From: "David E. Smith" <dsmith@prairienet.org>
Date: Fri, 7 Feb 1997 14:58:30 -0800 (PST)
To: "Vladimir Z. Nuri" <vznuri@netcom.com>
Subject: Re: automated moderation system
Message-ID: <3.0.32.19970207164355.006949b4@midwest.net>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


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At 01:15 PM 2/7/97 -0800, you wrote:

[... re: a auto moderations system...]
>now, the mailing list works as follows. people always receive
>posts from people they put on their "pass" lists. mail from
>entities on their "zap" lists is always trashed.
This much, you can do on your own.  Just filter "zap" messages to
/dev/null or somesuch.  (But I see its purpose; keep reading.)

[... using other's pass/zap lists as reputation markers...]
It's a good idea in theory, but would put a lot of load on the server.
For every message * every list subscriber, it has to _at_least_
look up the pass/zap criteria, and possibly do some number-
crunching based on the whole database of pass/zap lists, and keep
track of how long each message has been sitting in the queue
and its ratings by other people.

Also, Mallet could skew the reputations by subscribing with a dozen other
addresses (which M. created just to get the extra "votes"), decide
to have all of them "zap" Alice, and then Bob might never see
Alice's intelligent and thoughtful messages.  (Presumably, Mallet
keeps the bogus addresses subscribed, just dumping all mail into the
bitbucket; any user who leaves the list shouldn't have any weight
in the calculations any longer.)

This also doesn't even address anonymous remailers; Chuck and Dave
might both use the same remailer, even though Chuck only posts
good, meaningful messages (in whatever context) and Dave only
posts flaming ASCII art :)

dave (who doesn't post flaming ascii art, honest)
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