Cypherpunks Rating System

[Trei, Peter]

> Nomen Nescio[SMTP:nobody at dizum.com] wrote:
> 
> Cypherpunk Rating System
	[...]

> Clearly it would be highly ironic for a pro-privacy group like the
> cypherpunks to adopt PICS technology, which has been widely criticized
> by free speech groups.  Nevertheless it would be instructive to have an
> example where ratings are used for the opposite of the politically correct
> purposes for which they were originally intended.  Cypherpunks could
> use PICS to help find information on defeating government surveillance
> and interfering with the increasing crackdowns on civil liberties.
> 
	[...]
> Suggestions for expanding the rating system are welcome.
-----------------------
How about suggestions to drop the whole idea?

(I'm sort of reminded of the classic Crumb cartoon: A bunch
of hippies sitting around a room, and one of them says
"I've got a great idea: Everyone stop playing head games 
with each other, starting now!")

This is a Really Bad Idea, for a number of reasons.

1. Any system of normalized 'voluntary' labeling has a 
habit of becoming effectively mandatory - see the 
content ratings on movies, and now video games 
and records. How'd you like to see the sorts of 
ratings you're proposing applied to books and magazines?
I don't want to see pissing matches over whether Alice
applied the right lables, in Bob's opinion.

2. Content drifts on this list, rapidly and frequently. 'Enemy 
at the door' started out with a truly stupid and dangerous 
idea for a face-recognition based booby trap, and finished 
as a  discussion of long-haul 802.11b networks. Asking 
every  person posting to spend time considering detailed 
and accurate labeling for every post they make is hopeless.

3. Irony, allegory, and insinuation are an integral 
part of activity on this type of mailing list, and by their 
nature, cannot be accurately captured by a rating system. 
Don't misapply a system created for more-or-less static 
standalone web pages to a freewheeling discussion list 
where each message cannot be properly understood 
except in light of a lot of context and history.

4. The things people complain about are usually much less
about topic, then they are complaints about other poster's 
positions on a given topic. We don't bitch too much about
postings concerning physics (which are pretty off-topic), but
we waste a lot of bits on bitching about Choate's version of
physics. This kind of thing is also not really captured by a
self-applied rating system.

I'm all in favor of informative Subject lines, but to 
systematize something just for the sake of 
systematizing it is pointless petty authoritarianism.

Just what *problem* are you trying to solve, anyway?

Peter Trei