I see. The solution does not work, but it is nevertheless correct, because it should work. It is the people who are wrong.
In the real world, a solution to a problem is something that actually solves the problem. An engineer does not get to blame metal for obstinately rusting despite his wonderful anti-rusting invention. Instead, he recognises that his invention does not work. Neither does a would-be social engineer get to blame the people for not behaving as he thinks they should.
As the person whose experience Gerard is citing, I would point out that my beef is largely with how the micropayment is being done: known-good users (like myself) were not being grandfathered in, as would be sane.
Having dealt with so much spam on the LW wiki, I wouldn’t be averse to a micropayments thing if it were even slightly reasonable to expect random LWers to possess bitcoins and there were some non-payment way of editing with moderation (eg. having the first n edits by users who choose to not pay go into some moderation queue before going live).
To prove, at an extremely low cost to you and zero cost to society, that you are not going to spam them.
It appears this idea does not work in practice.
Hence my starting with “In a saner world”
I see. The solution does not work, but it is nevertheless correct, because it should work. It is the people who are wrong.
In the real world, a solution to a problem is something that actually solves the problem. An engineer does not get to blame metal for obstinately rusting despite his wonderful anti-rusting invention. Instead, he recognises that his invention does not work. Neither does a would-be social engineer get to blame the people for not behaving as he thinks they should.
“It is the people who are wrong.”
Hence the need for a website called “LessWrong”
As the person whose experience Gerard is citing, I would point out that my beef is largely with how the micropayment is being done: known-good users (like myself) were not being grandfathered in, as would be sane.
Having dealt with so much spam on the LW wiki, I wouldn’t be averse to a micropayments thing if it were even slightly reasonable to expect random LWers to possess bitcoins and there were some non-payment way of editing with moderation (eg. having the first n edits by users who choose to not pay go into some moderation queue before going live).