X-Message-Number: 27188
Date: Mon, 10 Oct 2005 01:11:30 -0400
From: "Kevin Q. Brown" <>
Subject: Re: ratings, risks, and redemption

Administrivia:

In message # 27165 I agreed to address the hypothetical risk
raised by Kennita Watson in message # 27152: exceptionally
bad messages may be filtered automatically from CryoNet digests,
yet remain accessible in the archives, probably without any
associated low ratings to serve as a warning to casual web surfers.

I just added the warning.  To see it in action, from the main
CryoNet page, click on the "CryoNet Messages by Author" link:
     http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/findauthors.cgi
select your "favorite" author, and click on the links for his or
her latest few messages.  If a message had been filtered from the
daily CryoNet digest, either due to low reputation or excessive
number of messages per day, there will be a red warning paragraph
at the bottom of the page.  For example:

   Warning: This message was filtered from the daily CryoNet digest
   because the poster's reputation was too low.
   It thus may need to be rated.

As it turns out, though, in all recent examples the messages
_were_ rated, even though they were filtered from the digests.
(Maybe the hypothetical risk rarely, if ever, actually happens?)
Furthermore, the _lack_ of a warning on all the other messages
now may be construed as some kind of endorsement.  By addressing
one problem, I may have created a new problem that we didn't have
before.  The law of unintended consequences is powerful indeed!

Kevin Q. Brown
 (include "cryonics" or "CryoNet" in the subject line)

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