At 9:41 PM -0700 5/13/01, Ryan Sorensen wrote:
>So I get this idea.
>Crypto is great for lots of things, but anonymous public postings it's not.
>I know this has been discussed here before, but I haven't seen specifics.
>
>
>What exactly makes a person's writing style distinctive?
>
>Is it distinctive phrases?
>Number of syllables?
>
>And almost the inverse, how would you come up with a "generic" writing style?
>
>Any help is appreciated.
>Including pointers to online resources or past discussions, if they
>have any specifics.
Think in terms of how _you_ would try to identify similar styles.
-- British or foreign usages
-- type of emphasis indicators (like _this_ or like *this* or like....)
-- use of ellipses, em dashes, etc.
-- vocabulary, phrases
No single set of these is proof, obviously, especially as it's so
easy to use search-and-replace to replace specific usages, e.g,
replacing em dashes with something else.
Rather than giving you pointers to sources of info, you should think
about what kind of program you might write to find "similarity
measures."
Will frequent posters to this and other mailing lists have specific
posts fall into correlation "bins"? You tell us.
** Tim May
--
Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED] Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
