I can't know this for sure, but I would hope those sorts of comments/attitudes would be voted down.
A modification on the idea would be to only allow a site with people who have a net worth greater than a certain amount or who are in certain positions of responsibility or power (like CEOs of companies with a market cap greater than 10 million). You could extend this for any classification system: people with doctorate degrees, people with X many years of experience in Y field, etc.
Basically I would be interested to see what sort of news and discussions would evolve from a meritocracy-based community. Think of the benefit that comes from the TED speaker's community.
What your advocating is exactly the opposite of the beautiful community that TED promotes and nurtures.
Advocating an IQ or net worth barrier of entry for discussion will filter discussion by, in my opinion, by all the wrong values. While I'm not saying everyone in a top position of a profitable company has nothing new to say, there are people who are just hard-working, potentially well-connected and knew how to hack the system for financial gain. Would heiresses and lottery winners be excluded? Where would one draw the line? Ditto for math degrees, would you care what a Chemistry PhD trying to create better ways for oil companies to make money has to say? Who would decide what fields are "worthy"? Is sociology okay? Is botology? Is computer science?
In my opinion, what made TED great is their dependence on the ideas themselves, and not credentials, to present to the world. The mix of people from all walks of life, from rural African villages, to dancers, to PhDs, to poets, to interns, to Nobel winners, to musicians, to Presidents (I can go on and on) is what made TED so great. Academic conferences existed before and will exist after, but very few will have the wide appeal and poignancy of TED.
Hoping that my comment above gets voted down is exactly the type of community I'm afraid of. What about my comment or attitude would you hope to have less of? Is being afraid of a community where potentially empty credentials (IQ, family, race, etc) are valued over ideas really so wrong?
I'm not advocating one site with a meritocracy filter; have as many as you'd like. One for Math PhDs, Chemistry PhDs, just having a bachelor's degree, CEO's, car salesmen, etc. The barrier to entry filter just assures that the community members share experience or ability, not just interest. The extent to which you wanted to quantify their experience or ability is up to you.
I see TED as the ultimate meritocracy-based conference. TED's official website is pretty fluffy about who gets invited to speak, but the reality is that everyone who gets on stage has done something amazing. If you're some college freshmen with an amazing idea to change the world but you haven't implemented it, you're not going to get invited to TED. Great ideas are a dime a dozen; implementing a great idea is what's amazing.
When I referenced "those sorts of comments/attitudes would be voted down" I was not referring to your post. I was referring to the sort of post you mentioned: the "mutual masturbation" posts. I apologize for any confusion.
A modification on the idea would be to only allow a site with people who have a net worth greater than a certain amount or who are in certain positions of responsibility or power (like CEOs of companies with a market cap greater than 10 million). You could extend this for any classification system: people with doctorate degrees, people with X many years of experience in Y field, etc.
Basically I would be interested to see what sort of news and discussions would evolve from a meritocracy-based community. Think of the benefit that comes from the TED speaker's community.