Founders of a new Web service launched Tuesday say they're offering a better way to participate in Usenet discussion groups, the parlor rooms of the Internet.
The new service, called Realize, promises to give Usenet participants more of what they want -- useful discussion -- and less of what they don't want -- spam, pointless messages, and flame wars.
"Thirteen to 20 million people are spending at least two hours a week on message boards, and there's an inundation of noise," says Realize founder Michael Ginn. "Our system tailors views [of Usenet] to each individual user."
The new service calls on Usenet participants to apply a kind of collective consciousness to determine what readers do and do not want to see in discussion threads. People with like interests would be grouped together to mutually benefit from what Realize calls "collaborative filtering."
"We see Usenet as a giant medium between people who share something at stake," Ginn says. "We reward participation."
Participation comes in the form of ratings. Realize members are encouraged to indicate whether messages are "not appropriate," "appropriate," or "very appropriate." Once the ratings reach critical mass -- typically, six to nine messages rated by users in a particular preference group -- future messages are either blocked from or displayed to like-minded Realize members. ____
Building Critical Mass
To accomplish its goals, Realize needs members who are willing to actively filter bad content from good. A critical factor in the success of its mission, therefore, is how quickly it can grow its membership. Realize launched Tuesday with only a limited cross-section of Usenet: 50 newsgroups, plus 150 non-Usenet discussion forums.
To expand the service to a full 20,000 Usenet newsgroups, the site hopes to attract users with a form of frequent-flyer miles, "Qy points," as Realize calls them. Members earn points by reading and rating messages and by contributing messages others members rate as useful.
Accumulated Qy points can be redeemed for airline miles with most major airlines, Realize says.
Ginn also thinks the promised benefits of the service itself will attract current Usenet participants, giving them the opportunity to use and contribute to a clearer Usenet forum. "When you lure them with the possibility of less spam, [people] become very excited about it."
The Night Shift
The process by which the groups are identified and used to hide and reveal messages is conducted behind the scenes, after a day's worth of ratings has been collected.
"It takes groups about two months before we get a critical mass that fully rates messages," Ginn says.
Collaborative filtering is a technology similar to that used to determine, for example, what movies visitors to, say, Reel want to know, based on titles they like.
While Realize is unique in its approach, Russ Allbery, one of the founders of the next-generation Usenet II, says an experiment at the University of Minnesota used software that monitored which postings people read and for how long. The results were used on Usenet servers to indicate which messages were popular with other users.
The same group tried, but rejected, a collaborative filtering system, Allbery says. "There was too much impact on the reading process for readers to rate each article after they'd read it."
The incentives employed by Realize may disprove that conclusion, Allbery says.
But he also notes that only certain discussion groups lend themselves to logical rating by users. Technical groups are one obvious example, where users have a specific goal -- greater understanding of a technical subject -- and articles are easily judged as to their usefulness.
Clear parameters of usefulness may not apply in social discussion groups. "You might also see people scoring down articles just because they don't like a person.... There a lot of ways it can break down," Allbery says.
In political and other ideologically oriented areas, members may seek to block out their ideological opponents, Allbery notes. "You start wondering if group-think is going to end up being a problem, as minorities end up being scored down."
Ginn emphasizes that at any point the filters can be turned off to allow a complete view of all messages.
Despite his questions, Allbery welcomes Ginn's service and hopes it can achieve its goals. "I'm all in favor of experiments. It will be interesting to see how it works."
