Another interesting idea might be to allow us to save personal rankings of people instead of messages/threads. For example, if I noticed that Sally Jones was always right on the mark, I could give her a personal technical ranking of say 5 out of 5. If everyone starts with a ranking of 3, I could downgrade those people who don't have anything meaningful to add. Remember, these rankings would be specific to me so it won't directly impact anyone else how I rate them. (It would be a cool PUTM feature to be able to see what your own average rank is though!)

Then, with that information in the UT, I could do all sorts of things. I could maybe filter the list for people I gave personal rankings of 3 or higher, I could mark messages that ask questions and only receive replies sent by people with rankings of n or greater. Or, hey, here's a cool one, I could have all messages from people I ranked as 5 come in as "marked" messages.

The other side of this is the data that the UT owners could harvest. After a period of time, they would be able to "peek" at our rankings and have a real idea of how users feel about the technical merit of others. They could then use that knowledge to "sweeten the deal" for the people who are voted highly. I would think that the UT fathers would want as many high-ranking people around as possible, to attract other users.

The interface for this could be as simple as a drop-down list next to our names on the message header.

This would gobble up disk space, but hey, disks are cheap. (Spoken like a true consultant.)

Marty


PS. Read Killer Apps! It's a great book for digital strategists.