
Show HN: FAQ Off – Open-Source Gamebook-Style Q&A Builder to Mitigate Trolls - some_furry
https://github.com/soatok/faq-off/releases/tag/v0.1.0
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some_furry
Hi HN,

I've been developing some open source projects on my Twitch.tv channel for the
past few months. I just got this project feature-complete enough for a first
beta release.

    
    
      Why?
    

When someone either accrues a large social media following, or become the
target of someone else with a large following, it can become very draining to
have the same conversation and debate the same tired arguments with hundreds
or thousands of different people with varying degrees of intellectual honesty
and good faith.

    
    
      What is FAQ-Off?
    

FAQ Off allows users to create a gamebook-styled Q&A, which can be linked to
when someone responds to a social media post with the same dumb question or
tired arguments.

At the bottom of the page, you can link to more Q&A posts that contain further
responses to the same, tired arguments.

In essence, it allows you to tell trolls, "FAQ off, dude!"

(For maximum impact, users are heavily encouraged to thoroughly cite their FAQ
Off entries with a diverse range of reliable third party sources.)

    
    
      What problems does FAQ Off solve?
    

If you find yourself being dragged into the same exhausting discussions over
and over again, especially from Twitter trolls, you can save yourself a lot of
time by pre-writing a branching FAQ adventure that answers users' questions,
and their follow-up questions, etc. to render their tired line of questioning
obsolete.

    
    
      Does it cost money?
    

No! You can self-host your own instance. I've tried to make it easy to setup.
All you need is:

* PHP 7.3 or newer, with ext/sodium

* PostgreSQL 9.6 or newer

* Apache or nginx with LetsEncrypt (for HTTPS)

If you want access to the instance I'm running at
[https://faq.dhol.es](https://faq.dhol.es), I'm only giving invite codes out
to close friends and Patreon supporters. Invited users are free to invite any
of their friends.

    
    
      Why the borderline-profane project name?
    

The project exists to tell boring Internet trolls, "Fuck off", in a way that
obviates their entire strategy. I feel that the name captures the spirit of my
intentions well. Also, I like puns.

    
    
      What motivated its development?
    

I'm very active in the furry fandom. We're frequent targets of thinly-veiled
homophobia. I wanted to arm my fellow furs with tools to better mitigate mob
harassment (e.g. the kind of behavior we see after tweets from toxic YouTube
personalities like
[https://twitter.com/keemstar/status/1100493020523347973](https://twitter.com/keemstar/status/1100493020523347973)).

