Hi,
Wade T.Smith <wade_smith@harvard.edu> writes:
<<
>>One creates demand by providing quality.
Pretty much a maxim already. Or is demand an achievement of quality?
And
what _is_ quality?
>>
What is quality? (uh oh... I'll probably lose half my audience in the next sentence) My theory is that quality is a measure of the "goodness of fit" between a problem and a proposed solution. For instance, the quality of an essay is dependent on how well the essay answers the question it (supposedly) addresses. The quality of a television is dependent on how well it performs (proposed solution) the tasks required of it (the problem) -- and since these tasks can vary, the same 12" television may be of low quality for one gal in one place (who needs a large screen in her entertainment room), but of high quality for another guy in a different place (who wants a little TV in his bedroom).
I admit that this theory is a bit 'rough and ready', but that is almost to be expected -- quality is a *fundamental* aspect of our interaction with reality, so anything less /basic/ would fail to capture it's essence. (see: Persig, Robert M. _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanence_, 1974)
<<
What can we provide that is of high quality here?
>>
You're free to hold up a different standard for measure; in which case your assessment of quality will differ from mine.
I spent about two hundred hours ranking the virus achives according to a similar (but more broad and less explicit) criteria -- I would like to think that there is general agreement that such a standard defines "quality"
ERiC