On Sat, Jan 04, 2025 at 02:30:41AM -0800, PGC wrote: > On Wednesday, January 1, 2025 at 2:48:25 AM UTC+1 Quentin Anciaux wrote: > > What pains me the most, is that this mailing list had I think the most > influential and best thinkers of this century and we're left with that... > this list had (and still has for those not in the mind bending dead state) > hal finney, wei dai, jurgen Schmidhuber, Russell Standish, Saibal Mitra, > Jason Resch, Terren Suydam, Telmo Menezez, Brent Meeker, Bruno Marchal > and > all of the nice non troll and truth seeking humans in this reality that I > forgot, happy new year, happy new day to be alive to you all and happy > discovering of this mind bending reality. I really love you all, even the > ones who triggers that bad feelings in me. > > > Look, I am all for freedom and anti-censorship as the next guy but I think > times have shifted from late 90s and early 2000s. This list is a target > because > some nuanced discussion takes place, people are jealous and want to be > associated with that; abusing the list's original purpose of exchange on broad > everything/ensemble type theories. The lack of moderation is why people leave > because: why should anybody bother? You can't block one offender's posts, as > they have mushroomed into too many spammers posting too much. Reading a good > post is becoming like an annoying search mission. > > One solution is to create a curated mirror of the archive—preserving those two > decades of thoughtful exchanges in a read-only format on a stable, publicly > accessible platform—while simultaneously placing tighter controls on new > posts. > By instituting a simple vetting process for membership (I DON'T want to be > admin or part of admin team, but what's happening here has reached a tipping > point; even if I am not part of the list's future, there needs to be some > admin > work performed by more people) and routing all messages through a light > moderation layer, administrator(s) can ensure that genuine contributions do > not > get overwhelmed by off-topic spam. Additional filters can help shield the > discussion from the bs. > > This measured shift toward a moderated forum maintains access to the original > trove of insights while keeping future debates civil, ensuring that valuable > material remains easy to find and that new voices can join the conversation in > a constructive atmosphere. There's a difference between naive posts and people > willing to refine their positions with willingness to learn and abusive > ideologues, trolls etc. Russell, Brent, Quentin etc. please consider beefing > up > admin and moderation, as we can't see the forest for the trees anymore. > Another > idea would be to move off grid and have parts be not publicly accessible. I > don't post original thoughts anymore as trolls are stealing here to grow their > audiences without crediting sources. > > Additionally, the list can defend itself by writing to troll audiences, their > platforms, or their publication outlets and linking to the evidence, > like https://groups.google.com/g/everything-list/c/RV_fof0nvKQ > > I don't care what measures should be taken, nor am I ambitious in advocating > anything. But imho the first step would be starting a general vetting > procedure > for who gets posting rights and not; both for old and new members alike, and > let a team of old hands/moderators, who know the spirit of this list the way > you describe it should perform it. Happy New Year to thos around here that > matter. >
This has been proposed before - by my friend Duraid Madina, where he forked the list into a moderated one. It did not fare well. Nobody moved to the new list, it was as dead as a doornail. He is now working on other things in his life So sadly, we have to deal with trolls by ignoring them. It wouldn't be so bad if people kept things on-topic, but even then it seems we can't help ourselves. Every 4 years, this list gets dominated by discussion of the US election, as does every other internet discuss fora. For us non Americans, who have absolutely no influence on the outcome, it does get a tad tedious. Creating a curated repository of on-topic posts and debates is certainly an interesting idea. It is a lot of work, though. I kind of did that with my 2006 book "Theory of Nothing", although be a synthesis, I may have failed in representing some of the opposing ideas that I couldn't understand, in spite of trying my best. My main concern was that Google Groups didn't archive the earliest posts, and I don't think Wei Dai's original archive still exist, unless the Wayback machine captured it. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders [email protected] http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/everything-list/Z3mqeALCtCcqFg4l%40zen.
