4 ms·

"including negative words and profanities." This is why I have a problem with things like this. "negative words" might be why I disagree with the politics of

"including negative words and profanities." This is why I have a problem with things like this. "negative words" might be why I disagree with the politics of the article...and poor spelling and grammar? Are we now discriminating against a certain type of person now? Do people that can't spell very well deserve to have their opinions ignored? This seems like nothing more than a smoke-screen to silence opposing view points and opinions. The up/down vote buttons already serve this purpose quite well. The same is already happening on Twitter. Activist groups against discrimination pass out lists of people to perma-ban based on nothing more but opposing opinions...doing the same exact thing they are supposed to be against.

olefoo 12y ago
> Do people that can't spell very well deserve to have their opinions ignored? Yes. Indeed they do. Good spelling is a mark of conscientiousness and attention to detail. Bad spelling is indicative of loose morals and an addiction to video games and misogyny that should be extirpated from polite society. Note also that users of a public channel ( Twitter ) choosing to accept other peoples suggestions as to who they should ignore so that they are not subjected to the vilest forms of verbal/textual abuse that humanity has invented; is not censorship. Relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/
- bradjohnson 12y ago
  >Bad spelling is indicative of loose morals and an addiction to video games and misogyny that should be extirpated from polite society. Is that a joke? How can you possibly justify that conclusion?
  - TronPaul_ 12y ago
    I was waiting for the /s as well. Having spent some time on the internet I've spoken and chatted with people for whom English is a second language. Are you telling me that their deficient understanding of English indicates a lack of morality? Is the English language a religion now? Guess I didn't get the memo.
    - thaumasiotes 12y ago
      related: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18667 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18667 The author is the daughter of Czech emigrants, writing about her experience visiting the Czech Republic, with an focus on the difference between learning a new language as an adult and re-learning a language you once knew. From the link: > There can be a striking lack of accommodation or cooperation on the part of listeners [in rural Czech areas]. Once, when traveling with my brother, I watched him flounder in Czech at a small town gas station, trying to convey which pack of cigarettes he wanted to purchase—he had forgotten the brand name, and was trying to describe the appearance of the package. Ignoring his pointing gestures, the cashier sat stone-faced through his attempts. When she finally identified what he wanted, she tossed the cigarettes on the counter, saying contemptuously, “As you can see, the package is red, not pink.” My brother apologized, “I’m sorry, my Czech is very bad.” “I can see that,” she replied without cracking the slightest smile. Experience with second-language learners is, speaking broadly, vanishingly rare among humans. Most people never meet any language learners. The rural Czechs are going by a rule of thumb: someone speaking that badly is more likely to be severely mentally retarded than anything else. (And they're correct about that! If they started seeing a flood of foreign tourists with rudimentary Czech, they'd adjust accordingly.)
- return0 12y ago
  > accept other peoples suggestions Are you insinuating they should accept suggestions from other nations and tribes? Or did you just omit the "'" , thus exposing yourself as a misspellist, a loosemoralist , a videogamist and misogynist? I hope the Trolly Inquisition finds you and burns your router!
- flohofwoe 12y ago
  I can't tell whether this is serious or a joke, I hope it's a joke since it sounds like taken right from the McCarthy era. Ah, now I understand, you're trying to be a troll, very clever ;)
  - olefoo 12y ago
    The gentleman to whom I was replying made a reference to shared blocklists as censorship. Having had to support a couple of friends through the showers of verbal excrement that get thrown their way by a group that call itself "Gamergate". I am less than sympathetic to the viewpoint that someone can demand the right to be listened to as well as the right to speak. Allow me to be explicitly and excruciatingly clear on that point. You are free to say whatever you want, to print it, to publish it on the internet, to build signs on your property, etc. without fearing arrest or detention. But; you do not have the right to demand that others spend even a fraction of a second of their time on this earth paying attention to you. And by loose morals I mean that disgusting sense of entitlement to others time and bodily affection that seems to characterize the "Gamergate community".
- hewhowhineth 12y ago
  You forgot to add pedophilia, racism, terrorism, and drugs to that list. Hundreds of millions of people all over the world speak English as their second, third or fourth language. That fact alone makes them more interesting than some grammar sharia asshole. Edit: grammar :)
karmacondon 12y ago
They didn't just choose those criteria out of thin air. They compiled data and ran a logistic regression that was able to predict whether or a not a given user would be banned from a web community based on the content of their posts. And it turned out that negative words, profanity, spelling and grammar were all predictive features in determining that result. Here's how science works: If you don't like the conclusions, you can question the methodology. You can conduct the experiment yourself to see if you can reproduce the results. You can run your own studies and see if you come up with different conclusions. But you don't get to say "Hmm, the data don't conform to my preconceived notions about how the world should work, so I reject their implications." Everyone doesn't agree with the idea that every thought from every person should be heard at all times. Some people are just jerks. "Trolling", by definition, is about making provocative statements to incite reactions, as opposed to contributing to conversations. There are places where that kind of thing is accepted (4chan) and places where it is not (hn). Tools that help communities to encourage their preferred forms of communication are good things, and will be increasingly important in the future.
- xnull2guest 12y ago
  Right, but you can find correlations between being black and committing crime - compiling data and running logistic regressions be damned. These measures they came up with are heuristic proxy measures at the very best, and noise at the worst. The troll hunting algorithm has to face the false positive problem [1], which the paper does not address. My very legitimate content has been censored various places (notably Facebook) because it tripped 'anti-trolling and scam algorithms' but the things I was trying to post were Snowden and Manning, and TPP leaks. [1] http://understandinguncertainty.org/node/238 http://understandinguncertainty.org/node/238
- 6d0debc071 12y ago
  > Some people are just jerks and "trolling", by definition, is about making provocative statements to incite reactions, as opposed to contributing to conversations. I believe the core of paulhauggis' point was closer to the idea that trolling and behaviour that leads to being banned are not the same thing. Scope in studies is as important as anything else.

olefoo 12y ago

> Do people that can't spell very well deserve to have their opinions ignored? Yes. Indeed they do. Good spelling is a mark of conscientiousness and attention to detail. Bad spelling is indicative of loose morals and an addiction to video games and misogyny that should be extirpated from polite society. Note also that users of a public channel ( Twitter ) choosing to accept other peoples suggestions as to who they should ignore so that they are not subjected to the vilest forms of verbal/textual abuse that humanity has invented; is not censorship. Relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/1357/ https://xkcd.com/1357/

bradjohnson 12y ago
>Bad spelling is indicative of loose morals and an addiction to video games and misogyny that should be extirpated from polite society. Is that a joke? How can you possibly justify that conclusion?
- TronPaul_ 12y ago
  I was waiting for the /s as well. Having spent some time on the internet I've spoken and chatted with people for whom English is a second language. Are you telling me that their deficient understanding of English indicates a lack of morality? Is the English language a religion now? Guess I didn't get the memo.
  - thaumasiotes 12y ago
    related: http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18667 http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=18667 The author is the daughter of Czech emigrants, writing about her experience visiting the Czech Republic, with an focus on the difference between learning a new language as an adult and re-learning a language you once knew. From the link: > There can be a striking lack of accommodation or cooperation on the part of listeners [in rural Czech areas]. Once, when traveling with my brother, I watched him flounder in Czech at a small town gas station, trying to convey which pack of cigarettes he wanted to purchase—he had forgotten the brand name, and was trying to describe the appearance of the package. Ignoring his pointing gestures, the cashier sat stone-faced through his attempts. When she finally identified what he wanted, she tossed the cigarettes on the counter, saying contemptuously, “As you can see, the package is red, not pink.” My brother apologized, “I’m sorry, my Czech is very bad.” “I can see that,” she replied without cracking the slightest smile. Experience with second-language learners is, speaking broadly, vanishingly rare among humans. Most people never meet any language learners. The rural Czechs are going by a rule of thumb: someone speaking that badly is more likely to be severely mentally retarded than anything else. (And they're correct about that! If they started seeing a flood of foreign tourists with rudimentary Czech, they'd adjust accordingly.)
return0 12y ago
> accept other peoples suggestions Are you insinuating they should accept suggestions from other nations and tribes? Or did you just omit the "'" , thus exposing yourself as a misspellist, a loosemoralist , a videogamist and misogynist? I hope the Trolly Inquisition finds you and burns your router!
flohofwoe 12y ago
I can't tell whether this is serious or a joke, I hope it's a joke since it sounds like taken right from the McCarthy era. Ah, now I understand, you're trying to be a troll, very clever ;)
- olefoo 12y ago
  The gentleman to whom I was replying made a reference to shared blocklists as censorship. Having had to support a couple of friends through the showers of verbal excrement that get thrown their way by a group that call itself "Gamergate". I am less than sympathetic to the viewpoint that someone can demand the right to be listened to as well as the right to speak. Allow me to be explicitly and excruciatingly clear on that point. You are free to say whatever you want, to print it, to publish it on the internet, to build signs on your property, etc. without fearing arrest or detention. But; you do not have the right to demand that others spend even a fraction of a second of their time on this earth paying attention to you. And by loose morals I mean that disgusting sense of entitlement to others time and bodily affection that seems to characterize the "Gamergate community".
hewhowhineth 12y ago
You forgot to add pedophilia, racism, terrorism, and drugs to that list. Hundreds of millions of people all over the world speak English as their second, third or fourth language. That fact alone makes them more interesting than some grammar sharia asshole. Edit: grammar :)

karmacondon 12y ago

They didn't just choose those criteria out of thin air. They compiled data and ran a logistic regression that was able to predict whether or a not a given user would be banned from a web community based on the content of their posts. And it turned out that negative words, profanity, spelling and grammar were all predictive features in determining that result. Here's how science works: If you don't like the conclusions, you can question the methodology. You can conduct the experiment yourself to see if you can reproduce the results. You can run your own studies and see if you come up with different conclusions. But you don't get to say "Hmm, the data don't conform to my preconceived notions about how the world should work, so I reject their implications." Everyone doesn't agree with the idea that every thought from every person should be heard at all times. Some people are just jerks. "Trolling", by definition, is about making provocative statements to incite reactions, as opposed to contributing to conversations. There are places where that kind of thing is accepted (4chan) and places where it is not (hn). Tools that help communities to encourage their preferred forms of communication are good things, and will be increasingly important in the future.

xnull2guest 12y ago
Right, but you can find correlations between being black and committing crime - compiling data and running logistic regressions be damned. These measures they came up with are heuristic proxy measures at the very best, and noise at the worst. The troll hunting algorithm has to face the false positive problem [1], which the paper does not address. My very legitimate content has been censored various places (notably Facebook) because it tripped 'anti-trolling and scam algorithms' but the things I was trying to post were Snowden and Manning, and TPP leaks. [1] http://understandinguncertainty.org/node/238 http://understandinguncertainty.org/node/238
6d0debc071 12y ago
> Some people are just jerks and "trolling", by definition, is about making provocative statements to incite reactions, as opposed to contributing to conversations. I believe the core of paulhauggis' point was closer to the idea that trolling and behaviour that leads to being banned are not the same thing. Scope in studies is as important as anything else.