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."

Comments

Hmmm.

[fyngyrz]

Perhaps slashdot should implement a requirement for writing a cogent, unique paragraph before it allows a user to have mod points. Then, if they also change the moderation to be accountable (no longer anonymous, and no longer scarce -- see Kuro5in.org for moderation technology that actually works), it might have a chance at being useful in the sense that one could actually use it to filter messages, instead of being relegated to endlessly observe people use mod points in place of actually expressing a counter opinion.

Then again, slashdot could continue on with completely broken moderation. I could see that as a possibility, given the existing sample set.

Re: Awesome thread to ask a (stupid?) question!

[TaoPhoenix]

In a Moebius strip kind of way, this is on topic.

Why is there a big rectangle around parent's post? I don't recall that feature more than a month ago and I can't begin to figure out what FAQ it is under.

this project is stupid

[azgard]

We don't need to filter stupidity. That's easy. Both Slashdot and Wikipedia systems (albeit very different ones) do it very well. We need to filter misinformation, omissions, lies and logical fallacies instead. That's the hard part; because these often appear quite logical.

Re:My favorite bit - Bush is definitely not stupid

[sien]

There is a myth around that Bush is stupid. It's untrue and allows him to get away with pretending to be a regular joe.

To verify this:

First, the rumours passed around from urban legends.

Now his SAT scores from CNN were 566 verbal and 640 math.

And from here we have a setup of pre-1974 SAT scores against IQ.

His score of 1206 combined sets him up with an IQ of about 130.

Now, from the IQ we can look at a distrubution of IQ versus percentage of people with such an IQ to see where a 130 IQ puts you, and it's in the top 2.5% of people.

Bush has been a terrible president and will probably be the first president to preside over 2 recessions but he isn't stupid.

No, all you need is statistical grouping

[Colin Smith]

For example Collaborative Filtering.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_filtering

A simple thumbs up or thumbs down for any particular link would be all that's needed to move the user further away from one statistical grouping and closer to another. Then everyone will be in a group of similarly intelligent people. Each page and each link on a page could be given and display for example, a likely percentage match (12%) with your preferences (89%).

It would require a shit load of servers to run the backend and a preference bar which can integrate with the browser. However, with billions of people in the world it's highly unlikely that any individual would end up in a grouping of 1.

Re:kuro5hin.org is no solution

[gwait]

I just wish Slashdot would increase the dynamic range of the moderation level. The signal to noise level is still very low, with only 11 levels,
this is a db level of only 20 db. I think it would be interesting if they pushed it up to 65534 mod levels (96 db), (then give out more mod points) so that the distance between really dumbass comments and brilliant ones would be quite high..

Also, they could track individual categories separately, so you could decide to read the funniest of the flamebait responses (for example) if you so desired..