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So people who are detail-oriented grammarians are necessarily good commenters? Since when? The assumption here is that you can tell a comment is going to be s
by DanielBMarkham 15y ago
So people who are detail-oriented grammarians are necessarily good commenters?
Since when?
The assumption here is that you can tell a comment is going to be stupid by testing whether or not the person understands homonyms. The only thing you check with that is language ability. I'd argue you'd be better off searching for common internet memes and cliches instead of original thinking -- since that's a sign of a lazy or uninteresting mind. The author is kind enough to inadvertently supply us with one "...If Fox Nation implemented something like this, they’d have zero commenters..." But you could test stuff like this based on any preconceived viewpoint, such as Obama-socialist, Obamacare, etc. The use of shortcuts and blindly-repeated jokes and phrases is a good sign that you're not going to be getting much from the comment.
Not sure how you'd code it, though, but I'm certain you could come up with some semantic magic given enough input text. I'd imagine you'd use n-grams and some Bayesian logic. You'd have to have a pre-existing corpus of the person's writing, though.
- corin_ 15y agoThey are homophones not homonyms - normally I wouldn't be so pedantic, but in a thread around the idea of people having prove they know meanings/spellings/etc, it seems suitible.
- DanielBMarkham 15y agoI actually doubted that was the correct word -- but didn't take time to look it up. Thanks.
- mirkules 15y agoDon't you think it's ironic then that you misspelled "suitable"?
- corin_ 15y agoPretty ironic, yeah. Though I'm generally terrible with misspellings, because once I've thought of what to write my mind drifts off, I usually gaze out of the window, and my hands often follow their muscle memories rather than what I want to type. So in fact, I actually often type their/there wrong, although any time I do I catch it as soon as I've done it.
- mirkules 15y agoNo harm, no foul. :) I was amused by it actually, and a thought crossed my mind that you did it on purpose. Anyway, it just reiterates that, while funny, this method of captcha is pretty much useless.
- Bud 15y agoAlso ironic that the grandparent used a hyphen instead of the proper em dash. (- vs. —)
- shrikant 15y agoSee Muphry's Law: http://www.editorscanberra.org/muphrys-law/ http://www.editorscanberra.org/muphrys-law/ :) edit: Why can't I use an apostrophe in a URL? HN seems to be stripping it out, so couldn't link to the Wikipedia page without a crufty "%27" showing up...
- nitrogen 15y agoWhy can't I use an apostrophe in a URL? HN seems to be stripping it out, so couldn't link to the Wikipedia page without a crufty "%27" showing up... Interesting. It looks like ASCII character 27 is supposed to be valid within URIs according to both RFC 3986 and RFC 1738 (via [0]). Maybe it's a simple component of a system for preempting SQLi on other sites via links from HN? [0] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1547899/which-characters-make-a-url-invalid/1547940#1547940 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1547899/which-characters-...
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- epo 15y agoGosh, a correct use of the term "ironic", can the ghost of Morissette be being laid to rest?.
- mirkules 15y agoThanks, I was very careful with that one.
- moss 15y agoIt's suitable, not suitible - normally I wouldn't be so pedantic, but in a thread around the idea of people having to prove they know meanings/spellings/etc, it seems apropriate.
- dredmorbius 15y agoGood grammar and basic wordsmithery make idiocy much easier to manage. Say: George F. Will vs. Rush Limbaugh.
- neutronicus 15y agoI see an unfair prejudice against the vocal and valuable Indian and Eastern-European HN contingent.