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IMHO reputation is important to build into the base level for a platform like this. Allowing anon registrations and commenting will eventually lead to a lot of
by ahnick 8y ago
IMHO reputation is important to build into the base level for a platform like this. Allowing anon registrations and commenting will eventually lead to a lot of noise and abuse of the platform for misinformation. I think some sort of verification of a person's qualifications on particular subject areas and then allowing them to only "fact check" on those qualified areas is required here to have an effective platform that will scale well.
- YazIAm 8y agoCurrently (for the prototype), you can start contributing, but your reviews only become public once I've vetted you and given you a fact checking test. Long term the goal is to have an open reputation score for every fact checker. I'm currently experimenting with different implementations of this, and seeing good promise.
- hamitron 8y agoWhat credentials do you have to properly vet people?
- YazIAm 8y agoWell first, the point of this type of open fact checking is you can always verify everything for yourself, so you don't need to trust my credentials. Working on this over the last few years though, I've personally fact checked over 500 assertions.
- adamsea 8y agoI would respectfully disagree. Introduce enough noise into the system and the cost of verification becomes so high that doing so is unrealistic for many or most people. Also, on first glance the app looks great, well-polished, and the UX of reading an article and looking at sources for claim is nice :). Thanks for working on and sharing this!
- SamBam 8y agoYes, but that's not the point. That merely shows that we still need to trust someone -- you. Specifically, let's say you support belief A, and I want to add a whole bunch of facts that support belief B. You're still the gatekeeper to decide whether I get to be a contributor. There's no way for someone to know that you're going to approve equally-qualified contributors on different sides of an issue, so they're always going to wonder whether there are voices or facts being omitted. (But if that's just the plan for beta, that's fine.)
- YazIAm 8y agoIndeed, manual vetting is only for alpha. I should reiterate - the point of this type of open fact checking is you can always verify everything for yourself, so you don't need to trust my credentials. Long term every review, even those that are flagged, will be accessible. Albeit, those that are flagged will be in a separate section, but the point is they will always be accessible, so that you never have to trust me or the community, you can always review for yourself.
- SamBam 8y ago> I should reiterate - the point of this type of open fact checking is you can always verify everything for yourself, so you don't need to trust my credentials. Again, not for the omission of facts, or the omission of counter-evidence. E.g, suppose you only let in contributors who agree with you. An article is posts with "Fact A," which you happen to agree with. A bunch of your hand-picked contributors put up evidence to support "Fact A." No one ever posts the evidence debunking "Fact A." So there's no way to "verify" anything, because we can't see what's not there. Most readers will be satisfied that "Fact A" is well-sourced. So it's not enough to say that the reader can verify everything and not need to trust you. I mean, they could do their own research to Google the evidence debunking Fact A, but they could do that anyway and the platform doesn't support them.
- idlewords 8y agoThis sounds like a job where people don't get paid.
- teleclimber 8y agoI'm not 100% sure that lack of specific subject matter expertise should prevent people from commenting. In many cases experts are the best people to go to, but in other cases they can represent entrenched ideas that are precisely the ones that need rethinking.
- SkyBelow 8y agoFor an example, I have read writings of many experts in mental disorders that completely ignore changes in the DSM V. I do not know if the experts are not aware of the changes or don't agree with them, but the way mental disorders are classified underwent some significant changes and I can quote direct lines from the DSM V that strongly contradict the claims of experts.
- dragonwriter 8y ago> For an example, I have read writings of many experts in mental disorders that completely ignore changes in the DSM V. Nitpick, but it's DSM 5; roman numerals were dropped after DSM IV. > I do not know if the experts are not aware of the changes or don't agree with them Almost certainly the latter. Lots of DSM V changes were, and are, controversial (even among people who acknowledge the existence of the problems the changes were intended to fix, the aisle solutions chosen are sometimes controversial.)
- Fiahil 8y agoEqually important : Don't display reputation to users other than themselves. Humans will attributes higher trust level to individuals with higher reputation, despite them occasionally dropping false claims.
- CoryG89 8y agoDoes it really make sense to call it "reputation" if you're the only one that can see it?
- EGreg 8y agoOn HN they call it Karma
- 0xffff2 8y agoYou can see a user's karma on HN though, just not on their individual posts.
- all2 8y agoI think so. You could probably pick something better. Its more of a Pavlovian reinforcement than reputation. You see what got you lots of points (what people liked) and you're more apt to do that in the future. By keeping everyone else blind to someone's scores, you don't have as much popularity bias creeping in.
- microcolonel 8y agoI think it is better to record the facts about people's opinions, than to count reputation points on identities. For example, as ternary predicates: 1: water is wet 2: identity_1 corroborates 1 3: 2 by_way_of blind_faith 4: identity_2 denies 1 5: 4 by_way_of blind_faith etc. You can go as far with this as you want, and the consumer gets to decide what establishes or hurts credibility, and which statements of fact corroborated by what methods and by whom will either count toward or against the credibility of a specific form of statement on a specific topic by a specific set of identities. For example, you could have predicates describing conflicts of interest, and identify the relevant conflicts of interest by querying for interests in the predicate in question to find what people you trust will say about the interest of individuals and organizations in corroborating or denying a particular claim. You could also have predicates which show ways in which a statement is controversial in its general form, but is uncontroversial when refined. For example: liquid water can not be wetted with liquid water.
- anigbrowl 8y agoDisagree. The point is to link assertions to publicly available primary sources like court documents or suchlike and articulate the linkage clearly.It's well designed for that.