MetaContentRecursionProblem

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is there already a page for this?

One large problem is that, while browsing, i sometimes end up spending time getting lots of bookmarks to "good sites" which themselves refer to more "good sites", and then i don't have time to read much of the content itself. The problem here is of course that on the one hand you need to have the content indexed so that people can find it, but on the other hand society ends up adding so much "content" in the form of indexes that this contributes to the InformationOverload.

so a significant amount of my time is spent finding "good sites". but i am doing something useful in slogging through this mess and finding the content, right? wrong. this would be useful if my "finding the content" lead to actual use of the content which was found, but i don't have time to read it all myself. I end up with extra information that i can't pass on; i now know a little bit about where the real good content is to be found, but there is certainly no point in my posting my findings to the web as it would contribute to the InformationOverload.

Wikis seem like a good solution to the MetaContentRecursionProblem, because WikiZen?s can consolidate redundant meta content. When you find "good content", it is actually useful to add that link to a Wiki because Wikis are immune to the MetaContentRecursionProblem. See LessRedundancy.

I am working actually on a project focusing exactly on this. It should be online soon. But additionally I think what is at least as important as good content is bad content! I spend a significant amount of my time as you state it "slogging through this mess" and I think this very indirectly useful time could be reduced significantly by smart techniques.

We could use, implement in wiki-style or just learn from projects like [RATED.IT], which is part of SELECT. Their concept focuses on GoldBalling?, BlackBalling? and WhiteBalling? (see the link), which I find quite useful. -- DavidAndel

cool, man! may i ask what the project is?

i only looked at RATED.IT a little bit for now. the infrastructure they are setting up looks pretty general, so it could be very useful for this sort of stuff. i can't really see wanting to get emailed "GoldBall?"ed sites weekly, but there are other better ways of using the ratings information in their server. however, on very brief inspection it does seem that their system is a bit "cluttered".

also, i should point out that there is a similarity between (why numerical ratings are one way to attack the MetaContentRecursionProblem) and (RatingAsContent). In both cases, one has a number of different opinions which are being condensed into a single number (or two or three numbers). This saves the reader time because no matter how many opinions there were, they only have a set number of things to look at.

MetaContentRecursionProblem

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