Diane tears apart that attempt

Hey, Ben.

I apologize in advance for the pending sarcasm. Please don’t take it personally.

Okay, Ben, the longer you type, the less sense you make. Aldon made good points, but you don’t seem to have addressed any of them.

Also... What, did you get a vocabulary for an early Christmas present? You typed and typed and typed and still said nothing of any substance. For example: “The problem with a Digg-style system is that it relies on a relative few, privileged with time and inclination, to read through all the stuff that isn't voted on. The result isn't a community vote of importance, but heavy users' view of what's interesting.” Basically that means: ‘Most rating systems show popular stories as opposed to informative ones.’ Be concise. You can apologize for wordiness all you like, it still makes you sound like a bibbiling idiot.

And who coined the phrase “time-share democracy?” Who ever it was needs to be called to put down their creation.

Let me see if I’ve gathered the important parts. (I’m going to use a bulleted list, a simple, easy to read way to display just the pertinent information.)

  • Instead of users elect popular stories, PWGD will have group-elected editors rate stories according to actual relevance.
  • PWGD will produce software to help amateur and professional journalists to place their stories on the PWGD community.
  • Software will also be developed to allow users to converse and comment about articles. This will allow communities to respond to news in an organized fashion, as opposed to just accepting what’s happened.

You still need to make a list (note: list, not dissertation) of the things that will cost money and what you expect them to cost. Remember, I said LIST.

You also need to outline how your “jury” will be selected. Detail the process in words of fewer than three syllables. (Or possibly find an eight year old to write it for you.)

And you still haven’t covered how you plan to make this project sustainable. You can’t rely on donations.

Also, how do you plan to get people involved? Are you planning an advertising campaign? Word of mouth? Remember, eight year old. Get a three-line tablet and some of those big crayons if you have to.

Again, I apologize for any sarcasm, it’s not personal. I have a natural aversion to long-winded, wordy, pointless speeches.

Good luck.

-Diane

Communication Problem Worse than Previously Thought

* There will not be anything resembling a panel of experts deciding what is informative.
* The problem with Digg (and Digg is great in itself) isn't that it is popular stories, but that it is stories popular with an elite user– the heavy Internet/Digg user. (Gordon Fowler suggests there is an additional filter to get to the front page, certainly the process isn't fully transparent, and relies on banning users: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg)
* With fixed costs of only operating a web site ($60 a month worst case including a service plan), donations could support this once the software is developed. My original draft did talk of advertising revenue but I'm actually de-emphasizing that, since I'd rather avoid it if possible.

But mostly, yeah, I wasted everyone's time with that last e-mail. Sorry about that. Just wanted to get some thoughts down. And that was the refined version of my thought process. All my thoughts start out, on paper, as sentence fragments. I think we ADHD people should have interpreters.