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Please read the paper before you comment

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Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#11

Post by serf »

sircastor wrote: post #4
burlesona wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a reasonable suggestion, but I would predict comment participation to plunge. Maybe that’s just fine?

Yeah, you’d get an increase in quality at a loss of quantity. As you suggest, that may be the key to the discourse we’re all looking for.

you lose a bit of quality, too. It might up the ratio towards quality, but you'll definitely lose some comments that the author doesn't feel like jumping through hoops to send through.

example : captcha/captcha-like services.

I've written well-thought out responses and comments on various forums and communities , and finally when asked to identify all the buses or traffic lights I quit the process.

Why? Is it because the comment isn't worth while? Is it because some moral repositioning enticed me to not to go through with the comment?

No.

Clicking every bus increases friction, I may not be all that motivated to begin with -- this friction pushes me over the edge and I close the tab. The captcha/whatever process may have succeeded in the job of fighting spam, but it also lost my comment to the ether.

I contend that gatekeeper systems like pop-quizzing the reader, and to an extent captcha-likes, are not necessarily a good gauge for content quality but rather of poster motivation.

Captcha doesn't stop spammers, it sets the bar higher -- requiring spammers to harbor a larger motivation in order to create the systems needed to circumvent captcha-likes.

A pop quiz would not hinder someone filled with vehement hate from posting a comment -- they'd skim the text, cherry pick the answer, and proceed to post the hateful or incorrect comment.

A community filled with people who post due to a large motivation seems like a bad thing.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#12

Post by cortesoft »

evolve2k wrote: post #2

When I first learnt to program the thing that I really enjoyed was learning to make a terminal app that took in the users input and used it as a conditional. I’d make all these little toy apps where my family had to type in the right word to continue. Eg “Who is the leader of the autobots?” => “Well done. Transform and roll out!!” It strikes me we could encourage better discourse with one word locked comments that th…

This feels like the old anti-piracy techniques games used in the 90s... asking specific questions along with the page number of the answer in the manual.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#13

Post by Tossrock »

burlesona wrote: post #3
evolve2k wrote: post #2

When I first learnt to program the thing that I really enjoyed was learning to make a terminal app that took in the users input and used it as a conditional. I’d make all these little toy apps where my family had to type in the right word to continue. Eg “Who is the leader of the autobots?” => “Well done. Transform and roll out!!” It strikes me we could encourage better discourse with one word locked comments that th…

It’s a reasonable suggestion, but I would predict comment participation to plunge. Maybe that’s just fine?

It doesn't need to be one or the other. The quiz could be optional, and answering correctly would simply give your comments a rating boost - or inversely, you could put a badge of shame on any comments from people who hadn't passed the quiz. Then you just let the natural human dynamics play out.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#15

Post by striking »

renewiltord wrote: post #14

I used to be upset about this. But now I just use a chrome extension to ban people who have clearly not read the article. It just kills any comment thread they start. My HN is much more useful now. My Twitter is fine because I only follow people who don't do this.

Which extension?

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#16

Post by vertex-four »

cafed00d wrote: post #5
burlesona wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a reasonable suggestion, but I would predict comment participation to plunge. Maybe that’s just fine?

I agree. It does sound like a valuable process. However, now we've increased the burden of work on the author. It is not only the author's job to conduct research, validate and share learnings; but also their job to make sure to keep noisy commenters away. At the limit, this could lead to knowledge getting concentrated to small groups of people? :shrug:

In situations where this could be used and the author would have the opportunity to create and enforce the use of such a "quiz", the author (or the collective of people the author associates with) has already chosen to give the commenters a platform when they don't have to.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#17

Post by jhardy54 »

evolve2k wrote: post #2

When I first learnt to program the thing that I really enjoyed was learning to make a terminal app that took in the users input and used it as a conditional. I’d make all these little toy apps where my family had to type in the right word to continue. Eg “Who is the leader of the autobots?” => “Well done. Transform and roll out!!” It strikes me we could encourage better discourse with one word locked comments that th…

I've been considering doing something similar, except with plain CSS:

    a.paper ~ a.comments {
      display: none;
    }

    a.paper:visited ~ a.comments {
      display: inline;
    }

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#18

Post by DoreenMichele »

Each day on twitter there is one main character. The goal is to never be it

Once upon a time, there were two main characters on Twitter in a single day: two escaped Llamas and a dress.

And it was actually not a bad thing.

Maybe we could try repeating that occasionally instead of accepting that it's a lousy world full of lousy people and that's all it will ever be.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#19

Post by fouc »

> I have about as much ignorance of these domains as all the people mocking the paper on Twitter. But there’s one big difference between me and them: I actually read the paper. All of this information is on the first page. Even if you don’t know about sci-hub, you could still read the abstract and check out the researcher bios! Nobody read the paper before dunking on it. Nobody read the abstract either. About half the people yelling at this paper had only read the press release. The other half hadn’t even done that. They had only read tweets about the press release.

This is a real problem. I'm guilty of not bothering to read the paper many times. I instantly look for the easily digestible reviews or comments that other people made. I'm part of the problem. Damn.

Re: Please read the paper before you comment

#20

Post by zzo38computer »

jhardy54 wrote: post #17
evolve2k wrote: post #2

When I first learnt to program the thing that I really enjoyed was learning to make a terminal app that took in the users input and used it as a conditional. I’d make all these little toy apps where my family had to type in the right word to continue. Eg “Who is the leader of the autobots?” => “Well done. Transform and roll out!!” It strikes me we could encourage better discourse with one word locked comments that th…

I've been considering doing something similar, except with plain CSS: a.paper ~ a.comments { display: none; } a.paper:visited ~ a.comments { display: inline; }

Some users (including myself) disable the :visited command.
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