5 ms·

I disagree that we don't think in tiers in real life. We do - except they are called roles or titles. For instance, the typical university has undergraduate s

by Jd 19y ago

I disagree that we don't think in tiers in real life. We do - except they are called roles or titles. For instance, the typical university has undergraduate students, graduate students, professors and administrators. One could simply say that there are four tiers. The reason that we don't think of it this way is most of these institutions have grown up organically over time, or at the very least we aren't aware of the original design decisions. Now I'm not arguing that we should necessarily replicate real-world institutions in online form, but one should at least recognize that real-world institutions (like universities) provide various measures which enforce content quality. As for approximating real discussion, I'm not sure exactly what you mean. There are many different types of real discussion, from idle conversation about sports to academic journals about the poetry of W.B. Yeats. Although certain similar principles apply, the way in which you would model either of these would have to be different. I'm afraid I also don't understand what you mean by an arbitrarily-tiered system. Are you arguing in favor of the reddit model?

whacked_new 19y ago
Good points. But again, these real life tiers are invented systems and not intuitive. They're just created for efficiency in operation in a particular environment. For universities, some roles work. For companies, others. For internet citizens, I think since there is a whole new level of information transparency (or lack of), we can jump out of the traditional way of thinking about roles. The examples you give about discussion are all "real discussion." What I'm saying is that I believe the ideal discussion system would accomodate all these discussions. Poetry, sports, academic journals, etc. If not now, eventually it must. While sometimes it makes sense to nicheify, like separating a fashion-specific website from a tech-specific one, the material isn't always mutually exclusive, and so lots of information is lost. There should be channels for different discussions to connect to each other. Wikipedia is one example of how it can be done. I guess arbitrarily-tiered system is a bad phrase. I just mean no explicit tiers, like, you have a bit set for mod status, a bit set for troll status, etc. Everybody will interpret authority, or hierarchy, differently, so just leave it as-is, at least with subjectively assessed content, like puns, politically incorrect jokes... Of course objective measurements are useful for winnowing things like necessarily true statements and necessarily informative statements, but not everything. I think reddit has a pretty good model. So is Slashdot. They're both obvious improvements from BBS style discussions. But there's a lot more to explore, and this more should be where there is more flexibility. One example where this flexibility is lacking is in funny Slashdot comments. Some of the +5 Funny are great stuff, but I can't just, say, have a Slashdot Jokes section and only look at those (and add jokes to the jokes section). So there's seenonslash.com. But that's a reposting of slashdot comments; in effect, lots of information that could've been more effectively harnessed if the Slashdot system itself was more flexible. Just my thoughts, but in general I don't like institutions and hierarchies and I'm biased against them. Of course it's insane to abolish all demarcations, but why not allow responsibilities to be expanded or dimished in small increments according to performance? It might take x percent of y to impeach someone in real life, but a virtual system would allow you to, say, have a bit less power if the populace thinks you should have less. It'd be an interesting experiment if anything.
- Jd 19y ago
  Lot of good thoughts there whacked. I also tend to be biased against institutions and hierarchies, although I have a similar bias against youtube comments and trollishness (which tend to be the same things). I think one of the main reasons that none of these basic problems has been solved is that the general mindset on when approaching them approximates your own. That is "we can jump out of the traditional way of thinking about roles." I wish that were true, but the traditional way is the traditional way for a reason. It worked, providing necessary efficiency in a specific context. Now, I would argue in an 'ideal discussion system' there would be a variety of different contexts that would be modeled in different ways. This means that you have to have flexibility in the individual implementation, which is part of the reason I was exploring the possibility of lisp list strings in transactional databases below on this thread. The problem with the arbitrarily-tiered system as I see it is that it relies on tagging. This may work in a smallish community but then you still have a problem when what you or I might consider trolls put youtube-style comments into this discussion on social modeling. The main way that this has been dealt with is to have evolving communities that focus on very technological subject material. By keeping things at a sufficient level of abstraction, one is able to create a new tech-specific language that must be mastered before one can participate. In other words, one has created a de facto tiered system. The dark side of this is that the need to force discussion into tech-specific language prevents people from having substantial discussion about fundamentals. And fundamentals (like how people discuss things, or would like to discuss things) are often more important than the latest trends in functional programming. So I would say that Slashdot and Reddit, though good models, encourage a certain faddishness with respect to the abstract language which they enforce. As for responsibilities being incremental instead of predefined, I have had similar thoughts. I think the problem (as articulated in political philosophical tomes as well as other places) is that the populace may shift unless it has an investment in something in particular. Usually this investment is in property. With the online world one would need something like core users which are in some way invested in the success or failure of a particular online venue. Once one had core users (property owners) then there are a number of fluid mathematical systems one could employ for the evaluation and promotion both of good content and good users. I was going to post more philosophical musings related what I see as the Turing Project, but I think Pg deleted my last comment on the topic and this post is quite long already.

by Jd 19y ago

whacked_new 19y ago

Good points. But again, these real life tiers are invented systems and not intuitive. They're just created for efficiency in operation in a particular environment. For universities, some roles work. For companies, others. For internet citizens, I think since there is a whole new level of information transparency (or lack of), we can jump out of the traditional way of thinking about roles. The examples you give about discussion are all "real discussion." What I'm saying is that I believe the ideal discussion system would accomodate all these discussions. Poetry, sports, academic journals, etc. If not now, eventually it must. While sometimes it makes sense to nicheify, like separating a fashion-specific website from a tech-specific one, the material isn't always mutually exclusive, and so lots of information is lost. There should be channels for different discussions to connect to each other. Wikipedia is one example of how it can be done. I guess arbitrarily-tiered system is a bad phrase. I just mean no explicit tiers, like, you have a bit set for mod status, a bit set for troll status, etc. Everybody will interpret authority, or hierarchy, differently, so just leave it as-is, at least with subjectively assessed content, like puns, politically incorrect jokes... Of course objective measurements are useful for winnowing things like necessarily true statements and necessarily informative statements, but not everything. I think reddit has a pretty good model. So is Slashdot. They're both obvious improvements from BBS style discussions. But there's a lot more to explore, and this more should be where there is more flexibility. One example where this flexibility is lacking is in funny Slashdot comments. Some of the +5 Funny are great stuff, but I can't just, say, have a Slashdot Jokes section and only look at those (and add jokes to the jokes section). So there's seenonslash.com. But that's a reposting of slashdot comments; in effect, lots of information that could've been more effectively harnessed if the Slashdot system itself was more flexible. Just my thoughts, but in general I don't like institutions and hierarchies and I'm biased against them. Of course it's insane to abolish all demarcations, but why not allow responsibilities to be expanded or dimished in small increments according to performance? It might take x percent of y to impeach someone in real life, but a virtual system would allow you to, say, have a bit less power if the populace thinks you should have less. It'd be an interesting experiment if anything.

Jd 19y ago
Lot of good thoughts there whacked. I also tend to be biased against institutions and hierarchies, although I have a similar bias against youtube comments and trollishness (which tend to be the same things). I think one of the main reasons that none of these basic problems has been solved is that the general mindset on when approaching them approximates your own. That is "we can jump out of the traditional way of thinking about roles." I wish that were true, but the traditional way is the traditional way for a reason. It worked, providing necessary efficiency in a specific context. Now, I would argue in an 'ideal discussion system' there would be a variety of different contexts that would be modeled in different ways. This means that you have to have flexibility in the individual implementation, which is part of the reason I was exploring the possibility of lisp list strings in transactional databases below on this thread. The problem with the arbitrarily-tiered system as I see it is that it relies on tagging. This may work in a smallish community but then you still have a problem when what you or I might consider trolls put youtube-style comments into this discussion on social modeling. The main way that this has been dealt with is to have evolving communities that focus on very technological subject material. By keeping things at a sufficient level of abstraction, one is able to create a new tech-specific language that must be mastered before one can participate. In other words, one has created a de facto tiered system. The dark side of this is that the need to force discussion into tech-specific language prevents people from having substantial discussion about fundamentals. And fundamentals (like how people discuss things, or would like to discuss things) are often more important than the latest trends in functional programming. So I would say that Slashdot and Reddit, though good models, encourage a certain faddishness with respect to the abstract language which they enforce. As for responsibilities being incremental instead of predefined, I have had similar thoughts. I think the problem (as articulated in political philosophical tomes as well as other places) is that the populace may shift unless it has an investment in something in particular. Usually this investment is in property. With the online world one would need something like core users which are in some way invested in the success or failure of a particular online venue. Once one had core users (property owners) then there are a number of fluid mathematical systems one could employ for the evaluation and promotion both of good content and good users. I was going to post more philosophical musings related what I see as the Turing Project, but I think Pg deleted my last comment on the topic and this post is quite long already.