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Hmm, you had not previously expanded on the prevention of impersonation, although that is indeed desirable. In fact, piggybacking this whole thing on PGP (with

Hmm, you had not previously expanded on the prevention of impersonation, although that is indeed desirable. In fact, piggybacking this whole thing on PGP (with special "is interesting" messages) may work. Somewhat. I don't see why the web of trust-approach would fail. Certainly, I admit, "is worth reading" is not (intended to be) a global value, while "is really that person" is. But ultimately the web of trust answers the question "do I trust that person to be who (s)he says (s)he is". For instance, someone who trusts a lot of people is likely able to verify that key D5327CB9 belongs to Wietse Venema, while someone who has just created a key but doesn't yet trust anyone cannot. Therefore, while this key belongs to Wietse or does not belong to Wietse irrespective of who asks this question, the answer may differ. There are obvious parallels to "do I trust this person to produce interesting content/tag appropriately". I can understand your desire to bring the elite together, but what is the big added value over, say, Twitter or blogs? These are fairly stable, fairly reliable identifiers of people, with connections between them. Filtering out the nonsense is so easy that it's hard to notice that we're even doing it, and "clusters" of smart people form more or less automatically. (Which is not to say that either Twitter or blogs are the best possible communication medium, especially for small messages like this, but they seem to get this mostly right.)

alan-crowe 17y ago
What is the big added value? I was prodded into making another attempt to bring coherence to the swirling mass of ideas I call Outer Circle by a recent thread here on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=916448 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=916448 Other people consider the forum problem important. When Kuro5hin died, I started reading The Edge, http://www.edge.org/ http://www.edge.org/. However The Edge is what I call an Inner Circle site. Outsiders get to spectate, but there is no way for outsiders to ask questions or raise objections. The Edge seems introverted to the point of sterility. My dream for Outer Circle is that it should impose a wholesome discipline on outsiders. They are not confined to spectating but can ask questions and raise objection. On the other hand outsiders have to work for access, playing nicely, and earning a place on insider's white lists. The big win happens when you have people you don't know making unexpected positive contributions. The hard question is how to permit that without suffering the usual forum problem.
- JoachimSchipper 17y ago
  I understand that people believe this to be important, and I see the value in interesting communities. It's just that I don't consider the forum model something to emulate, but rather a regression from earlier models - I much prefer mailing lists or Usenet groups, both of which allow a user much more control via their client, and both of which seem to, on average, suffer less from "the idiot problem" than their web-related counterparts. Part of the reason may have been that many web fora try to appeal to the broadest possible audience, while many mailing lists and Usenet groups have a formal or informal charter.

alan-crowe 17y ago

What is the big added value? I was prodded into making another attempt to bring coherence to the swirling mass of ideas I call Outer Circle by a recent thread here on Hacker News: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=916448 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=916448 Other people consider the forum problem important. When Kuro5hin died, I started reading The Edge, http://www.edge.org/ http://www.edge.org/. However The Edge is what I call an Inner Circle site. Outsiders get to spectate, but there is no way for outsiders to ask questions or raise objections. The Edge seems introverted to the point of sterility. My dream for Outer Circle is that it should impose a wholesome discipline on outsiders. They are not confined to spectating but can ask questions and raise objection. On the other hand outsiders have to work for access, playing nicely, and earning a place on insider's white lists. The big win happens when you have people you don't know making unexpected positive contributions. The hard question is how to permit that without suffering the usual forum problem.

JoachimSchipper 17y ago
I understand that people believe this to be important, and I see the value in interesting communities. It's just that I don't consider the forum model something to emulate, but rather a regression from earlier models - I much prefer mailing lists or Usenet groups, both of which allow a user much more control via their client, and both of which seem to, on average, suffer less from "the idiot problem" than their web-related counterparts. Part of the reason may have been that many web fora try to appeal to the broadest possible audience, while many mailing lists and Usenet groups have a formal or informal charter.