Hi Keith,
Who would be the filter? No filter, then a lot to read... (my first attempt to make things italic -- no clue if it will work--by gosh, it worked!)
Well posed question, that.
There are several metrics for filtering that can be handled in an automatic fashion, given the software infrastructure to support what I am suggesting.
The first filter is time -- temporal order of posts coming in. Not much of a filter, but historical sequence does have its value.
Then, there is the notion of *issue-based* discussion. Should the user interface support that, it becomes possible to install a *voting-based* filter that bubbles responses upward or downward according to *peer review* of the post. That way, the list you get when you click on some topic (thread) would be ordered in a *most to least* thought to be valid/valuable ordering. It's all, still, opinion. Some posts will be backed up by hard data, some will not. It's clear that hard data would lend, say, more points to some position. There will always be room for folks who stuff the ballet box, who fudge their data, etc. But, that's the nature of knowledge; it's only what the individual makes of it.
Hope that provokes you to discuss this idea further.
Cheers, Jack |
