
Must answer questions before posting comments to prove you understand news - cnst
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/nrk-norwegian-news-site-comments-read-story-understand-post-quiz-questions-a7607246.html
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kristopolous
I was under the impression that comments on news sites were mostly to divert
the readership from directly contacting the author or the company through
channels that _are_ listened to; merely a solution to keep the wacko segment
of the readership occupied and satiated. At least in practice, this is how it
appears to function; they're almost exclusively 3rd party plugins and nobody
that works for the news organizaion seems to ever engage with them.

~~~
jk2323
I find the comments most of the time more read worthy than the article.

~~~
BeetleB
>I find the comments most of the time more read worthy than the article.

What news site is this? For _general_ news sites, I've found them to be of
very low quality. I can't remember the last time I gained anything from them.

~~~
travmatt
I'd consider HN to be a news source, I typically check the comments on
articles first. I'd say I've found this to be true.

~~~
setr
It's a news aggregator, not a source. In fact, it's only really got two
primary functions: allow users to post arbitrary links, and allow users to
comment on them.

Most news sources however have three primary functions: Identify, Write, and
Publish news.

Commenting in HN is key to its existence; Commenting in news sources just
happens to be a thing available.

Saying that comments works in HN is like saying comments work on reddit; it's
trivially true, assuming the site is in any way functional/popular. But that
doesn't mean comments are useful on NYT; take away comments and there really
wouldn't be much lost from its primary goals.

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libeclipse
> Google announced last week, for instance, that it had built an artificially
> intelligent tool that can read through comments and identify whether or not
> they are "toxic".

Censorship at its finest.

~~~
KekDemaga
"Censorship + Math != Censorship" evidently.

~~~
kurthr
We seem to have a choice between that and S#1T Posting and Spamming. Now, I
suppose Poe's law could limit some sarcasm, but I'm not sure that would be a
real loss either.

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Overtonwindow
This reminds me of a literary test to vote. In this case it's: "Here's our
news story. Answer some questions to be sure you understand OUR point of view,
the words and ideas WE want you to acquiesce, in order to express your so-
called opinion." Ungood.

~~~
pmarreck
Would you really want illiterate voters, though?

~~~
ice109
are you like totally ignorant of how literary tests (and poll taxes) were used
to disenfranchise minorities

~~~
pmarreck
if all the literate people were male and all the illiterate people were
female, requiring literacy would not _necessarily_ be sexism. you're
conflating 2 different things. as did they. perhaps it did exclude more
recently-emancipated black people. oh well. requiring literacy for something
as important as an election is not obstructionist, IMHO

The fee you mentioned, however, is, IMHO.

if I had to hire a scientist for a job and the only applicants that were
qualified enough were white males, hiring a white male would not make me a
racist sexist.

i look forward to the day when people just stop trying to correlate everything
both positive and negative to race, gender, age, and any other attribute other
than "are you a good person" and "can you do this job well"

~~~
warrenm
If it were universally applied, evaluated identically each time, and then used
a clear pass/fail manner, you would be right. For example, the mathematical
answer to "1 + 1 = ?" can be evaluated objectively.

But those "literacy" weren't anything even close to similar.

~~~
pmarreck
People are biased dicks. I know.

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MrTonyD
I've often thought that those who make decisions for society should be
required to pass a test to show they understand all sides of an issue. It is
absurd to me that politicians are currently allowed to make the wide variety
of decisions that they make. I don't think anybody really wants to vote for
them to do that. (There was an old episode of Star Trek that had officer
candidates use the holodeck to be exposed to a wide variety of situations and
outcomes. I would think that whatever we could do to emulate that should be a
requirement for making associated decisions.)

~~~
Boothroid
I've often thought that apart from the very fewest national security issues
all government should be conducted in the open: all cabinet meetings should be
public, all political areas should be monitored and the results available to
all, and all private political discussion between politicians should be banned
on pain of imprisonment. If they've nothing to hide they've nothing to fear,
right?

~~~
snakeboy
The problem I see with that proposal is that it would entirely eliminate the
ability of Congress to compromise on anything, for fear of a video going viral
showing them ceding ground on contentious issues and being used against them
next election.

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protomyth
I expect there will be some mockery of the questions if they are not careful.
Imagine questions written by MSNBC & FoxNews for the same story. I can see the
questions setting up an echo chamber effect.

~~~
fruitcake
> Imagine questions written by MSNBC & FoxNews for the same story.

As far as I can tell from briefly viewing them, the MSNBC and Fox News web
sites don't allow comments.

~~~
protomyth
I was using them as examples of two groups that would write totally different
questions both with a prejudice towards a particular worldview.

~~~
spencerflem
They would also write articles with a different worldview.

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mtl_usr
Simple fact trivia won't do anything to demonstrate a person has understood
the article, merely that he read it.

It's the fundamental difference between functional illiteracy and "plain"
illiteracy.

This difference shows up all the time when analyzing data because some
jurisdiction will only report the illiteracy number while some other will
include the functional illiteracy as well.

~~~
gleenn
I think you're ignoring that many people might not even read the article at
all. Proving comprehension sounds incredibly hard; proving someone has at
least tried would probably be a huge step in the right direction compared to
the mayhem which is most comments online.

~~~
warrenm
Proving _real_ comprehension would be (is?) hard/impossible in a constrained
format such as this would have to be (pointy-clicky multiple choice).

Proving someone "tried* is also [nearly] impossible here: just take standard
test-taking strategies for standardized tests of reading comprehension, and
apply them to this context (because that's all this is, but not even done by
people whose entire job is to make "good" tests)

------
BrandoElFollito
Next in line : voting at elections.

My dream of having people answer 5 simple questions to be allowed to get a
voting card would come true.

Example of questions: name three neighbour countries, who is the current
president, is France in Europe or Asia, what was the last world war,...

I understand that this will unfairly remove people who are illiterate, or had
a difficult childhood, or are simply dumb but they are expected to make a
choice which will impact the whole country. If they do not know anything about
this country and the world it is in then sorry, they are not in a poisition to
choose.

~~~
xorcist
Stupidity has very little political bias, fortunately.

Such questions are rarely useful. They tend to be either trivial to the
extreme (such as the continent of France or the first letter in the alphabet),
politically opinionated, or more complex than you think. (What _was_ the last
world war? You and I might think it was the Cold War but with in depth
knowledge would have more nuances to their answer.)

~~~
BrandoElFollito
This is not a matter of political biais. If someone wants to vote extreme left
or right and knows who is the current president - fine.

I do not want biais, I want people who get to vote know the very basics of the
world they live in.

Someone who voted X because yeah, the current president is wrong, but this
"current president" happens to be a TV celebrity and not the president - such
a person does not deserve to have voting rights. You would be surprised where
people put France...

~~~
nsgi
I doubt that a significant number of people wouldn't be able to name the
current president. The problem is that anything more complex than that is
prone to bias.

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michaelfeathers
I wonder whether another way of approaching the problem would be to have to
two commenting sections for a site. One would be moderated algorithmically and
the other wouldn't. People could choose according to their tolerance.

~~~
loomer
I think that would only hinder conversation. The original idea of questions
also seems dumb to me, since it feels like even many good posters who actually
read the article would be too lazy to answer the questions, and if there was
another comment section which didn't require answering questions, they'd just
post in there. It also seems like having two comment sections would divide the
conversation.

~~~
kurthr
I'm not sure it would be laziness. A good poster who bothers to understand the
article and compose an interesting response probably isnt lazy.

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warrenm
If that actually _worked_ , the noise to signal ratio might not be infinite

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nthcolumn
phil1edinburgh1 asks 'what does NKRbeta mean?' \- not sure if he is being
sarcastic or hasn't actually read the article :/

------
Myrmornis
Great, now how about extending this to voting rights?

~~~
hashmal
someone will quickly sneak in stuff like "is global warming real?" in the
questions.

~~~
alexee
at least "What is the European Union?" when voting for brexit would be enough.

~~~
makomk
That's a good (and presumably unintentional) demonstration of the problem -
the European Union is a hugely complex, very political beast and the right
answer to that question depends heavily on your political frame of reference
and priorities. Even just the free trade-related aspects can be accurately
described either as giving up control of our own laws and regulations to a
centralized bureaucracy or enabling trade by removing non-tariff barriers
depending on how you want to frame them - since almost all non-tariff barriers
other than differences in regulations are banned by WTO rules they're the same
thing, one description just emphasises the benefits and the other the
downsides. (I've even seen a certain FT writer who insists he's not pro-EU use
both framings - the positive one when discussing the EU and the negative one
when discussing post-Brexit trade deals outside the EU.)

