madavis@cdp.UUCP (03/30/89)
It would be very interesting to have a joke conference that is
moderated by the opinions of the readers, rather than by one person:
rec.humor.dem, "dem" for democratic.
When the index page for the newsgroup is displayed, it would look
like:
Readers Score (+2 to -2)
41030 1.722 1 New Punchline to old joke jem@latcs1.oz.au
36099 1.993 2 football shelley@aimed.UUCP
20665 1.873 3 Sales qsxy@vax5.cit.cornell.edu
10383 1.946 4 Mind your Manners Devin_E_Ben-Hur@cup.porta
5521 1.366 5 Year in Review wall@tilde.ti.com
7600 1.924 6 Rabbinic wisdom fivel@umd5.umd.edu
35 0.251 7 It's chemical bobc@killer.DALLAS.TX.US
7 -1.822 8 Reagan lives! michaelw@microsoft.UUCP
24 0.534 9 Little Johnny 64460v@d1.UUCP
After reading the actual joke, you can press "++", "+", "0", "-", or "--"
to add your opinion to the score.
When a joke is posted to the newsgroup, it is circulated to a few
nearby sites. If those readers like it, it would make it to more and
more sites.
If it the system works for jokes, we could try it for poetry, surveys,
political discussions, whatever.
Marilyn Davis arisia.xerox.com!cdp!madavispavel@dgp.toronto.edu (Pavel Rozalski) (03/30/89)
In article <206000001@cdp> madavis@cdp.UUCP writes: > > >It would be very interesting to have a joke conference that is >moderated by the opinions of the readers, rather than by one person: >rec.humor.dem, "dem" for democratic. What? You expect democracy to work on this net? Someone is sure to can the joke well before it reaches a significant portion of the net. It is far too easy to offend a small group of net folks who will probably raise a sufficient uproar to stop the joke. Pavel Rozalski CSNET: pavel@dgp.toronto.edu CDNNET: <...>.toronto.cdn UUCP: {decvax,linus,utzoo,uw-beaver}!utcsri!dgp!pavel ARPA: pavel@dgp.toronto.edu BITNET: pavel@dgp.utoronto (may not work from all sites)
brian@motcsd.UUCP (Brian Smithson) (04/01/89)
In article <206000001@cdp> madavis@cdp.UUCP writes:
)
)
)It would be very interesting to have a joke conference that is
)moderated by the opinions of the readers, rather than by one person:
)rec.humor.dem, "dem" for democratic.
)[...]
)When a joke is posted to the newsgroup, it is circulated to a few
)nearby sites. If those readers like it, it would make it to more and
)more sites.
Hey, that sounds great! I like it as much as having New Hampshire and
Iowa pre-select our presidential candidates! :-)
--
-Brian Smithson, Motorola Inc., Computer Systems Division
10700 N. De Anza Boulevard, Cupertino, CA 95014 USA, (408)864-2225
brian@csd.mot.com, {apple, pyramid, hplabs!hpda}!motcsd!briangmarcus@cdp.UUCP (04/03/89)
I think the bottom line of madavis@cdp.uucp's proposal (206000001@cdp) is that possibly this medium COULD be used to survey public opinion on a variety of issues. The result of the survey may just be information, not removal of the topic. Do any of you have some ideas on how something like this COULD be used? I mean, this medium may evolve into something serious someday.... Cheers, Genevieve Marcus pn:gmarcus
madavis@cdp.UUCP (04/07/89)
In response to my article <206000001@cdp>, pavel@dgp.toronto.edu <3003> says: >What? You expect democracy to work on this net? Yes I do. Direct, non-representative democracy will work in any large group. Affinity for direct democracy lies dormant in our hearts just as the ability to walk upright was dormant in our ancestors' bodies until someone tried it and fell and tried it and fell and tried it again and again. We humans need a new form of decision-making. Now, our earth is suffering from our bad decisions. As a species, we waste too much on military equipment, on fission (and cleaning up after fission), on highways instead of public transportation, and on and on. Our decision-makers listen to lobbyists who are paid to represent special interests. It is not a fair game for the Sierra Club and other groups who lobby for the "special interest" of what is good for us. They are funded by donations, not profits. They can only fight fire after fire. If this old system goes on and on, it can only end in bad news. For the sake of the earth, let's try decision-making on-line. The big difficulty in designing a legitimate experiment in on-line voting is finding questions to vote on that are interesting enough to gather participation. The Usenet's particular problem of maintaining a joke conference is ideal for a first experiment in on-line democracy. I have heard that 20,000 or 50,000 people per day look for jokes in rec.humor.funny. From that group, there would be enough participation to make rec.humor.dem work. >Someone is sure to can the joke well before it reaches a significant >portion of the net. There would be one vote per person; no "someone" could can a joke. >It is far too easy to offend a small group of net folks who will >probably raise a sufficient uproar to stop the joke. A joke would only be stopped if there were plenty of other jokes that people liked better. The only uproar any group could raise in the decision-making system would be "--" times the size of the group. In my mailbox came the criticism: >A nice sounding idea, but totally impractical because it would >require installation of new software to record the opinions on every >site on the net. Yes, it would require new software. My guess is that it would be an enhancement of !rn. Is it technically possible? feasible? Marilyn Davis arisia.xerox.com!cdp!madavis