Okay, so Scott thinks that bots suck. Now THAT is a valid reason to want a
"language" since bots and human moderation are the only other solutions. I
don't see why bots suck, and it's not because it's centralized, because
it's not centralized. A single bot would be centralized, but bot-based
moderation could be done by any number of cooperating bots, as many as
there are people trusted to have the key to administrate the subspace.

However, accepting as a premise that bots suck, I will agree that a set of
rules inserted into the network is the only way to maintain a subspace. I
think that filtering should happen on request instead of insert,
however. I've been in support of rule-based request filtering for a long
time (only give me a result if it is signed by X, for instance), as it is
more efficient in terms of bandwidth than downloading all of the files and
then rejecting the ones that don't fit. The reason that I favor
request-based filtering to insert-based filtering is that since Freenet is
a reader-oriented system, the request should get to decide how to
filter. The publisher should only get to give a suggestion by
inserting putting some default rules for the subspace. My client can
automatically fetch these rules and, based on my configuration, use them,
not use them, ask me if it should use them, etc.. Why do I want the
ability to change which rules I use to get things from the
subspace? Because I consider blocking on insert to be a form of
censorship. It's analogous (uh-oh, analogies!) to slashdot only showing me
4+ rated comments. Usually I want that (lots of people do), but sometimes
I like to turn it to -1 and see what the moderators rejected. The analogy,
as always is stretched. But why block on insert mandatorily when we can
block on request voluntarily?

One possible argument is that blocking on request is slower (you must
compute the valid keys many times instead of one). However, that isn't
true. The node can precompute the valid keys on insert and just not reject
the nonconforming items. That way it will be just as fast blocking on
insert, but allow noncomforming requests.

Not only that, but it will be more flexible. The user can still go to
Bill's All Files Signed By Bill Under 3k That Aren't Subspaces subspace
and use the default rules found there, knowing all the files requested
will be signed by bill under 3k and not subspaces.

However, he can also copy those rules and apply them to normal requests,
in effect making his own subspace out of the network.



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