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

Show HN: Respectify – A comment moderator that teaches people to argue better

respectify.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 244 posts

Re: Show HN: Respectify – A comment moderator that teaches people to argue better

#81

Post by Supermancho »

ceejayoz wrote: post #52
coleworld45 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In other opinion polls they back up that he doesn't suck. Either way who cares? That's not what the app is supposed to be about if it's teaching/correcting you how to argue/debate better. You completely ignored the whole point of what I said, which is that even in a simple statement like "This person sucks" it added its own implicit connotations, namely that disliking someone who happens to be black is implicit racis…

I'm really expanding on your point - that two humans can't even agree here. The AI probably has even less chance of resolving the multi-factorial scenario we're in.

AFAICT, Respectify is trying to address improvements via leveraged grammar using minimal context. Dis/agreement is incidental.

eg

* Noun1 is great.

* Noun2 is great.

Ideally would result in equal outcomes.

Re: Show HN: Respectify – A comment moderator that teaches people to argue better

#82

Post by alabhyajindal »

arjie wrote: post #73

I think the better model is to just block everyone who isn't useful to communicate with. For instance the top of this HN page reads (for me): 68 comments | 11 hidden | 3 blocked The hidden comments are from people in the Top 1000 by word count (who I usually don't want to hear from but if there is not much content I might click to toggle). The blocked are people I've seen argue with others in a useless way because th…

How do you block users on HN? Are you using a different client?

Re: Show HN: Respectify – A comment moderator that teaches people to argue better

#83

Post by NickHodges0702 »

Miraste wrote: post #72
NickHodges0702 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks so much for the feedback. Exactly the kind of perspective that we need. I agree, it shouldn't be like that. I guess it isn't a surprise that politics will be the hardest topic to moderate. We'll keep trying to get better. Your comment helps us know where to focus. Thanks.

Sorry for such harsh impressions. I think this is a worthy idea, but it's going to take a lot of tuning. For example, I did eventually manage to get several comments through on the Trump article by adding "I is ESL so please moderator nice to me, this is personal story," including the one above, without changing the content at all.

Not at all! We really appreciate the great feedback and comments. So much to think about.

Interesting on the ESL comment -- gaming it! Great idea!

Re: Show HN: Respectify – A comment moderator that teaches people to argue better

#84

Post by protocolture »

I like the tool, I respect the tool, and I wouldnt use it in its current form.

However: Something that would make me sit up and take notice. Have this tool police more formal debates. Have it tweakable rule out comments that dont present supporting evidence, or fall into formal (or even informal) fallacies.

That would probably need to be its own website.

Re: Show HN: Respectify – A comment moderator that teaches people to argue better

#85

Post by boznz »

NickHodges0702 wrote: post #70
Miraste wrote: post #68

It seems to have a harder time with political news than more abstract concepts. I was able to pass the checks for the Algorithmic Radicalization and Echo Chamber articles with my first comments. However, I did not manage to express any opinion on the transgender rights article, from any political perspective, without being flagged. On one of the comments I tested, it gave me a suggested revision from this: "This is a…

Thanks so much for the feedback. Exactly the kind of perspective that we need. I agree, it shouldn't be like that. I guess it isn't a surprise that politics will be the hardest topic to moderate. We'll keep trying to get better. Your comment helps us know where to focus. Thanks.

Moderating politics is not just hard, I would say its near impossible. I tend to hide anything that hints of politics from all my feeds, block users who are disrespectful, and reserve political banter for when I am walking with my friends, where we are all totally different on the spectrum, but remain civil.

Re: Show HN: Respectify – A comment moderator that teaches people to argue better

#86

Post by alexose »

arjie wrote: post #73

I think the better model is to just block everyone who isn't useful to communicate with. For instance the top of this HN page reads (for me): 68 comments | 11 hidden | 3 blocked The hidden comments are from people in the Top 1000 by word count (who I usually don't want to hear from but if there is not much content I might click to toggle). The blocked are people I've seen argue with others in a useless way because th…

If there's one good thing that could possibly come out of this AI revolution, it would be the ability for people to automate this across all their feeds. I'd love it if I never had to waste time on toxicity, spam, or propaganda.

Although, recent history would suggest that we'd just end up with even more powerful echo chambers.

Re: Show HN: Respectify – A comment moderator that teaches people to argue better

#87

Post by skybrian »

I like the concept. Not sure about the specifics.

I read somewhere that much of the market for robot vacuum cleaners was people who already had pretty clean houses and wanted to do even better. Similarly, I imagine this will appeal more to people like me who genuinely want to improve how they interact?

If someone started a forum for people who like this sort of tool, maybe I'd be into it.

I'm not wild about the name. It seems more confrontational than aspirational, like it's for people who want others to treat them with respect. But we do need moderation tools so maybe it's good.

Re: Show HN: Respectify – A comment moderator that teaches people to argue better

#88

Post by vintagedave »

8organicbits wrote: post #76

I noticed the output wasn't very stable. If I add a filler sentence on the end, it calls an earlier sentence a dog whistle when it didn't say that earlier. I think its offline now, it just says "application not found".

We had a brief outage for ~6 minutes, the SSL cert became invalid and reflected our hosting provider instead (we don't know why and have filed a support request.) My apologies -- it's definitely online again now.

Re: Show HN: Respectify – A comment moderator that teaches people to argue better

#89

Post by mcmcmc »

vintagedave wrote: post #20
netsharc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI enhanced language monitor, what a double plus good improvement for society!

I get this. There’s a line on our doc page: > Respectify is not an engine for monoculture of thought, but in fact intends to assist in the opposite while encouraging in healthy interaction along the way. We don’t want to monitor or enforce saying specific things. We want people to be able to speak, but understand how others will hear them. All those times people talk past each other. Or are rude but don’t realise it.…

Intent is immaterial if the output doesn’t match. The very nature of the product in attempting to coach commenters to argue in the “correct” way goes against your stated goals. This will encourage the kind of algo-speak self-censorship now common on TikTok etc, just more effectively because it at least tries to explain the rules.

Re: Show HN: Respectify – A comment moderator that teaches people to argue better

#90

Post by arjie »

alabhyajindal wrote: post #82
arjie wrote: post #73

I think the better model is to just block everyone who isn't useful to communicate with. For instance the top of this HN page reads (for me): 68 comments | 11 hidden | 3 blocked The hidden comments are from people in the Top 1000 by word count (who I usually don't want to hear from but if there is not much content I might click to toggle). The blocked are people I've seen argue with others in a useless way because th…

How do you block users on HN? Are you using a different client?

Yes, a different client on iOS and a Chrome extension for my laptop. What I built for myself (and perhaps you if you want it simple) is here: https://overmod.org/

This kind of software is pretty cheap to write these days. The Chrome extension there is open-source and the backend is a generic CRUD app running on a SQLite that I backup periodically. You're welcome to use it, and you're welcome to use the CRUD backend without it. I had Claude write a separate iOS app but it was on an older model so not very good (sufficient for me but I doubt for anyone else). The 'protocol' between the backend and the frontend is trivial so you could probably rebuild the iOS app with just the extension as reference to Opus 4.6. I pay my $100 to Apple and then just use it as a 'tester' haha.

I made that directory public because I think this benefits from a single place people can go to subscribe to lists, but if you were to rewrite on true full decentralized ATProto/ActivityPub I'd probably switch over my lists to that and use it instead.

Post reply on HN