Re: Authority (was Looking at were we are...)

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Thamer Al-Herbish (shadows@whitefang.com)
Sun, 23 May 1999 01:59:56 -0700 (PDT)

On Sat, 22 May 1999, David Alex Lamb wrote:

> I'm not sure I'm comfortable with "distributed authoring" as
> suggested above - but perhaps something along those lines would be
> needed just to add the touch of authority that would get people to
> pay more attention.

What species of monstrosity could be authoritive for: a FAQ on dish
washers, a FAQ on "redundant genetic bio-morphic algorithms" a FAQ
on a movie star . . . etc ?

I don't think anything exists in this entire universe that can bear
that kind of authority. But if we get philosophical, and toss in the
term "emergent authority" we can say that Usenet as a whole is an
authority on its FAQs. I think your authority system is there, just
difficult to explain to the happy go lucky world of Dejanews and AOL
etc. I also think Usenet FAQs get their fare share of exposure. At
least enough exposure. Every time we post a FAQ thousands (if not
millions) of people get to read it. Maybe the way ahead is not to
try to shape Usenet FAQs into something Dejanews might want to
recognize. Why toss away our greatest strength? Additionally, if
some sort of rigorous "peer review" was in place I think many people
would just pack up and decide they don't want the hassle. They would
post their FAQ and keep a web version up on Geocities.

I'm not trying to say that *.answers should accept anything etc. But
imposing any "regulated" or "authoritive" measures could be more
trouble than it is worth.

--
Thamer Al-Herbish                     PGP public key:
shadows@whitefang.com                 http://www.whitefang.com/pgpkey.txt
[ The Secure UNIX Programming FAQ     http://www.whitefang.com/sup/  ]

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