[ExI] META: A modest proposal for the Extropy-Chat list

[Emlyn]

2009/4/29 Max More <max at maxmore.com>:
> So, regarding the possibility of:
> Extropy-Controversial"
> or
> "Extropy-Unmoderated
>
> ...what are your thoughts?
>
> Max

My vote is "no". Creating a new list will mean either everyone goes
there and this one dies (unlikely) or no one goes there and the new
one is stillborn (very likely). Either way, there's only one list.

Over the years Exi Institute tried to drag us kicking and screaming
onto web based forums and whatnot, to great consternation and no
result. I concluded long ago that this will always be an email list,
even well after we've all evolved into pure energy.

Email is problematic, no? But I think we are stuck with it.

Moderation is problematic, especially in this nest of rugged
individualism. I know I'd be a terrible moderator, because I can't
think of many or any cases for moderation (I'm comfortable with chaos,
and cool with using my mail client to do my own filtering).

It'd be nice to use some kind of karma system, or something a bit more
crowd-sourcey, to replace moderation. Unfortunately, just about every
scheme I can think of would require a website (there are no feedback
buttons in an email). And this will always be an email list.

Lists are this big bucket 'o' stuff, vulnerable to denial of service
attacks by overposters, which is mostly what we use moderators for,
and to trolling attacks, which is the rest of what we use moderators
for.

I do have a couple of thoughts. First, I think most stuff that needs
(wants? :-) ) moderating, is stuff where the poster wants instant
gratification. So, delaying posts might work as well as blocking them
entirely. I get the impression this has been the defacto situation
with Spike; if you go on moderation, you get delayed by Spike's busy
schedule (and fair enough).

Secondly, if you had a web based mechanism to allow member feedback
where people cared enough to do it, that'd probably be underused and
abusable. However, it might make decent input for a bayesian filter to
sort out "bad" posts (low quality/troll/??) from "good" posts. If that
filter's results were used to drive a delay mechanism (ie: bayesian
"badness" filter says "no", so post is delayed by 1 day), and the
poster got an automated email to tell them of that event, might that
begin to be workable?

-- 
Emlyn

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