The Next Generation of Hypography

[TheBigDog]

A debate forum: refereed, viewable by everyone, but posting restricted to debaters/referees during debates and locked afterwards. An 'open challenge' page/thread for people to accept matches, maybe a sidebar...

 

YES!!!

[Zythryn]

Hypography is absolutely wonderful. As it stands, it is the best science forum site I have ever found and the community is wonderful:)

 

There are some great ideas in this thread. The only thing I can think of to suggest (some of which has already been mentioned) would be:

1. Better/more seemless, links to outside resources.

1a. Summarize the links in each thread at the end/beggining of the thread

(or find another wasy to organize the resources in a central/easier to find structure/location)

2. Guest lecture/discussions with 'experts' in certain fields (computer science/AI, Global Warming, Agricultural, Archeology, etc)

3. Live web-debates.

[Tormod]

Would a tag-based system be useful as a means to find topics and threads? In other words a tag cloud on the front page, and a tag list in each thread. It would have to be dynamically generated, though...

[eric l]

I can say I am already rather happy with Hypography as it is (although I aggree with Michelangelica that a good spell checker would be nice). Any idea of the ratio of members for whom English is not the mother tongue ?

My "complanints" are more directed to the users.

I joined partly because of the language forums, because I thought I could contribute by giving replies with subtitles and such things. But there is definitely a lack of response, and that is not an incentive to go on. I do not know how you could make them more apealing. The linguistics forum is a very good thing, but clearly more intended for people who master at least English, and possible one or two other languages, rather than for people who want to practise a foreign language.

A more or less similar complaint concerns the "Science Projects and Homework" section : too often treads are started by people who just haven't done their homework, rather than with poor understanding.

Anyway, just don't drop some of the good things in your efforts to make it better !

[TheBigDog]

I can say I am already rather happy with Hypography as it is (although I aggree with Michelangelica that a good spell checker would be nice). Any idea of the ratio of members for whom English is not the mother tongue ?

My "complanints" are more directed to the users.

I joined partly because of the language forums, because I thought I could contribute by giving replies with subtitles and such things. But there is definitely a lack of response, and that is not an incentive to go on. I do not know how you could make them more apealing. The linguistics forum is a very good thing, but clearly more intended for people who master at least English, and possible one or two other languages, rather than for people who want to practise a foreign language.

A more or less similar complaint concerns the "Science Projects and Homework" section : too often treads are started by people who just haven't done their homework, rather than with poor understanding.

Anyway, just don't drop some of the good things in your efforts to make it better !

Interesting ideas Eric.

 

Perhaps some of our membership could help make a set of self directed courses on English and Grammar, including quizzes. It would be a useful resource for everyone.

 

Bill

[cwes99_03]

I had a suggestion the other day regarding rep.

 

1) rep should be based off of an algorithm considering number of posts, threads, and rep received.

2) there should be different types of rep (rep for humor, rep for informative posts, rep for staying on task, etc.)

3) Each member should be able to control the amount of rep they pass on to another member with an upper and lower limit (say 1-10% of their own total reputation). Since mods and admins have more responsibility perhaps they should have more rep power (perhaps 1-25% for mods and 1-50% for admins).

 

Under this system, everyone will have some reputation for posting, and limits can be set as to how soon one can start their own threads and rep others based simply off of their own reputation. This ensures that participation in other threads takes place and is organized a bit.

Also everyone having control over how much rep they give others allows mild and major reputation (or rebuke) to be given, instead of an automatic level of rep.

With the different forms of reptuation, I can rep someone if I think their response was humorous (or their attempt at humor was in poor taste) or whether they contributed valuable information to the post (or detracted from the informative value of the post. These variations in rep allow other members to view what kind of person each member is (mostly humorous or very intelligent and informative) with each having their place on this forum.

[Boerseun]

Had an idea regarding rep.

 

Make it four (or so) horizontal bars, named as follows, or something similar:

(*insert Username*) is:

1) Informed

2) Class Clown

3) Active

4) Generous

 

...and when someone gives you rep, they have to give rep based on whether your post was informative, or just funny, or both, even. They can't rep for Activity or Generosity - every post you make, counts as one point on the Activity slider, and every rep you give counts as one point on the Generosity slider.

 

...but here's the catch! Every day, all four your sliders move back a point or two. So, if you're not consistent in the quality of your posts, or even in the regularity of your visits, pretty soon you'll be back to zero. But the good news is that you can get it back to where it was pretty soon, too.

 

I think this idea has some merit, in the sense that new members can participate in the 'rep rush', and they can catch up to the Big Guns repwise in a matter of a month or two. Any newbie joining now won't have a snowball's chance in hell of catching up to any of the older members, regardless of the quality of his/her posts, and I think that might even alienate or intimidate new members.

 

This system, with daily reducing rep counters, will level the playing field for everybody.

 

Would this be possible, or is this even a good idea?

 

42

[Southtown]

Would a tag-based system be useful as a means to find topics and threads? In other words a tag cloud on the front page, and a tag list in each thread. It would have to be dynamically generated, though...

I think so, definitely. It could only help broaden people's interests. And also help people find related info that might normally fall under a different forum category. Then there's always points for innovation. It would hafta be done well, though, so that no post gets 'left behind'. =P

 

Also you could make a tag-hierarchy so that the appearance is much like the forum index, if that's feasible. And maybe a randomizer.

[cwes99_03]

I think the four parts are a good idea.

 

I don't really like the idea of the take back of points though.

 

My idea was that we would have a way of getting to know people through their points (that seemed to me what the rep system was all about). If they points disappear then all we'll know is that they aren't very active, we won't know about what kind of activity they are known for.

 

Perhaps some of this should just be on their user page. So if I wanted to know a bit more about TFS, i would click on his name and go to a user stats page that displayed all this information. Then you could just post their rep stats beside each post (humor, informed, etc.)

 

We already know how active they are by the number of threads they've started and the number of posts they've made. Now additional stats might be how often they rep, how many posts per day they make (though one could calculate this based on their join data), how many threads they have posted on, how many subscriptions they have (this might not be the best, but i'm brainstorming), what different forums they frequent most, and stuff like that.

[cwes99_03]

When you guys say tag, are you refering to a quick search type of button?

 

I am imagining topics like mass explained, or time explained, or relativity explained which seem to be some common topics. Then the button you click on would take you to a search page showing the threads that have discussed this issue.

 

As for how to determine whether a thread discusses a certain issue, ask for keyword search criteria to be included with the thread at it's start, and then the mods that are involved in that thread can add extra keywords when they feel that new ideas have been presented that aren't already keyworded.

[Southtown]

I dunno about T. In my reply I assumed he was referring to my suggestion of metadata.

http://hypography.com/forums/user-feedback/9496-next-generation-hypography-3.html#post149018

[IDMclean]

When I hear tag, what I think of is check buttons to sort things categorically.

 

So I start a new thread and it can be categorized as something like this:

Dewey Decimal System,

* 000 – Computer science, information, and general works

* 100 – Philosophy and psychology

* 200 – Religion

* 300 – Social sciences

* 400 – Language

* 500 – Science

* 600 – Technology

* 700 – Arts and recreation

* 800 – Literature

* 900 – History and geography

 

So you check off what forms of information a given thread topic relates too. It should be allowable to have multiple categories, I would think, so as to allow for multi-forum spanning threads. Often enough threads pop up that are related to more than one thread, spanning say Social Sciences to Philosophy and Humanities. Also Interthread linking could use a little work. So that one can relate mutliple threads of similar topic to one another, for ease of traversing... then again that might be what this confounded "Linkback" thing is.

 

Also I was thinking, I like the ranking system and I was wondering if it could be used (or modelled from) so that users could participate in evaluating where a thread should be by vote.

[Southtown]

When I hear tag, what I think of is check buttons to sort things categorically.

. . .

So you check off what forms of information a given thread topic relates too.

T said it would have to be automatically generated, I assume to keep people from manipulating the system to get more traffic.

 

It should be allowable to have multiple categories, I would think, so as to allow for multi-forum spanning threads.

Yeah that's the crux of the concept, a dynamic sorting system. That way you could find a thread like 'the biophysical side-effects of climbing Mt. Everest' in either the biology or the geology forums, without needing multiple copies.

[ldsoftwaresteve]

I would like to see the following added to hypography discussions. These things would drive us in a direction that required more in-depth understanding of the rules of argumentation, the purpose behind those rules, etc. Kind of a 'Roberts rules of order' sort of thing.

 

1. icons representing types of logical fallacies. If someone tags an argument with a logical fallacy, then they would have to have filled out a form that shows exactly why they did it. Each fallacy type would have its own requirements.

2. grading of individual posts.

3. a hierarchical representation of the branches a discussion has taken.

3a. Removal of duplicate/ redundant posts.

4. a truth value assignation on a branch. (for instance: say a thread broke off on a tangent based on a post that had a logical fallacy in it. If the discussion in the tangent thread used the fallacy as a building block, then until the fallacy was refuted, the entire tangent thread would have a less than 1 truth value - or have a doubt component.

4a. if there are multiple fallacies inherent in a post, then its doubt component would be higher and truth component less.

5. show the premises on which a statement is based. (this would be the identification of the building blocks inherent in a particular statement).

 

To the extent that what I have said makes any sense whatsoever, I think that it may show where the pursuit of knowledge is headed. We simply must provide a way where we can move forward in the identification of truth. Even if it's just tiny bits. The important part is to have forward motion.

 

Forgive me if I've given you a boulder to move. Perhaps, if we could just nudge it a little bit...

[Southtown]

1. icons representing types of logical fallacies. If someone tags an argument with a logical fallacy, then they would have to have filled out a form that shows exactly why they did it. Each fallacy type would have its own requirements.

That's a lot of manpower. What would it accomplish? I recommended an official debate thread that would teach people how to form valid arguments.

 

2. grading of individual posts.

Excellent! I was about to say something similar along the lines of redoing the thread-rating. Someone else mentioned an option to reduce the points you give when you rep a post. And I was just going to post here about a thread-rating system that represented the average rep of each post in that thread. Might be a lot more storage/querrying involved though...

 

3. a hierarchical representation of the branches a discussion has taken.

Only feasible with a metadata-based sorting method. Otherwise, too much manpower.

 

3a. Removal of duplicate/ redundant posts.

Do you mean automated?

 

4. a truth value assignation on a branch. (for instance: say a thread broke off on a tangent based on a post that had a logical fallacy in it. If the discussion in the tangent thread used the fallacy as a building block, then until the fallacy was refuted, the entire tangent thread would have a less than 1 truth value - or have a doubt component.

4a. if there are multiple fallacies inherent in a post, then its doubt component would be higher and truth component less.

Yeah, neat concept. But it requires more manpower to sort every post than it does for readers to skim over annoying irrelevance.

 

5. show the premises on which a statement is based. (this would be the identification of the building blocks inherent in a particular statement).

Is that a rule for posters, or job of moderators? AI maybe... lol

 

To the extent that what I have said makes any sense whatsoever, I think that it may show where the pursuit of knowledge is headed. We simply must provide a way where we can move forward in the identification of truth. Even if it's just tiny bits. The important part is to have forward motion.

I think it could all go into a post-rating system operated by us the members. And the topical trace-route would even be feasible with a metadata-based system of sorting threads.

[ldsoftwaresteve]

Hi Southtown!

I posted those ideas even though I was aware that the manpower requirements would be restrictive.

On the other hand, you might be underestimating the number of people who'd gladly help move us in that direction. People who don't necessarily like to argue, those who are more contemplative.

So it might be a way to engage a whole new class of contributor and we might be surprised at what happens.

Perhaps a joint effort with numerous universities and the teachers of Logic. We could put the University logo on the various forms to show who contributed that part of the process.

If this would enable us to have a more deliberate result....

[Killean]

Might be a lot more storage/querrying involved though...

The bulletin board is already making between 15 and 30 queries per page view. A few more won't be much of a bother.

 

No one should worry about if or how we program any features. If what you want to see involves cleaning, upkeep or refereeing, then all I have to say is why don't you ask an admin to become a slav.. err, moderator? You have a better chance at joining the staff then of the dev team creating AI.