Confession of a KudoZ limits supporter

MarcPrior wrote:

I prefer such lists, particularly the private or semi-public (i.e. with open membership, but requiring a log-in) lists, for two reasons. Firstly, if I'm unsure of a term, I can consult colleagues without informing anyone capable of using Google of the fact. Besides the image issue, there is also one of confidentiality: I can often justify publishing one sentence from a customer's text when I know that it will be read by 150 fellow members of my professional association, but would not be willing to post it where it can be found by any search engine spider.

Secondly, proper discussion is not impeded on these lists by having to take place within the framework of a party game. The party game has a certain appeal, I admit, but once the novelty has worn off, it's just an obstacle. As anyone with experience of proper terminology discussion lists knows, a system which attempts to define terminology issues in terms of a quiz with a question and a range of possible answers is far too simplistic. That colleagues nevertheless manage to engage in some form of constructive discussion within the KudoZ system despite these constraints is a tribute to their ingenuity, not to KudoZ. Nevertheless, as discussions of KudoZ show with monotonous regularity, the signal-to-noise ratio on KudoZ, at least in some language pairs, is annoyingly low.

Marc