RATINGS: why, which, and how.

[jpp@markv.com]

=			  But *why* ratings?

  Readers only want to read good stuff; so they will enhance rating
capable post perusers, and they will comunicate with that post peruser
by rating authors of ratings, and other authors of general posts.
Think of it as a really smart killfile, you tell your post reader if
you liked, or didn't like an article, and it learns what ratings are
important to you.

  Authors want to be heard, and build up a 'rep' (and digital cash),
so they are incentivized to post good stuff, in apropriate places (and
when good enough, to sell the stuff).  Flamers will still flame, but
they will see clearly how many people read, or like their flames.
(and good flamers will sell their rants over in alt.flame...)

  Raters want to build up a 'rep' (and digital cash), so they are
incentivized to rate things (and like other authors, when their stuff
is good enough, they will sell it).

  A person will naturaly be author, reader, and rater at various
times.


=		Which rating dimentions should we use?

  I really like the idea of a ratings system (no suprise).  But I
sugest a little more anarchistic, spontaneously ordered system.  Start
with _any_ set of dimentions, and let other people rate the
dimentions.  Popular dimentions will be rated highly, and unpopular
ones lowly.


=		  How should we format the ratings?

  I really like the format dimention-name.rating-digits with the
digits taken to be a value from 0 to 1.  But rather than only being
able to rate one article in one rating article, how about condensing
multiple ratings as shown below?  Then each ratings service (or
person) could batch things up, and distribute them with less
overhead.

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
(
  ; comment begins with a semicolan
  (POST article-id1 dimention11.rating11 dimention12.rating12 ...)
  ; or perhaps even more lispy
  (POST article-id2 (dimention21 rating21) (dimention22 rating22) ...)
  ; rating of a portion of an article
  (POST (article-id3 line-beg.char-beg line-end.char-end) 
        dimention31.rating31 dimention32.rating32 ...)
  ; rating an author
  (FROM author1 dimentionA1.ratingA1 dimentionA2.ratingA2 ...)
  ; rating a rating dimention
  (DIM dimention dimentionD1.ratingD1 dimentionD2.ratingD2 ...)
)
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
6Ez3P7vdHa75uiuqzy4mwaUM3ekx8ohTudmXND1OKr3r9j9mjWtZr8TD8Upc7rVy
4NzoFpDTEXWpGcq6fF7jL4OPpRIMH7ljORDrBL19gjqR9w8leoSylFpNRAHVOCTx
jOVUdh+45+u1t9hiYS6IeK5A0LoRWpS/iQCVAgUBLWm2Rni7eNFdXppdAQHB1gQA
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

j'
--
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