Re: META: traffic-limited list idea

Sean Morgan (sean@lucifer.com)
Sun, 13 Apr 1997 14:30:57 -0600


hanson@hss.caltech.edu (Robin Hanson) wrote:

>New ideas have a lousy track record, so only volunteers should
>be subjected to them. If however that many members of that list are
>already experimenting with one or more other auxilliary lists, members
>may not feel much like trying yet another concurrent experiment. This
>is a good reason for trying to coordinate with ExI plans regarding
>other trial extropians lists, or for trying on another list.

Coordinating between NodeNet and pay-for-merit may be difficult as there is
a difference in philosophy. NodeNet involves central planning whereas the
other is market-based.

One common point to both of these schemes is that they rely on some measure
of majority opinion of worth. Ideally we would each filter on our own
measures of worth, as with Sasha's document rating proposal (not
coincidentally related to his work at Firefly on rating movies, web sites,
and now books). Combining document rating with a payment scheme (as I
suggested some time ago) might be the best solution, as you get both
measures of both similarity and worth.

In brief, an author says what a message costs (or a subscription to her
messages): one-liners may be free, substantive postings 5 coins, essays 10
coins, whatever. The author is charged a fee by length of post. Readers rate
the message on what they think it is worth. As with Firefly your ratings are
compared to others, and the system recommends messages to you. You can then
pay the author the fee to read the message, and subsequently rate it (if it
wasn't worth the entrance fee, too bad).
-------------------------------+---------------------------------------------
Sean Morgan (sean@lucifer.com) | "The chances of anything coming from Mars
| are a million to one," he said.
http://www.lucifer.com/~sean/ | "The chances of anything coming from Mars
| are a million to one--but still they come!"