From: blanc <blancw@accessone.com>
Date: Sat, 11 May 1996 20:14:29 +0800
To: "'Vladimir Z. Nuri'" <vznuri@netcom.com>
Subject: RE: self-ratings vs. market ratings
Message-ID: <01BB3ED3.D79972C0@blancw.accessone.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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>From Vladimir Z. Nuri (just when I thought it was over): 

	".......PICS is a very flexible architecture and I hope it will be 
	"used in many ingenious ways not previously foreseen."

Guess so.  

.  How long do "cool sites" stay "hot"?
.  How long would web pages rated "sexual content" keep that rating?

.  Many sites are casually rated as "cool" for the fun of it.  
.  Why are controversial pages rated?

.  What motivated Yahoo to begin featuring Top 5 Sites of the Week?
.  What motivates those who are calling for mandatory rating?


	"but in a sense, this is what you do whenever you read a book
	or a newspaper. you are reading information screened by 
	someone else."

You could say that *all* communication is a rating, then.   All evaluations are ratings (as are all emotions, and all modifying terms in grammar.  Art is a rating on life, as love is a rating on others).   But an individual must decide how much screening they can tolerate before they become useless to themselves (or:  *whose* rating is important?)

Many things help us to make judgements, to aid us in arriving at conclusions.   Ratings present the conclusion itself:  rather than assisting, by reasoning and discussion (or argument) in the development of judgement,  they present a final evaluation.  They leave out the middle, where the work of thought takes place.    


	"ratings are not a substitute for personal judgement. they are 
	meant to be a method to aid thinking, not to replace it, imho."

They can do that, in a very reduced, limited way.  I myself think that even short descriptions are more informative and useful.  You can reduce communication to such constricted labels that it loses all meaning.

Or as Beavis n Butthead would posit:  uh - uh; uh - uh

(hee-hee.  It just occurred to me how dogs mark their territory.  You could call *that* a rating, too.  THIS site is MINE, honey!!)

     ..
Blanc