Had an interesting conversation tonight night.
I've been working on this http://thegestalt.org/simon/remove this bit between these two slashes/gestalt/ [ which is *strictly* alpha code and I'd prefer it if you didn't add yourself to the system just now until I've finished with the final design ] The basic idea is to try and map the topology of the London nu-media-and-related-industries community. Anyway, one of the (non enforced) rules is that you don't link from yourself to another person unless you play the 'bodily fluid' get out rule - if you're blood relatives or seeing somebody. Instead you link through other entities such as houses, workplaces, universities and online cabals (such as, err, this mailing list). The reasoning behind this is that I thought that it would be more scaleable - if I had a link to all my friends and all my friends had a link to all my other friends then it could get very messy, very quickly. However a friend of mine argued that having everyone you knew listed explicitly would be better since you met everybody you know from a situation and so its only going to create extra links by linking through the situation as a third party. Does that make sense (in a purely semantic sense)? Anyway, I can kind of see my friend's point - enough to be worried enough to ask youse lot (partly because there are other advantages to be had from having every entity link to every other entity explicitly) so, ye great oracle of Pm De That Nodnol, what say you. Which is a better system. Simon
