Re: Improving the list (was: Can we please dekookify the list?)

Aaron Davidson (ajd@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca)
Sat, 27 Feb 1999 21:00:50 -0700

>A Davidson just got added to my glorify list by implementing Brian Atkins
>suggestion to
>>> combine collective and collaborative filtering
>
>He suggests a sig. at the bottom of each post as follows:
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>> 1) Kookify [http://some.url.com/mail.cgi?kookify=memberId]
>> 2) Glorify [http://some.url.com/mail.cgi?glorify=memberId]
>> 3) Kill Thread [http://some.url.com/mail.cgi?killThread=threadSubject]
>> 4) Kill Topic [http://some.url.com/mail.cgi?killTopic=topicType]
>> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>I think this is wonderful, with one modification. No global filtering. All
>mail clients are smart enough and bandwidth is cheap enough that noone wants
>to have the ultimate choice about reading a mail taken out of their hands.
>However, neighbourhood gosip is great and a trail of glory attached to your
>posts woudl be a powerful incentive to make posts good, clever and great.

With this system in place we could log into a web page and check what our kook rating or glory rating is as well, and perhaps be presented options to modify/delete/add our filters. The behavior of the commands could even be customized, to some degree, via a web interface.

I don't think such a system would be incredibly difficult to make.

Of course, as Elizer pointed out, each URL would also need a userID associated with it, and a password stored as a cookie, so that multiple votes by the same person are not possible.

>I suggest therefore, that the definitions be as follows (A Davidson inplain
>text, my mods in [ ... ].
>
> 1) Clicking Kookify will vote to have the poster of the message labelled a
> kook[by you].
> [The user can then filter messages posted by kooks using an
> x-kook-by-me tag].
> [the] percentage of the list members kookify[ing] the person [will
> also be transmitted allowing filtering on this parameter].

Good idea.

> 2) Glorifying a poster will have the effect of casting
> a [glorifying vote which can be used for filtering].
>
>The last two are not needed anymore.
> 3) Kill Thread does the obvious. You will no longer recieve that thread.
> (and possibly not receive dereived threads either?)
>
> 4) Kill Topic. If subjects are prefixed correctly (ie. ADV, META,
> SCI/TECH...) you can elect to have certain specific topics filtered.

Why are the last too not needed? Your change above still does not let me filter out entire threads which I might find boring.

--Aaron

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|  Aaron Davidson          |  <ajd@gpu.srv.ualberta.ca>                 |
| Silicon Creek Software | <http://ugweb.cs.ualberta.ca/~davidson/> |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+