# Criticism of Kidcode (was Re: KidCode: Next steps )

Alan Wexelblat (wex@media.mit.edu)
Thu, 22 Jun 95 23:14:46 -0400

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    From: Alan Wexelblat <wex@media.mit.edu>

    Date: Thu, 22 Jun 95 23:14:46 -0400

    Message-Id: <9506230314.AA16853@media-lab.media.mit.edu>

    To: francis@cactus.slab.ntt.jp

    In-Reply-To: Paul Francis's message of Fri, 23 Jun 95 09:53:33 JST <9506230053.AA03298@cactus.slab.ntt.jp>

    Subject: Criticism of Kidcode (was Re: KidCode: Next steps )

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Forgive me, but I'm unclear on what the problem is. I'm also not sure I can
help you.

Paul Francis wrote:
> an automatic-grading system through correlation of peoples' opinions like
> you have built could just as easily be used to filter out unwanted
> resources as to "filter in" wanted resources.

It seems you've got a lot of erroneous assumptions; I suggest you try the
system for yourself and form an opinion. But maybe I'm just confused.

You seem to think:
- we're imposing rating; we're not, the ratings come from the users
- we're actively including material (URLs in Webhound's case); we're
not, the database of URLs is user-grown (thus we only have around 10,000
URLs in the database; Webcrawler claims to have over 3 million URLs)
- I am responsible for Webhound; I'm not. Webhound is the product
of thesis research by one of our graduating masters students, Yedzi Lashkari
(yezdi@media.mit.edu). He is building on the work of two previous masters
students as well as the group director, Dr Pattie Maes. (Though, if I may
say so, I think Yezdi has derived some interesting new results which I
expect will be published in a year or so.)

Webhound is being featured in GNN's publications and web pages RSN. See
those sources for more info if you like.

Finally, I'm still not sure what you're concerned about. Are you bothered
that Webhound may not recommend to people documents they don't want to see
but by some measure you think they should know about?

Yours in confusion...

- --Alan Wexelblat, Reality Hacker, Author, and Cyberspace Bard
MIT Media Lab - Intelligent Agents Group finger(1) for PGP key
Voice: 617-253-9833 Pager: 617-945-1842 wex@media.mit.edu
http://wex.www.media.mit.edu/people/wex/
"When the possibity of art forms is analyzed from a rationalist standpoint,
most can be shown to be dubious at best, if not outright impossible."

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