A Norwegian Website Is Making Readers Pass a Quiz Before Commenting (niemanlab.org) 185
Joseph Lichterman, writing for Nieman Lab: Two weeks ago, NRKbeta, the tech vertical of the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK, published an explainer about a proposed new digital surveillance law in the country. Digital security is a controversial topic, and the conversation around security issues can become heated. But the conversation in the comments of the article was respectful and productive: Commenters shared links to books and other research, asked clarifying questions, and offered constructive feedback. The team at NRKbeta attributes the civil tenor of its comments to a feature it introduced last month. On some stories, potential commenters are now required to answer three basic multiple-choice questions about the article before they're allowed to post a comment. The goal is to ensure that the commenters have actually read the story before they discuss it.
I like it (Score:5, Insightful)
"The goal is to ensure that the commenters have actually read the story before they discuss it"
A+ idea.
+1 insightful
Too many RTFA's...
I don't like it (Score:5, Funny)
I don't know why I must pass a test before being able to read a website. Also, do I have to pay for the test? How long is it? I think this is a stupid solution for a non-existent problem.
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The user doesn't need to pass the test to READ the article, they need to pass the test to COMMENT on the article. Didn't you re-- ... aha. I see what you did there!
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Whoooos... aha, I see what you did there.
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Use of obvious irony is not always a troll.
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You won't be appreciated
Got modded right. Seems like the clueberts have the mod points today. And yes, amusing troll.
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I don't know why I must pass a test before being able to read a website. Also, do I have to pay for the test? How long is it? I think this is a stupid solution for a non-existent problem.
Just wait until these guys get hired by the TSA to quiz [slashdot.org] people coming into the US.
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Access to KoL chat requires passing a basic English exam. Several questions are aimed at common grammatical errors (to vs too, their and there and they're).
There is less low quality trolling and a lot less bot spam.
But even with a basic language test you will still have worthless discourse. The spelling might be a bit better, though.
Did you RTFA? (Score:4, Funny)
Did you read the article before posting that?
Re:Did you RTFA? (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you read the article before posting that?
This is Slashdot. A lot of the members don't even read the summary before commenting...
Re:Did you RTFA? (Score:5, Funny)
Did you read the article before posting that?
Why? The submitter probably didn't.
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Fuck. I just realized I've done that before. I've been here too long.
Re:I like it (Score:5, Funny)
If it were to be tried at Slashdot, I think the editors would have had to have read the articles in order to make up the quiz questions. It couldn't possibly work.
Question Bites (Score:5, Funny)
The only way this can work with US readers is if the questions are shorter than 140 characters, and the answers were in the readers' twitter feeds within ten minutes of the question being asked.
Also, SQUIRREL!
Narrative Pushing Will Ruin It (Score:2, Insightful)
Every article on immigration will require you to agree on the unqualified benefits of mass immigration (and a gauntlet of other talking points), or an article will require you to say you believe in the wage gap, for example.
Re:Narrative Pushing Will Ruin It (Score:5, Interesting)
As with any tool, it can be used responsibly and have good outcomes or be used for terrible purposes by immoral people. You also forget that for the website to ask a question and assign it a correct answer is a tactic endorsement that they believe it is the truth. A news site could run a story about political candidate X talking about the wage gap, but that's just reporting on something that happened, having a question where the correct answer is "the wage gap is real" on the other hand goes beyond just reporting. Any news site that used questions so irresponsibly would just hang itself.
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Yeah, and in right-wing sites (in the USA) users would have to verify their belief that Jews are God's (capital G please) Chosen People, that Jews are the world's best scientists and produce more science than all other people, and there is only one true God and his name is Yahwe.
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They're already ruining it (Score:2)
Many have already closed their comment sections.
When I see that, I immediately add the domain to my hosts file. Any form of echo chamber is a bad thing.
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Yeah, I suppose... but you know, I really don't mind APK. He makes more sense than some people do sometimes, even through his fairly obvious issues. One just has to work a little harder to extract the sense. I can do that.
And the hosts file... really doesn't often get the credit it deserves as a means of filtering out various network malefactors. So there's that.
Hay, look! (Score:2)
Nonsense.
Good for him. So?
Are you enjoying constructing and embellishing your strawman?
And yet, here you are, doing exactly that. The only question remaining is: have you also written a program?
Pros and cons of hosts (Score:2)
I've written programs, but not programs to build hosts files. I have, however, written an article about the pros and cons of using programs like APK's [pineight.com].
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Very nice article, kudos. Good info.
FWIW, I remap unwelcome hosts to 127.0.0.1 on machines without actual server duties. While 0.0.0.0 does not always work, 127.0.0.1 has worked everywhere I've tried it (about 30 machines or so.) I make sure that there are no available resources other than 404 errors and the equivalent for other services. As far as I know, this is a safe practice.
I kill off all media sites that don't provide for a comment section or engage in punitive moderation (by which I mean, deleting o
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FWIW, women do earn less than men, on the average, so there is a gender-based pay gap. There are many reasons behind this, some reasonable and some perhaps not so reasonable.
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Thing is, we don't necessarily care about how something can be abused in some context, if we have no real need to use that context. A right-wing site might make me agree that Trump is God's chosen before I comment, but I have very little desire to post on such sites. (Same for similar left-wing sites; I dislike echo chambers and mutual admiration societies no matter whether I agree with them or not.) A site where my comment might actually be of use to someone is not going to have slanted quizzes.
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Be honest, did you RTFA before commenting? :-)
I... skimmed TFA. Read is too strong a word.
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I skimmed the slashdot summary, I figure that puts me on par with the other people here.
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Bad idea. This is Slashdot.
That might be good for the comment section of the site hosting the article, where everybody in the comment section is presumed to have access to the article. It might not be ideal for a third-party comment section such as Slashdot, which is known to link to articles that I'm not allowed to read. Some articles are behind a different paywall from the one to which I already subscribe. Others require users of anti-tracking extensions to whitelist the site, thereby causing the browser to communicate with sites t
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How is it "uninformed" to notify the editors of a problem with the article's availability, particularly on a discussion system that offers no mechanism to contact them privately?
Isn't this like (Score:2, Interesting)
..requiring a literacy test to vote?
Re:Isn't this like (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH, political literacy can be VERY subjective and emotional. Literacy for one can look like propaganda for the other.
Re:Isn't this like (Score:4, Insightful)
..requiring a literacy test to vote?
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume you are not trolling with that one, and share just a couple ways how these are not similar.
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I'm not sure about the effectiveness of voting vs commenting on a web forum. In some venues a well written post could change at least a single persons vote. And if it accomplishes that then it has had more impact than your single vote.
That said I agree that a literacy test for voting is a far cry from a reading comprehension test for commenting. When you go to vote you aren't presented with the entire text of proposed law changes or dossiers of politicians history and platform. Instead when you go to vote y
Re:Isn't this like (Score:5, Funny)
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I figure you were probably joking, but this concept gets way more credit than it deserves and needs more push back. Why should illiterate or otherwise uneducated people not be allowed to vote? They were already left behind by society, and then we want to punish them on top of that? I get that people like that may be more easily manipulated, but the solution it to try much harder to not let anyone go without a good education, instead of restricting the rights of those who fell through the cracks of society.
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..requiring a literacy test to vote?
In some countries, that would be denounced by one party as racist. Just as soon as they've checked their voter demographics and literacy statistics.
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No, it would be like requiring people to have some basic idea what the person they vote for stands for. Why vote for a person if the goals of him/her is unknown? Likewise why post comments on an article one haven't even read?
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Likewise why post comments on an article one haven't even read?
That depends on the answer to the following question: Where else should one post a comment that one cannot read the article?
Slashdot Should Do This (Score:3, Funny)
And here's the list of questions:
1) Where do hot grits go?
2) Give us a good "In Soviet Russia" joke.
3) Who is Old Ike?
4) What does the acronym GNAA stand for?
5) What movie is it a requirement to watch to join GNAA?
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I'm an Albatraoz
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7) What does the fox say?
The answer [youtu.be]: "I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin's death as George Zimmerman was."
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The movie should be http://www.imdb.com/title/tt02... [imdb.com] I guess? Not that I actually know that meme and not that I've watched the movie but the name latched on for some reason...
So... (Score:3)
Or at least, they'll have a harder time getting through the keyhole.
Citation (Score:4, Funny)
"But the conversation in the comments of the article was respectful and productive"
[CITATION NEEDED] ;-)
Awesome! (Score:5, Insightful)
This sounds like a surefire way to get only the best trolls! ;)
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Obligatory snarky comment (Score:2, Funny)
Why isn't this quiz being presented in multiple languages?
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Well that is stretching it more than a bit as some dialects are very local and even Norwegians can have problem understanding them. In practice there are many more dialects however the Internet will probably reduce them to a few in some decades...
"Links to books" (Score:2)
Serious question: how did they share "links to books"? Was it near-useless stuff like "hey dumb***, read this" or were they actually able to point to specific passages, freely available to all, that were applicable to the discussion?
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I ain't doing it (Score:2)
Wouldn't work on /. (Score:3)
The editors would just take the questions from the summary.
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Wait, what? On slashdot, the "editors" clearly never read the summaries.
It also reduces automated trolling (Score:3)
I have seen facebook posts by a tonne of accounts that seem to be posting every 2 minutes.I was pretty sure those were bots. Maybe their scripts will need to be more intelligent now?
On the flip side I hope the questions are not biased towards a point of view which would then result in filtering out a complete side of conversation from comments!
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Breulykken in 1986 occurred at
Briksdalbreen, Nigardsbreen, Folgefonna
OQLT means
Origo Query Language Toolkit, Oscar Question Language Tool, Origo Question Lookup Tool
National Library Assessment Report states
Stored and archived, Norwegian Historical recordings, In living memory
That said, exhausting all possible responses is pretty easy (and it appears that these are the only questions after F5'ing a few times), so this should be easy to brute force, but hopefully it'll weed out those who haven't R'd TFA.
substance abuse (Score:5, Funny)
Starting April 1, Slashdot will require users to pass a drug test before commenting. Here in the /. offices, we refer to it as the "If You're Not High, GTFO Rule".
Submission of a >0.080 breathalyzer score will also be accepted for full credit.
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I'm sorry, I'm too drunk to Google "permille".
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I assumed it was an allusion to the limit of 0.08 percent blood alcohol content for drivers on highways in the United States.
I failed such quiz for TFA here.... (Score:2)
good start (Score:4, Insightful)
now if we could make the "journalists" pass a quiz before writing an article on something they know nothing about.... even better.
"Journalists" (Score:2)
This, this, this, a thousand times this.
+++++++++++insightful
qualifying can be good (Score:4, Insightful)
It's nice that people have to qualify for some things. Doctors, for instance, and police. Drivers tests help, but maybe should be more strict. More controversial is that parents should be tested before having children (are some parents unprepared physically, emotionally, financially?).
Qualifying before comments sounds interesting. Unfortunately many sites require commenters to register with an outside data gatherers before you can comment.
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if only there was a quiz on the constitution before you could take an oath of office for public service in the united states.
The Public Service Quiz (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, there is. It goes like this:
[ ] Check if you think "interstate" is a synonym for "intrastate"
[ ] Check if you think "unreasonable" means "ignore the rest of this amendment"
[ ] Check if you think "ex post facto" means "pile on punishment at will post-sentencing"
[ ] Check if you think article five says "SCOTUS shall make any amendments it likes"
[ ] Check if you think article three says "article five was just there for humor's sake"
[ ] Check if you think "shall not infringe" means "infringe"
[ ] Check if you think "rights reserved to the people" means "things congress can tell them they can't do"
[ ] Check if you think "speedy and public trial" means "rot in Guantanamo indefinitely"
[ ] Check if you think "inflicting cruel and unusual punishment" means "withholding waterboarding"
[ ] Check if you can keep a straight face while intoning "support and defend the Constitution"
Bonus questions:
[ ] Check if you will take bribes from lobbyists
[ ] Check if you will do what the party "leadership" tells you to
Did you check all the boxes? Congratulations! You have qualified to pass the initial screening process of our two political parties!
Lol at the first one (Score:2)
That was funny. Unfortunately, lately I've been posting every day, so I don't get mod points.
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Kind words mean more to me than mod points do anyway. So thanks.
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...are some parents unprepared...?).
Yes. [imdb.com]
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On the contrary various law enforcement agencies actively avoid hiring people who are deemed too smart. The authorities who wield law enforcement agencies don't really want the front line troops thinking about the laws they are tasked to enforce, they just want it done. The last time I looked into working in Law Enforcement, the pay was actually pretty good considering the low hiring requirements. I actually applied for a job, but took a different job offer that came along first, they took more than six mon
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We also spend quite a bit on weapons, a lot of that money could be redirected towards education, infrastructure, basic research, free medical care for all. I would definitely not want the police getting more money, shit they'd want to upgrade their battering ram vehicles to F-16s (for safety).
Charge money for commenting (Score:2)
The problem for charging for anything on Internet is difficulty of assessing value. I do not know if an article will tell me anything new until I read it. Comments are a good case where I am obviously interested enough to chime in, and posting one gives me potentially huge audience. So it's a good opportunity to raise quality bar and help reward the author at the same time.
And those too cheap to pay can still go chime in on umm... content aggregator websites.
The slashdot version ... (Score:5, Funny)
... would start with, "What day was the original version of this duplicate post posted?"
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FTFY
That would shut down a BUNCH of websites (Score:2)
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I thought The Huffington Post already killed its comment section back in late 2013, when it added a requirement to link each comment account to a "verified" Facebook account. This in effect requires all commenters to subscribe to SMS-capable mobile phone service and share both the mobile phone number and Huffington Post identity with Facebook Inc.
TL;DR (Score:5, Funny)
I want VOTERS to be subject to such a test too (Score:2)
I want the voters to prove their eligibility — in addition to being citizens — by the following:
"Who is the vice-president" eliminates half of US (Score:2)
No need for it to be so complicated. Asking "who is the current vice president?" will eliminate the half of US adults who have no interest whatsoever in paying attention to national policy issues. It could certainly be argued that the half who do know his name are better prepared to decide whether or not he should keep his job.
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That may be an acceptable replacement for (or an addition to) the second item, but it may get dangerously close to being partisan in itself. For example, some Americans today find it hard to accept Trump/Pence as the Administration — forcing them to spell out the name(s) to a computer could make them unnecessarily uncomfortable.
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I'd really like to see this apply to levels of government responsibility as well. If you think the federal government is responsible for your parking tickets, or the state governor can declare war, you're not really prepared to make an informed decision.
Redistricting Majority Project (Score:2)
Every ten years, state legislatures and governors have the indirect power to declare war. Here are the steps:
1. Wait for a substantial increase or decrease in the state's population.
2. Redraw House districts in favor of the major political party more likely to declare war.
3. Wait for the new House to take office and pressure the Senate to join the House in declaring war.
The U.S. Republican Party did this in 2010, calling it the Redistricting Majority Project [pbs.org].
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That is a little unreasonable. I do think people should have to pass the exact same naturalization exams as any immigrant before they are made citizens and allowed to vote.
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Having gone through naturalization myself, I must reject the idea — too much in the exam is subject to the officer's interpretation. You'll need humans to verify the answers, which makes it both dangerous and impractical for voting.
The things I listed are apolitical and objective — and the test can be performed by a computer at not even today's, but yesterday's level of technology and sophistication.
Oh dear, the next logical step is ... (Score:2)
Don't need to test that deep (Score:2)
Just your elementary grammar, math and, perhaps, social studies test (non-biased, stick to the facts and dates only), administered once in a while, would keep all public social media discourse much more civil.
It's not the "fake news" - it's just that loud morons with too much free time and nothing else to do are, well, just that.
I didn't RTFA (Score:2)
I want to make a bot! (Score:5, Funny)
I want to make a bot that can answer the quiz. My theory is that, once I have done so successfully, it can make more intelligent comments on the article than the average commenter. At that point, I think I have won my own personal turing test.
Next up: A bot that tells you if the news is fake. Has someone already done that? I imagine something like Microsoft's "clippy" popping up in the corner saying "I see that you are reading complete bu11sh*t. Would you like some help posting vitriolic comments?"
Out of control bot (Score:2)
That bot is already in operation. You can see it in action right here. [twitter.com]
Just like here (Score:2)
I guess it is like here on slashdot.
Nobody RTFA.
Two points (Score:2)
1) "the tech vertical of the Norwegian public broadcaster NRK" - sorry, I guess I'm meme-impaired. WTF is a 'tech vertical'?
2) It might not be politically correct, but I'm just going to say it anyway: the primary reason their discussion was cogent and reasonable probably had everything to do with them all being Norwegian. Not to say that Scandinavians can't be as big of assholes as other people on occasion, but their culture is pretty unique in their level of open-mindedness, consensus, and reasonability
But what do we do (Score:2)
But what do we do when the Captcha-breaking bots start making meaningful and insightful comments?
WHAT?!? This is outrageous!! (Score:2)
I can't believe they're doing this! What bullshit!
Oh wait, was there an article I was supposed to read? I don't have time for that! I'm just foaming at the mouth about the headline. Carry on.
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That was a depressing link: In the USA we're number 44 with 69% of people considering religion important, I guess that's how we got DT.
Net debt (Score:2)
I guess people assume net debt, which would exclude debt that the U.S. government owes itself. So they're probably trying to answer the related question: "Who holds the most U.S. Treasury debt, excluding debt held by another U.S. government agency or by the Federal Reserve System?"