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

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

#111
Folks, Dave here -- it's half past two in the morning over here, things have slowed down a little, and so we need to pause and get some sleep.

Thankyou everyone who tested it out. We modified it live a lot during the discussion so much of it is already outdated / changed -- it was fantastic feedback. As of now it is a lot more direct, accepts things we never thought of, has much more accurate dogwhistle handling, and far more. I hope the intent, to teach people how to interact better, carries through. We have a bunch of signups and if you run a blog or site with comments, I hope we can help you build a healthy community. Thankyou again from both of us!

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

#112
post #85

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.

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.

I'm honestly not even sure if civil political discourse is desirable in times of radical actions being taken by the government. I almost think that's worse than no political discourse.

e: To clarify my point, e.g. you can't calmly disagree with whether or not it's okay to shoot people in streets, that diminishes it as if it was just a slight disagreement

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

#113
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…

This goes back to my early days on the internet, but: I do not use blocklists or ignore features except as an absolute last resort. Ignoring the problem is not a solution. In other ways I think it just makes the problem worse. If the person is not banned from the community, then your decision to pretend they don't exist just leaves other people to deal with it. Instead my feeling is that you should confront it by lobbying for their removal, or leave the community.

Sure, you may no longer see the noise, but that means that newcomers to your community do and have to deal with it. When you have a giant blocklist, you are ignoring your duty to police your own community.

Then there is the issue of people blocking people who are simply more tolerant than they are. Hiding speech that is challenging to your personal views is a different kind of disaster.

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

#114
I am bitter about this.

Do you really with your mind and with your heart believe that: - LLMs are fundamentally fit for this type of comprehension - Misjudgements posted in this thread are "bugs", "errors" - Agents who choose to act in bad faith will be anyhow affected - It is desirable by a majority of the group whose opinion you would even consider (is there such a group?), that everyone should have this kind of thing shoved into their face - Promotion of this kind of thing does not also promote (and help build) harsher censorship mechanisms

Do you think that every single thing you will ever say publicly from now on will be considered constructive by all future filters with all of their different biases and "bugs"? Do you think that this new "constructive speak" will not make you want to blow your brains out at some point? Do you not see it everywhere already and get nauseus from it? I would prefer trash talk to that - at least seldom honest and true. If you don't like the message - hide it, timeout the poster, block them or whatever - with your own agency. If you think they welcome education from you - dm them a book.

Or perhaps you imagine yourselves as above that kind of filtering? Then there is no question.

Also, nothing new under the sun. Can't remember exactly but I saw not long ago on a medical platform a review filtering system. It "isn't" censhorship per say, of course, the same as your idea. Only, you can't post a review you want - only a much more milder version (and therefore useless) with transformations akin: "This thing doesn't work" -> "I felt like this thing didn't work for me in this instance, but there were such an such positives". Way to go - turning everything into "we are sorry you feel that way".

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

#115

How can I apply this system to a random discussion archive page at HN in order to evaluate it more efficiently as a discussion guidance mechanism? I don't want to see usernames in that example, and I don't want a dynamic example either — but I think it would be much easier to convince HN that your AI product is worthwhile if you present an HN-specific example. Specifically, I suggest you take an HN discussion (the HT…

That is an excellent idea. It is 2AM my time, but I may set Claude going and check in the morning. (I tend to keep a closer eye on AI coding than that usually!) The preset articles and trying out comments were intended to be something similar: see a topic, see how it works. But running it on each and every comment on an existing thread is really powerful. There may be privacy concerns? General respect? I don't want t…

If you look through the history of the Show HN category, you will see a near-endless stream of "analyzing HN discussions" prior arts that may offer some assurances. I'm not suggesting removing usernames because anonymity is involved — it is not! — but, instead, to specifically focus viewers on the substance of the comments rather than the who of them. That's also why I chose something from two years ago, so that there's no appropriate reason to witchhunt over the past. (Some may still, but nothing short of evaluating AI-generated data will stop them, and you can't make a reasonable case using AI to evaluate AI.)

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

#117
I think the premise of this tool is flawed. Bad faith actors are not people who write poorly or aggressively because they don't know how to express their beliefs like a polite, college educated white collar professional. They are people who have an agenda to push and are willing to use whatever rhetorical techniques allowed to achieve their goals.

I would even go as far as saying that we are under more threat from bad faith arguing from eloquent, educated actors than what people usually blame. You know, "trolls." You notice this every time when a city planning meeting gets derailed by concerned citizens just asking questions about the potential dangers of a children's playground. You notice this when an abusive person in a relationship goes to a therapist and suddenly has a whole high minded vocabulary justifying their own action. You notice this when your boss talks about opening up new opportunities and chasing new fields of business while coworkers circulate rumors of upcoming layoffs.

The entire point of bad faith is saying words you don't mean to achieve your goals. The words are always just a disposable tool secondary to the bad faith actor's true intentions. You fundamentally cannot fix bad faith by fixing someone's choice of words any more than you can sugarcoat a poisoned pill and make it safe.

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

#119

I think this is a great idea, it seems you have a GOOD faith approach and contribution and kind of surprised how many people just love to tear things apart. Hopefully you get some good learnings and keep improving

If by "tear things apart" you mean "people quickly finding out the flaws of the system" then yeah, I support people tearing it apart. Adversarial testing like this is how we find out if something actually works against bad actors or not.

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

#120

I think the premise of this tool is flawed. Bad faith actors are not people who write poorly or aggressively because they don't know how to express their beliefs like a polite, college educated white collar professional. They are people who have an agenda to push and are willing to use whatever rhetorical techniques allowed to achieve their goals. I would even go as far as saying that we are under more threat from ba…

agreed, this just seems like a tool to make people more effective at sea-lioning[0].

i'd prefer if the trolls in my life retained the superficial appearance of trolls to make them easier to spot.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning

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