Re: Request for Discussion


Edward Green wrote:
I've reserved some real estate on Google groups for one or more physics
discussion groups. The format will be mildly moderated discussion with
pre-screening of members. "Mild moderation" means that after an
initial probation, members will only be silenced for flagrant abuse. I
will undertake the moderation.

Any suggestions for content, interest in studying particular texts,
topics, welcome. Reply here or email me directly at this address.

The beauty of sci.physics is that it is completely uncensored.
The proof of this is the poor grade postings present here.
That anyone can contribute without fear of censorship is valuable.
The people who *** here are sort of the da da artists of physics.

I believe that the proper form of censorship is a filtration of
sci.physics.
In effect the base layer remains as is; an unfiltered viewer sees it
all. You as a moderator would then have the ability to present a
customized interface to the generic pool. It could even allow access to
the censored material, but would allow a user who opts for your
censorship to save his own filtration time by reusing yours. Now we
could have the option of parallel filtration. Theoretically this would
allow a user whose persuation is aligned with particular other readers
to adopt their filters in parallel.

This is potentially a consensus model where universally rejected
messages have a high likelyhood of being garbage. Numerous features are
possible but the beauty of such a system is really the act of
filtration rather than deletion. This model might actually cause the
shitters to generate more sincere content.

It's scary how megalithic Google has become. It is tempting to ask them
to implement this interface. Already they have a simple rating flag.
The filtration implementation could be as simple as you replying to the
content that you wish censored with a vote of for instance 'errant',
'overemotional', or 'junkmessage'. The structure is already present.
The implementation is an addition to the existing protocol and so is
compatible with any existent interface. The new interface hides
information without conceit. A group methodology allows for a master of
the group who lets in or denies fellow consors thereby preventing
censorship abuse for that particular group which is admittedly biased
toward the master. This then alleviates the master's responsibility of
reading every message thanks to teamwork.

This is quite a competition model. Somewhat like a stock market
democracy. The negative model rather than an 'in' and 'out' model seems
to make sense doesn't it? Just 'outing' information is actually a
positive format since it tends toward diversity. We probably need a
shrink to assess what human behavior will yield under these models.

I do not have enough USENET protocol knowledge to identify the pitfalls
of this approach.

-Tim

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