s/n problems on this list

[Sean Roach]

At 08:52 AM 1/14/97 -0800, Vladimir Z. Nuri wrote:
>I've posted on this subject many times in the past, and its
>something I like to brainstorm on. signal to noise problems
>on this list. 
>
>generally, the moderator-specific approaches I find less
>palatable than techniques that can be automated. here
>are some more ideas for automated moderation techniques.
>
>1. software called "grouplens" I've talked about here (search
>yahoo) has been used to rate articles. they found that there
>was a very high correlation between how long people spent reading
>articles and the "interesting" rating that they gave that article.
>
>hence, a proposal: cpunks have long advocated and hacked mailer
>programs to stick in crypto. how about sticking in a hack that
>tracks how long mail messages are being read, and send that
>info back to an auxilliary mailing list address. the list
>software keeps track of time spent reading articles and
>can allow people to screen the list based on the "most interesting
>articles". "send me only those articles that go over a threshhold
>of 500 combined human attention minutes".

I for one would be weary of reading mail if I knew that just which ones I
paid the most attention to were known by some computer somewhere.  By doing
this, cypherpunks would risk becoming big brother.  Much as the supermarkets
are trying to do now.  All they are interested in is demographics also.