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Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

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Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#61
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What credentials do you have to properly vet people?

Well first, the point of this type of open fact checking is you can always verify everything for yourself, so you don't need to trust my credentials. Working on this over the last few years though, I've personally fact checked over 500 assertions.

Yes, but that's not the point. That merely shows that we still need to trust someone -- you.

Specifically, let's say you support belief A, and I want to add a whole bunch of facts that support belief B. You're still the gatekeeper to decide whether I get to be a contributor. There's no way for someone to know that you're going to approve equally-qualified contributors on different sides of an issue, so they're always going to wonder whether there are voices or facts being omitted.

(But if that's just the plan for beta, that's fine.)

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#62
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently (for the prototype), you can start contributing, but your reviews only become public once I've vetted you and given you a fact checking test. Long term the goal is to have an open reputation score for every fact checker. I'm currently experimenting with different implementations of this, and seeing good promise.

This sounds like a job where people don't get paid.

Like Wikipedia contributors?

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#63
post #46
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it really make sense to call it "reputation" if you're the only one that can see it?

On HN they call it Karma

You can see a user's karma on HN though, just not on their individual posts.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#65
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently (for the prototype), you can start contributing, but your reviews only become public once I've vetted you and given you a fact checking test. Long term the goal is to have an open reputation score for every fact checker. I'm currently experimenting with different implementations of this, and seeing good promise.

This sounds like a job where people don't get paid.

Just like this one site ... Wikipedia?

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#66

Great project, but this seems like a classic example of a programmer naively assuming a technical solution can solve a social problem.

But it might be worth a try. Wikipedia does pretty well imho but if someone would told me the idea I would never thought that it would work.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#68
post #32

Nice to see more work in this area. However as others have said a reputation system for participants is absolutely key. Any platform like this has to assume it is going to be flooded by bots trying to influence opinion on behalf of corporations, foreign governments and activists. A reputation where users gain reputation slowly (through work, by verifying sources, etc..) become more able to influence opinion, but the…

I 100% agree that the reputation system will be they key to scaling this. I'm currently seeing promise with my experiments with reputation scoring. As for "How do you create a platform that allows correct ideas to flourish even when they go against conventional wisdom?" Great question, however my goal here is a bit more modest, it's to create a platform that allows facts which are provable by public primary sources t…

The bots would be a serious issue if this ever became big enough, since they can add to each other's reputation. Reddit probably has thousands of code-hours devoted to this, and bots are still a problem.

There is also the problem that humans will probably tend to upvote "facts" that they agree with, and visa-versa. I'm not sure that reputation is the solution.

And yet "expert" verification introduces trust. I'm not sure what the solution is.

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#69
While I like how the software ties together the sourcing, I feel like the following is lacking (and I realize this is an alpha, but its things to consider)

1. Anyone who answers a question regarding whether the claim is "fully" proven by a source or whether the source is valid for the claim must or should (debatable) provide proof of their own interpretation by citing either specific instances in the source in question supporting it. For example, in the Net Neutrality article, Yatz states this: The adopted principles in this statement are at the top of page 3 in a response to does the source fully prove the claim. It would be nice if that was linked to the actual location in the document or identified through highlighting or some other mechanism to get full context for the response. There also should be uses for outside sources to be attached when evaluating these questions that are suppose to validate a source. This is because someone could submit a response to these source validity questions and cite an external source or internal quote of the source in question for their reasoning that doesn't support their answer.

2. Having some sort of expertise verification is extremely important and should be weighted either separately as in Experts: Yes Experts: No category and should be more important. It distinguishes this from random anon answers that have no training in how the source should be interpreted.

3. Having anonymous people do this seems rather dubious and the current platform seems like it would make it prone to Youtube comment syndrome. Maybe have some reputation system to gate keep like StackOverflow?

4. Sources usually require appropriate interpretation in order to be taken in the right context and be considered correct. Sometimes there's no single source or any source, philosophically, that fully proves a claim. I'm guessing that's what supporting documents are for?

5. Why is the original articles claim allowed to be edited?

Re: Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking

#70
post #8

Finally something viable to combat fake news

Russian government backed trolls will use this system to spread fakes instead. Wikipedia has similar system and Russians abuse it a lot.

Can you back this up with examples?
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