One big, supposedly hard target, or millions of definitely soft targets?
A) The hard target only has to be breached once for the concept to be abandoned.
B) So Lessig is shilling for the NSA now? Putting ALL of EVERYONE'S info on one system is NOT a wise move, if we have any hope of protecting our privacy.
What we need is a business model for law firms to profit from suing insecure sites just as the music industry has law firms that support themselves entirely from suing copyright infringers. Said law firms would solicit for "expert witnesses" to provide information as to which sites may be insecure. The law firm then does research (through legal means) to find enough people, who have information on the site, to constitute a class action lawsuit. They file the suit and pay their expert witnesses a fee for their testimony. No one can retaliate against the expert witness because that would be witness tampering. The expert witness would be working on behalf of the plaintiffs rather than working independently.
SWEET!!! This is exactly the kind of reference I was hoping to receive. All the trolls were worth this one reference. This site, and the project members themselves, will be a vast goldmine of information and potential collaboration. I don't know if I ever would have come across this on my own.
I guess where I am really going is a two level system. A reputation engine to rate the reliability and trustworthiness of contributers. Then a voting system for the content where the votes are weighted based on the reputation of the voter.
I will definitely look into your system. The only part I don't like is being able to buy influence. But earning influence/karma in one place and spending it in another is an interesting idea. Though it does introduce the possibility af "karma mills" where a site is created just to allow people to easily build karma or to sell karma on the black market.
Well, I can stand on the shoulders of giants. Or I can stand on the shoulders of two dozen trolls. What I'm doing here is trying to stand with one foot on the giants and one foot on the trolls. It'll be a precarious balance, I know. But I believe in Science, rather than Academia. I believe the best ideas can come from anywhere and everywhere. So, if I have to consort with trolls to stand with giants, so be it.
(I know. That sounds insanely egotistical. If I am ultimately successful, it will be a profound quote. If I fail, well, no one will give a shit. Besides, it just sounded so damn good in my head.)
Yes, I need to read a lot more Clay Shirky. Though he does have his failings. I feel he tends to focus on the rhetoric espoused by the creators of a site rather than the actual mechanisms involved. He will talk about the rhetoric espoused by Site A and the results obtained, and then compare that to the rhetoric espoused by Site B and the results obtained. If on the internet no one knows if you are a dog, then it is even more true that on the internet no one cares about your rhetoric (at least in this context). All that matters is the mechanisms in play on the web site. If said mechanisms allow for or encourage trolling, as do sites like Slashdot and Reddit, then trolling you will get.
I would like to point out that DICE edited my headline, which was originally, "Reputation Engine - Best Practices for Information-Based Site?" The existing headline makes it appear as if I am trying to use the reputation engine to rate the actual information. Instead, I merely want the reputation engine to cut down on the number of jerks on the site and reduce the influence of trolls, bots, and crusading armies. Once that is accomplished, I trust the "good" contributors to provide good and relatively accurate content by working together and collaborating. I do not expect any reputation engine to get to some ethereal "Truth."
Yes, I had been thinking of showing reputation scores going from 1 - 10 but allowing the internal, hidden, weights to go much higher. Research has shown it is effective to encourage novices, as in rewarding them with increasing reputation scores, but that has diminishing returns. Once people become more skilled, they respond better to specific constructive criticisms. So, I was thinking that, if someone wanted to downvote a contribution, that should have to give a specific reason that is shown only to the original contributor and moderators. Then the contributor can respond only by either editing their original contribution and clicking a button that says, "Is this what you meant?" or by rejecting the criticism and indicating if it is a troll or simply a non-preferred edit. If flagged as a troll, the criticism may be reviewed by moderators or other trusted users. If the criticizer feels strongly enough about their suggestion, they can make their own contribution that can get voted up or down, or criticized on its own.
By making these criticisms private, I think it will remove a lot of the motivation for trolling.
I've also been tossing around the idea of forcing the criticizer to select the portion of the contribution they want to criticize BEFORE entering the criticism. In most forums, Slashdot included, the respondent can choose whether to quote the original text. But then ALL the text is quoted and the respondent has to delete the irrelevant portions. Of course they almost never do. This can lead to more confusion, or just be tiresome to plow through.
Thanks for the link. I will look into your system. I would be more interested in the data model itself, rather than the user interface. I'll let you know if I decide to steal any ideas.;^)
Actually, it did make sense. Still does. Most just can't make sense OF it, and it doesn't make it easy to sell eyeballs. However, that is yet a different project, which I may or may not have time to work on in my lifetime. I call it "Web 0.0"
See, now here is some of that gold spoken of earlier. While I am somewhat familiar with deep learning, I hadn't thought of using it to mine trust information out of the entire database of comment and voting information. Possibly across an entire swath of associated sites.
Remember, this fuzzy stuff is not my strong suit. My real project is organizing hard information into hierarchies. Kinda the opposite of sussing out the real intent of something as mushy as anonymous internet users. I was just going to try to go with a few basic probabilistic algorithms with some simple rules and be done with it. This really WOULD be a good research project all by itself.
Seriously. Where is my moo cow? It is not a real Slashdot thread without the moo cow. Of course now that I have asked for it, I have probably disqualified myself from moocowdom.
The vast majority of your thesis is in the original research you did and writing down your findings from that research. The implementation is just a prototype to show off a working example of your ideas.
That is a good point. I struggle with that issue constantly. I am mostly an idea guy, but academia is all about the research. So I constantly have to figure out how to couch my ideas in terms of the research that could be done around them. Not just, "Hey, here is my great idea!" but, "How can this idea be exactly how much better than some past idea, along some measurable vector?" It is a whole different mindset.
The two problems to avoid are: 1) Groupthink, where dissenting opinion are drowned out or ignored. 2) Onerous or arbitrary rules that drive away experts, so you are left with only clueless idiots commiserating with each other (example: answers.yahoo.com).
Good points. Groupthink is one of the main things I am trying to avoid. Groupthink can so very often be wrong.
Though I have complained about such arbitrary rules myself, I hadn't thought about that being a problem in any system I created. (I know, we never think we will make the same mistakes we complain about ourselves, but it can happen.) I will remember to keep the actual use of the system as simple as possible.
Oh, that is a REALLY good idea. I had planned to have multiple hierarchical organization systems in the knowledge portion of the system, but I hadn't thought of doing the same in the reputation engine. If one really expands on this idea, one could consider the possibility of multiple, independent, competing reputation "services" that people sign up for. Kind of like there are multiple different search engines for the internet. And like there are componentized discussion engines, such as Disqus, that can be plugged into any web site.
Well, we’ve all known for some time that Slashdot could stand to have a better reputation engine of some sort, just to filter out most of the kinds of comments I’m getting here. Be that as it may, I will try to have a conversation with the actual thinking individuals who still come here, over the noise of the trolls.
In answer to some of the protests:
If anyone thinks a few opinions, randomly thrown around, here on Slashdot can, in any way, shape, or form, constitute the bulk of the work for a graduate project, then said person has no clue as to how much work a real graduate project can be.
In any research project, it is best to gather as many ideas and opinions as possible. Only a fool would assume someone is fool enough to let Slashdot be their be-all-end-all source of information. I also have a friend who is a Research Fellow in HCI at PARC, who I have hit up for ideas and/or connections to fellow researchers. You know, it's good to get input from both ends of the academic spectrum.;^)
The reputation engine for this project is merely an ancillary, but necessary, accessory to the real project, which is the knowledge sharing and organization system.
Any attempt to compare what I am doing within my knowledge system to some existing system, based upon the small amount of information I have provided here, is doomed to just look ridiculous. The only reason I am providing any information at all about the actual project is to provide some perspective as to the direction the reputation engine portion should take. A reputation engine for an opinion-based site, such as this one, would necessarily have a different algorithm from one designed for collecting and organizing actual information.
With all that said, based upon the general cluelessness exhibited by most web-developers and many of our "helpful" friends here on Slashdot, it seems the question of how best to design a reputation engine would be quite a viable research topic in and of itself.
Finally, anyone who thinks insulting Slashdot is a BAD THING just hasn't been on Slashdot long enough. Between the trolling trolls and the mooing cows (which I love, BTW), getting to any useful information can be a roller-coaster ride. But occasionally, the grown-ups win out and one can find some real gems. It's worth a shot, right?
I appreciate the voting system used by Stack Exchange, though my system would be more organized and said organization would also be crowd-sourced. So, I am thinking I would need some variation on the system used by Stack Exchange.
Slashdot Mirror
One big, supposedly hard target, or millions of definitely soft targets?
A) The hard target only has to be breached once for the concept to be abandoned.
B) So Lessig is shilling for the NSA now? Putting ALL of EVERYONE'S info on one system is NOT a wise move, if we have any hope of protecting our privacy.
What we need is a business model for law firms to profit from suing insecure sites just as the music industry has law firms that support themselves entirely from suing copyright infringers. Said law firms would solicit for "expert witnesses" to provide information as to which sites may be insecure. The law firm then does research (through legal means) to find enough people, who have information on the site, to constitute a class action lawsuit. They file the suit and pay their expert witnesses a fee for their testimony. No one can retaliate against the expert witness because that would be witness tampering. The expert witness would be working on behalf of the plaintiffs rather than working independently.
Well, the point doesn't "speak to me" because I won't be using an enterprise license or logging into AD.
SWEET!!! This is exactly the kind of reference I was hoping to receive. All the trolls were worth this one reference. This site, and the project members themselves, will be a vast goldmine of information and potential collaboration. I don't know if I ever would have come across this on my own.
Thank you so much.
Grant
Good point. Thanks.
I guess where I am really going is a two level system. A reputation engine to rate the reliability and trustworthiness of contributers. Then a voting system for the content where the votes are weighted based on the reputation of the voter.
I will definitely look into your system. The only part I don't like is being able to buy influence. But earning influence/karma in one place and spending it in another is an interesting idea. Though it does introduce the possibility af "karma mills" where a site is created just to allow people to easily build karma or to sell karma on the black market.
I think the karma should always be earned.
Well, I can stand on the shoulders of giants. Or I can stand on the shoulders of two dozen trolls. What I'm doing here is trying to stand with one foot on the giants and one foot on the trolls. It'll be a precarious balance, I know. But I believe in Science, rather than Academia. I believe the best ideas can come from anywhere and everywhere. So, if I have to consort with trolls to stand with giants, so be it.
(I know. That sounds insanely egotistical. If I am ultimately successful, it will be a profound quote. If I fail, well, no one will give a shit. Besides, it just sounded so damn good in my head.)
Bingo!
Yes, I need to read a lot more Clay Shirky. Though he does have his failings. I feel he tends to focus on the rhetoric espoused by the creators of a site rather than the actual mechanisms involved. He will talk about the rhetoric espoused by Site A and the results obtained, and then compare that to the rhetoric espoused by Site B and the results obtained. If on the internet no one knows if you are a dog, then it is even more true that on the internet no one cares about your rhetoric (at least in this context). All that matters is the mechanisms in play on the web site. If said mechanisms allow for or encourage trolling, as do sites like Slashdot and Reddit, then trolling you will get.
Awesome! Thanks.
I would like to point out that DICE edited my headline, which was originally, "Reputation Engine - Best Practices for Information-Based Site?" The existing headline makes it appear as if I am trying to use the reputation engine to rate the actual information. Instead, I merely want the reputation engine to cut down on the number of jerks on the site and reduce the influence of trolls, bots, and crusading armies. Once that is accomplished, I trust the "good" contributors to provide good and relatively accurate content by working together and collaborating. I do not expect any reputation engine to get to some ethereal "Truth."
Yes, I had been thinking of showing reputation scores going from 1 - 10 but allowing the internal, hidden, weights to go much higher. Research has shown it is effective to encourage novices, as in rewarding them with increasing reputation scores, but that has diminishing returns. Once people become more skilled, they respond better to specific constructive criticisms. So, I was thinking that, if someone wanted to downvote a contribution, that should have to give a specific reason that is shown only to the original contributor and moderators. Then the contributor can respond only by either editing their original contribution and clicking a button that says, "Is this what you meant?" or by rejecting the criticism and indicating if it is a troll or simply a non-preferred edit. If flagged as a troll, the criticism may be reviewed by moderators or other trusted users. If the criticizer feels strongly enough about their suggestion, they can make their own contribution that can get voted up or down, or criticized on its own.
By making these criticisms private, I think it will remove a lot of the motivation for trolling.
I've also been tossing around the idea of forcing the criticizer to select the portion of the contribution they want to criticize BEFORE entering the criticism. In most forums, Slashdot included, the respondent can choose whether to quote the original text. But then ALL the text is quoted and the respondent has to delete the irrelevant portions. Of course they almost never do. This can lead to more confusion, or just be tiresome to plow through.
Thanks for the link. I will look into your system. I would be more interested in the data model itself, rather than the user interface. I'll let you know if I decide to steal any ideas. ;^)
Actually, it did make sense. Still does. Most just can't make sense OF it, and it doesn't make it easy to sell eyeballs. However, that is yet a different project, which I may or may not have time to work on in my lifetime. I call it "Web 0.0"
See, now here is some of that gold spoken of earlier. While I am somewhat familiar with deep learning, I hadn't thought of using it to mine trust information out of the entire database of comment and voting information. Possibly across an entire swath of associated sites.
Remember, this fuzzy stuff is not my strong suit. My real project is organizing hard information into hierarchies. Kinda the opposite of sussing out the real intent of something as mushy as anonymous internet users. I was just going to try to go with a few basic probabilistic algorithms with some simple rules and be done with it. This really WOULD be a good research project all by itself.
Thanks, Gilligan!
Yup.
I'd mod you up, but then I wouldn't be able to comment in my own thread. So...
Meh. I've seen better, and much funnier before.
Seriously. Where is my moo cow? It is not a real Slashdot thread without the moo cow. Of course now that I have asked for it, I have probably disqualified myself from moocowdom.
The vast majority of your thesis is in the original research you did and writing down your findings from that research. The implementation is just a prototype to show off a working example of your ideas.
That is a good point. I struggle with that issue constantly. I am mostly an idea guy, but academia is all about the research. So I constantly have to figure out how to couch my ideas in terms of the research that could be done around them. Not just, "Hey, here is my great idea!" but, "How can this idea be exactly how much better than some past idea, along some measurable vector?" It is a whole different mindset.
The two problems to avoid are: 1) Groupthink, where dissenting opinion are drowned out or ignored. 2) Onerous or arbitrary rules that drive away experts, so you are left with only clueless idiots commiserating with each other (example: answers.yahoo.com).
Good points. Groupthink is one of the main things I am trying to avoid. Groupthink can so very often be wrong.
Though I have complained about such arbitrary rules myself, I hadn't thought about that being a problem in any system I created. (I know, we never think we will make the same mistakes we complain about ourselves, but it can happen.) I will remember to keep the actual use of the system as simple as possible.
Oh, that is a REALLY good idea. I had planned to have multiple hierarchical organization systems in the knowledge portion of the system, but I hadn't thought of doing the same in the reputation engine. If one really expands on this idea, one could consider the possibility of multiple, independent, competing reputation "services" that people sign up for. Kind of like there are multiple different search engines for the internet. And like there are componentized discussion engines, such as Disqus, that can be plugged into any web site.
Well, we’ve all known for some time that Slashdot could stand to have a better reputation engine of some sort, just to filter out most of the kinds of comments I’m getting here. Be that as it may, I will try to have a conversation with the actual thinking individuals who still come here, over the noise of the trolls.
In answer to some of the protests:
If anyone thinks a few opinions, randomly thrown around, here on Slashdot can, in any way, shape, or form, constitute the bulk of the work for a graduate project, then said person has no clue as to how much work a real graduate project can be.
In any research project, it is best to gather as many ideas and opinions as possible. Only a fool would assume someone is fool enough to let Slashdot be their be-all-end-all source of information. I also have a friend who is a Research Fellow in HCI at PARC, who I have hit up for ideas and/or connections to fellow researchers. You know, it's good to get input from both ends of the academic spectrum. ;^)
The reputation engine for this project is merely an ancillary, but necessary, accessory to the real project, which is the knowledge sharing and organization system.
Any attempt to compare what I am doing within my knowledge system to some existing system, based upon the small amount of information I have provided here, is doomed to just look ridiculous. The only reason I am providing any information at all about the actual project is to provide some perspective as to the direction the reputation engine portion should take. A reputation engine for an opinion-based site, such as this one, would necessarily have a different algorithm from one designed for collecting and organizing actual information.
With all that said, based upon the general cluelessness exhibited by most web-developers and many of our "helpful" friends here on Slashdot, it seems the question of how best to design a reputation engine would be quite a viable research topic in and of itself.
Finally, anyone who thinks insulting Slashdot is a BAD THING just hasn't been on Slashdot long enough. Between the trolling trolls and the mooing cows (which I love, BTW), getting to any useful information can be a roller-coaster ride. But occasionally, the grown-ups win out and one can find some real gems. It's worth a shot, right?
You are correct. Thank you.
I appreciate the voting system used by Stack Exchange, though my system would be more organized and said organization would also be crowd-sourced. So, I am thinking I would need some variation on the system used by Stack Exchange.
Thanks. This is just the kind of helpful comment I was hoping for.