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That's right. There's also SARS patients, grizzly bears, incompetent politicians, no jobs, horrible traffic, we're right next to the Pacific Ocean (which routinely produces typhoons that kill thousands of people), nuclear power plants, deadly blizzards... we even have a place called Death Valley.

Hmmm... maybe I should reconsider. Here in Texas, we have West Nile Virus, alligators (though they leave people alone), incompetent politicians (wish they would), jobs that go away when oil prices dip, horrible traffic, we're in Tornado Alley (with a direct hit on downtown Ft. Worth), cement plants, 120-degree weather, and we have a 32,000 square mile region (larger than all of New England) called the Llano Estacado that is so flat, it slopes just 10 feet per mile, and barely gets 12 inches of rain a year.

Screw it all, I'm moving to Barbados!

Hi, what a great chance to plug Prosebush. This is a site where you can read and write stories with others in a wide range of genres. The stories can branch out as many times as you like so you can continue a branch or start a new one when you want to take the story in a different direction.

The community is completely unmoderated and has some non-fiction areas as well for people to discuss the site and writing in general (we have online workshops and so on).

Check it out! It may not be exactly what you are looking for but it is certainly a good place to start and may give you some good ideas...

Hi! We have partially implemented this on a site called Prosebush (http://www.prosebush.com). Feel free to make an account (or not) and try to get you post boosted up to the top story. We are presently evaluating the system and would like to have some good data. We haven't implemented the entire algorithm yet for various reasons (I don't think the cheap server we are on would be a good place to do real-time clustering and the C++ compiler is really old). But what we have there is a start. Please try to break it (in the context of the moderation algorithm!), I have no doubt we at Prosebush will learn a lot from it. Thanks for you interest!

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I'm going to disagree... It is possible to do algorithmic moderation based on Natural Language Processing (NLP) and an analysis of who read what. I have been yammering about this in several discussions on Kuro5hin but no-one seems to reply so I won't bother reiterating here... but basically you do similarity analysis between what the person has read in the past and the current articles, this lets you know if they will be likely to want to read the current stuff. Further the number of other people who read that article (and it's children) will weight the choice (so a disagreeable, but controversial or important argument, still gets modded up).

The advantages of such "no hands" moderation include not requiring users to work in order to mod up posts (they just browse), the ability to turn off the rating or weight it in favor of some metric (browse at -1, or just read the Sports news), and articles that show up in a discussion long after the human moderators would have stopped paying attention would still have a good chance of being modded up automatically (for those who come to the dicsussion late but still have good ideas).

Disadvantages include the fact that it requires a helluva chunk of computer power to do this. We have implemented a more simplistic version of this system over at Prosebush and use it to rank story contributions, stories, and genres. So far it seems to work. Please check it and let me know if you think the system is failing to work...



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Hey, if you like IF you might also enjoy writing or reading collaborative fiction.

Basically, you read what others have written, and at the end of each contribution the story can be continued by anyone in any direction (as many branches as you like). If you don't like any of the choices you can add you own (or add something anyway just to make the story richer).

We have set up a website to do this (Prosebush). And so far the response from people has been great! There are a few stories that are coming along really well, a few that are really silly, etc... All the guys involved in building the site were fans of old-school text adventure games and choose-your-owns... They really inspired the site in many ways...

--8<--

Hey, if you like IF you might also enjoy writing or reading collaborative fiction.

Basically, you read what others have written, and at the end of each contribution the story can be continued by anyone in any direction (as many branches as you like). If you don't like any of the choices you can add you own (or add something anyway just to make the story richer).

We have set up a website to do this (Prosebush). And so far the response from people has been great! There are a few stories that are coming along really well, a few that are really silly, etc... All the guys involved in building the site were fans of old-school text adventure games and choose-your-owns... They really inspired the site in many ways...

--8<--

One thing I am wondering about is how will this policy affect people who choose to post anonymously. If they do this they are forfeiting ownership of thier work right? (RIGHT?!?) What do you guys think about that. If someone doesn't explicitly release thier work is it free for others to use?

--8<--