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Path: utzoo!henry
From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: news.stargate
Subject: Re: a simple alternative to moderation -- enforced self-moderation
Message-ID: <7961@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 25-Apr-87 21:29:49 EST
Article-I.D.: utzoo.7961
Posted: Sat Apr 25 21:29:49 1987
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Apr-87 21:29:49 EST
References: <965@vortex.UUCP>, <7946@utzoo.UUCP> <7947@utzoo.UUCP>, <522@aramis.RUTGERS.EDU>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 40

> The natural way to accomplish quality control and flow reduction is to
> set up a system that requires people moderate themselves.  Give each
> user 10 transferable usenet postings a month and let them decide what
> they want to do with them.  If that still generates too much flow
> after a few months, then reduce the number...

Unfortunately, this assumes that all posters are equal.  Wrong.  People
like Guy Harris and Doug Gwyn are often able to give an authoritative
answer to questions that other people just guess at; they clearly deserve
a larger posting limit, if indeed they deserve one at all.  And there are
certainly people whose posting limit should be zero.  How do we set the
limits?  (You can bet that everyone with a low limit will scream "fascist
censorship!" no matter how the limit is chosen.)

Believe it or not, your idea is not new, and the concept has been talked
about (and rejected) before.

> Moderation does not mean quality improvement, it just means that you
> end up with what the moderator thinks is the good stuff.  Remember
> Sturgeon's Law, that 90+% of everything is garbage, was generated in
> edited journals containing the publications of professional writers.
> Most people disagree about what is the good stuff.

On the contrary, there is usually general agreement about what is excellent
and what is real trash; the differences of opinion arise in the broad band
of quality in between.  By and large, the most important role of moderators
is just to exclude the trash and reduce duplication in the middle range.
There is nothing particularly harmful about this, and the net improvement
in average quality is considerable.

> The unique aspect of usenet was that it allowed people to access a
> maximum amount of raw opinion and make up their own minds about what
> they wanted and what they didn't.

The amount of raw opinion has already gone well beyond the point of
diminishing returns, and our tools for sifting gold out of the rubbish
are increasingly unequal to the task.
-- 
"If you want PL/I, you know       Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
where to find it." -- DMR         {allegra,ihnp4,decvax,pyramid}!utzoo!henry