"Readers had to prove they read a story before they were able to comment on it."
AUSTIN, Texas—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.
[NRK is "Norsk Riks Kringkasting" Norway Public Broadcasting - Wikipedia here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRK -- MEM]
"It was a basic idea," NRKbeta developer Ståle 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."
The story has since been told a few times, but Grut's recent refresh on the topic is just as compelling for its comment-section impact as it is for NRK's thought process on how to make Internet media a better place: invite readers to have an active stake in improving it.
[...]
... Grut had his own eureka moment while showering before biking to the office: why not a quiz? A WordPress plugin could force users to correctly answer a few multiple-choice questions before the page's comment field would appear. Once he got to the office, he and fellow staffers spent three hours building the plugin, which Grut reminded the crowd is wholly open source.
"Naturally, this was paid for by Norwegian people, so you can thank them if you want to implement it," Grut said when emphasizing that he was happy if more sites tried it out.
Should you slap the plugin into your own WordPress install, it's then a matter of having a story author or editor come up with multiple choice questions (and Grut says he's still unsure whether basic facts or fuller comprehension make for better quiz questions in this case). He admits having no A/B testing data to confidently determine Know2Comment's impact, but he says "99 percent" of NRKbeta's most frequent users were "overwhelmingly positive" about the function.
Still, he and NRKbeta have softened their use of the plugin in the past 13 months. "In the first period after we did this, we thought it was really fun to write these quizzes," Grut told Ars Technica. "We had a good time writing them. But then we 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."
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/0...
[NRK is "Norsk Riks Kringkasting" Norway Public Broadcasting - Wikipedia here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NRK -- MEM]
"It was a basic idea," NRKbeta developer Ståle 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."
The story has since been told a few times, but Grut's recent refresh on the topic is just as compelling for its comment-section impact as it is for NRK's thought process on how to make Internet media a better place: invite readers to have an active stake in improving it.
[...]
... Grut had his own eureka moment while showering before biking to the office: why not a quiz? A WordPress plugin could force users to correctly answer a few multiple-choice questions before the page's comment field would appear. Once he got to the office, he and fellow staffers spent three hours building the plugin, which Grut reminded the crowd is wholly open source.
"Naturally, this was paid for by Norwegian people, so you can thank them if you want to implement it," Grut said when emphasizing that he was happy if more sites tried it out.
Should you slap the plugin into your own WordPress install, it's then a matter of having a story author or editor come up with multiple choice questions (and Grut says he's still unsure whether basic facts or fuller comprehension make for better quiz questions in this case). He admits having no A/B testing data to confidently determine Know2Comment's impact, but he says "99 percent" of NRKbeta's most frequent users were "overwhelmingly positive" about the function.
Still, he and NRKbeta have softened their use of the plugin in the past 13 months. "In the first period after we did this, we thought it was really fun to write these quizzes," Grut told Ars Technica. "We had a good time writing them. But then we 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."
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/0...
With the amount of time it takes to read just one of these monsters...lawmakers would have a lot less time with the useless, frivolous bills they're constantly dumping into the system. Might even get them to start writing them in English (instead of liar speak), again.
You are probably well aware of the fact that judges remove juror who discuss nullification of bad laws.
It is a consequence of the so-called "CSI Effect" that less educated people demand often ridiculous physical evidence, whereas the better educated often demand no physical evidence, but accept the prosecution's case as presented.
It was Dr. Ferris who said "That's what laws are for, Mister Rearden. If the right people don't break them they are of no use whatsoever."
Respectfully,
O.A.
Youz just a racist, ain't ya?... :-)
I have the belief (opinion based on incomplete evidence) that, many
reviewers in websites and in magazines have not evaluated the item they are
writing about but have copied manufacturer's publicity.
When I buy an appliance I go to review sites and look at the bad reviews first.
Many are illiterate and illogical, and make complaints that have no relevance.
I have just read a master's thesis paper on an aspect of the work of Jane Austen.
The thesis writer has read much literary criticism, but shows no admiration or
appreciation or personal insight would would be evidence that the novels have been read.
This sort of thing is widespread, it is more than corruption, I propose that many people want to be accepted as an authority, or just have their opinions read, or just need to spout off in public.
But I think an AI would be best.
It seems like the plugin would stop unsophisticated bots any people who just want to post stupid "this stuff is gay" insults or people who see the name of a public figure they don't like in the title and post some "I can't stand him" criticism. It would not stop a committed troll.
I suspect, though, a significant percentage of impertinent comments come from people who would not bother to take the test.