X-Message-Number: 32481
Date: Sat, 13 Mar 2010 20:15:19 -0500
From: "Kevin Q. Brown" <>
Subject: Collateral Damage or Misguided Malarkey?

A recent spate of messages (32432, 32433, 32438, 32442,
32443, 32444, 32477, 32478) concerning a pain point
of the CryoNet rating system triggered the wake-up
protocol of my time-shifting experiments. As I arose
from my torpor and shook off the chill, the nag bot
rudely reported the ratings ruckus.

According to Google Summarize (beta), the angry, shrill,
hell hath no fury like ... messages that we all know
and love had suffered unfairly at the hands of anonymous
pea-brained droids. Expert opinion differed on the etiology:

(1) collateral damage
(2) antagonistic pleiotropy
(3) WTF? The CryoNet rating system sucks!

In rebuttal, Bing Briefs broached the bothersome bugaboo:

(4) Are muzzled messages mostly misguided malarkey?

Enough of that bot talk! The psych profiler just completed
its analysis of the hostilities to date, and, through its
direct neural interface, nearly SHOUTED at me:

What part of "do not engage" do you not understand?

I know. Never, ever insert yourself between combatants
in a bar room brawl or an Internet "discussion".
But too late.  I already stuck my foot in it.

To refresh your memory, the CryoNet rating system
was born from a pressing need ages ago, as recalled
in the 2006 message:

http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=28795
Lunatics, sociopaths, and malicious malcontents

It evolved to combat disruption of the mailing list by
persistent and incorrigible miscreants. Some claim that
it now behaves like an overzealous immune system or
has been co-opted by the forces of darkness. My root-kit
prevents me from discerning such distinctions, but I still
can offer a general-purpose, high-level guiding principal:

The Best Answer To Bad Speech Is More Speech

How to do that? Frankly, I am loath to tinker too deeply
into the creaky edifice of customized CryoNet code.
(It's just so 90's and way overdue for a reboot.) But to
help foster a kinder, gentler CryoNet rating system,
I just patched in a quick-and-dirty 50% Discount Special.
The Reputation Calculation Algorithm described at:

http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/reputation.cgi?help=y

now will employ a "spaminess" weight of just half the
previous amount. "Bad" now will be just "half-bad" and
"good" will be "great". (You all know that such grade
inflation has worked wonders for our educational system!)

I'll now head back to that time-pod, while the
not-so-bad-anymore speech battles the good and great speech.

Kevin Q. Brown

(Include "cryonics" or "CryoNet" in the subject line.)

Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32481