Re: Need PGP-awareness in common utilities

At 23:56 7/6/96, bryce@digicash.com wrote:

>Hm.  That might be an interesting addition to my plan, but the
>first step is to generate ratings and to consume them at each
>individual's mail-handling site.  So I, for example, would run a
>script every time I received mail (or every hour, or every day,
>etc) which looked for ratings certificates, PGP-verified them,
>and saved the rating in a database.  Then I would run another
>script (every time I received mail, or every hour, etc.) which
>identified incoming messages and _did_ something to them if
>there were sufficient ratings in the database to merit _doing_
>something to them (e.g. delete, promote to a "well-rated"
>folder, demote to a "poorly-rated" folder, forward to my
>friends, forward to my enemies, etc.).

As has been discussed in numberous previous threads on this topic, even a
passive rating system is very hard to implement. The computer doesn't know
if you hit delete because the post was garbage or because you are running
late on some project. An active rating system is virtually impossible to
implement, given the added workload on the readers.

Good lucky anyway,



-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com>
   PGP encrypted mail preferred.
   Disclaimer: My opinions are my own.

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Lucky wrote something like:
>
> As has been discussed in numberous previous threads on this topic, even a
> passive rating system is very hard to implement. The computer doesn't know
> if you hit delete because the post was garbage or because you are running
> late on some project.


What's the difference?  All practical measure of value is in 
comparison to competing objects.  This _does_ mean that your
"approvalness" coefficient goes up and down as your situation
changes, but it doesn't mean that your rating becomes
meaningless.  Hm.  If it happened that a bunch of prolific
raters got busy, ratings across the board would go down.  (Seems
statistically unlikely, but still...)  Then when they went back
up there would be a "burst of activity" effect.  :-)


Possibly what I like most about ratings and micropayments is how
the quantify previously unquantified human behavior.  We've all
seen the "burst of activity" on a mailing list or at a party, or
on a stock market, right?  Well that is just people's ratings
all pushing each other up!


> An active rating system is virtually impossible to
> implement, given the added workload on the readers.


Which is where the small payments to ratings producers from
ratings consumers comes in.  Again this is just the
quantification of a phenomena that we all take for granted.
(Namely, that people who produce quality ratings are producing a
value and trading/contributing it to others.)


("'Just' the quantification", I said !!  That might seem like a
hilarious understatement someday.)


Bryce




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