
Thoof "is an attempt to improve on sites like Digg and Reddit" - zx76
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/18/business/media/18thoof.html?ex=1339819200&en=99bf1ddbadf72930&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
======
pg
If this guy thinks the fact that so many Americans believe Saddam Hussein was
involved in 9/11 is evidence that a new news site is needed, he's off to a bad
start. They believe that because they want to, not because there are no
reliable news sources available.

~~~
paul
The fundamental problem is real though. News sites, including social news like
reddit, are riddled with errors. Finding the truth often requires a real
effort on the part of the reader, and for the most part I'm just too
lazy/busy.

~~~
weel
There is a traditional solution to this, in theory. The theory goes that a
newspaper will meticulously edit and fact check, because at some point, they
are bound to write about something I happen to know a lot about, and then if
they are wrong, I will no longer trust them on other things. Unfortunately,
the theory works a little too well: virtually all newspapers, if you read a
few issues cover to cover, contain enough errors about things that you happen
to know a lot about that you start mistrusting them. But there are a few
publications for which traditional solution seems to work. I have rarely found
any mistakes in The Economist, for instance, when they write about things I
happen to know a lot about, which leads me to trust them more than most other
news sources when it comes to things I don't know.

~~~
paul
It's funny that you mention the economist, because I used to feel the same way
about them, but then a few years ago they published some article about Google
that was full of errors.

Clearly the old model isn't working though. I think the solution must be
collaborative. I don't know if Thoof is it, but at least it's in the right
direction.

~~~
pg
I think anyone who is a general-purpose journalist rather than a domain expert
is going to have this problem. Journalists don't actually understand the stuff
they write about; no one could, probably; so instead they have a lot of hacks
for sounding like they know what they're talking about.

Come to think of it, though, domain experts are often wrong too. Think about
programming books, for example. I've now learned enough about several other
fields to be fairly sure this problem is universal, except possibly in math.
(Though even mathematicians have often been wrong in the sense of overlooking
something that to later generations will seem obvious.)

Basically, you have to be a very critical reader. I doubt there's a "solution"
beyond that. This is something the very smartest people struggle all their
lives to get better at-- to take in all the stuff they're told, and from that
figure out what's really going on.

~~~
brlewis
Sometimes the problem has nothing to do with lack of domain knowledge. For
example, before I went to MIT I saw a NYT article about students protesting
the proposed removal of the pass/no credit system for the following freshman
year. The article slanted it as if the students were selfishly interested in
not getting grades. It doesn't take a domain expert to realize that if you're
an MIT student now, you won't be a freshman next year, and could not be
affected by the removal of pass/no credit. Students were objecting because
they felt it would have a detrimental effect on others.

------
nickb
Thoof (were all the names in the World taken or what?!) was started by this
guy: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21863>

Anyway, I looked at Thoof when it was posted on TC and I got an invite. It's a
waste of time. It just requires way too much work from the regular user to be
worthwhile and viable. Only redeeming quality was the endless scroll :).

------
maxklein
Ian Clarke is such an arrogant guy. Back in the day when he was nothing but a
developer, he was arrogant as hell, I can only imagine how he is now.

And he's arrogant, and produces nothing but commercial flops. He's a typical
close minded geek type, he thinks he knows everything, yet is unable to see
the big picture.

Moral of the story: It's not difficult to be polite. There is no excuse for
rudeness, but it will come back to bite your ass, even 8 years later!

------
antirez
Btw oknotizie ( <http://oknotizie.alice.it> ), a reddit alike system my
startup developed for the Italian market, already has the ability for users
called "power users" (having enough total rank and enough rank accumulated in
the last month) to replace the URL with one better suited (for example not
linkjacked).

------
greendestiny
So how does a recommendation algorithm get around the fact that interesting
doesn't equate to accurate? Oh wait it doesn't. Although I do enjoy the irony
of the first publicity for this site that will find the TRUTH is complete
bullshit.

Also the implication "we could win netflix we just don't want to" is not very
credible.

------
mynameishere
Headline: The value of paying big $$$ for PR: Yet-another-Digg-copycat gets
NYTimes mention.

~~~
pg
It seems more likely to me that the origin of this article is explained in the
last sentence.

~~~
omouse
Indeed. Very funny that _it's the last sentence_. Isn't that kind of important
information that belongs at the top of the article?

------
Alex3917
There are maybe one or two genuinely thought provoking articles on the entire
web each week. What does it matter how the rest of them are displayed?

------
djangoboy
the fact that this system uses bayes inference means it is doomed for failure.
bayes requires large amount of training data. Most users want instant
satisfaction. That could only mean failure.

