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

Timothy Bates (tbates@karri.bhs.mq.edu.au)
Sun, 28 Feb 1999 13:06:18 +1100

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.

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].
  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.

I would gladly write the software to do this if I can be compensated for my time.

me too. it might even be compensation in itself ;-)

Other cunning ideas begin to enter ones mind. I would like to be able to highlight all threads in which Mike Lorrey participates. Maybe I could just read his emails on a thread, deprecating the mails which his emails quote extensively so I don;t have to read the original silly posters comments myself ;-)

Essentially, we are devising an extensive meta-tag language (such as is being proposed by the W3 committee and others. These tags could embody extensive logical processing at the server end, allowing the client to use some relatively simple rules to localize the (proposed but undesirable) global filter role.

Maybe people could reply to the list using this subject if they have proposals for a meta language for community discussions. This could be the basis for scientific correspondence of a wide rage of subject matters, so be as general and abstract as you can. Think different.

if you click on the below (in a nice mail client like Outlook Express for Macintosh 4.5) it will build a boiler plate email for you to get on board.

<mailto:extropians@extropy.com?subject=metaTagDictionary?body=TagName%20%3D% 20informative%20name%0DTagDescription%20%3D%20what%20the%20tag%20would%20do% 0DTag%20Purpose%20%3D%20why%20should%20we%20burden%20the%20net%20with%20this %20tag%3F">