"Annihilating less-than-useful contributors"

[Information Security <guy@panix.com>]

[ snipped, see full article at Declan's new site ]

#   http://www.wired.com/news/news/technology/story/15611.html
#   
#   5:45 p.m.  14.Oct.98.PDT
#   SAN FRANCISCO -- Science fiction author Bruce Sterling
#   acknowledges that he isn't a programmer, or even a
#   contributor to the kind of openly developed software project
#   [Apache] that brought his audience together on Wednesday. 
#   ...
#   Using a fictional example of people gathered online around
#   their interest in "freakish, left-handed mollusks," he said
#   collaborative software is needed that liberates the creative
#   power of the best people and "annihilates the counterproductive."
#   According to Sterling, the latter includes idiots, spammers,
#   and less-than-useful contributors.
#   ...
#   Sterling envisions an "online utopia" that would occur if
#   Web- and email-leveraging software were automatically
#   moderated. 
#   ...
#   "If you could do this, you could advance knowledge," he said.
#   The Net and the collaboration it enables would be able to add
#   to the sum of human knowledge. 
#   ...
#   Successful implementation of such a concept, Sterling said,
#   is critical to the success of the Net as a so-called "gift
#   economy".... [This] economy should function more like an
#   [actual] economy," he said. A differing set of rewards should
#   be returned for a differing set of efforts.