4 ms·

> Centralized moderation, for instance, is replaced by moderating every instance separately. But doesn't that simply shift the problem? The largest instance(s)

> Centralized moderation, for instance, is replaced by moderating every instance separately. But doesn't that simply shift the problem? The largest instance(s) can still moderate maliciously, while the rest are insignificant. I've always thought about modeling this as vote based system votes support claims. Like, "Israel's IDF is committing genocide in Palestine" would be maybe supported by Wikipedia, but would have opposing votes by the US and Israel, and it's up to each client to decide who to trust. Non controversial claims would be generally supported, and on controversial ones you could have them scored given your prior trust in voters and have the UI mention it's controversial and show the underlying votes if you want to dig into that.

mirekrusin 2y ago
Exactly, votes + who you trust-follow (ie. "MIT" with high degree, "Flat Earth Society" with high negative degree) – recursively; creates your own landscape of truth-weighted information.
mzajc 2y ago
Wikipedia generally avoids resolving disputes democratically, instead opting to establish consensus based on sources where possible. With voting systems you end up walking the tightrope between making your system susceptible to Sybil attacks and sockpuppetry on one end, and giving well-established users undue voting rights on another.
- iterance 2y ago
  Obligatory - Wikipedia is not a democracy - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#DEMOCRACY https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_... (Or the related / more in depth "Polling is not a substitute for discussion" - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Polling_is_not_a_substitute_for_discussion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Polling_is_not_a_s...)
- mirekrusin 2y ago
  Sybil and sockpuppetry is solvable by "following" (possibly truth-weighted, can nicely express negative weights). The downside is that there is no global truth view, only individual ones based on who you grant trustworthiness and how it recursively expands – but arguably this reflects reality better.
  - yorwba 2y ago
    "No global truth view" also makes discoverability difficult. How do you know whom to follow? Just people you already know from elsewhere? Then if you don't know any subject-matter experts, will your individual view of the wiki be devoid of subject-matter expertise? That arguably reflects reality better, but also isn't terribly useful. Edit: I guess the situation of an expert correcting an article written by laypeople is similar to an expert replying to a layperson's toot or whatever. So maybe you could solve this by letting people see new edits made by other people on top of their own edits, and giving them the option to block or accept the change, or even follow the user in question.
    - mirekrusin 2y ago
      It would be neutral which is current status quo, not that bad? The nice part is that it would work the other way around as well – from article/subject back to people who endorse or object it – in case you want to follow (attract/repel their pov). In reality who to follow should be easy as it would be recursive – if you follow MIT and MIT follows ie. Noam Chomsky – you wouldn't have to directly follow Noam as your trust would already exist as transitive one from MIT etc.
      - yorwba 2y ago
        The status quo is not neutral. It is extremely biased, particularly against spam, vandalism and low-quality content. Its defense against sybil attacks and sockpuppetry is a single global truth, collectively patrolled by all users. If you tried to do a neutral wiki anyone can edit, it would be full of ads and porn.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  Yea but the list of sources accepted is itself editorialization. And furthermore the articles are unbalanced and incomplete on anything controversial, choosing to quote from sources supporting the view espoused and ignoring others.
- dietr1ch 2y ago
  It's not exactly democracy once you add weights penalising erroneous information and bad actors. Science kind of works this way, you have papers to support, and lack of rebuttal is sort of understood as general acceptance, new evidence updates our beliefs about old information. I think it should be feasible to encode this general agreement into something that can be put into a database. No one has succeeded I guess, and it seems a bit harder since "flatearther-12345" is initially the same as "actual_scientist" since it's hard to have verified identity and offer anonymity at the same time.
EGreg 2y ago
I have a different approach — rather than keeping people apart in echo chambers, I force them all together in a centralized site where they have to see the best arguments for and against each claim Building this to clean up online discourse: https://rational.app https://rational.app Anyone want to join me? Reply or find my email in my profile
drdaeman 2y ago
This requires web-of-trust/friend-to-friend or similar system, and despite numerous attempts none of such things had ever succeeded so far.
reshlo 2y ago
That model doesn’t work because there are plenty of issues on which a vote by the US would increase my confidence in the truthfulness of a claim, but others where it would not make a difference, or even decrease my confidence.
- dietr1ch 2y ago
  I don't think it's impossible to encode that, but yeah, it means that the straightforward approach meets immediate edge cases that may render it broken.

mirekrusin 2y ago

Exactly, votes + who you trust-follow (ie. "MIT" with high degree, "Flat Earth Society" with high negative degree) – recursively; creates your own landscape of truth-weighted information.

mzajc 2y ago

Wikipedia generally avoids resolving disputes democratically, instead opting to establish consensus based on sources where possible. With voting systems you end up walking the tightrope between making your system susceptible to Sybil attacks and sockpuppetry on one end, and giving well-established users undue voting rights on another.

iterance 2y ago
Obligatory - Wikipedia is not a democracy - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#DEMOCRACY https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_... (Or the related / more in depth "Polling is not a substitute for discussion" - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Polling_is_not_a_substitute_for_discussion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Polling_is_not_a_s...)
mirekrusin 2y ago
Sybil and sockpuppetry is solvable by "following" (possibly truth-weighted, can nicely express negative weights). The downside is that there is no global truth view, only individual ones based on who you grant trustworthiness and how it recursively expands – but arguably this reflects reality better.
- yorwba 2y ago
  "No global truth view" also makes discoverability difficult. How do you know whom to follow? Just people you already know from elsewhere? Then if you don't know any subject-matter experts, will your individual view of the wiki be devoid of subject-matter expertise? That arguably reflects reality better, but also isn't terribly useful. Edit: I guess the situation of an expert correcting an article written by laypeople is similar to an expert replying to a layperson's toot or whatever. So maybe you could solve this by letting people see new edits made by other people on top of their own edits, and giving them the option to block or accept the change, or even follow the user in question.
  - mirekrusin 2y ago
    It would be neutral which is current status quo, not that bad? The nice part is that it would work the other way around as well – from article/subject back to people who endorse or object it – in case you want to follow (attract/repel their pov). In reality who to follow should be easy as it would be recursive – if you follow MIT and MIT follows ie. Noam Chomsky – you wouldn't have to directly follow Noam as your trust would already exist as transitive one from MIT etc.
    - yorwba 2y ago
      The status quo is not neutral. It is extremely biased, particularly against spam, vandalism and low-quality content. Its defense against sybil attacks and sockpuppetry is a single global truth, collectively patrolled by all users. If you tried to do a neutral wiki anyone can edit, it would be full of ads and porn.
blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
Yea but the list of sources accepted is itself editorialization. And furthermore the articles are unbalanced and incomplete on anything controversial, choosing to quote from sources supporting the view espoused and ignoring others.
dietr1ch 2y ago
It's not exactly democracy once you add weights penalising erroneous information and bad actors. Science kind of works this way, you have papers to support, and lack of rebuttal is sort of understood as general acceptance, new evidence updates our beliefs about old information. I think it should be feasible to encode this general agreement into something that can be put into a database. No one has succeeded I guess, and it seems a bit harder since "flatearther-12345" is initially the same as "actual_scientist" since it's hard to have verified identity and offer anonymity at the same time.

EGreg 2y ago

I have a different approach — rather than keeping people apart in echo chambers, I force them all together in a centralized site where they have to see the best arguments for and against each claim Building this to clean up online discourse: https://rational.app https://rational.app Anyone want to join me? Reply or find my email in my profile

drdaeman 2y ago

This requires web-of-trust/friend-to-friend or similar system, and despite numerous attempts none of such things had ever succeeded so far.

reshlo 2y ago

That model doesn’t work because there are plenty of issues on which a vote by the US would increase my confidence in the truthfulness of a claim, but others where it would not make a difference, or even decrease my confidence.

dietr1ch 2y ago
I don't think it's impossible to encode that, but yeah, it means that the straightforward approach meets immediate edge cases that may render it broken.