Greedy Goblin

Saturday, March 4, 2017

Weekend minipost: Nobel Prize to this guy!

Pure genius: before commenting, one should answer three questions about the factual content of the article, to weed out those who didn't even read (or failed to understand) it.

14 comments:

maxim said...

1 step further, and people with "incorrect" political opinions are barred from commenting.

Gevlon said...

@maxim: blogs and journals are private organization. You don't have free speech rights against my blog for example, I can throw out anyone who I subjectively deem useless.

Unknown said...

My country also has no free speech rights constitutionally speaking. It does have freedom of movement tho, so anyone that doesn't like that sort of thing can just leave, never to return.

Imo the factual quiz about an article is a good idea, but do you really want to spend the time required to craft good questions for such a quiz? Because there really isn't any room for opinion questions in such a quiz, nor can you leave any room for interpretation as to the meaning of a question.

Anonymous said...

> I can throw out anyone who I subjectively deem useless.

You obviously CAN do this. @maxim is suggesting that it would be a bad idea.

Imagine that you setup a mandatory poll for your readers: "Who was smarter: Ayn Rand or Albert Einstein?" Subjectively, you might decide that Rand is the correct answer. You could filter out everyone who disagrees with you, but you'd be left with a useless echo-chamber of concurring opinions. You'd also get a few trolls who deliberately choose "Rand" so that they'll be able to leave shitposts or advertisements.

And you'd presumably lose traffic. There are some people (like me) who disagree with your political opinions but continue to visit your blog because you present interesting or novel ideas. If you create a "conform or GTFO" barrier then you'd just be needlessly antagonizing such people. It would be similar to the childish practice of referring to political parties by derogatory names (demonrats, repuglicans) which you've usually *avoided* doing. The Rand/Einstein poll doesn't really prevent anyone from participating, but it indicates that you're not interested in a grown-up discussion.

If you're going down that route then it would be simpler to just switch to a platform (such as Disqus) which allows community moderation. You usually get a hivemind effect, with any dissenting voices being quickly downvoted into oblivion.

Gevlon said...

I think it's a good idea to aggressively moderate: http://greedygoblin.blogspot.hu/2014/09/the-proper-handling-of-official-forums.html

Anonymous said...

not sure how their current system works but if i were designing it i would allow anyone to comment but only people who got their quiz correct would be shown to other people. the morons are blissfully unaware that they are shouting in the wind and so continue to give the site their traffic. informed people can have a proper discussion uninterrupted by the idiots.

Anonymous said...

Not good enough. Like my programming lecturer used to say, one can code fool-proof, but no number of foolproofing layers will protect you against a persistent fool with time on his hands.

The questions are always the same, so it's as simple as screenshotting them and pasting the image to every other supporter of the stupidity cause.

Bots can just pick it apart by brute force with some attempt to context-guess to start with more probable answers. After all, 3 questions, 3 variants, and ability to check the right ones by observing from another connection if your comment appears or not - fairly trivial, not to mention human can just provide answer to troll comment posting bots.

I live in russia, and we have a huge problem with a combination of bots and humans polluting the internet with pro-establishment comments and other content. This will only delay them for a few minutes... at best.

Well, that's some start against total dumbfucks, but to fight the spam and troll bots, not good enough.

Gevlon said...

@Anon: it's not against bots or professional trolls. It's against dumb people. They are aplenty

maxim said...

@Gevlon
The problem i see with this idea is that i don't trust anyone's definition of "dumb" and i'll probably stop reading any source that enforces it's definition of "dumb".
If your goal is straight up reduction of Internet activity, then it would be productive. However, most outlets seek to increase Internet activity, not reduce it, for financial reasons.

Gevlon said...

@maxim: you are reading my site, despite I strongly enforce my definition of dumb.

Also, if you remove a troll, you increase traffic, as normal people no longer run away.

maxim said...

@Gevlon
You don't really enforce anything :) If you think you do, you are kidding yourself. Either way, your enforcement is nowhere near the level of "take a quiz for a right to comment".
Also, there really is no way to cleanly (or even 80%-reliably) separate trolls from normal people. If there was one, it'd already be automated and implemented everywhere.

Gevlon said...

@maxim: this is exactly why the quiz is genius. Every previous attempt tried to separate the troll and the normal based on his opinion. This tries to based on "did he read the post"?

A normal person, even a misguided and dumb one reads the posts and tries to argue with it. A troll doesn't care what was written, just want to create flamewar.

Anonymous said...

Ok you may weed out the "eat some dicks" and "drink bleach you stupid cunt" comments, but the professional trolls will go the extra mile and make their posts count by letting others derail the conversation for them.

1 step further, and people with "incorrect" political opinions are barred from commenting.

we are already several steps ahead. Lock at deemed "unpopular" twitter accounts. Fabulous example being Milo, that also recently got the wrath of the left smear-campaign after being on maher https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP7vi9oLk54. Or youtubes elegant move to demonetise "unfit" content (which will for the most part be an incentive to produce "correct").

Even the ISPs shut you down at some point. (TOR exit nodes or torrent trackers) .. so even if the tech ignorant world thinks "going decentral" is the shit, it is not. we had that in the 80s (BBSes, modems hugely decentral. BBSes where run by computer hobbyists and enthusiasts in their house) and out of that era and some teens breaking shit came the computer fraud and espionage laws in the early 90s world wide.

the masses are afraid of excellence and intelligence, to be confronted with some of that is in their mind talking to the devil. So shut it down, ban, hang, execute. Or in better words what this guy said in 1981 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZ0phUpDPA4&t=272

Dobablo said...

Now to merge it with some form of CAPTCHA. "Please select all the images that the author uses as metaphors for socialism."