That, however, throws the effort from publishers to readers without lessening it as much as one would like. I can see specialized audiences investing the time r

That, however, throws the effort from publishers to readers without lessening it as much as one would like. I can see specialized audiences investing the time required to get a web of trust going, but not mass audiences. Mass audiences, when contemplating "is this any good?", don't usually go for "I know, I'll rate how much I trust a bunch of people that I know or know of and algorithmically consult their opinions!" They go for "probably not." This is the parallel to how, when you're creating a new web site, your enemy is less the competition and more the Back button. So there are serious network-effect problems with this proposition - it has big barriers to entry. I would love to partake of its benefits, because they sound awesome, but I think that you're underestimating how difficult it would be to get this off the ground. See also: http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt http://craphound.com/spamsolutions.txt