26 Feb 2003 whytheluckystiff   » (Master)

it's a trip to read raph's overview of advogato and
think about the experience of using advogato.  for him,
it's an immersive experiment with implications as to
how he sees applied mathematics.  it's a microcosm of
humanity and relationships.

i remember coming to advogato and thinking, "oh, so
people rate each others' progress and the goal is to
get to the top."  so i forage in, rating entire villages
with casual glances at their worth.

my judgements were all based on the diary entries.
one user who magnetized me was ReadMe.  i could
appreciate the verse.  i rated him/her, he/she rated me
equally.  apparently it's ReadMe's standing policy.

the problem with rating based on writing is that
your trust network builds around a loose group of
writers who can appreciate each other, but don't really
know each other or communicate at all.  nothing to build
much trust on.

then i joined the yaml project and noticed that cce
keeps a diary here.  knowing clark from yaml development,
we rated each other based on a deeper knowledge of each
other's skills.  clark's rating me as journeyer is meaningful
in a way that other ratings simply aren't.

so then i begin to see advogato through raph's eyes.
the trust metric diagrams make more sense in context.

so here's a suggestion for building trust on advogato:
(someone should write a guide)

build trust with individuals you trust in life.
bring them to advogato and rate each other,
link to each other.  your team's real trust in each
other should translate into trust metrics here.

of course, you will then need to seek trust from
the good nodes of advogato.  i don't know if receiving
trust from stragglers on recentlog (such as myself)
will pollute your value.  i'd seek other masters and
journeyers online who work on related projects and
could see the value of your work.  e-mail them?
tell them you're seeking trust on advogato and are looking
for peer review?  or pitch in on one of their projects
and prove your worth.

(it looks like alan has got this sort of idea going
on with his mother certifying him.  and as fun as it
would be to certify a first-grader, i should probably
avoid spreading my compromised status until i find a way
out. :D)

it's hard to say how much value being a master on advogato
actually holds at this time, though.  you don't accumulate
services or access beyond the rating itself.  i'm not
saying the rating doesn't hold value on its own, it's
just easier for me to rate other people high because i say
to myself, "well, it's just a rating."

i guess the beauty of the system is that advogato likely
considers me a compromised node since i've had such a 
lackadaisical approach to certifying.

good luck on the talk, raph.  twould be fun to attend.
and congrats to bytesplit for being the anomaly.

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