Rattle replied:

That's not useful. Online identity is useful, especially when attacking reputation to it.

I assume you meant "attaching." Regardless, that's not what's driving the front page. In fact, the current front page algorithm is explicitly NOT based on reputation.

Yes, that is what I meant. I even corrected myself. In fact, I corrected it when I read the version after hitting "Post it!". There is no preview button in the recommend forms. The version of a post that appears in a user's MemeBox is the first submitted version, not one that has been edited. You replied to the version that went across when I hit "Post it!", not the one that survived review. You also replied to it several hours after I walked away from the system, and the reviewed post. Oversight in system design? Initially. Since then we have seen all kinds of ways its produced amusing miscommunications. Its stayed, for both lazy and curious reasons.

The mistake of sorts in reading over what I typed in the edit window can be interpreted several ways. I see no reason why this one disqualifies itself from giving useful insight.

Think e-mail and the send button. Say "useful paradigm" a few times. I have myself when contemplating that "bug".

You seem to have ignored my observation that the front page is presently frequently populated by items that only appear in one stream, and thus the issue is moot, since anyone can readily overtake the front page with only one account.

First, let's get one thing straight. The main page is fucked. Decius coded that to fill in a void. It was designed to handle a situation present when there was very little content in the system, and showing anything there was of use. Filtering was not in the equation. It has remained that way. Very similar to the last situation, it's due to lack of execution on a better (present) plan, and reinforced by interesting issues its presented in its current form. The only updates since the time its gone into place have been minor patches to address specific narrow problems and UI updates.

Even the simplest of rules, such as only showing posts that have at least two recommends, would have an effect. With its present aggregation logic, it should allow you to page beyond ten posts to be fully functional. People should be using the Reputation Agent, not the /topics/ page. Eventually, and according to plan at that, the entire /topics/ directory hierarchy will go away. As in 404. That is our attitude to that section of the site, which happens to contain the most hit page of the site.. The redirect from / to /topics/ is not a matter of connivence to get around a line of apache configuration we should be using if we wanted it to be based at /.

Are you trolling me?

Is it still a troll if you respond?

Certainly! Just because something has great wisdom and logic behind it, does not mean its not a troll. Some trolls should go unanswered. Some require too much tact to answer properly, and result in nothing. Some bring out something that needed to be brought out. Doesn't the /topics/ page logic current bump up a post if it has a reply? Trolls get attention. Some can be dismissed, others can't, some shouldn't.

Is this where I say something like this? - "Nothing is real-time in our post-human future." I'm still thinking more William Gibson than Ann Rand...

In an environment with a sizable user base and a steady flow of traffic, having two accounts would be scarcely more useful than just one account. You'd find that the entries dominating the front page were those that have been recommended a large number of times -- not twice instead of once. If it so happened that having two streams become common, then it would offer no relative advantage, and thus would not be much of an issue.

The issue has to do with the culture of system usage. Respect for the situation the system presents and expects/wants you to follow, and how both that system and the element of respect for it can be depended upon.

At this point, if one has the goal of getting a specific item on the home page, this is quite easily done, all by oneself, with only one account, during any "slow" period. Simply submit the URL to your stream multiple times, using slight variations of the URL that don't affect retrievability but which make each instance suitably distinct, as required by the stream. For example, submit URL_A. Then submit it as URL_A?foo. Then change "?foo" to "?bar". And so on, ad infinitum. Let's say you do this 100 times. Then, when the front page algorithm goes to select an entry from the set of entries whose thread-count is 1, your URL will be there 100 times. If there are only 10 other single-recommendation URLs at the moment, your URL stands a good chance of getting selected. To increase the probability of getting chosen, just increase the number of times you enter that URL on your stream.

Again, nothing new about that to me. Sure, it sucks. People can piss in the pool. If the pool becomes an expense that isn't worth it or safe, or that anyone wants to swim in, we just take away the public pool and everyone can go swim in the private pools. The randomness of meeting people and socializing at the public pool has benefits. If people decided to kill that environment, its a loss. Things go wrong.. What can be said? Its not like the public pool has a set of rules that is all that restrictive... Anyone can use it, and the only limits have to do with how many people can it can use at once. How do you want to behave at the public pool? No one is going to stop you.. We'll just close the damn pool. You will not have the pool with its people traffic and its element of "cultural coolness" to sport your new swim trunks at.

People could just go to the section of the site labeled Weblogs in the menu and find people to read that way. From that point, they could use the Reputation Agent to bring their content together on their regular visits. That's the way most MemeStreams users use the system. Looking into the logs has always seemed to reveal that. The Reputation Agent doesn't get a shitload of hits, but those hits seem to use quite useful to people. The Weblogs page gets a fair amount of hits, but that appears to be because the useful stuff needs to be mined from pages it links, rather than directly from it. Users check out the main page, but they seem to use it like the public pool, ranking their swimsuit against that of others.

I notice that you don't bother to put things into topics when using your possibly noteworthy account. How do you think that would fare in a information economy where tags/filing was important?

Viewing over the history of this system, I'll fully admit failures to execute on the vision present. I also have trouble doing things like meeting basic needs in life, such as food and shelter. Would you believe that one pays me for anything I do or put significant energy into? Lets just say my tax returns this year are incredibly simple, but highly suspicious. I do think that I present the arguments as I see them and learn from the results. Execution requires way more than I have on my own. Same goes for Tom. At least we get in a constant stream of adventures. I can't complain, only be severely frustrated.

You had access to the site code awhile back. Did you do anything with it beyond the search engine indexer? You should IM me more when you are online. I'll give you a login for the current repository.

As a side note related to the search engine, one of the things on the short list of things to do to the site code is to switch the search logic from assuming "OR" between terms to "AND", like every other search engine on the planet.. It currently accepts "AND" between terms, but few people seem to pick up on that...

RE: Re: Reengineering MemeStreams for our posthuman future