I've dreamed about the possibilities for automated fact-checking to improve online debate, and considered attempting to write it myself (using data sources like

I've dreamed about the possibilities for automated fact-checking to improve online debate, and considered attempting to write it myself (using data sources like Wolfram Alpha and Google Public Data, and parsing natural language with a big dirty pile of regular expressions, which can't be the best approach but it's an approach I could attempt in a weekend). For example, a program could examine a text for sentences matching "[X country] is [comparison] than [Y country]" and check that against online data sources. So if you're typing a comment into reddit or wherever, it would first check your comment for claims it can parse, and alert you if you are mistaken about something so you can change it. And if you are correct about something, but didn't supply a citation, it could add it automatically. This could have several awesome effects: * It would make online debates more accurate, spreading truth and knowledge. * It might set a standard of factual accuracy; people might come to expect assertions to be backed up with citations, and regard claims as suspicious if no supporting reference is provided. * Just knowing their facts will be checked (possibly by a future version of the software being re-run on old forum comments and highlighting inaccuracies for all to see) might make people more careful in their assertions. If voice recognition technology improves, then this might eventually fact-check TV in real-time.