Re: [syndication] Automatically Transforming Blog or HTML Content into XML

[elijah wright <elw@stderr.org>]

sorry that i've been incommunicado, lots of work to do here today.

> > content for fun, even if the tools are free, 100% available, etc etc
> > etc.  :)
>
> Yes, that's a different argument however.  I probably jumped the gun on
> your initial argument.  My rabid opposition was based on the impression
> that this is yet another paper that attempts to twist statistics into
> making one product or technology look bad.  Thus branching out into
> larger sets of numbers was my attempt to devalue numbers I'd seen as
> being less than useful to what I'd consider a worthwhile agenda.  As in,
> why carp about low RSS adoption numbers when the overall numbers are
> skewed so low as to be useless.  It only makes RSS 'look bad' and here's
> where Twain's quote starts kicking in...


i think we're pretty software-neutral; we're not trying to make
evaluations so much as report that what we find in a randomized sample of
blogs isn't in line with what the "hypesters" are trying to tell everyone
is true of "all blogs".  if we say, for instance, that we don't see a
whole lot of linking in blogs, then people should be able to trace that
backwards and figure out what conditions we were working under that might
have skewed the result.  [we think our sample size, for instance, is large
enough to observe patterns, but other people might disagree.  i would
heartily encourage people to 'do their own thing' and test for
reproducibility if they have qualms.  ;) ]


[and i'm not so much interested in RSS as a specific technology as i am in
blogs in general; that may be part of our mis-communications.]


One of the things that's really hard to do is say "we think that some of
the more popular 'experts' in this domain are making things up as they go
along, and that they're rather partial to particular views that may not
really make much sense".  For one thing it makes this area of study look
even more like a contest of personalities than it already does;  people
often tend to interpret 'facts' as simple attacks on someone's credibility
before they bother to see what's actually being said.

Much better to say "hey, we used this methodology, on this size data set,
and these are the results we got - and they disagree with 'popular gossip'
on points X, Y, and Z."  :)  [which is basically what's going on].


> > > My caution against filtering comes from observing the biased
> > > behaviors that usually accompany it.  The risk being that filtering
> > > is applied by "peoples in authority" for the "good of the people".
> > > Consider bigotry, racism, religion, xenophobia, class warfare,
> > > nationalism and the like.
> >
> > all great evils, yes.
>
> And ones I see quite regularly as themes in discussions with those that
> would seek to enable only 'select' portions of what they'd consider the
> 'viable' population of content producers.  Sort of like only selling the
> printing press to those of a given mindset.  (Twisting Liebling's quote
> of "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one").

oi, you should hear the librarians talk about this one :)

ACCESS, ACCESS, ACCESS


> > > At this point the number of voices participating in the overall
> > > delivery of content does not strike me as being anywhere near large
> > > enough to justify investing efforts into excluding things.
> >
> > oh, now i'm starting to follow.
>
> Right, and efforts to cast one technology over another based on
> statistical analysis of the current user population seems to support
> arguments that don't lead to wider implementations.  But then I'm
> probably being overly paranoid here.

i don't think so.  you're making sense, now that i've got a handle on what
level of granularity you're thinking in/about...


> > on the one hand there's the possibility of producing FILTERS that exclude
> > content.  that's a bad idea, as you say.  on the other hand, though,
> > there's room to create tools that allow users to collect and manage lists
> > of resources that they LIKE - inclusive content rather than exclusive.
>
> Or how about 'anti-metadata' that filters based on knowing what you DISagree
> with?  As in, search out all comments made by user 'X' and dump them into my
> 'full of shit but intriguing in a watch a car crash sort of way'.  Simple
> exclusion filters would have a rather tough time.  Or extend that out along
> social network structures, find me things that group X says are bogus, mainly
> because I think group X is a pack of drooling idiots and I generally find
> following what they dislike to be of the sort of think I know to be correct.
> Not just collaborative filtering based on like-minded agreements here...

ROFL - this whole paragraph is a real howler (in a good way ;) )


> > i'm really enjoying this conversation - good to get to hash through some
> > of this .....
>
> Likewise,  thanks!

*nod*

elijah