Oxygenating the flame in threads was Re: [extropy-chat] afuturist prediction

[Brett Paatsch]

>On Thu, Aug 25, 2005 at 11:04:47AM +1000, Brett Paatsch wrote:

> > Shunning was a very effective form of feedback in tribal villages
> > as I understand. Violence and censorship wasn't necessary, the
> > simple withdrawal of attention was enough.
>
> Shunning is an active process in meatspace: the target is immediately
> notified, via nonverbal communication channels.
>
> There's no way for you to sense in how many killfiles you're in.

If you mean me Brett Paatsch in the sense of the word you. I disagree.
Or perhaps rather I don't care that much, or think I could find out if
I wanted to.

If you mean you Eugen Leitl, well you *may* be right. I assure you that
you are not in mine. I don't use automated ones. If you want to know if
you are in my killfile all you'd have to do is send me a personal email
and you'd get a pretty good indication.  If I killfile anyone I will 
basically
tell them I'm done with them. I've only done it once and that was 
reluctantly
because the person was actively using me as an experiment in how much
rudeness they could get away with.

> > You can still send, and see your messages broadcast through the list.
> > Consider this a protocol deficit, but it's locked in now. Can't change
> > it.

I don't want to.

> > Crap is poisonous.

So don't do it on the list (which you and I agree on), but the second
point is when someone else does, don't eat it, don't praise it, don't
encourage it.

> > It causes a slippery slope: everybody's standards slide. The best
> > contributors soon leave, because they have the least tolerance
> > for crap.

I don't know that that is true.

It might be. Damien Broderick and Hal have said things like that that
I took seriously because I consider Damien and Hal to be amongst
the bed quality posters.

I think Hal said "bad posters drive away good".  But I'm not sure
that even Hal or Damien are always the best judges of what is and
isn't going anywhere. Nor would I be and I definately don't want
to be.

But if you consider what is implied when people say they want more
quality isn't it that they want other people to post more good quality
stuff? Or censorship?

Re the first, of course we'd all like to have more great stuff (as we
variously see it, to read, but that involves someone taking the time
to write it and they are not paid for doing so).

>  The trolls take over. Eventually, not even idiots can
>  tolerate idiots, volume goes down, and the list dies. Consider this
>  a caricature of a common pattern, a pattern I've seen very often.

I consider it a theory. Yours. I'm open to your evidence in its favour.

> This is why shunning doesn't work online.

If one is part of the noise and one is not being read then shunning
isn't going to work of course. If the people you like to talk to won't
talk to you *maybe* there is a reason.  Maybe you've pissed them
off.  It is very hard to shun someone that is already not paying
attention to you, so that is why I suggest coupling the tactic with
a database. I suggest *actively* using and processing the list. Keep
track of the interests of people you want to talk to. Repay good
posts with good posts.

I personally feel I *owe* Hal Finney some good posts, though he
may not care less if he gets them !

I feel I *almost* owe you and Rafal a response to your posts on
cryonics but not quite ;-)

>                                                                  You need 
> moderators,
> temporarily or permanently removing your ability to post as soon
> as you're over crap quota. This needs to happen in realtime (less
> than a day), or the control loop is too loose.

I agree with the current moderator approach. 8 posts per day max.
A panel of moderators.  I wouldn't mind if the post limit was reduced
for everyone to 6 or 4. The good posters, as you probably consider
them, will simply talk to each other anyway they will just do it offlist
once the post limit kicks in.

> This is different from meatspace, and this is what most list
> operators don't understand.
>
> Cryonet now apparently has a crude voting mechanism (gosh, in
> 2005, who'd thunk), but it is only available in digest format, and
> the users are not using it enough, apparently.

I've seen it, I still get the digest.

Brett Paatsch