

Rbutr: a browser extension that finds rebuttals to web pages you're reading - MichaelJW
http://rbutr.com/

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tomstuart
This reminds me of Intel Research Berkeley's (now-defunct?) Confrontational
Computing project, which produced a Firefox extension called Dispute Finder:
<http://ennals.org/rob/disputefinder.html>, <http://confront.intel-
research.net/Dispute_Finder.html>

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username3
_We are in contact with Rob Ennals atm, who was the creator of Dispute Finder
which aimed to provide a line by line annotation system which provided
rebuttals to disputed claims._

[1]:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/u8q8a/new_tool_to_h...](http://www.reddit.com/r/skeptic/comments/u8q8a/new_tool_to_help_skeptics_reddit_can_we_get_your/c4tf8i8)

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Goladus
In my experience:

> Foster good principles of logical debate within the community

This is the most agonizingly difficult problem to deal with.

Getting people to actually judge arguments on their logical and factual merit
is ridiculously difficult. Many do not even seem aware such criteria exists,
much less have capability to recognize or respect those traits in opposing
arguments. The moment you start touching on politically or emotionally-charged
issues like religion and discrimination, fair judgment of opposing logic and
facts becomes scarce.

~~~
username3
We'd need to vote on votes, dispute reasons for your reasons, have a checklist
of user's logic for voting and then filter out users with bad logic history.

We could instead argue in code or in language that can compile, so "[y]ou are
punished swiftly for obvious errors." [1]

[1]
[http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2012/05/16/please_lear...](http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2012/05/16/please_learn_to_write.html)

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twelvechairs
Great idea - I've always wanted to see something like this.

But... compulsory registration? This just dissuades most of your potential
users from even giving it a try....

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Zakharov
That might be beneficial. Their philosophy section states that they want
people submitting and voting on rebuttals to have an understanding of
argumentative logic; making registration difficult makes it more likely users
have some idea of what rebutr is before they start using it.

~~~
alttab
Considering this is auto research for lazy people, any price point creates a
chicken egg problem nearly impossible to solve.

~~~
Aegist
While it will no doubt get used as 'auto research for lazy people', the
implications of success for this project are much bigger than just that.
Providing automatic skepticism for the average person is unheard of, but with
a wide enough net cast by an active community, and wide uptake by common
users, that is exactly what can come of it.

Definitely the chicken-egg problem is our main hurdle, but we are working on
that by turning this project in to something more than just the plugin. We are
also focusing on connecting with the most active communities who already
engage in exactly the sort of activity which we need - the Skeptic community
is exactly that community. So we are walking away from chickens and eggs, and
going straight after the seeds.

~~~
alttab
Going after the skeptics would certainly be a niche market that could easily
be created, I get that for sure.

I still think there is a model where you can impact the wider lay internet
audience by providing healthy skepticism for everyone. Between Twitter and
Facebook, communities with large, lasting impacts on social knowledge
distribution and the behavioral modification that follows really helps gain
mainstream traction.

I guess what I'm saying is - please don't only solve the small problem of
giving balanced skepticism to those who want it (and thus may have the drive
to do it on their own), but make those who don't look for it want it in the
first place by making it easy to obtain (paying for that service would not be
one of those ways).

The lazy people will think paying for such a service is a scam, but little do
they know they get scammed for free all the time with unbalanced points of
view.

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Zakharov
Having gone through the tutorial, I had a couple issues. I couldn't mark a
page to be rebutted, switch tab to the rebuttal, then mark that page as the
rebuttal except by manually copy-pasting the url. When adding tags, I could
only add tags from the list and couldn't remove a tag I accidentally added.
Shouldn't the tag text box be editable?

~~~
Aegist
Zakharov, I'm really sorry it didn't work for you. It is clear that this
happens to a small percentage of the people because we occasionally get messed
up submission coming through from the tutorial (which in theory should all be
the same).

As of yet though, we are unable to replicate the problems. If you could
provide some details of your OS and browser, and exactly what happened, I
would appreciate it.

Because normally, copy and pasting a URL in to the rebuttal place actually
isn't allowed at all. So something has gone very wrong! Also, the Tag box is
indeed normally editable (after addition of the first tag).

So I just wanted to let you know, that there is a bug causing those faults,
and we haven't identified what is causing that bug yet...

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Zakharov
This sounds really cool. Very minor quibble: in rebutr's Philosophy, section
3, "backs it's claims up" should be "backs its claims up".

~~~
Aegist
Fixed.

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mazsa
This extension can access:

* Your data on all websites

This item can read every page that you visit -- your bank, your web email,
your Facebook page, and so on. Often, this kind of item needs to see all pages
so that it can perform a limited task such as looking for RSS feeds that you
might want to subscribe to.

Caution: Besides seeing all your pages, this item could use your credentials
(cookies) to request or modify your data from websites.

* Your tabs and browsing activity

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Virtually every Chrome extension that has to deal with a web page somehow
requires those two permissions.

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taybenlor
This is fantastic. I've always wanted to be able to see this, but the only way
so far has been either if they allow comments, or if I see a discussion in the
place I used to follow the link (eg. Twitter, HN, Reddit).

Is it all manual or is there some automated component?

~~~
Aegist
It is all manual I am afraid. We are reaching out to Skeptic communities right
now in an effort to get the ball rolling and get as many rebuttals added as
possible. We're getting amazingly positive support from the Reddit skeptical
community (which is where this post came from), and I will be at the Amazing
Meeting in July, talking to skeptic community leaders from all over the world.

But of course, everyone and anyone can add rebuttals, so please, feel free to
add any whenever you happen across one :)

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username3
Websites/domains should be allowed to rebut rbutr rebuttals and be
highlighted/referenced like Talk.Origins and True.Origins do for each
other.[1]

What are they going to do with all these rebuttals? This is like level two. We
need to go up some more levels.[2]

[1]: <http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/moonrec.html>

[2]: <http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/>

~~~
Aegist
rbutr rebuttals can absolutely be rebutted. Any page can be rebutted, so you
can follow a whole multi-step debate online.

Is that what you meant?

For example, one
link:[http://rbutr.com/rbutr/WebsiteServlet?requestType=showLink&#...](http://rbutr.com/rbutr/WebsiteServlet?requestType=showLink&linkId=1828)
where the rebuttal is rebutted:
[http://rbutr.com/rbutr/WebsiteServlet?requestType=showLinksB...](http://rbutr.com/rbutr/WebsiteServlet?requestType=showLinksByFromPage&fromPageId=1825)
where the rebuttal is rebutted:
[http://rbutr.com/rbutr/WebsiteServlet?requestType=showLinksB...](http://rbutr.com/rbutr/WebsiteServlet?requestType=showLinksByFromPage&fromPageId=2126)

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joshuahedlund
There is definitely room for some cool innovation in the online flame war
space. I've thought it would be cool to have some kind of dedicated place for
summarizing well-worn debate topics so that whenever comments on a site
dissolve into assertions about the same old things you can point them towards
an existing summary instead of again rehashing the same old facts and
contexts. I haven't taken the time to flesh the idea out to see if it could
really work, though.

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chris_p
It seems that users have to submit rebuttals to articles they read, I thought
that was done by the system using NLP techniques, specifically Sentiment
Analysis. Now that would be really cool.

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albb0920
This makes me think of sidewiki. Will many people really go find rebuttals and
contribute back to the original page? It seems a little bit too much of work.

~~~
Aegist
So far we are getting very promising numbers. The main difference betwen us
and all of the annotation services which have come before us (around 50 on
last count, thanks to Hypothes.is), is that we are page level. We connect one
URL to another. It is so simple your grandmother could probably do it. The
previous versions were all line-level, meaning that you had to highlight text
and then write your comment, or connect to another page etc. It was
overwhelming and confusing. rbutr requires you to press two button, small
descriptive comment and tag. You don't need to be an expert on the subject
matter or anything. You just connect the two authors who claim to know about
it to one another...

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koide
Related, but not implemented yet: <http://hypothes.is>

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woodall
From the looks of it, the hivemind has already taken over.

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volandovengo
Nice work Shane. How do you find the rebuttals?

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lectrick
I would love this but 90% of the people I meet and know are not actually
interested in _actual discussion_ of the ideas they believe in and consume.

~~~
username3
I don't blame them. We keep having the same discussions and don't get
anywhere. Have the discussion once and for all. Let them follow it and show
you what they agree with. Give us multiple choice discussions. We could just
pick what's already been said to each other. Auto-complete ideas. Auto-
correction for discussions.

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brudgers
<snark> A browser that flames debate on the internet? Yeah, that's helpful.
</snark>

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ktizo
_rbutr is the best tool for keeping yourself genuinely informed online._

I'm not so sure about that, I wonder if there are any articles that disagree..

~~~
Aegist
Haha. Consider it a goal :)

