> Thoughts and suggestions are welcome, especially right now, since I'm > designing data structures that may be a real pain to modify later.
I have been musing over some ideas for a few weeks now regarding all of the metric measurement of the list. One idea is that there is a direct relation of immunity to new ideas to the number of posts. The more one posts, the more likely to not go through a "Meme conversion". The recipical is also true. This assumption could be tested if there was a sidebar feedback system in place. Let me explain. As a person posts a message, each list member is given the opportunity to cast a vote as to whether they agree or disagree with the overall statement made by the poster. Perhaps there will be multiple opportunities to vote per message. The poster gets feedback, either positive, negative or apathetic (meaning no vote was cast). If each message was stored in one database,like in a forum, each message could be converted to a web form, so that as the reader reads, feedback could be given at the time, without disrupting the reading experience. >From this data, one could see if an idea had enough penetration to cause miminal or widespread 'meme conversion". we could then test my hypothesis about "meme immunity" by tallying votes. With this in mind, that it will change later, you should put placeholders in the design or schema to allow for vote tallying. The code to separate one idea from another should be pretty easy (unless the poster posts using HTML ;-} ). I could do it in Perl. Python would be a stretch for me. Nerd From Hell > > Nick > > P.S. And I am chagrined to realize that I promised Jeroen > some server space > more than a week ago and let it slip away. The machine is sort of > half-configured. > >
