Hi Vilc,
Interesting to discuss the idea of a value assessment vs an ‘aggregated this was useful in the moment’ value.
I had considered some kind of scheme like this in the past as I have been toying with this whole area for a year or so, I went through various ratings and favourites plugins which did not do quite as I wanted.
Returning to the ideas you floated…
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I imagine sophistication would be required, for instance a new tiddler would have a disadvantage over one that was 3 years old - indeed you point this out in your disadvantages.
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It would still suffer from inflation, if the numbers are not to get arbitarily high you might need some kind of normalisation and I suspect that might have a bearing on the first point. I find myself thinking of using floating point numbers and dividing through by elapsed time to get a final value but it is probably more complicated than that.
As far as the review plugin goes I am finding that the anti-inflationary measure of adding one day to the review-interval for all tiddlers in the review pool works very well. The review plugin creates work because unlike a value score it actually invites me to do the review. I am often behind and have a list of 200 or more tiddlers to review. Over time I click on the button that increases review-interval for all tiddlers until over time I find I reach some kind of equilibrium. Each time I do this I review all tiddlers with a short review interval and decide whether I should reverse the action just taken for that particular tiddler - so after anti-inflation I review specific ‘prices’ that need to increase again but this time only for the short interval tiddlers that have some perceived extra value or I keep forgetting.
So it’s a kind of multiphase sifting process which starts with a software time-save but then flows into a manual adjust phase to try to ensure that the really deserving cases end up where they belong whilst ensuring a manageable daily workload.
The anti-inflationary measures for the rating value plugin will likely follow a similar pattern but this time the driver will be the accuracy of the higher ratings rather than trying to manage a self-imposed or rather software-imposed workload. The ratings plugin does not directly suggest I do some work but the review plugin does.
I don’t see any of this as “fire and forget” - our understanding and memory are fickle beasts and ratings from today will not necessarily serve as ratings for tomorrow so I see the anti-inflationary measures only as a time saving device to re-baseline everything after which the fine tweaking starts. The tools designed to fill the storyriver with a range are therefore just as important for the search for tiddlers affected recently by an anti-inflationary sweep that need re-adjustment.
Maybe other people would not suffer from inflationary tendencies but I doubt it - we do tend to get excited by the latest thing and sometimes need to review and older thing to realise just how good it really was.
I do find long term use of these tools affects the mind.
Initially the review plugin meant my brain was overloaded and I entered a phase of brain fog - the software was being too demanding, then as I added anti-inflation it helped and finally I started to look at the list of tiddlers to review as something to chip away at and not to get done today and that phase started to ease off a bit. Changes in software + changes in me.