In a saner world micropayments would take care of this as everyone would expect to have to pay a penny to evidence that they are not a spambot. But as we don’t have a good micropayments infrastructure this solution is likely unavailable to you.
Which can of course still be misapplied; the Bitcoin wiki at some point began requiring a payment of some bitcoin, I logged in to make some more edits, discovered it applied to me too, and mentally told them to go screw themselves: I wasn’t about to pay for the privilege of working for them, when I had already proven myself with previous good edits.
Requiring people to fork over any amount of money at all usually results in many fewer participants. This doesn’t seem better overall as long as other effective solutions to spam exist.
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).
In a saner world micropayments would take care of this as everyone would expect to have to pay a penny to evidence that they are not a spambot. But as we don’t have a good micropayments infrastructure this solution is likely unavailable to you.
Which can of course still be misapplied; the Bitcoin wiki at some point began requiring a payment of some bitcoin, I logged in to make some more edits, discovered it applied to me too, and mentally told them to go screw themselves: I wasn’t about to pay for the privilege of working for them, when I had already proven myself with previous good edits.
Requiring people to fork over any amount of money at all usually results in many fewer participants. This doesn’t seem better overall as long as other effective solutions to spam exist.
Probably because it’s currently very hard to pay 0.1c hassle-free.
Artificial shortages are artificial. Why should people bother giving you money to work for you?
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).