User submitted content is one of the defining features of our new "2.0" world wide web. Sites that depend entirely on content produced by its visitors are being acquired every day and no frequent user of the Internet could have failed to hear about sites such as MySpace, Digg and YouTube. But user submitted content is of varying quality, especially when it expresses an evaluation of something, such as a review or a blog entry. It has become more important than ever to be able to tell quacks from the real doctors.

I just finished watching the semifinal of the Eurovision Song Contest, a relatively popular event here in Europe. For those of you who aren't familiar with it, it's an annual contest where several European, as well as non-European, countries compete in music. Each country chooses an artist to represent it. The winnining country gets to host the contest the next year. As usual the quality was uneven, there were some potentially great ones and a lot that were mediocre and some that were outright bad. Also as usual, the results of the vote made absolutely no sense.