Something similar to the google ranking system based on hits AND links.
Nah?
Seriously.
There's an information problem with material on the Web that means it's not
simply a quantitative difference between material produced in a print
culture and material available on the Web. (And are we recapitulating what
happened with the movement from manuscript to print?)
The difference is the information-to-noise ratio -- the Web increases
information linearly and noise exponentially.
google has at least partially solved this when it comes to general
information on the Web. So the google model may have some traction when we
come to consider how to deal with poetry on the Web.
Eventually, I perhaps optimistically hope, some sort of homeostatic
mechanism is going to kick in ...
Another answer is to extend print criteria to the Web, thus Web magazines
which approximate to reputable print magazines get rated. This works to a
degree in the area of academic studies -- _Early Modern Literary Studies_
has as high a reputation as any peer-reviewed hard-copy print journal in its
area of specialisation.
But I don't think this is the answer, even when it comes to scholarly work
(which is a damn sight easier to filter than poetry).
I'm not sure that even a qualified version of the hundred year rule is going
to be the answer.
Having devoted much of my attention in the last four years or so trying to
retrieve not just individual texts but to excavate an entire apparently
misplaced *tradition of cant writing, I'm all too aware of how much gets
filtered out, and how difficult it is to recover it.
I don't think this analogy is interesting just because I'm mildly obsessed
by cant writing, but that the nature of the texts I'm mostly trying to
recover -- ephemeral, widely and quickly distributed (in broadsheets),
dismissed by traditional canons of judgement, looked down on, etc. --
presents rather a close parallel to the current state of the Web.
Also you have to plough through a hell of a lot of shit to find the
occasional pearl.
Robin
Have at it.
At 04:30 PM 3/27/2010, you wrote:
Again, I don't see that as insurmountable. Of course, some sort of
filtration system would have to be devised similar to that used with print
anthologies. It will be difficult, but not impossible.
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