X-Message-Number: 32432 Date: Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:14:39 -0700 From: Kitty Antonik Wakfer <> Subject: Continuing Message Suppression with CryoNet's Rating System --------------030005020109040700030607 In following up on comments to my own post of 1/24, I noted that again Melody Maxim's most recent message, #32421 - Subject: Re: CryoNet #32418 - Kitty Antonik Wakfer's Post, does not show in the digest and again the only notification is: <<< POSTER'S REPUTATION TOO LOW >>> Just as I wrote back in October 2009 (http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/dsp.cgi?msg=32072), it is clear that "a number of CryoNet subscribers are using the rating system to squelch publication of Melody Maxim's messages in the daily digest." Melody wrote: I hope the Alcor Board of Directors will give the proper attention to Paul Wakfer's suggestions, as outlined in Kitty's Antonik Wakfer's recent post, as I feel it would be a step in the right direction. It is time for Alcor to focus on the survival of the community, rather than on individuals who don't take steps to protect themselves and ensure their wishes for cryopreservation get carried out. In regard to Ms. Robbins, is this one person, who didn't move closer to Alcor, (when she knew she was dying and Alcor suggested she do so), and didn't take steps to make sure her family did not interfere, or perhaps truly did change her mind in the "11th hour," (just as Timothy Leary did), really worth the bad publicity involved? Alcor seems to be on a collision course with regulation, or extinction...not just for themselves, but for the entire cryonics community. (And, yes, I am currently inclined to think that nothing short of regulation will veer the cryo-orgs off an impending collision course with public perception.) Melody Maxim I think that this latest message by Melody - and in fact all of them - deserves to be read by all who subscribe to CryoNet and anyone who is interested at all in the continuation and improvement of cryonics. Melody's raising of points that some do not like to hear does not equate to her trying to incite hatred against or harm to any individual whose actions she has questioned - the essence of "flamebait", the score she has been given by sufficient numbers of CryoNet subscribers to result in this filtering by Kevin Q Brown's algorithm. Imputing intention is always foolish (not to mention slanderous) unless one has very clear evidence. I recently made this very same point in a comment to a blog entry at the Association of Physicians and Surgeons: The intent or desire of a person "to harm [another] usually seriously through doing something unlawful or otherwise unjustified" (from Merriam Webster's definition) is most often not clear unless the person has made specific verbal or written statements of his/her (hir) intentions regarding an action taken. A person simply taking the action to inform others of the activities or practices of another with which that informant does not agree/approve may be and often is without any desire or intention to cause physical harm to the party with whom s/he does not agree/approve, but just to have that person stop the activities. In a non-coercive society, one has only the liberty to inform; it would, in such a society, be solely the decision of others how they will make use of such information - purchase or not the "snakeoil" or any service/product, or to voluntarily interact or not with such informant. http://www.aapsonline.org/newsoftheday/00802/comment-page-1#comment-4157 Even this simple message by Melody has Poor 6.00 as part of the (at the time I noted & after I'd scored it myself) Current Rating Summary: Excellent 1.25 Good 1.20 Informative 0.45 Insightful 0.45 Interesting 0.45 Normal 0.20 Poor 6.00 I suspect that the "Poor" came from those who regularly rate her messages as "Flamebait". Do those of you who do this *really* want to help solve the problems that cryonics organizations face, maybe even as a result of some of their own practices? Stifling a messenger is *not* a recipe for gaining information and finding true solutions. Specifically to Kevin Q Brown, Administrator: Why do you continue to ignore the "vote" of those who do not rate messages at all? The fact that someone has not thought it worth their time to register a specific rating of a message, even though they get the digest daily, is worth something in the algorithm - I do not see that this happens. This failure in my estimation distorts the entire system and reduces the value of CryoNet to me, and likely to many others. **Kitty Antonik Wakfer MoreLife for the rational - http://morelife.org Reality based tools for more life in quantity and quality The Self-Sovereign Individual Project - http://selfsip.org Self-sovereignty, rational pursuit of optimal lifetime happiness, individual responsibility, social preferencing & social contracting --------------030005020109040700030607 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=32432