not really
I'd rather just listen - I'm not sure I agree or disagree with anyone
whole-heartedly
and somehow I think that's the point in thinking freely
Helen
----- Original Message -----
From: komninos zervos <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2001 8:32 PM
Subject: filter coffee anyone?
> what do people think about a mediated discussion list that is organised
> this way?
> ie the lurkers have a chance to vote for posts, the posters would then
know
> how much the list agrees or disagrees with what they say, rather than just
> one or two pro-posters and anti-posters?
> komninos
>
>
>
> Web Sites Begin to Self Organize
> By KATIE HAFNER
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> ----
>
> SUZANNE CROSS, a 49-year-old paralegal in New Orleans with a passion for
> history, is a prolific writer for a Web site called The VinesNetwork,
which
> bills itself as "the Encyclopedia of Everything, Built by Everyone."
> Articles on the site, covering dozens of different topics, are all written
> by members.
>
> Since Ms. Cross began writing for The Vines last August, she has produced
> nearly 40,000 words about ancient Rome. Her nom de plume is Heraklia
Aelius
> and her lengthiest work to date, 18,000 words, is a series on the life of
> Julius Caesar.
>
> Ms. Cross knows her writing is valued highly by other members of The Vines
> (www.thevines.com). In fact, she knows exactly how highly she is prized,
> because they give her grades. They rate each of her articles on a scale of
1
> to 10. Ms. Cross consistently scores above 9.5, which puts her articles at
> the top of their category. As a result, she is featured more prominently
on
> the site than lower-scoring writers.
>
> The Vines and similar sites for writers operate not as conventional
> publications might, with dozens of editors deciding what to publish.
> Everything that is submitted is published, and then the members' tastes
> determine what articles you can actually find without burrowing into the
> site in search of that 0.5 article on someone's theory about other
> universes.
>
> "It's really hard to find the really bad stuff on The Vines, said Eden
Muir,
> a founder of the site. "It's designed to make the bad stuff disappear. It
> will be up for a little while, then it will sink like a stone."
>
> On the other hand, articles with the highest ratings bubble to the top,
and
> aspiring writers like Ms. Cross, whose articles have also attracted notice
> from the outside world, are enjoying a level of recognition that might not
> have been possible without the Web.
>
> The Vines is an example of an emerging class of what are called
> self-organizing Web sites. Such sites are demonstrating that with a dab or
> two of well-written code and a bit of careful planning, a site can take a
> random collection of links or posts and turn them into a sophisticated,
> adaptive system.
>
> Articles submitted to The Vines are read and rated by members. Software
> handles the rest, putting the highest-rated articles at the top of their
> respective categories. Royalties are based on the popularity of the
article.
> The Vines also holds periodic contests and awards cash prizes to the
writers
> with the highest standing, using the automated ranking system.
>
> "The Web in 1996 didn't need to organize itself," said Joey Anuff, who is
> editor in chief of a new self-organizing site called Plastic.com. "But we
> have a Web now that's measured in billions of pages and millions of users,
> so any kind of mechanism that automatically imposes order becomes more
> useful and important."
>
> Most efforts at self-organization so far have been fairly simple, but
> effective. Several features on Amazon.com, like the list of authors with
> books similar to the one being viewed, take what could be a random
database
> and develop relationships within it. The search site Google, which ranks a
> site depending on how many other sites have linked to it, is yet another
> example of self- organization at work.
>
> Sites for writers, like The Vines and others, are growing quickly, largely
> because of people's pent-up urge to pepper the world with their prose.
>
> The writers certainly aren't driven by money. Contributors to The Vines
and
> other self-publishing sites are paid a nominal fee. Ms. Cross has been
paid
> $50 so far for roughly 40,000 words. "Maybe someday it will amount to
> something," she said, "but I'm not planning retirement. I'm not even
> planning a dinner."
>
> More gratifying than the small payments is recognition from the outside
> world. On the strength of her articles on The Vines, Ms. Cross was
recently
> asked to contribute a chapter to a book on ancient Rome, to be published
in
> the spring by ibooks, a new imprint of Simon & Schuster.
>
> Carol Skolnick, a 43-year-old copy writer in Manhattan who focuses on
> spiritual topics, writes for ThemeStream (www .themestream.com), another
> writers' site. Ms. Skolnick has been asked to contribute four of her
> ThemeStream essays to the "Chocolate for Women" series of inspirational
> books, published by Simon & Schuster.
>
> Another ThemeStream author, A. M. Benneter of Seattle, who writes film
> reviews, noticed recently that her review of the Sylvester Stallone film
> "Get Carter" had been quoted in national advertising campaigns.
>
> Yet another ThemeStream writer, Laura Shanley, of Boulder, Colo., who
> specializes in health and nutrition-related topics, recently attracted the
> attention of television producers at work on a medical series. The
producers
> sent a film crew to interview Ms. Shanley. They were especially interested
> in two of her articles, "Cleanup on Aisle Nine: Woman Gives Birth in
Grocery
> Store" and "Milkmen: Fathers Who Breastfeed."
>
> There is also plenty of potential for abuse on the writers' sites. Recruit
a
> group of friends to award your writing four stars every 20 minutes or so
for
> a few days, and your work is bound to drift to the top of the heap.
>
> But Themestream and other sites have developed methods for identifying
> so-called click circles, which consist of people who work to inflate one
> another's ratings. "We look for people who exhibit certain
characteristics,"
> said Bill Turpin, a founder of ThemeStream. "We measure the time between
> when you load the page and when you rate it, and if you rate everything
> good, with no variability in your ratings."
>
> The reverse can happen, too. Richard Bossi, a 42-year-old freelance writer
> and former chef in Folsom, Calif., contributes food-related articles to
The
> Vines under the name ChefCayenne. His ratings are consistently high, but
> once in a while he will see one of his articles come under attack by what
> some Web writers call retalirators. "People will sink me to the bottom,"
Mr.
> Bossi said. "There's a lot of jealousy."
>
> Another form of adaptive Web site assigns ratings not to submissions
> themselves but to members' comments about the submissions. Slashdot, a
> three-year-old site for computer buffs that uses such a system, is the
model
> for the new site Plastic.com. Slashdot operates with a minimum of human
> intervention yet gives visitors the opposite impression.
>
> Articles sent to Slashdot (slashdot.org) are culled from the Web. After
> passing an initial test of suitability, administered by a Slashdot editor,
a
> contribution is posted, followed by dozens, sometimes hundreds, of
comments
> from the site's 305,000 users.
>
> Once you have established yourself as a seasoned Slashdot user, the system
> will periodically assign you "moderator" status, a temporary position that
> carries with it the right to rate other members' comments on a scale of 0
to
> 5. Users can then browse through Slashdot using a quality filter. With the
> filter set to 3, for example, a visitor will see only those comments with
a
> rating of 3 or higher.
>
> Slashdot members who receive high ratings also earn special privileges:
> their posts start out at a higher rating than usual, and they are more
> likely to be chosen as a moderator in the future.
>
> "This last privilege is a brilliant example of metafeedback at work," said
> Steven Johnson, the author of the forthcoming book "Emergence: The
Connected
> Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software" (Scribner, 2001) and a vice
> president of Automatic Media, Plastic.com's parent company.
>
> "It's the ratings snake devouring its own tail," Mr. Johnson said.
> "Moderators rate posts, and those ratings are used to select future
> moderators." The most impressive aspect of the Slashdot system, Mr.
Johnson
> said, is that it not only encourages high quality in submissions to the
> site, but it also sets up an environment where community leaders can
> naturally rise to the top.
>
> "It's interesting and powerful and it really works," Mr. Johnson said,
> adding that only the Internet could give rise to such a system. "It allows
> large groups of minds to get together and interact in a way they could
never
> do before, in any other medium."
>
> Another self-organizing aspect of Slashdot is the fact that because nearly
> all of the site's content comes from its readers, its emphasis changes
> according to contributors' interests. "The subject matter we cover has
> changed over the last couple of years because what our readers are
> interested in has changed," said Jeff Bates, a Slashdot founder.
>
> Now, for instance, Mr. Bates said, the site carries far more articles
about
> civil liberties than it did two years ago. "It's not a decision we made by
> sitting down in a smoky room and saying, `All right, we're going to be all
> about civil liberties now,' " Mr. Bates said. "But we all agreed, in some
> kind of Jungian collective unconscious way, that that topic was a big
deal."
>
> Plastic.com, which made its official debut earlier this week, is very
> similar to Slashdot, but with a more general audience in mind. While
> Slashdot advertises itself as "News for Nerds," Plastic.com will cover
> politics, movies, technology, games, music and other topics.
>
> "We're trying to develop a system that can take the whole concept of news
> and figure out a way where the people who use the system can themselves
> decide what's interesting or not," said Mr. Anuff, who is also co-founder
of
> Suck.com, a popular online magazine. "The end result will be a
> community-defined front page."
>
> A still purer example of a self-organizing site is Everything2.com,
created
> a year ago by Nathan Oostendorp, 22, a Slashdot founder. Unlike Slashdot
and
> Plastic.com, which draw heavily on news stories found on the Web,
> Everything2 (everything2.com) more closely resembles writers' sites like
The
> Vines, because it links only to other links within the site.
>
> Yet Everything2 works far more autonomously than sites like The Vines. The
> Everything2 software monitors traffic patterns and modifies itself
> accordingly, assigning higher status to the more popular links. Users can
> also collect "experience points" and vote on one another's posts.
>
> "It's this soup where people can drop in any little bit of information
they
> want, like their favorite movies or directors or any other ideas," Mr.
Anuff
> said, "and the only things they can link it to is other people's ideas in
> the same soup."
>
> At first glance, Everything2 appears to be a chaotic jumble of random
> discourse. Look a little more closely, however, and you will see an
> intricately interconnected conversation, touching on topics as diverse as
> the languages of India, MTV and melanoma treatments.
>
> "It's not really about anything in particular," said Mr. Oostendorp, whose
> site has about 2,000 users a day. "The only thing that's there is the
> system. Here's an open database with these rules functioning, and if you
> come in and spend time on it, you can gain prestige and reputation within
> the system, and that's an attractor to a lot of people."
>
> Web sites with mechanisms for self-filtering, self-ranking and
> self-organization are very likely to continue to grow in number. "This is
a
> fundamental shift in the Web's evolution," said Mr. Johnson, at Automatic
> Media. "The first generation of the Web was individual interactivity. And
> now, after a period of distraction, it's getting back to the roots of the
> idea of interactivity." But this time, he added, the interactivity is
> collective.
>
>
>
>
>
> komninos's cyberpoetry site http://student.uq.edu.au/~s271502
> cyberpoet@slv site http://www.experimedia.vic.gov.au/cyberpoet/
> komninos zervos, tel. +61 7 5552 8872
> lecturer in cyberStudies,
> school of arts,
> gold coast campus,
> griffith university,
> pmb 50, gold coast mail centre
> queensland, 9726
> australia.
>
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