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Show HN: FAQ Off – Open-Source Gamebook-Style Q&A Builder to Mitigate Trolls

4 points by some_furry 7y ago

some_furry 7y ago
Hi HN, I've been developing some open source projects on my Twitch.tv channel for the past few months. I just got this project feature-complete enough for a first beta release. Why? When someone either accrues a large social media following, or become the target of someone else with a large following, it can become very draining to have the same conversation and debate the same tired arguments with hundreds or thousands of different people with varying degrees of intellectual honesty and good faith. What is FAQ-Off? FAQ Off allows users to create a gamebook-styled Q&A, which can be linked to when someone responds to a social media post with the same dumb question or tired arguments. At the bottom of the page, you can link to more Q&A posts that contain further responses to the same, tired arguments. In essence, it allows you to tell trolls, "FAQ off, dude!" (For maximum impact, users are heavily encouraged to thoroughly cite their FAQ Off entries with a diverse range of reliable third party sources.) What problems does FAQ Off solve? If you find yourself being dragged into the same exhausting discussions over and over again, especially from Twitter trolls, you can save yourself a lot of time by pre-writing a branching FAQ adventure that answers users' questions, and their follow-up questions, etc. to render their tired line of questioning obsolete. Does it cost money? No! You can self-host your own instance. I've tried to make it easy to setup. All you need is: * PHP 7.3 or newer, with ext/sodium * PostgreSQL 9.6 or newer * Apache or nginx with LetsEncrypt (for HTTPS) If you want access to the instance I'm running at https://faq.dhol.es https://faq.dhol.es, I'm only giving invite codes out to close friends and Patreon supporters. Invited users are free to invite any of their friends. Why the borderline-profane project name? The project exists to tell boring Internet trolls, "Fuck off", in a way that obviates their entire strategy. I feel that the name captures the spirit of my intentions well. Also, I like puns. What motivated its development? I'm very active in the furry fandom. We're frequent targets of thinly-veiled homophobia. I wanted to arm my fellow furs with tools to better mitigate mob harassment (e.g. the kind of behavior we see after tweets from toxic YouTube personalities like https://twitter.com/keemstar/status/1100493020523347973 https://twitter.com/keemstar/status/1100493020523347973).

4 points by some_furry 7y ago

Hi HN, I've been developing some open source projects on my Twitch.tv channel for the past few months. I just got this project feature-complete enough for a first beta release. Why? When someone either accrues a large social media following, or become the target of someone else with a large following, it can become very draining to have the same conversation and debate the same tired arguments with hundreds or thousands of different people with varying degrees of intellectual honesty and good faith. What is FAQ-Off? FAQ Off allows users to create a gamebook-styled Q&A, which can be linked to when someone responds to a social media post with the same dumb question or tired arguments. At the bottom of the page, you can link to more Q&A posts that contain further responses to the same, tired arguments. In essence, it allows you to tell trolls, "FAQ off, dude!" (For maximum impact, users are heavily encouraged to thoroughly cite their FAQ Off entries with a diverse range of reliable third party sources.) What problems does FAQ Off solve? If you find yourself being dragged into the same exhausting discussions over and over again, especially from Twitter trolls, you can save yourself a lot of time by pre-writing a branching FAQ adventure that answers users' questions, and their follow-up questions, etc. to render their tired line of questioning obsolete. Does it cost money? No! You can self-host your own instance. I've tried to make it easy to setup. All you need is: * PHP 7.3 or newer, with ext/sodium * PostgreSQL 9.6 or newer * Apache or nginx with LetsEncrypt (for HTTPS) If you want access to the instance I'm running at https://faq.dhol.es https://faq.dhol.es, I'm only giving invite codes out to close friends and Patreon supporters. Invited users are free to invite any of their friends. Why the borderline-profane project name? The project exists to tell boring Internet trolls, "Fuck off", in a way that obviates their entire strategy. I feel that the name captures the spirit of my intentions well. Also, I like puns. What motivated its development? I'm very active in the furry fandom. We're frequent targets of thinly-veiled homophobia. I wanted to arm my fellow furs with tools to better mitigate mob harassment (e.g. the kind of behavior we see after tweets from toxic YouTube personalities like https://twitter.com/keemstar/status/1100493020523347973 https://twitter.com/keemstar/status/1100493020523347973).