Barbed reply

If the internet is--as Sen. Ted Stevens maintains--a bunch of tubes, it could sure use a dose of Liquid Plumber. The most persistent rap against the web has been that it's almost impossible to tell whether you are getting good information or not. In a time of reputation management, viral marketing, buzz doctors and spin control--not to mention the assortment of more pedestrian rumormongers, outright liars, and smear artists--who can you believe? Then there are the soreheads, the crackpots, the professionally paranoid, and the wearers of tinfoil hats. It boggles the mind (if the mind is not already boggled).

I assumed that somewhere in the jungle of social networking tools that is burying traditional media like a collapsed barn under grapevine, there would be a service that allowed the surfing community to tag specious content as crap. Something like :
428 readers reported (link to offending content) to SepticTank.org.
Tags: bogus (412), twaddle (15), how do i log in? (1)
Veracity score: 00.23%
But there's no such thing. I should know because I checked it out… on the internet.

Community self-policing works pretty well on individual sites like Wikipedia, but we lack a scheme that will apply to the whole ball of bits. Long before the days of cyberspace my friend Allen proposed the following, which can be taken as a model. Repeal all traffic laws and give every driver a dart gun. Each time a driver jumps the light, cuts someone off, straddles both lanes, or drives while shaving, a vigilant motorist fires a barbed dart with a red flag into the body of the offending vehicle. Collect enough flags and police wave the idiot over and ask him to step out. Then a big electromagnet lifts his car into the maw of a portable crusher. Harsh perhaps, but then Allen is a bit of a sorehead himself.