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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

#201

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

NickHodges0702 wrote: post #16
netsharc wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Nick Hodges here -- one of the developers. I get that objection, and we are certainly very uninterested in that becoming the norm. The idea, of course, is to try to prevent comments that we want prevented and that aren't helpful. Different bloggers and different communities are going to define that differently. That is why we are making a good-faith effort at allowing sites/people/groups to tweak this as desired. Tha…

Are you able to tune the AI such that it guides towards liberalism and rejects postmodernism? The point of postmodernism is to problematise language and results in unwelcoming nannying like the example above. I suspect the AI only knows to do that as a function of the pervasiveness of postmodernism and its offshoots in academia and society more broadly.

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

#203

Post by turbocon »

Just wanted to comment to say that I think this is a wonderful product idea with a noble mission. It clearly has flaws and you guys are clearly working on it and that's okay. I really like the approach of getting people to pause and think about what they're posting to promote a more thoughtful experience

Seriously. Best of luck to you

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

#204

Post by ranger_danger »

pibaker wrote: post #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 ba…

> They are people who have an agenda to push

Not always, and we can't know people's intentions ahead of time. But I'd rather have something like this that at least tries to help people improve themselves who are open to it, rather than doing nothing.

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

#205

Post by ranger_danger »

casey2 wrote: post #164
NitpickLawyer wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the premise of this tool is flawed. Bad faith actors are not people who... I think there's something here. The tool is not intended to stop bad faith actors. You can't stop those. But you can nudge people into "being better" with a simple prompt. I can't recall the exact blog/paper now, but I remember reading that someone did this test (google perhaps?) and saw that with a simple prompt "hey this message is…

Nudging people to be better might make each individual better but site experience isn't made by an individual. It's just reinventing religion

Case in point IMO, this very comment embodies the common trap that even "smart" people fall into... black-and-white thinking that is often wrong and just makes you look less intelligent.

"As a rule, strong opinions about issues do not emerge from deep understanding."

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

#206

Post by ranger_danger »

earthnail wrote: post #63

I tried it as well with a contrarian view on UBI. I think the UBI one is a great test case. If you’re against the idea you will likely argue that it is idealistic and that in the real world it would create bad incentives. So basically you end up arguing for a darker, more pessimistic world view, and that tends to get flagged very quickly by the tool right now. I think you should fix that. It’s a mistake in modern dis…

> It’s a mistake in modern discussions to be overly positive

According to who?

I trust you'll publish your double blind study with sample sizes and p values shortly /s

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

#207

Post by ProllyInfamous »

Decades ago (1995), when I was barely a decade old, I created a maintainence/repair website for a Motorola product (pre-iFixit). A fellow geek created his own similar website, focusing more on general product usage.

Neither of us webmasters took constructive feedback well, often lashing out at fellow usenet geeks who were just trying to be helpful. Tantrums, from us both.

Twenty years later we randomly met in-person @DEF-CON (recognized his unique name) — he ended up being a year younger than me! We exchanged chuckles about what big personalities us two little kids had been, blasting angst into the aether.

Motorola had linked to both our websites in their official documentation, despite our pottymouths =P

----

When I witness road rage (myself, included), I pretend the aggressor is a toddler. This makes it easier (and more effective!) to handle the rage that often passes through miscommunication(s).

----

I've been a forumjunkie since 1994, and HN is the only online forum I still participate within — mostly because of the techgenre, but also because the rules here prevent all sorts of perpetualSeptembers from scattering themselves among otherwise-constructive threads.

DanG&co: thanks for cultivating an exceptional online community

OP: Thanks for trying; I haven't used your product, but the premise seems noble... my main question to ya'll is: how do you prevent overbearing censorship (e.g. does karma influence how "tough" your product is on particular users, or are we all equally correctable)?

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

#208

Post by ryanackley »

badc0ffee wrote: post #7

This thing seems to be more about enforcing a political PoV than about avoiding logical fallacies. All my attempts to comment on the UBI article (and not supporting UBI) said my comment was a dogwhistle, and/or had an overly negative tone. This topic, of all things, is absolutely worthy to challenge and debate. Using this would have the effect of creating an echo chamber, where people who stay never benefit from havi…

Yeah I feel like this will funnel everyone's opinion into sounding like it was written by an AI.

Love the idea but the example they give with bears is absolutely hilarious. Calling bears dumb animals is offensive? God help us.

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

#209

Post by 5o1ecist »

NickHodges0702 wrote: post #174
5o1ecist wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Just to be clear -- we aren't "forcing" anyone to behave. We are trying to "nudge" and "educate". I also believe that if I have a blog with comments, it's perfectly fine for me to set the rules about discourse on my blog. Right?

[flagged]

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

#210

Post by vintagedave »

ProllyInfamous wrote: post #207

Decades ago (1995), when I was barely a decade old , I created a maintainence/repair website for a Motorola product (pre-iFixit). A fellow geek created his own similar website, focusing more on general product usage. Neither of us webmasters took constructive feedback well , often lashing out at fellow usenet geeks who were just trying to be helpful . Tantrums, from us both. Twenty years later we randomly met in-pers…

I empathise. We definitely mature over time :) And we all have bad days.

If we can bring the HN kind of interaction approach to more sites, we'll call ourselves successful. Dan and co provide an inspiration through this site. Someone commented below something about automating dan, and... dan, if you read this, I laughed, but kinda ;) At least, bringing a chance for or what we can of the general HN approach to other spaces.

Re specific users or karma, everyone is equal. Comments are judged on their own merits, within the context of the topic they are about (the API allows adding more context, such as other comments in the thread, which isn't shown in the demo.)

We've played around with the idea of building a kind of reputation over time, ie allowing people to build a score. If so, it's important to note that's not based on the content of what was written (eg specific political views) but based on how well, how healthily, someone expresses it. That line does blur because some opinions are inherently unhealthy, and cannot be expressed in a way that respects others, demonstrates decency / humanity, etc, but within the spectrum of 'being a decent person and just trying to interact well including while disagreeing' we specifically do not want to police topics. We want instead to encourage, and in future maybe try to build a rep, for how well someone engages with others.

And returning to your question, if we did that, every comment would still be assessed standalone. We want people to grow, kinda like you were talking about. If someone expressed themselves poorly a year ago and behaves more healthily now, now is what should be reflected.

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