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Neat exploration of a solution - but I wouldn't consider this a complete product - more of a test of auth-less logins for a randomized guest book. There is a l

Neat exploration of a solution - but I wouldn't consider this a complete product - more of a test of auth-less logins for a randomized guest book. There is a lot more that would be needed before people used this. I can almost guarantee that random posts will be worthless and I have no feedback on the messages I personally send.

s_kilk 12y ago
Thanks for the comment, and I agree, it's very bare-bones right now. In an ideal world, what would a product like this look like when fully fleshed-out?
- skymt 12y ago
  I can't see it becoming a product as in "makes money" or "attracts investors" without compromising the slow-web spirit. Social sites traditionally thrive on compulsive re-visiting (because ad money), and limiting users to one update per day kills that dead. That said, it might become a more attractive experiment if it had some way of floating good thoughts to more readers. E.g. you could "like" only one of the thoughts from your feed and have an extra slot in your feed for a thought that another user "liked."
  - s_kilk 12y ago
    >> I can't see it becoming a product as in "makes money" or "attracts investors" without compromising the slow-web spirit. We're on the same page there. Still it would be nice to find a way to make enough to cover the server costs without fucking up the site. The notion of upvoting thoughts is a recurring theme in this discussion, so I'm bumping that to the top of the todo list. Again, thanks for the input, it's very much appreciated.
- yaddayadda 12y ago
  Not quite building off of your current system, but I've long wanted a service where I could log-in and be approved to participate anonymously in conversations that are still somewhat moderated. "?&%$#?#$&?", you ask. There are a lot of sites that I participate in that allow you to rate and flag other users (e.g. HN). I actually really like this ability. But frequently I want to make many posts to such site, but I don't really want all my comments to be able to be tied together For example, there's an HN post about BFE, Idaho and I mention that's my hometown. In another post, it's relevant to the conversation, so I mention I'm Italian. In another post it becomes clear that I have extensive professional experience in underwater basket weaving. Put these three facts together and they can quickly undermine any anonymity (i.e. I'm the only Italian born in BFE, Idaho that has a career in underwater basket weaving). So having a log-on system that allows me to be held accountable (i.e. If I make a comment on HN that gets downvoted, my HN rating still goes down) but where I can still be anonymous (i.e. no one can aggregate my comments). From a service perspective, I'm thinking of something like a Disqus plug-in architecture where I could log-in to the primary service, and only that service would ever know that I'm a singular entity. That service would provide an api that other sites could use set and grab general reputation data. For example, I log into Service as 'yaddayadda'. I navigate to HN, and log-in. The Service reports to HN that I'm an authorized user currently known as 2051013165142 (new, random user id each time I visit HN). HN polls the Service API for my current user id. The Service reports back that my identity has earned a total of X HN submission up votes, Y HN comment up votes, and Z HN downvotes. HN can then do what it does to calculate my reputation. When I subsequently make a submission or comment and am rated, HN reports those points back to the Service, which aggregates them into 'yaddayadda's' HN totals.
  - spencerflem 12y ago
    Some subreddits of the reddit fork voat.co do this
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Quite a few brain (and cpu) cycles have been spent on 'author identification' software that allows to tie together pieces of text at various points in time to a single author.
    - mutagen 12y ago
      Opportunity for a text anonymization API here. Insert subtle stylistic changes for the pendants with more obvious 'foreign-isms' for those seeking a greater degree of misdirection and anonymity.
    - yaddayadda 12y ago
      I believe most of them still require sizable amounts of work. For example, this individual comment might be able to narrow me down to native U.S. English speaker with higher education, but not much beyond that. I have played with gender-identification software[1], which has such a limit. Frankly, the identification seems to be more topically sensitive than it is gender sensitive. For example, if I put in my writing about robots it will id me as male, but if I put in my writing about cooking it will id me as female. Combining the 'author identification' software with known identities (such as we have here on HN) will certainly make them more accurate. Hence, my desire for a system that limits such computations. [1] http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

s_kilk 12y ago

Thanks for the comment, and I agree, it's very bare-bones right now. In an ideal world, what would a product like this look like when fully fleshed-out?

skymt 12y ago
I can't see it becoming a product as in "makes money" or "attracts investors" without compromising the slow-web spirit. Social sites traditionally thrive on compulsive re-visiting (because ad money), and limiting users to one update per day kills that dead. That said, it might become a more attractive experiment if it had some way of floating good thoughts to more readers. E.g. you could "like" only one of the thoughts from your feed and have an extra slot in your feed for a thought that another user "liked."
- s_kilk 12y ago
  >> I can't see it becoming a product as in "makes money" or "attracts investors" without compromising the slow-web spirit. We're on the same page there. Still it would be nice to find a way to make enough to cover the server costs without fucking up the site. The notion of upvoting thoughts is a recurring theme in this discussion, so I'm bumping that to the top of the todo list. Again, thanks for the input, it's very much appreciated.
yaddayadda 12y ago
Not quite building off of your current system, but I've long wanted a service where I could log-in and be approved to participate anonymously in conversations that are still somewhat moderated. "?&%$#?#$&?", you ask. There are a lot of sites that I participate in that allow you to rate and flag other users (e.g. HN). I actually really like this ability. But frequently I want to make many posts to such site, but I don't really want all my comments to be able to be tied together For example, there's an HN post about BFE, Idaho and I mention that's my hometown. In another post, it's relevant to the conversation, so I mention I'm Italian. In another post it becomes clear that I have extensive professional experience in underwater basket weaving. Put these three facts together and they can quickly undermine any anonymity (i.e. I'm the only Italian born in BFE, Idaho that has a career in underwater basket weaving). So having a log-on system that allows me to be held accountable (i.e. If I make a comment on HN that gets downvoted, my HN rating still goes down) but where I can still be anonymous (i.e. no one can aggregate my comments). From a service perspective, I'm thinking of something like a Disqus plug-in architecture where I could log-in to the primary service, and only that service would ever know that I'm a singular entity. That service would provide an api that other sites could use set and grab general reputation data. For example, I log into Service as 'yaddayadda'. I navigate to HN, and log-in. The Service reports to HN that I'm an authorized user currently known as 2051013165142 (new, random user id each time I visit HN). HN polls the Service API for my current user id. The Service reports back that my identity has earned a total of X HN submission up votes, Y HN comment up votes, and Z HN downvotes. HN can then do what it does to calculate my reputation. When I subsequently make a submission or comment and am rated, HN reports those points back to the Service, which aggregates them into 'yaddayadda's' HN totals.
- spencerflem 12y ago
  Some subreddits of the reddit fork voat.co do this
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Quite a few brain (and cpu) cycles have been spent on 'author identification' software that allows to tie together pieces of text at various points in time to a single author.
  - mutagen 12y ago
    Opportunity for a text anonymization API here. Insert subtle stylistic changes for the pendants with more obvious 'foreign-isms' for those seeking a greater degree of misdirection and anonymity.
  - yaddayadda 12y ago
    I believe most of them still require sizable amounts of work. For example, this individual comment might be able to narrow me down to native U.S. English speaker with higher education, but not much beyond that. I have played with gender-identification software[1], which has such a limit. Frankly, the identification seems to be more topically sensitive than it is gender sensitive. For example, if I put in my writing about robots it will id me as male, but if I put in my writing about cooking it will id me as female. Combining the 'author identification' software with known identities (such as we have here on HN) will certainly make them more accurate. Hence, my desire for a system that limits such computations. [1] http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.php
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]