On the Internet, how does one provide a mechanism for judging
a certain kind of unique item and reporting the results?
You can build trust for a online news story or encyclopedia article:
give some `points' for a few days to a regular and ask that person to
allocate them in judgements of news stories or articles, along with
others. Few need be asked at any one time, and most who are asked
will be willing to do the task gratis.
I know, from personal experience with Slashdot, that the method
succeeds probabilistically. Generally, `level 5' items are better
than `level 1' items and there are far fewer of them.
Slashdot provides only one judgement number. Another entity might
offer more. For example, an encyclopedia could have a `how truthful'
judgement as well as a `how well written' one. (My hunch is that more
people will be able to judge `how well written' an entry is than `how
truthful' it is. For example, do you know whether the first Secretary
of the Treasury of the United States was born in 1747, 1755, or 1757;
do you know about his birthdate controversy?)
But what about an item such as an apartment for rent?
(In economists' jargon, an apartment is `rivalrous': your use of it
`rivals' mine, much like a shoe or shirt. On the other hand, because
the cost of manufacturing a new instance -- what we call `copying' --
has dropped so low, a news story on a computer, a Brin-L posting, or
software is `non-rivalrous'.)
Recently, I helped a friend post an apartment for rent on Craig's
List, a gratis Internet service that lists apartments (and other
items) for rent or sale.
If you are looking for an apartment, Craig's List permits you to
search according to various criteria. This reduces the number of
entries you see. But you may still see too many. In my case, to
check the posting, I set the criteria for what I figured would be a
reasonable search and ended up with 497 ...
Unlike a single news story or a single encyclopedia article, I do not
see how anyone else can judge `how truthful' such an entry is and
provide you with the appropriate trust-building and evaluation
information.
Moreover, repeat business is or should be sufficiently infrequent that
no one can judge the reputation of the poster as is done for frequent
sellers on EBay.
To reduce spam, Craig's List makes it time consuming to enter the
details. In addition, Craig's List has a `five letter verification
word' in an image that is hard for robots to read.
An alternative to forcing humans to spend time on each transaction is
to charge, as is done by hardcopy newspapers with classified ads.
Both methods are designed to reduce the number of entries as user sees
by costing the enterer resources: either of time or of money.
Morevoer, electonic search is supposed to reduce the number of items
for an online user. But as far as I can see, none succeed.
Can you tell me of some way to convey selection information to a
person online, as can be done with comments, stories, encyclopedia
articles, and the like?
--
Robert J. Chassell
[EMAIL PROTECTED] GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.rattlesnake.com http://www.teak.cc
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