X-Message-Number: 33501
Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2011 08:49:28 -0700 (PDT)
From: Luke Parrish <>
Subject: Re: A Wave of New Cryonets

Before we spark off a wave of New Cryonets, maybe we should
agree on which ones are worthy of attention:

1. Easy to use. This one sucks in that I have to carefully
hard-wrap my email text before posting otherwise it comes out
hard to read. Also it's a pain to quote people because most
email software does it wrong.

2. Moderated. By this I mean there are mechanisms to prevent
trolling/flamewars, and encourage people to think twice before
posting nonsense. One simple way to do this is to have users
themselves award points or Karma for posts and comments they
like.

3. Clean. It's not that hard to set up a clean, ad-free forum
or blog with it's own URL. Cheap/free solutions like network54
and yahoo groups are out of date and are the equivalent of
wearing jeans and a t-shirt where you should be wearing a tux.

4. Editable. People need to be able to edit or delete their
posts after posting. This is the internet, where inhibitions
are lower and your future boss is going to be googling you.

5. Promoted. Cryonics needs to be promoted. We need to reaching
out to new users, especially those with medical and
experimental science degrees who can boost its credibility and
enhance its focus on improvement. There are millions of people
out there with unanswered questions about cryonics which they
simply never thought to ask.

I think whomever is considering being the new ringleader should
ask themselves if they are prepared to invest a few hundred
dollars in designing a robust, high-quality replacement system.
A few ads or donation buttons that actually benefit the site
owner and motivate them to improve the interface (or cover the
cost of hiring someone to do so) aren't a bad thing and don't
reflect badly on the community -- ads that benefit the free
hosting provider are, because they signal that we are just
playing around here.

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