You could blacklist everyone by default, then personally contact individual “smart” people and invite them to your darknet. The price of admission is to blacklist everyone but yourself and the people you personally approve of. When someone breaks this policy, you could just blacklist them again.
The first step (blacklisting everyone except me and people I approve of) is easy. Expanding network depends on other people joining the same system, or at least willing to send me a list of people they approve of. I think that most people use default settings, so this system would work best on a site where this would be the default setting.
It would be interesting to find a good algorithm, which would have the following data on input: each user can put other users on their whitelist or blacklist, and can upvote or downvote comments by other users. It could somehow calculate the similarity of opinions and then show everyone the content they want (extrapolated volition) to see. (The explicit blacklists exist only to override the recommendations of the algorithm. By default, an unknown and unconnected person is invisible, except for their comments upvoted by my friends.)
If you implemented this, I’d even be interested in trying it out, provided that I could see the two scores (smart-only as well as all-inclusive) side-by-side.
If the site is visible for anonymous readers, a global karma is necessary. Though it can be somehow calculated from the customized karmas.
Personally, though, I would prefer to err on the side of experiencing negative emotions now and then. I do not want to fall into a death spiral that leads me to forming a cabal of people where everyone agrees with each other, and we spend all day talking about how awesome we are—which is what nearly always happens when people decide to shut out dissenting voices.
I also wouldn’t like to be shielded from disagreeing opinions. I want to be shielded from stupidity and offensiveness, to protect my emotions. Also, because my time is limited, I want to be shielded from noise. No algorithm will be perfect in filtering out the noise and not filtering out the disagreement.
I think a reasonble approach is to calculate the probability of “reasonable disagreement” based on the previous comments. This is something that we approximately do in real life—based on our previous experience we take some people’s opinion more seriously, so when someone disagrees with us, we react differently based on who it is. If I agree with someone about many things, then I will consider their opinion more seriously when we disagree. However if someone disagrees about almost everything, I simply consider them crazy.
I think that most people use default settings, so this system would work best on a site where this would be the default setting.
I think this is a minor convenience at best; when you choose to form your darknet, you could simply inform the other candidates of your plan: via email, PM, or some other out-of-band channel.
It would be interesting to find a good algorithm, which would have the following data on input...
This sounds pretty similar to Google’s PageRank, only for comments instead of pages. Should be doable.
If the site is visible for anonymous readers, a global karma is necessary.
Yes, of course. The goal is not to turn the entire site exclusively into your darknet, but to allow you to run your darknet in parallel with the normal site as seen by everyone else.
I also wouldn’t like to be shielded from disagreeing opinions. I want to be shielded from stupidity and offensiveness, to protect my emotions. Also, because my time is limited, I want to be shielded from noise. No algorithm will be perfect in filtering out the noise and not filtering out the disagreement.
Agreed; if you could figure out a perfect filtering algorithm, you would end up implementing an Oracle-grade AI, and then we’d have a whole lot of other problems to worry about :-)
That said, I personally tend to distrust my emotions. I’d rather take an emotional hit, than risk missing some important point just because it makes me feel bad; thus, I wouldn’t want to join a darknet such as yours. That’s just me though, your experience is probably different.
The first step (blacklisting everyone except me and people I approve of) is easy. Expanding network depends on other people joining the same system, or at least willing to send me a list of people they approve of. I think that most people use default settings, so this system would work best on a site where this would be the default setting.
It would be interesting to find a good algorithm, which would have the following data on input: each user can put other users on their whitelist or blacklist, and can upvote or downvote comments by other users. It could somehow calculate the similarity of opinions and then show everyone the content they want (extrapolated volition) to see. (The explicit blacklists exist only to override the recommendations of the algorithm. By default, an unknown and unconnected person is invisible, except for their comments upvoted by my friends.)
If the site is visible for anonymous readers, a global karma is necessary. Though it can be somehow calculated from the customized karmas.
I also wouldn’t like to be shielded from disagreeing opinions. I want to be shielded from stupidity and offensiveness, to protect my emotions. Also, because my time is limited, I want to be shielded from noise. No algorithm will be perfect in filtering out the noise and not filtering out the disagreement.
I think a reasonble approach is to calculate the probability of “reasonable disagreement” based on the previous comments. This is something that we approximately do in real life—based on our previous experience we take some people’s opinion more seriously, so when someone disagrees with us, we react differently based on who it is. If I agree with someone about many things, then I will consider their opinion more seriously when we disagree. However if someone disagrees about almost everything, I simply consider them crazy.
I think this is a minor convenience at best; when you choose to form your darknet, you could simply inform the other candidates of your plan: via email, PM, or some other out-of-band channel.
This sounds pretty similar to Google’s PageRank, only for comments instead of pages. Should be doable.
Yes, of course. The goal is not to turn the entire site exclusively into your darknet, but to allow you to run your darknet in parallel with the normal site as seen by everyone else.
Agreed; if you could figure out a perfect filtering algorithm, you would end up implementing an Oracle-grade AI, and then we’d have a whole lot of other problems to worry about :-)
That said, I personally tend to distrust my emotions. I’d rather take an emotional hit, than risk missing some important point just because it makes me feel bad; thus, I wouldn’t want to join a darknet such as yours. That’s just me though, your experience is probably different.