, this is only valuable if you like the
ratings.  Thus it is necessary to have meta-ratings.  The
simplest meta-rating is "rate raters by hand".  That is, you
manually make a list of (potential) raters and put their public
key ID and a coefficient indicating how much you value their
ratings into a meta-ratings database.

More complicated meta-ratings include "how often did I agree
with them", true (acquired from other people) meta-ratings,
and... um..  automated textual analysis or whatever other whacky
heuristic you want to plug in.

This could be so much fun...

Bryce

P.S.  Oh yeah... The demo.  Just a sec.

Message-Id: <199607062132.QAA00782 at manifold.algebra.com>
Subject: Re: Need PGP-awareness in common utilities
To: bryce at digicash.com
Date: Sat, 6 Jul 1996 16:32:38 -0500 (CDT)
Cc: ichudov at algebra.com, cypherpunks at toad.com, e$@thumper.vmeng.com
Reply-To: ichudov at algebra.com (Igor Chudov)
In-Reply-To: <199607062117.XAA25154 at digicash.com> from "bryce at digicash.com" at Jul 6, 96 11:16:59 pm
From: ichudov at algebra.com (Igor Chudov @ home)
Content-Type: text

bryce at digicash.com wrote:
> You know, Igor...
> (It has been a few months since I was hot on this idea, but
> hearing about your practical PGP successes has gotten me
> interested again...)
> 
> If you have a moderation bot for a Usenet group (and could it be
> pressed into service as a mailing list handler I wonder?), this

Yes, it can be. When I was writing it I had in mind that I want
to write a general moderation bot that can be _applied_ to USENET.

There is a script processApproved which is called when a message 
should get posted. If you replace the usenet version of processApproved
to mailing list version, you will be done.

> would be a nice tool to start with in order to implement
> full-fledged content/author ratings. 

Well, STUMP is a generic moderation tool.

> Anybody wanna hack a perl
> script or two to produce/consume content/author ratings for
> cypherpunks (it could surely use some!).  We can use my dormant
> mailing list, c2punks at c2.net, as a parallel channel to transmit
> cypherpunk (and maybe other) ratings.

So, what you want is a tool that accepts "unmoderated" cpunks list,
selects messages by authors with high ratings, and forwards only
these into the "filtered" list? That's neat _if_ ratings are done
by people whose tastes are similar to mine..

> Let me know.  We _could_ adopt the ridiculously simple NoCeM
> protocol, or the ever-mutating public key certificates being
> designed in a nearby mailing list, or some protocol of our own.
> (Shouldn't be too hard to come up with an implementable, useful
> protocol.)

?????

	- Igor.

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