
Ask HN: Does this exist? web Content Fact challenging. I Want to open source it - newman8r
Does this tool exist yet in any form?<p>Users can submit any content from the web, print media, or their own uploaded media (i.e. a videotape of a speech) that they feel has a factual error<p>why? I get really frustrated when I see a blog post from years ago that has clear factual errors. These can arise for more reasons than I have time to mention but range from innocent typos and misunderstandings of a topic all the way up to clear conflicts of interest, conspiracy theories, propaganda and scams.<p>Unfortunately getting many of these issues fixed directly isn&#x27;t feasible. The original creator may be impossible to reach, may resent being called out, may genuinely believe in their content, may be a scam artist, etc. Sometimes threads are locked or deleted, sometimes a dissenting voice is banned, and sometimes it exists in archives like archive.org where it&#x27;s simply a record that isn&#x27;t meant to be changed even if incorrect.<p>how it would work:
The page or social post or media link in question is spidered, the user highlights one or more factual issues and then provides contrary evidence. Other users can view the issue and agree or disagree with its merit. The submissions themselves can be submitted as well (meta), so there&#x27;s no threaded messaging but always the opportunity to formally disagree.<p>The owner of the content is notified if their resource has been listed. Being listed is never in itself an indication of a factual misrepresentation, instead it provides a place for people to view evidence associated with content that someone has deemed questionable - and then use that evidence to come to their own conclusion.<p>links are noFollow so we don&#x27;t send link juice to these sites.
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jacquesm
There is something like this that allows collaborative annotation using post-
it like bits using a plug in for FF.

For the life of me I can't remember the name though.

Wikialong or something like that, it provided a side-bar with stuff from a
wiki to any web-page.

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newman8r
This sounds fairly close to what I'm thinking - I'm sure someone else will see
this and remember if you don't

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jacquesm
Found it:

[http://www.wikalong.org/](http://www.wikalong.org/)

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newman8r
Thanks, this looks like a nice tool.

I'd like to see something with the specific purpose of saying "this thing on
the web is wrong" rather than a catch-all but I am going to give this a closer
look.

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jacquesm
I like your idea but I suspect that even more than wikipedia something like
that would lead to endless shoutfests about who is right and who is wrong.

The web is fast becoming a battle ground where it doesn't matter who is right
or wrong but who can shout the loudest.

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newman8r
I wouldn't doubt it - some stuff is easy to agree on (an incorrect date,
value, etc.), but when it comes to political and other topics, it's never a
done deal. But I do think a place to report this stuff is nice.

I can barely stand to visit reddit anymore - but even there, it's not the
hardest task to identify some of the rational comments and check their
veracity - thats essentially what I would be interested in.

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brudgers
I'm not sure a repository of incorrect information would improve the internet.
Or maybe I should have said "another repository of incorrect information".

Anyway, the trend is toward platforms that support editing to improve
accuracy: e.g. Wikipedia and StackOverflow. That is it's less trouble to
create a trusted source and get a good ranking in Google's page rank than to
worry about XKCD386.

Good luck.

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newman8r
Thats an interesting way to look at it - I would not call it so much a repo of
incorrect information, more a directory of information in dispute.

I'm curious if anyone else ever sees clear errors on the web and gets
frustrated about not being able to effectively call them out.

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Piskvorrr
skeptics.stackexchange.com ?

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newman8r
These appear to be mostly questions,

the format I propose would be "This content___ contains a factual error
{reference here}. It is incorrect because___ and this is supported by {insert
reference}

