[Seattle-editorial] (1) political overview, (2) going beyond slashdot

[Ben Seattle]

Hi Gentry,

> Well, welcome to the list. I take back the moron
> comment I posted, and will now treat you as
> I do all active editorial members, in otherwords
> with more respect.

Hey, thanks for your encouraging words--and for giving me the
keys to the magic kingdom ;-)

> it's a step towards understanding that you've
> signed up and are actively involved in
> the discussion

Well I am signed up to the list.  I am not in the editorial
collective, of course, and I will not be voting.  Nor will it be
possible for me to participate in the discussion at anything near
the intensity that I have recently (I am way too overwhelmed with
other responsibilities).  But the Seattle Indymedia project is a
very important one.  It has been quite valuable to me and to
thousands of activists in Seattle and (considering the sites it
has spawned around the country and the world) to hundreds of
thousands of activists elsewhere.  Furthermore (at least to a
very significant extent) the Seattle IMC is focused on
progressive news as mediated in an open way by an active
community.  And such a project is the focus of my life's work.

At the same time (until or unless I am proven wrong) I am of the
opinion that the Seattle Indymedia project faces severe
limitations in terms of what it will be able to accomplish in
relation to what I believe is possible with a news service
mediated in an open way by an active community.  We live in a
class divided society and this simple fact profoundly influences
everything we see, hear, feel and touch.  This simple fact
profoundly influences everything in our minds--and in our hearts.
This simple fact of life in the early 21st century is reflected
within each of us and, more to the point, is reflected within the
Seattle Indymedia collective.  The focus that I would like to see
for the Seattle Indymedia project (ie: a strong focus on giving
readers the news, information, open discussion and debate
necessary to understand the class forces which make our society
what it is--and all the logical conclusions that follow in
relation to the creation of a mass movement that is serious about
fundamental change) is not something which I consider the Seattle
IMC as likely to take up (certainly not in 2003 or 2004) -- for
the simple reasons that such a path would be:
(1) controversial to the max and would likely be extremely
     upsetting to a number of people within the collective and
(2) would involve shouldering complex, difficult and confusing
     tasks which no one (myself included) understands very well.

For this reason it is my view that some kind of separate
non-Indymedia project is necessary.  Having said that, I should
add that this does not mean that I don't wish Indymedia well--or
am unwilling to assist in small and modest ways.  On the contrary
I would like to encourage the evolution of Indymedia in a
direction that I consider healthy.  I just want to emphasize that
I insist on keeping my expectations realistic--and modest.

------------------------------------------------------------
The need to go beyond Slashdot
------------------------------------------------------------

I have been following slashdot for years.  Their ratings system
is wildly successful.  To my knowledge it is the best and the
most well-known rating system on the net.

However I think that, in the long run, we need to think in terms
of collaborative filtering (which is more advanced than what is
used by slashdot).

For those who have not followed the details of how slashdot
works--the slash code essentially selects a kind of temporary
jury from the pool of registered users.  Each selected user is
then given the opportunity to rate a small number of "posts"
All visitors to the site are then given an opportunity to select
which ratings level they would like to use as a cutoff in
selecting comments.  I usually select "5" (the highest) because
my time is limited.  For example there might be half a dozen
postings rated "5".  If, on the other hand, I select "-1" (the
lowest rating) then I might see more than a hundred
posts--including all the trolls and brain damaged.

But I am sure that you guys know all that.

But the slashdot system also has limitations.  Not everyone can
rate any post they would like: only the randomly chosen few.
Furthermore each post is rated by only a single, randomly-chosen
person--rather than a larger number of people.  If that person
happens to lack a clue--then the post could get a poor
rating--and lose out in the competition for attention.

And there is a much deeper problem than this.  There is a single
uniform rating system that applies to everything.  But in a site
with a fair number of political news articles and comments the
need for "collaborative filtering" will eventually assert itself.
With collaborative filtering you, as the reader, have the option
of looking at the posts that are highly rated by that subset of
people who have tended to agree with your own ratings.  For
example a freeper, who originally comes here to cause "trouble",
would be able to look at posts which are highly rated by other
freepers (even if such posts include little content other than a
made-up image of a soldier pissing on a photo of Rachael Corrie).
On the other hand someone like me would have the option of
looking at only those posts that have been favorably rated by
other readers whose ratings judgement has been similar to my own.

The significance of such collaborative filtering (for reasons
that I do not have time to try to explain here--I will simply
state it as my "opinion") is that the end result of such a system
in a news service with the breadth and traffic volume of the
Seattle IMC--is that a lot of the freepers that come here looking
for trouble--will leave here strongly opposed to the war and to
all the vicious plunder of the large corporations.  And this
phenomenon, played out in innumnerable forums over the decades
ahead will (in my opinion) eventually lead to a very extreme
crisis for the present ruling class.

(Getting back to the subject) I am not sure if the description of
collaborative filtering above is very clear.  But that's ok.
Collaborative filtering is not on the immediate agenda.  For now
(ie: for the next year or two or three or four) a more ordinary
tpye of filtering would be a step forward for the Seattle IMC.  A
first stage might be rating by editors.  Later stages would
include rating by readers--and filtering by readers (ie: similar
to slashdot).  Sometime down the road (I would certainly like to
see it before the end of the decade) would be collaborative
filtering.

The significance of this for us at this time--is that in
selecting a new code base (a decision that we will be living with
for years) I would argue for selecting that code base which comes
attached to a group of geeks who would be willing to help us
customise it for our own experimentation.  If this is not
possible--then the next best alternative would be code that local
(ie: possibly more available) geeks could learn to understand--so
that we could be more self-reliant and modify and experiment with
it ourselves.  I am by no means a hard core geek--but I do
understand the principles that form the foundation of filtering
and rating systems and would certainly be interest in discussing
this with anyone who is interested.

Hey--I'm going to be late for work.  Bye.

Ben Seattle
----//-// 27.Oct.2003
http://struggle.net/Ben (my elists / theory / infrastructure)

-----Original Message-----
From: Gentry Lange <g at art13.com>
To: Ben Seattle <bensai at pix.org>; seattle-editorial at indymedia.org
<seattle-editorial at indymedia.org>
Date: Sunday, October 26, 2003 11:08 PM
Subject: RE: [Seattle-editorial] Solutions to newswire spam
(reply to Judy)


The Philly site uses their own version of slashcode. It's not
well supported
by those outside Philly, but I love the ratings system. I don't
know if it's
available in MIR, DADA, or SFactive. Also check out Danbury,CT
IMC that's
easily my favorite IMC.

As for rating comments, look at http://www.slashdot.org for a
site that's
been doing it successfully for years.

Gentry

-----Original Message-----
From: seattle-editorial-bounces at lists.indymedia.org
[mailto:seattle-editorial-bounces at lists.indymedia.org]On Behalf
Of Ben
Seattle
Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2003 7:23 PM
To: seattle-editorial at indymedia.org
Subject: Re: [Seattle-editorial] Solutions to newswire spam
(reply to
Judy)


--- Correction ---
(edit goof corrected in brackets in the 2nd paragraph below)
__________________________________________________
Some IMC sites (I think Philadelphia) allow editorial committee
members to rate posts and then show two newswires:
(a) one newswire with posts highly rated, and
(b) a news wire with posts that are unrated or rated poorly

I think this may be useful [but] that it would be better, for
several reasons, to allow _readers_ to rate the posts
and to filter posts by rating.