Reply #41: The Blogosphere Risks Putting Off Everyone but Point-Scoring Males

[bemildred]

I don't agree with all he says, however, I do think the idea of a slash-dot style ratings system has great merit. It provides incentive/accountability without coercion or a loss of anonymity.

SO YOU’RE at a public meeting on, say, the war in Iraq and the main speaker has just sat down. Someone in the audience rises to declare the speaker is talking crap, but that’s typical of him because he knows nothing and it’s a scandal that he’s paid for the rubbish he turns out. A second man agrees that the speech was trash, but tells the first man he should crawl back under his stone because he never says anything worth listening to. A third man wonders why the speaker didn’t mention Israel, especially given his Zionist-sounding last name.

The first man is now shouting at the second man, insulting him for insulting him first. A woman gets up to make a point about the war in Iraq, but she is rapidly drowned out by a fourth and fifth man now debating Israel and the Palestinians. A sixth man compares the speaker to Hitler and proceeds to read out a 1,500-word article he read somewhere six years ago. If that has an oddly familiar ring, it may be because you’re spending a lot of time online, specifically in the new and still lawless world known as the blogosphere.

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t present, you can be an irascible, misogynistic anti-Semite online with little or no consequence. But what if that began to affect the rest of your online life? Note how careful people are to be well-regarded on eBay, where money is at stake. Might it not be possible to have a single online identity, one that you cared about, even if it had little connection to your identity in the real world?

Neil Levine, formerly of Clara.net, wonders about a system of comment credits, earned by the ratings of other users. High credit would give you an enhanced standing online, perhaps pushing your comments to the top of any thread. If other users deemed you out of line, your status would fall.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=94884&d=12&m=4&y=2007