this is just a thought experiment, but instead of "no obscurity open rules engine" for blocking spam which can be used to help create ever more creative $pAm, how about a "no obscurity open rules engine" that all acceptable posts must meet, a sort of Turing test. Then the stuff that was allowed through would at least be readable.<p>remember that post a month back (and of course all other recently discusseds) for stylometry, to use writing style to identify authorship? would it work to require posters to expose a unique "voice" in their posts, and where banning of your style would definitely be something you'd want to avoid.<p>This is a thought experiment to talk about. Yes, there are obvious criticisms, but would it also produce something "we can have nice things" useful?<p>obvious criticisms are sort of like "what about the children!?" concern trolls (this is meant to be hyerbolic and biased): "what about PopulationX, the half literate know-nothing n00bs who are barely surviving under repressive regimes, they may all sound alike, but we can't silence their voices!" Which I agree with, we don't want to silence their voices. But again, this is just a thought experiment, I bet all the super high quality well informed thoughtful posters would in fact sail through the system. So the question is, does PopulationX actually all style-sound alike? (where population X is the concern you raise, not the fake one i just made up) maybe they are just as distinctive and the system would actually work for them too.<p>and the criticism "this is not going to work because it's just spam filters with more steps and a minus sign" is not an adequate criticism because (a) spam filters do exist, and are deployed, and do take care of a bunch of spam. and (b) yes, what I'm trial ballooning here is similar, it would just distribute some of the work of maintaining the tasty spam rules to good posters who might get some sort of "you can't post hot grits here, naked or petrified" warning, more frequently then they currently do, hopefully in some way that would be useful for the community at large.