From: frantz@netcom.com (Bill Frantz)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 1996 11:17:38 +0800
To: Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: This post is rated LTC for `Low Technical Content'
Message-ID: <199601280256.SAA29212@netcom6.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


At  6:36 PM 1/27/96 -0800, Rich Graves wrote:
>On Sat, 27 Jan 1996, Bill Frantz wrote:
>
>> At  7:55 PM 1/27/96 -0500, JMKELSEY@delphi.com wrote:
>> >The best solution has always seemed to me to be one of these three:
>> >
>> >a.   Tags appended to notes/posts, from various reviewers, digitally
>> >signed and otherwise coded to allow intelligent filtering, or
>> >
>> >b.   Electronic distributions of reviewers' evaluations tagged to
>> >notes in some simple way.  (I.e. give each note or post a unique ID
>> >which appears in the message.)  Then, a smart newsreader/mail
>> >program sorts the notes accordingly, or
>> >
>> >c.   The reviewer reads the group/list, and rates posts according to
>> >some useful criteria.  He then resends it out to his users, filtered
>> >as desired.  (CP-LITE seems like a very early version of this.)
>> 
>> d. The "V-Chip" device makes a network query to the selected rating service
>> to ask for a rating.  What happen when the rating service is unreachable is
>> just one of the many parameters that the parent needs to set.  (If designed
>> right, no parent could use it, but its availability would still stop the
>> adult censorship croud in congress.)
>
>This just gets ridiculous. It adds a lot of overhead without necessarily 
>giving you good information.

... <lots of good rant deleted>

Rich - Remember that this is NOT being designed for usability, only to stop
a bad movement in congress.  The reason I proposed solution (d) is that it
adds no overhead to people who don't use it.  (I propose using the
Message-ID: header as a lookup ID for items received by email.  I suspect
it has spoofing problems, but perhaps congress won't notice.)

Perhaps we should re-visit the need for usability if anyone really wants to
use such a system themselves.  As a parent, I always wanted my children to
explore freely and discuss anything they found that bothered them.

Bill