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The w3 (failed) PICS rating system[1] has always fascinated me. In short: Everyone (including the author) gets to rate everything by whatever scale they want to
by 6510 6y ago
The w3 (failed) PICS rating system[1] has always fascinated me. In short: Everyone (including the author) gets to rate everything by whatever scale they want to use. Everyone gets to use ratings made by whoever they like. I could see it work as well for academics and intelectuals as bodybuilders and progamers.
One angle of my fascination was how the [rating] baby was pretty much tossed out with the bath water. It was shouted down and denounced by journalists (as for example an adult filter which ironically ended up its only application) Some journalists described a perspective as if they had a kind of tenure. They were published for so long that the idea of a rating system was just offensive. We could argue that a good rating system would use existing talent for calibration but the real question to ask imho is: If PICS was so bad, what did we get in stead? Anon 5 star ratings? Thumbs up? HN points? Number of github saved games? To say it doesn't compete with publishing in journals is somewhat of an understatement.
End of the day all we are looking for is good meta data. If note worthy people in a field want to endorse a HN topic, a blog posting, a usenet post, a tweet, a youtube video, a facebook posting or a torrent[2] real credit could go to the author.
A rating system or spec therefore could simply accommodate that process. (It should for example require the author and their endorsers make backups available.)
Journals are from the horse and carriage days. It is quite embarrassing how we didn't come up with something modern.
[1] - https://www.w3.org/PICS/services-960303.html https://www.w3.org/PICS/services-960303.html
[2] - torrents are nice to share huge data sets
- marcus_holmes 6y agoTotally agree about the entitlement of journalists. I hadn't heard of PICS before, it's interesting. Is there a published story about why it failed anywhere?
- 6510 6y agoI cant find anything anymore but the story seems obvious enough. Content rating systems were tried. They didn't gain popularity. Eventually only adult filters and movie classification remained. It isn't just journalists apparently, I think most people hate anything that smells like scrutiny. There are probably plenty under appreciated authors. They ironically have no way of knowing. I'm convinced there are and always have been fantastic ideas out there that didn't even get written down. Why even bother having them or fleshing them out if they cant be judged? In my inner dialog I consider it the greatest puzzle of all times (and expand the scope to rating all human creations) if anyone ever truly solves it all previous revolutions will be reduced to simple events. The potential for recursive self improvement of such system is probably equal to a general AI but the results will be better. haha, with the lack of published stories I just discover I sound to myself like I have a lot of explaining to do making such fancy claims. I will have to ponder writing it into a blog. For now a business plan that everyone is specifically uninterested in is not going to work. But then again, that is like, just everyone's opinion? We have no means of judging the value of it.