[Theforum] Dan's 3rd birthday article

[John Corry]

> On Sunday, December 16, 2001, at 06:34  pm, Warden, Matt wrote:
>
> > http://www.evolt.org/article/rating/25/18629/index.html
> >
> > Guys, I understand that we're all gung-ho about evolt's 3rd birthday and
> > all, but we should be using ratings to judge the content of the article,
> > not what it's about. We've talked about this time and time again on
> > admin
> > about *members* doing this and how we can make it clearer what ratings
> > are
> > for, but we seem to be turning around and doing the same thing.


I remember reading this article at Wired during the presidential campaign.
It was about how if you searched for 'dumb motherfucker' at google, the
first link was to GW Bush's official campaign site. The gist of the article
was about the 'god in the machine'. That phrase and it's implications stuck
with me.

Evolt.org is a fairly complex system. What's wrong with giving the system
rights to operate as it is? OK...ackowledged that the creators of the system
may have had somethign else in mind when they devised a method for rating
articles, but hell...this is the way that system is responding. To me, it
seems worth it to honor that...let the system do what it will. Maybe you're
measuring only sentiment for evolt instead of 'quality of content', but so
what? Why not just let sentiment for evolt have as much right of expression
as 'the engineering of evolt'?

someone had to say it...and even if my opinion doesn't matter that
much....that's really OK, because that's simply a 'feature' of the system
too :)

jpc