4 ms·

Am I crazy to think a "human curated X" is less impossible than we think it is, even at scale? Imagine if you could upvote/downvote Google search results, and

Am I crazy to think a "human curated X" is less impossible than we think it is, even at scale? Imagine if you could upvote/downvote Google search results, and got rewarded for being "right" or something...

Meekro 6y ago
I agree there has to be a way, but it'll have to be cleverer than what you suggested. App stores already rank apps based on user reviews, and reddit ranks posts based on user voting. Both are manipulated to hell, and I've read reports of third world sweatshops dedicated to churning out those reviews. Since the farmed reviews are written by humans, they don't get filtered by AI reading the text or watching people's mouse movements or whatever.
- TameAntelope 6y ago
  The word "right" in my comment is doing a lot of work, heh...
  - nwienert 6y ago
    It only fails on large subreddits. The key is scale. Reddit still has the best content on the web despite a few scale problems.
m463 6y ago
why wouldn't it be just as easy to game a human?
smoldesu 6y ago
The issue with "human curated X" isn't the X-factor, but the "human" one. Even an upvoting system like you're suggesting can be abused by bad actors who want to bury legitimate results in favor of seedier ones. At the end of the day, your best bet is to take a combination approach: using RSS for news/reading is a pretty good upgrade, and switching to a decentralized search engine like searx will at least provide a benevolent result.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nerbert 6y ago
Totally, it would be curated by people who’ve read the results and though it had its place on the board. We could call it "ReadIT".
- nwienert 6y ago
  You joke, but searching with “site:reddit.com” is half the battle to getting good results on Google. See also: stackoverflow, HN, various forums, basically any user generated + user voted content. A user-voted search engine is a good idea, I think.
  - nerbert 6y ago
    Totally agree, point is they already exist in some form.
PhantomGremlin 6y ago
Am I crazy to think a "human curated X" is less impossible than we think it is, even at scale? Once upon a time, back in 1994, a startup used this idea as their first product. It was very popular, very useful. It was called Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web. But, as the WWW grew insanely fast in the 1990s, the human approach couldn't keep up with the algorithms. Eventually it was abandoned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Directory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Directory
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

Meekro 6y ago

I agree there has to be a way, but it'll have to be cleverer than what you suggested. App stores already rank apps based on user reviews, and reddit ranks posts based on user voting. Both are manipulated to hell, and I've read reports of third world sweatshops dedicated to churning out those reviews. Since the farmed reviews are written by humans, they don't get filtered by AI reading the text or watching people's mouse movements or whatever.

TameAntelope 6y ago
The word "right" in my comment is doing a lot of work, heh...
- nwienert 6y ago
  It only fails on large subreddits. The key is scale. Reddit still has the best content on the web despite a few scale problems.

m463 6y ago

why wouldn't it be just as easy to game a human?

smoldesu 6y ago

The issue with "human curated X" isn't the X-factor, but the "human" one. Even an upvoting system like you're suggesting can be abused by bad actors who want to bury legitimate results in favor of seedier ones. At the end of the day, your best bet is to take a combination approach: using RSS for news/reading is a pretty good upgrade, and switching to a decentralized search engine like searx will at least provide a benevolent result.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nerbert 6y ago

Totally, it would be curated by people who’ve read the results and though it had its place on the board. We could call it "ReadIT".

nwienert 6y ago
You joke, but searching with “site:reddit.com” is half the battle to getting good results on Google. See also: stackoverflow, HN, various forums, basically any user generated + user voted content. A user-voted search engine is a good idea, I think.
- nerbert 6y ago
  Totally agree, point is they already exist in some form.

PhantomGremlin 6y ago

Am I crazy to think a "human curated X" is less impossible than we think it is, even at scale? Once upon a time, back in 1994, a startup used this idea as their first product. It was very popular, very useful. It was called Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web. But, as the WWW grew insanely fast in the 1990s, the human approach couldn't keep up with the algorithms. Eventually it was abandoned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Directory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahoo!_Directory

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]