Re: Voting on messages: a way to resolve the mailing list problems
On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 10:35:14AM +0000, Jurij Smakov wrote:
> * "Vocal minority" dominates "silent majority" by contributing a
> disproportionate amount of list traffic, [...]
Note that voting can have a similar drawback -- in that if you've got
enough like-minded people voting for a particular viewpoint (eg, "Joe
Random sucks, give him what for!") people with a different viewpoint
(eg, "stop berating people, argh") aren't going to bother voting ("the
score's already +50, why bother with a -1?"). This seems to happen on
digg a fair bit. Probably someting to be aware of.
Anyway, another idea I was pondering, was having "posting credits". Everyone
gets, say, five a month, and whenever they make a post, they use one up. _But_,
everytime you get a reply to a post you made, critical or complimentary, you
get one back. Benefits:
- rate limits people, rather than censoring them. got a lot
to say? if you can say it in one post a week, rather than a hundred,
you're set. if people think you're intersting, it's easy for them
to follow what you've got to say, if people think you're boring,
it's easy to ignore you
- allows discussions to happen (I say something, you reply, I reply
to you, you reply to me, etc, and I've spent one credit, and we just
keep swapping the other one)
- discourages people from "feeding the energy beast" -- replying to
trolls then *technically* enables them to post more not just socially
(and likewise prevents you posting on other subjects technically,
not just due to the distraction); so unless you've got something
you *really* want to add, your best way to shut someone stupid up
is just to ignore them (both technically and socially)
Optionally: also allow people to give someone else one of their credits
without posting a "+1". Maybe also limit who can get the five credits
a month (eg, DDs, DMs, people recommended by someone with credits),
so random anonymous trolls with throwaway accounts have to get vetted
first, before posting.
Cheers,
aj
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