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Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

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Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#211

Post by edraferi »

rakoo wrote: post #205
edraferi wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The technology and concept are interesting, but the branding is a non-starter. Even if you forgive the overall project name, the individual applications are worse. They include: - QFlatBoob - QHandjoob - Boobcoming - Boobsize - Flatboob - Wetboobs This naming convention undermines the project's potential. I can't take this to my boss & colleagues. I don't want it on my github profile or my resume. I don't want to tal…

Thanks a lot for this feedback, but this is not my project. I merely know about it (ansd contributed a module). It is true that coming from France, the issue is probably less important. By the way, here's a piece the creator has written explaining their point of view on the whole thing: http://laurent.bachelier.name/2013/12/weboob-the-asshole-det...

Cool, which module?

Thanks for the link. It's fascinating to me that the name has been an issue since at least 2013 (when the post was written).

  There’s no denying they’re childish. What they are not, however, is sexist. [...] it’s all about friendly jokes.
I agree -- I don't see ill will or discriminatory intent here. It's just unprofessional and kinda off-putting.

  Weboob is a formidable tool to detect people that are part of the “be offended first, think later” crowd. Interestingly, the crusaders are to date all male, and often assert that women can’t like jokes about breasts or sex in general.
I'm sure that happens, and I'm sorry. I hope this discussion feels more productive. Culture wars are no fun for anybody. For the record, I am male, and not offended. Just disappointed. I agree that wetboobs is a funny name for a weather thing. But it's much funnier in a comedy movie [1] than a collaborative software project.

Seems like the project is well aware of and content with the current state of affairs. I wonder how much more it could have grown already without the brand as a stumbling block.

  They will always make a scene on how they’re never going to use Weboob because of names. Guys, here’s the thing: we don’t need you and we certainly don’t want you.
Most of this discussion is about the value of small communities, so maybe it's for the best. Personally, I want to read a bit more about the tech despite the name. Still, the name will likely prevent me from using the tech as broadly as I would otherwise. And that's the disappointment.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MG_LL9m7cl4

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#212

Post by losteverything »

ueroc wrote: post #167
d--b wrote: post #127

As much as I really liked using IRC back in the day, I still think I spent way too much time on it. I mean you got to know the people there, and after a couple of years most discussions were like office conversations. Plus the takeovers, the trolls, the noobs, the never ending screwing around with the bots, etc. I've never done much newsgroups because I didn't like public speaking without anonymity. ICQ and others we…

I think a lot of the nostalgia is a result of being uncomfortable dealing with people now being the "insiders" rather than the users. It's much easier to call out the new generation of users or large companies and praise old things than actually creating something relevant for today. I've played around with creating a relevant version of things like usenet, but at the end of the day it wasn't something I wanted to wo…

Reading your comment made me nostalgic for trust.

It took a lot of effort to make a long post back in the rec. And alt. days.

I remember trip planning 19 years ago looking at trip reports. Got superior tips for my once in a lifetime Yukon vacation

I dont believe todays internet noise partially because it is too easy to opinionate. There is no effort required anymore.

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#213

Post by amsilprotag »

dredmorbius wrote: post #191
SerLava wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curation of shitty content is also built right into the algorithm. They'll hide behind "But people are voting for this mindless content" but that's not the full picture. A vote after 5 seconds is actually weighted higher than a vote after 5 minutes. It's specifically because Reddit the company is against too much engaging content. They want people to smirk, chuckle, acknowledge, and move on. Engaging content means fe…

A vote after 5 seconds is weighted , or acts as if weighted ? If that's built into the algorithm, that's one thing. If the social effect of early moderation is amplified, well, that's still a problem (and a major one), but ... of a different sort. Citations requested.

The first graph linked below shows "hotness" as a function of time with upvotes held constant. The equations are above the linked section. Compounding this effect, there is a feedback loop where hotter elements are more likely to be seen and voted, which increases hotness logarithmically.

So no, the algorithm doesn't intentionally punish dense material. But it does happen incidentally.

https://medium.com/hacking-and-gonzo/how-reddit-ranking-algo...

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#214

Post by losteric »

callumlocke wrote: post #149
losteric wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon and Facebook, to me, are symptoms of a deeper problem: Technology is still hard. We're building complex large-scale products because the non-technical consumers can't use the simple small-scale products. We're here because it's convenient, not because it's good. I always felt that Google should have created simple tools for web publishing and creating personal walled-gardens - make the web personal for 7 billi…

> Surely there must be something in between Facebook and Jekyll/Hugo. I guess Wordpress is an example. It's got a hosted plan, which requires little more computer literacy than Facebook, and you can also leave at any time and self-host the software, which keeps the hosted offering honest. But it's just not as contagious as something like Facebook. That's the problem, Facebook isn't just more 'convenient' than self-ho…

I'd argue that, in terms of features, Wordpress is little better than Jekyll/Hugo. Social integration is the aspect that's missing. Chat, access control, tagging, push/pull update, etc.

I envision this is a two part problem: the "back-end", one-click install or oauth register services to create your private space and identity (possibly a VPS or agglomeration of AWS services) for sending/receiving emails, direct messages, tags (push), and friend posts, group updates, news subscriptions (pull), plus APIs for search, access control, creating/managing your own content, so on; and the front-end, a glorified RSS reader for using the above services through standard APIs.

That's the challenge. The solution is way more complex then the existing offerings, like WP or other simple blogs, but all that complexity must be buried away so it's at least as easy as registering to Facebook.

It's possible, all of the constituent problems have been tackled separately... what's lacking is a unified standard, comprehensive tools, and stable (corporate) backing.

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#215

Post by hellbanner »

CM30 wrote: post #153
hellbanner wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but there have been an increasing trend in "reddit style" comments on news.ycombinator.com . Myself and other users have noticed, called people out, downvoted etc for the lousy comments. But the realities of the threading style & upvote democracy is that lowest common denominator spreads easily. Related discussion in same thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14699133

Out of curiosity, could you explain what you mean by more Reddit style comments? Because I don't think I've seen too many low effort comments here recently, or at least not much more than there were in the past. And while political threads get a bit out of control, my experience there is that the most volatile, disruptive posts tend to get downvoted to hell before they can cause too much of an issue. So even if a cer…

Comments that are only jokes, with nested replies that are word-plays are continuations of jokes. Good for a quick laugh occasionally but I prefer not to see that on HN (puns + groupthink meme jokes are not what I come to HN for).

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#216

Post by tommorris »

losteric wrote: post #66
cyphunk wrote: post #45

Did we get to this point of fragmentation due to smart phones and their walled garden philosophy? People stopped making applications for the sake of interoperability. ... if RealAudio™ was founded today it'd be king. Or is facebook to blame? John Gilmore famously said "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- he was wrong, censorship just has to wait for the right monopoly to appear. And with…

Amazon and Facebook, to me, are symptoms of a deeper problem: Technology is still hard. We're building complex large-scale products because the non-technical consumers can't use the simple small-scale products. We're here because it's convenient, not because it's good. I always felt that Google should have created simple tools for web publishing and creating personal walled-gardens - make the web personal for 7 billi…

> Surely there must be something in between Facebook and Jekyll/Hugo.

There's an effort to try and build some standards for open web sharing at indieweb.org - cross-post comments, syndication to existing social networks. A few of those standards have now been given the W3C stamp (MicroPub, WebMention).

There's some services built on top of it like WithKnown, MicroBlog and people building on top of WordPress, building their own site and so on.

The founding principle of that community (build what fixes your problem, don't try and solve everyone's problems) keeps it quite well focussed.

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#217

Post by lyra_comms »

uhhhhhhh wrote: post #189
lyra_comms wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have a go with Lyra (hellolyra.com), it's designed to be an efficient use of your time rather than a sink for time, trolling and harrassment.

https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png Looks like a quip/discourse clone from a 10 second look. Not sure why another product offering relatively the same service solves anything.

A 10 second look isn't really enough to evaluate a service, now is it? Quip and Discourse are subscription products targeted at teams. They aim to make money.

Lyra is a discussion platform targeted at a general audience. We're a nonprofit and aim to improve the quality and attentional demands of online conversation.

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#218

Post by lyra_comms »

d--b wrote: post #162
lyra_comms wrote: post #160

We are working to restore the openness of online discussion with Lyra: www.hellolyra.com. We aim to provide helpful services for conversation, not to get users addicted. We have made the choice to focus around people and conversations rather than topics (because Lyra is designed to be harrassment-proof, and topics lead easily to harrassment - you don't see this so much in the tech world but in the mainstream it's a h…

Just some thoughts: putting the full message in the discussion tree means that people will tend to write shorter / comment-like messages, and not in-depth argumentations. On the other end, having only a tree of authors is a bit to slim, cause you have to read the content of each message to know what's going on. I think people who reply to a thread should give it a "reply title". You know it's the same thread, but you…

Thanks for your thoughts!

Are you suggesting that every reply should have a title?

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#219

Post by dredmorbius »

amsilprotag wrote: post #213
dredmorbius wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A vote after 5 seconds is weighted , or acts as if weighted ? If that's built into the algorithm, that's one thing. If the social effect of early moderation is amplified, well, that's still a problem (and a major one), but ... of a different sort. Citations requested.

The first graph linked below shows "hotness" as a function of time with upvotes held constant. The equations are above the linked section. Compounding this effect, there is a feedback loop where hotter elements are more likely to be seen and voted, which increases hotness logarithmically. So no, the algorithm doesn't intentionally punish dense material. But it does happen incidentally. https://medium.com/hacking-and-…

Right. Reddit definitely doesn't favour quality.

Re: Stopping the Internet of Noise – A useful internet back again

#220

Post by Mathnerd314 »

WalterGR wrote: post #115
Mathnerd314 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> one giant unified database of everything That's Google (almost; not everything is online). No need for the semantic web at all, or to wait for your vaporware 'solution'.

That's Google (almost; not everything is online). As a (presumably) end user, do you think that the interface provided by Google is database-like?

query; results. So yeah. It's easy enough to scrape. All this stuff about structured data is trying to find something that isn't there to begin with. If you want structure from unstructured data then use machine learning, don't try to sell everyone a "semantic data format" they have no incentive to use.
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