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Internet Metadata - Open Collaborative Rating

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the cool-idea-in-action dept.

XenonOfArcticus writes "INMD is a recently-submitted proposal for an open collaborative profile-based ratings system for Internet Web/Usenet content. Based on a system partially inspired by Slashdot itself, it seeks to facilitate content rating that does not force censorship. The purpose behind INMD is to allow the user to choose what criteria to use when filtering/sorting content, and whose opinions should impact their browsing.Don't want the RIAA or MPAA to influence your Internet? Exclude them. Want your opinions controlled by the NRA? Submit your browsing to their discretion. You remain in control. " Looks still quite beta, but it's a cool idea - something like everything, in terms of rating knowledge/content.

1 of 71 comments (clear)

  1. This would never work by Fastolfe · · Score: 3

    Assuming the author is seriously suggesting this (it's hard to tell by the writing style and gross errors in these "drafts"), this idea would never take off.

    Firstly, consider just how massive and transient data is on the Internet. Now imagine for yourself a database capable of indexing and storing *ratings* for this massive volume of data, including necessary security precautions such as "this-person-has-already-rated-this-item", etc. The amount of data required for such a database is truly staggaring, and, depending on the popularity of an item being rated, could likely exceed the storage requirements of the item itself. This isn't even considering the database of users that would be required in an authenticated setting as he's suggesting.

    Assuming one could construct such a titanic database, a rating system like this would only really be effective for static content (like non-dynamic web sites). Things like newsgroup articles stick around for a few days -- weeks at most. This is hardly enough time to get "moderators" to accurately rate articles in all but the most popular newsgroups. Face it: Slashdot has several orders of magnitude more readers and posters than any one newsgroup heirarchy in existence. It would be a rare thing to have more than one or two posts in a given newsgroup rated, and that rating would be virtually meaningless because of this.

    The bottom line is that this is unfeasible and would not be adopted widely, which would be essential for its growth and continued use.

    Just my $0.02 ($0.02 Canadian).