jazj

Saw this years back, tried it again just now to see if they got it to work by now.

It thought the VU's "Sunday Morning" was Guardiani Del Destino's "Rhapsody" (and their "Rock & Roll" was Sonata Arctica's "Weballergy"), the head of Coltrane's "Giant Steps" was Shakira's "Whenever Wherevr", CSN's "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" was "A New York Fairytale", Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" was "If Ever I Would Leave You", The Clash's "Atom Tan" was Mental as Anything's "Live it Up", and The Police's "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" was Toquinho's "Aquarela". FAIL.

I think paid barriers to entry just amplify the positive or negative effects of other administrative measures; in and of themselves, all they do is reduce the rate of people coming in without much affecting its make-up. It doesn't even work that well for filtering out teenagers any more with the advent of prepaid gift cards (and before that they could just ask the 'rents to stump up the cash anyway).

I say that paid barriers don't do that much good or bad themselves based on the fact that on MeFi they seem to have been an asset whereas on, say, Something Awful they seem to've just turned the place into an echo chamber, and on Kuro5hin all it's done is drive the site further into stagnation. Paid barriers aren't risk-free either; it makes account gaming even more fun and makes your site a juicier target for attacks, especially if it means you end up storing people's personal details.

Fair point. It was actually three years ago:

"On February 9, 2005, AOL discontinued newsgroup access through its service (this was announced on January 25, 2005[6][7])."

Of course "the September that never ended" ended two years ago. So this post appears to be not only a non sequitur but also self-contradictory.

I suspect that this article is a direct consequence of Arc's sceptical reception on Slashdot, Digg, and Reddit.