The digg and del.icio.us models are still in their infancy and are working through a lot of problems. But I do see things going in that direction, they need a wider acceptance to reach a tipping point but once they do there will be many niche flavors and permutations. Wink has a good idea too but these models are in the same place search engines were in 1997, there was not a wide awareness of the potential and not that many users. Back then porn spam was the biggest problem as I recall, no matter what term you entered at Lycos you got porn versions of what you wanted... In the end it boils down to community, once the cohort becomes large enough niches can develop within a community and promote a model. Andi
I agree to a certain extent--the points you make are what I meant by spamming. I don't think that is much different from what happens today. People are making millions from cloaking, etc... There are always ways around the system, and I don't think that will ever cease. Making user rating a small part of a larger search engine algo would be beneficial to search for most internet users in my opinion.