Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Must answer questions before posting comments to prove you understand news

independent.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 96 posts

Re: Must answer questions before posting comments to prove you understand news

#11

Post by spoiledtechie »

kristopolous wrote: post #8

I was under the impression that comments on news sites were mostly to divert the readership from directly contacting the author or the company through channels that are listened to; merely a solution to keep the wacko segment of the readership occupied and satiated. At least in practice, this is how it appears to function; they're almost exclusively 3rd party plugins and nobody that works for the news organizaion see…

On point. I would add that this is a false sense of the commentor getting their two cents in so they no longer care to participate any further.

Re: Must answer questions before posting comments to prove you understand news

#12

Post by mtl_usr »

Simple fact trivia won't do anything to demonstrate a person has understood the article, merely that he read it.

It's the fundamental difference between functional illiteracy and "plain" illiteracy.

This difference shows up all the time when analyzing data because some jurisdiction will only report the illiteracy number while some other will include the functional illiteracy as well.

Re: Must answer questions before posting comments to prove you understand news

#13

Post by caseysoftware »

averagewall wrote: post #9
MrTonyD wrote: post #7

I've often thought that those who make decisions for society should be required to pass a test to show they understand all sides of an issue. It is absurd to me that politicians are currently allowed to make the wide variety of decisions that they make. I don't think anybody really wants to vote for them to do that. (There was an old episode of Star Trek that had officer candidates use the holodeck to be exposed to a…

The danger there is that the people who write the test end up having some power. They can choose a biased set of questions or even demand wrong/biased answers. Being political issues, often nobody knows the right answers anyway. So we'd need elections to choose who writes the tests and then who gets to vote for them? The great thing about democracy is that no matter what goes wrong to the country internally, the blam…

You're very correct.

In the US, we've had variations of that in the US under the guise of a literacy test.[1] Promoting "understanding" sounds like a great idea until the test itself is made a weapon against groups that are considered "undesirable" by the majority of the populace.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_test

Re: Must answer questions before posting comments to prove you understand news

#14

Post by yorwba »

everdev wrote: post #10
protomyth wrote: post #3

I expect there will be some mockery of the questions if they are not careful. Imagine questions written by MSNBC & FoxNews for the same story. I can see the questions setting up an echo chamber effect.

The example they give is correctly stating what an acronym in the story stands for. The trouble starts if you have to answer questions like "Which Senators are pro-life" or "Who threatened to exit the EU" which can be leading or misleading or have multiple correct answers depending on your world view.

Then turn the questions into factual "Which Senators are named as pro-life in this article?", "Which country's representative threatened to exit the EU?". Even when you disagree, you should be able to give an accurate account of the opinion you disagree with.

Re: Must answer questions before posting comments to prove you understand news

#15

Post by protomyth »

fruitcake wrote: post #4
protomyth wrote: post #3

I expect there will be some mockery of the questions if they are not careful. Imagine questions written by MSNBC & FoxNews for the same story. I can see the questions setting up an echo chamber effect.

> Imagine questions written by MSNBC & FoxNews for the same story. As far as I can tell from briefly viewing them, the MSNBC and Fox News web sites don't allow comments.

I was using them as examples of two groups that would write totally different questions both with a prejudice towards a particular worldview.

Re: Must answer questions before posting comments to prove you understand news

#16

Post by protomyth »

yorwba wrote: post #14
everdev wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example they give is correctly stating what an acronym in the story stands for. The trouble starts if you have to answer questions like "Which Senators are pro-life" or "Who threatened to exit the EU" which can be leading or misleading or have multiple correct answers depending on your world view.

Then turn the questions into factual "Which Senators are named as pro-life in this article?", "Which country's representative threatened to exit the EU?". Even when you disagree, you should be able to give an accurate account of the opinion you disagree with.

The problem is if you disagree you get another confirmation of the leanings of the organization. I agree with everdev, you really need to stick with indisputable facts. Your first question is problematic because you might dispute the characterization regardless of what the article says.

Re: Must answer questions before posting comments to prove you understand news

#17

Post by gleenn »

mtl_usr wrote: post #12

Simple fact trivia won't do anything to demonstrate a person has understood the article, merely that he read it. It's the fundamental difference between functional illiteracy and "plain" illiteracy. This difference shows up all the time when analyzing data because some jurisdiction will only report the illiteracy number while some other will include the functional illiteracy as well.

I think you're ignoring that many people might not even read the article at all. Proving comprehension sounds incredibly hard; proving someone has at least tried would probably be a huge step in the right direction compared to the mayhem which is most comments online.

Re: Must answer questions before posting comments to prove you understand news

#18

Post by spencerflem »

protomyth wrote: post #15
fruitcake wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Imagine questions written by MSNBC & FoxNews for the same story. As far as I can tell from briefly viewing them, the MSNBC and Fox News web sites don't allow comments.

I was using them as examples of two groups that would write totally different questions both with a prejudice towards a particular worldview.

They would also write articles with a different worldview.

Re: Must answer questions before posting comments to prove you understand news

#19

Post by cl0rkster »

yorwba wrote: post #14
everdev wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The example they give is correctly stating what an acronym in the story stands for. The trouble starts if you have to answer questions like "Which Senators are pro-life" or "Who threatened to exit the EU" which can be leading or misleading or have multiple correct answers depending on your world view.

Then turn the questions into factual "Which Senators are named as pro-life in this article?", "Which country's representative threatened to exit the EU?". Even when you disagree, you should be able to give an accurate account of the opinion you disagree with.

According to the AP stylebook, "pro-life" would need to be replaced with "anti-abortion" because that is more neutral and carries fewer weighted connotations with it. I would suspect a large population would disagree with the AP conclusion, but it goes to show how difficult it is to avoid bias even in a simple fact-based question.
Post reply on HN