Group ratings server (was Re: noise levels)

[maher@gso.SAIC.COM (Kevin Maher)]

>I have an expansion on this.  Why not generalize the problem to create
>a group rating system?  

	I do this for myself.

	I hacked elm to accept, display, and update ratings from 0-9, keeping
the database in a very simple ascii file (internally it's a hash table).
	Then I have a script that converts the database into a procmail
program, so for me cypherpunks is seperated into cps (signal, rated 6-9)
cpu (unknown, rated 4-6 or no rating) and cpn (noise, rated 0-4).

>This is patterned after a newsgroup collaborative filtering tool I
>read a paper on not too long ago.  I can't find that reference, but
><URL:http://www-sloan.mit.edu/ccs/CCSWP165.html> has an open
>architecture design for a ratings server.

	This was an interesting project.  My favorite part was the idea 
that ratings from people you generally agreed with would be given greater
weight.  I don't know if they based this on comparing your ratings over 
a long list of messages, or simply looking up the average rating you 
gave their posts.

	I'd be interested in working on the other MUA and majordomo changes
you listed, if you're really interested in experimenting with this.

	Kevin

-- 
Kevin Maher          Software Engineer / General-Purpose Computer Geek
maher@gso.saic.com   Geophysical Systems Operation      
(619) 458-2167       Science Applications International Corp., San Diego