Re: [circle] Voting on p2p

[Paul Campbell]

On Mon, May 10, 2004 at 04:54:31PM +1000, Jiri Baum wrote:
> How to find good stuff (nice music) on a p2p file-sharing network.
> 
> Status quo:
> ==========
> 
> Currently, file sharing applications (including circle) largely ignore this 
> problem. They provide a popularity count, but this is problematic: in order 
> to have a high popularity count, a file must be already popular.
> 
> A brand new, just-recorded file is available on only one computer (the 
> artist's), and a pure popularity count system will keep it that way.
> 
> Currently, the most successful way of gaining a high popularity count is to 
> have a recording company pay for an international advertising campaign; 
> understandably, they're not entirely happy if this advertising ends up 
> promoting p2p downloads rather than sales of shiny CDs.

Even with voting, there's always questions...

Popularity sometimes helps. What also helps immensely, especially for video
files and applications, is to list ALL of the filenames on the file. That way
often one or two users tags it with something like "blah blah blah--FAKE!"
which may be a clue (although a minimal one) that the file is junk.

But what seems to do the best overall is the various VERIFIED file sites.
All these sites require is some sort of organization, whether volunteer or
otherwise. Probably the most successful one that I can think of to date is
Suprnova, which is practically the only Bittorrent site of any major
consequence.

Under circle, verified file sites would be pretty simple to set up using the
existing message posting systems anyways. It amounts to what becomes a
sort of distributed web site.