From: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>
Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 19:18:42 +0800
To: "E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>
Subject: Re: Mandatory Voluntary Self-Ratings
In-Reply-To: <01I4ILRRY69S8Y5AJT@mbcl.rutgers.edu>
Message-ID: <199605110420.VAA27663@netcom20.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



[ratings]
> For a market-driven system to emerge, we're going to
>have to have one or both of two things:
>	A. Raters being paid by the people who post web pages. Not likely.
>	B. Raters being paid by the people who get the ratings. More likely.
>Neither the RSAC or SafeSurf systems does either of these.
>	-Allen

ug. I see that "market driven" didn't make a lot of sense the way I used
it. I was not talking about money. I was using it in the sense 
of "third-party ratings" vs. "self-ratings".  maybe the latter 
terminology is better.

I'd like to point out that market-driven systems, in the sense you use
of the economy supporting the creation of the ratings, already exist
in cyberspace.

examples:

1. point communications top 5%. people effectively pay this company
to find the "cool web sites" by buying their book or whatever.

2. surfwatch. as I understand it they have already rated many
sites out there on the internet and are using a proprietary system
that mimics a rating server. people are essentially paying for
them to rate web sites through the purchase price of the software.

other examples probably exist.