Posted by Dr. Bob on December 27, 2002, at 21:21:14
In reply to Poster qualifications. Dr. Bob, posted by BrittPark on December 27, 2002, at 19:33:03
> There has been one person posting on PB recently who makes quite specific, authorative, and often wrong recommendations. He or she is not the first to behave this way. I suppose it's a pipe dream but perhaps there could be a way to attach a qualification estimation for each poster. One way would be via a "How do you rate this post?" form that one could fill out for any post. This kind of system sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. But I do worry about relatively naive Babblers who cannot tell the difference between those who know what they are posting about and those who don't.
Thanks for your post, this has in fact come up before. I think of it as one of the downsides of free speech, and it's a concern of mine, too.
I've also wondered about some sort of rating system, but (1) people might not bother to submit ratings, (2) some of the raters would be "naive", too (though I suppose in theory the ratings they give could be weighted by the ratings they receive...), (3) some posters wouldn't like being rated, and of course (4) there would be lots of technical issues.
I know it can be a lot of work, but IMO the best way to fight bad information is with good information.
Bob
poster:Dr. Bob
thread:8603
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/admin/20021128/msgs/8606.html