On Ringo: I'm actually tossing around some ideas in my head for
a similar peer-review style system for this list when we move to
hyperreal.com (the machine's arriving Friday, hopefully be set up
Saturday). Doing it through a WWW interface seems most intelligent
to me... Anyways, here's what I was thinking:
In the "reviews" area, every artist has a page, (with a
separate directory for various) and within each artist's
page is a link to each of their albums or singles. Each of
those links has maybe the cover art, maybe some samples, etc.,
plus a link to all the reviews ever written about the item.
There will be a link to a fill-out form to review an album;
an email gateway to both posting a review and seeing new reviews
is also possible. Finally, each album/single can have associated
with it a list of "seal of approval"s, which are basically marks
that people leave on albums they like. I.e., I don't write many
reviews even though I buy a lot of music, so I can go through and
put a seal of approval on, say, "Diversions" by Orbital.
If a lot of people do this, then we have a big database of music
and who likes what - and I can go through and say "okay, I trust
Pete Ashdown's taste in music, what has he put a seal of approval
on?" and get a list of the stuff he's liked. We could optionally put
a 1-10 rating on these seals, to improve the interface. The
authenticity of these seals is protected on a password basis through
HTTP, so it's not easy to spoof someone else's name. I'm working
on a similar system for Wired, too.
Setting up a system whereby poeple can leave a "preferences" file,
and people reviewing an album can specify what other music it
sounds like, sounds like a good thing too.
This system could be expanded far beyond IDM, too.
If you're interested in talking more about this, send me mail privately.
But this is exactly the sort of thing I'd like to start doing.
On Mon, 4 Jul 1994, Rob Hwang wrote:
quoted 5 lines HOW TO USE RINGO: Send an e-mail to ringo@media.mit.edu, with only> HOW TO USE RINGO: Send an e-mail to ringo@media.mit.edu, with only
> the word 'join' in the body. It will then send you a list of 125
> artists. You rate the artists that you are familiar with. Send it
> back. You will then receive a 'help' file describing how to use all
> the features of Ringo.