Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

How An Open Source Plugin Tamed a Chaotic Comments Section With A Simple Quiz (arstechnica.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the very-challenging-response-authentication dept.

Long-time Slashdot reader jebrick quotes an article from Ars Technica about how Norway's government-owned public broadcasting company "employs open source tactics to fight trolling": The five-person team behind a simple WordPress plugin, which took three hours to code, never expected to receive worldwide attention as a result. But NRKbeta, the tech-testing group at Norway's largest national media organization, tapped into a meaty vein with the unveiling of last February's Know2Comment, an open source plugin that can attach to any WordPress site's comment section. "It was a basic idea," NRKbeta developer Stale Grut told a South By Southwest crowd on Tuesday. "Readers had to prove they read a story before they were able to comment on it"... He and fellow staffers spent three hours building the plugin, which Grut reminded the crowd is wholly open source... "[W]e realized not every article is in need of this. We are a tech site; we don't have a lot of controversy, so there's not a big need for it. We use it now on stories where we anticipate there'll be uninformed debate to add this speed bump."
What do you think? And would a quiz-for-commenting-privileges be a good addition to Slashdot?

6 of 154 comments (clear)

  1. Fair's Fair by fibonacci8 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Will editor's have to demonstrate they've read the story as well? Little things like copy and pasted characters unsupported by the site suggest they hadn't.

    --
    Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
    1. Re:Fair's Fair by DRJlaw · · Score: 5, Funny

      Will editor's have to demonstrate they've read the story as well? Little things like copy and pasted characters unsupported by the site suggest they hadn't.

      The irony is palpable.

    2. Re:Fair's Fair by fibonacci8 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Will editor's have to demonstrate they've read the story as well? Little things like copy and pasted characters unsupported by the site suggest they hadn't.

      The irony is palpable.

      Irony would have been if I'd type editorâ(TM)s. (I didn't)
      Irony could also have been if I were an editor and made the mistake. (I'm not)
      Irony may be that I've demonstrated that having read the story doesn't improve the quality of responses. (It really doesn't, it just delays poor quality responses like these)
      However this was merely coincidence. This suggests to me that neither of us should be an editor.

      --
      Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
  2. Re:Worth a shot by Anonymice · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I doubt the people who actually had something insightful & of actual value to add to the conversation would be much deterred by something quite so trivial.

    If you can't be arsed to answer a simple question about TFA, then you'd unlikely be arsed enough to contribute anything of any value.

  3. Could Work on Slashdot by mentil · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How about commenters that pass the quiz get an automatic +1 mod? That could work. Not positive it'd be a good idea, though.

    --
    Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
  4. And reduce bots by Okian+Warrior · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Readers had to prove they read a story before they were able to comment on it

    This would end Slashdot as we know it!!

    But in a good way.

    As an additional suggestion, people would only be able to post as AC if they got every question wrong... AKA "Hot Take" mode.

    This would also get rid of a lot of automatic posts (bots), comment spam such as the "gay naggers" thing, and automatic gainsaying.

    It would also slow down the insulters and auto-dissers by making them take a few moments to read the story. As a bonus, those people would become more informed over time.

    I don't know if slashdot is interested in improving the site (whipslash has said that they maintain this site for other goals than popularity), and there may be other considerations such as "no money available", but it would sure make for a nice experiment.