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New Project To End Stupidity Online
mrneutron2003 writes to tell us that StupidFilter, a new Open Source project started by Gabriel Ortiz and Paul Starr, plans to provide an intellectual prophylactic for memetically transmitted diseases. "Too long have we suffered in silence under the tyranny of idiocy. In the beginning, the internet was a place where one could communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people. Then, Eternal September hit and we were lost in the noise. The advent of user-driven web content has compounded the matter yet further, straining our tolerance to the breaking point. It's time to fight back."
You AOL whores
"the internet was a place where one could communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people"
First, BWAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Second, it's not 1978 anymore.
... too bad it'll never be able to detect irony. As a sarcastic person, I rely on savage mockery to let my hatred of idiocy show.
OMG U CN'T BLOCK M3!!!!!!!1111 I R SMARTER THAN U GHEYFAGS
I have this really funny quote that I like to put here. Unfortunately, there's this really annoying thing called a char
Anything that would filter out all of Digg is A Good Thing (c)(tm).
Not only does the stupidity filter help you rise to a higher echelon of intelligence, but it'll save you money, too! Your ISP will be happy to install the stupidity filter on your connection, and it's easy to sign up. Simply stop paying your Internet service bill, and your ISP will add the stupidity filter to your connection in no time! (Allow four to six weeks for delivery.)
Actually, the GP was doing you a favor. You probably don't want to visit http://4chan.org./
v4sw6PU$hw6ln6pr4F$ck 4/6$ma3+6u7LNS$w2m4l7U$i2e4+7en6a2X h
In the case of this particular project, it's more about the manner of expression rather than the ideas expressed. A short comment consisting of OMGs, LOL's and emoticions, with "ur k3wl i lik ur site" would trip the filter, but (to quote the page again) it "will cheerfully approve an eloquent, properly-capitalized defense of mandatory, state-subsidized rocket-launcher ownership for all schoolchildren."
In theory, if the filter is trained properly, it should also be able to distinguish between non-native speakers who have only a smattering of English (or another target language) and those who write in 1337-5p3@k and SMS-style abbreviations. But that requires the people training it to make that distinction.
And you didn't link the actual website in the post. It's http://stupidfilter.org
Go ahead, slashdot me. I dare ya.
This is how you get modded up AND bypass the idiot filter.
"I totally agree with you. Your points are both intelligent and compelling, and I think everyone ought to look at things the way you do. Anyone who disagrees is an idiot, and it's not even worth the time to expose yourself to anything they say."
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Here is a good example of what I consider stupid. Thinking that ones political opinion is fact. I am sick of both parties and all the "independents" as well. I have heard that people claim that Clinton was immoral, but I have never heard anyone say he was stupid. The real truth is it is very unlikely that you can be "stupid" and be elected president. Those that call Bush stupid are just as wrong. Stupid people can not fly a jet fighter which he did or graduate from Yale which he did. You may not like Bush or Clinton or in my case you may dislike them both but to dismiss ether one as stupid is foolish.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Skip the ad-laden overloaded blogodreck site and go directly to StupidFilter. The concept is straightforward - they're training a naive Bayesian classifier, like a spam filter, on a set of text excerpts rated by humans. You can look at random samples from the training set for amusement.
Wikipedia already has some 'bots that do somewhat similar things, looking for totally bogus edits and reverting them. Yahoo's "commercial intent" filter also does something like that, to separate commercial and non-commercial sites. We considered something like that for SiteTruth, where we need to distinguish non-commercial sites so we don't rate them by business criteria.
This approach to filtering will probably need domain-dependent filters. A political site, a social site, a sports site, and a game site all need different training sets. I'd go for a two-stage classifier, one that divided sites into about ten to twenty major categories, and then a stupidity filter trained for each of those categories.
Applying such a filter at blog posting time should be interesting.
And the characters in these books, and plays, and so on, and in real life, I might add, spend hours bemoaning the fact that they can't communicate. I feel that if a person can't communicate the very least he can do is to shut up. - Tom Lehrer.
Actually, I meant "sorted according to a gradient".
Graduated would work, but would imply that once passed, the test would not have to be taken again, which would allow for cheaters and nogoodniks. I think they -- well, we -- should have to take the test every time.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
I bailed on kuro5hin.org a couple of years ago. Basically, it had become popular enough and let people vote on enough things (what got published to what pages, etc), that it seemed that the teaming masses of idiots were running the place. And basically they were.
/. may suck, mostly the crap sinks to the bottom, and good responses float to the top. Especially if you change your modifiers so that responses marked mostly "Funny" are given -2 in your personal filter.
As much as some of the editors here are idiots. As much as they fail to edit. As much as they abuse their editorship (quips in the article, changing article text), they are also answerable to someone. And I think that's probably a good and important thing.
And as much as the mod system here at