Veritula – Meta
Discuss Veritula itself. For feedback and suggestions.
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas, and submit new ideas.When all I change during a revision is the criticism flag, the activity log just says ‘no changes’.
As of 9702c05, a revision activity now says that the idea was either marked or unmarked as a criticism.
Hi all! This platform looks like such an awesome idea!
This discussion says, "Discuss Veritula itself. For feedback and suggestions."
I wanted to ask about how many members are here. And whether it's encouraged to invite more people, in order to add more and more conversations.
Should probably show the explanation in a revision, when given. In the activity feed, that is.
Should I give the icons in the activity feed colors?
The activity feed just shows top-level criticisms as regular ideas. They should be shown as criticisms just like when they are child ideas.
Highlight current nav item.
When a comment is a criticism on another criticism, the activity should say ‘So and so addressed criticism #…’
In activity feed, behind timestamp (‘… hours ago’), link to corresponding discussion.
There should be user profiles.
Since the diff processes the text as a single line, the hunk header is always going to say either @@ -0,0 +1 @@ (for the first version) or @@ -1 +1 @@ (for every subsequent version). Meaning the header provides no real information. So I might as well remove it.
Done as of 8d3eed0, see eg the version history of #414.
There’s a bug where hovering over a link in the markdown preview removes the form and all typed text. Hovering over a link should have no effect on the form.
Now that there are user profiles (#408), each profile can have a tab for unproblematic ideas. Among all the ideas a user has submitted, those are the ones he can rationally hold. And another tab for problematic ideas, ie ideas he has submitted that he cannot rationally hold.
Diffs should omit unchanged lines. Maybe just leave up to three lines around changed content for context – that’s how git does it.
Done as of cc8e3e9. It now says ‘x unchanged lines collapsed’. See eg this activity.
Would be neat linking to a specific activity.
Done as of a02e6c4, see eg this activity.
Each activity should have a distinct HTML title. The browser history and search results in search engines all look the same…
There’s a bug where right-clicking in a form to paste text doesn’t result in the preview updating.
Dirk Meulenbelt says the concept of revising someone else’s idea is not intuitive.
The following commits should address this:
3af3966Clarify in title that someone revised an idea (rathen than originated idea)The HTML title now says ‘Idea x revised by…’
6c70ceaUnderneath idea, indicate that someone revised an idea (rather than submitted it)It says ‘Dennis Hackethal, 1 day ago’ for new ideas, ‘Dennis Hackethal revised 1 day ago’ for revisions
d20d386Explain that users can revise each others’ ideasAs part of the alert on the revision page, when the user is about to revise someone else’s idea.
c5748e3Turn ‘revise’ link into ‘revise their idea’ when it’s someone else’s ideaUnderneath each idea.
e0fbd41List user under each revision in version historySo that each version is clearly attributed to the corresponding user.
06d3241List contributors at top of version historyComma-separated list to see all contributors at a glance. Eg see here
Tom Nassis asks (#448):
I wanted to ask about how many members are here.
Currently 7.
And whether it's encouraged to invite more people, in order to add more and more conversations.
Yes.
The more ideas there are in a discussion, the further the form for top-level ideas is pushed down. Then people don’t know how to submit a new idea and comment on an existing one instead, even if it’s unrelated, as happened with #448. So I need to make this clearer.
The way IG solves this is by rendering the form in a fixed position. It’s still on the bottom but always remains visible.
Reddit is a bit different because they have multiple subreddits/communities, but each community has top-level posts which people can then comment on. They have a completely separate page/UI for top-level posts. And then directly underneath a top-level post, there’s a textarea saying “Join the conversation”.
Now that there are notifications, people should be able to @mention each other.
Mostly done, apart from some polishing, as of 5f5c545. Eg @dennis-hackethal.
I'm still getting a feel for this platform. I'm wondering whether it would help promote wider and deeper engagement if Veritula was organized in terms of problems and their solutions. So instead of discussions, discussion trees, and broad topics such as 'Abortion', users would articulate problems and their solutions. Of course, the problem itself could be criticized as well as its proposed solutions. This approach might also make Veritula even more Popperian. All life is problem solving as Popper says.
As I recall, previous iterations of Veritula had explicit designations such as ‘problem’ and ‘solution’ but I decided against continuing those designations. It’s been years but I think it was too rigid and felt too much like ‘red tape’. It’s easier when the only check box in this regard is a boolean for ‘criticism’.
Can’t discussions already map onto the structure you suggest?
Discussion title: problem
Top-level ideas in the discussion: proposed solutions
Nested ideas: criticisms, counter-criticisms, and further solutions
Note also that revisions act as solutions to problems. So do counter-criticisms, in a way.
So I think people can already use Veritula in the way you suggest.
They can also use it like this:
Discussion title: some topic (such as ‘abortion’)
Top-level ideas: problems
Nested ideas: solutions, criticisms and so on
Makes sense to me.
'Discussions' is a much broader term than 'problems and their solutions.'
So I can see how that would allow for greater freedom.
I can also imagine some of the challenges presented in prior iterations of Veritula, if it had more of a 'problems and their solutions' structure.
Perhaps some of this theory of problem-solving just shared can make it into 'How Does Veritula Work?'
Yes, I do think discussions can map onto the structure I suggest.
So, no worries. I was wondering whether the 'Discussion Titles' can draw in current and future users in a more frictionless manner with problem statements.
But if it was tried before, why try it again? Thanks.
You marked this as a criticism but it sounds like you’re agreeing with me.
Perhaps some of this theory of problem-solving just shared can make it into 'How Does Veritula Work?'
Done, see #510.
I was wondering whether the 'Discussion Titles' can draw in current and future users in a more frictionless manner with problem statements.
I think you’re right, that would be best.
You suggest replacing discussion trees:
[I]nstead of […] discussion trees […] users would articulate problems and their solutions.
But then you also write:
Of course, the problem itself could be criticized as well as its proposed solutions.
Which means you’d still have trees regardless. So that sounds like a contradiction.
To be clear, I'm not opposed to 'trees' in general.
I was wondering whether 'discussion trees' can be replaced with 'problems-and-their-solutions trees' (for lack of a better phrasing).
Veritula should have a section with a list of all its current members.
For now, people just have profiles.
But having a list of members would build a sense of rapport between the participants.
And would promote a greater flow of communication.
Good idea. I’ve added this to my list of features to implement.
Done as of 6251b6a, see veritula.com/members.
[H]aving a list of members would build a sense of rapport between the participants.
Just so you know, although I’ve implemented the list of members, I do want to be clear that Veritula is not meant for socializing.
I know what you mean, but Veritula unavoidably facilitates public (i.e. social) interactions, no? Of a certain kind, to be clear. Ideas, ideas, ideas.
Well, discussions are necessarily a ‘social’ activity in that they involve at least two people, yes. I just don’t want Veritula to be yet another social network.
In a mixed society, people can prioritize truth seeking or fitting in but not both.
Veritula deserves to scale to the size of Wikipedia.
But it never will, unless its users innovate.
How can the global success of Wikipedia inspire Veritula?
I agree that Veritula deserves to scale to something huge.
Looking through the history of Wikipedia, I see that its core concept is that of “compiling the world's knowledge in a single location […]”. To be clear, I think the core concept of Veritula is to be a programmatic implementation of Popper’s rational discussion methodology; it then becomes a dictionary for ideas as a result. It’s also less about listing facts and more about listing ideas and their logical relationship (though criticisms do provide built-in fact-checking mechanisms). That said, with enough users, Veritula could become a place with a lot of knowledge.
The linked site traces some of the success of Wikipedia to volunteers: “The use of volunteers was integral in making and maintaining Wikipedia.” So early adopters such as yourself are crucial.
In addition, 9/11 apparently played a role in making Wikipedia famous:
The September 11 attacks spurred the appearance of breaking news stories on the homepage, as well as information boxes linking related articles. At the time, approximately 100 articles related to 9/11 had been created. After the September 11 attacks, a link to the Wikipedia article on the attacks appeared on Yahoo!'s home page, resulting in a spike in traffic.
Veritula could be a place where people break news stories and others can quickly fact-check and improve upon reports by revising them. An urgent story would draw a lot of users to the site, too.
Something like Wikipedia’s arbitration process could be interesting, too.
Something similar to Wikipedia’s page-protection feature to combat “edit warring” and “prevent vandalism” could address the issue of people posting criticisms in rapid succession to protect their pet ideas.
Your suggestion to look to Wikipedia for inspiration is spot on. Thanks.
Would it be possible / worth it to produce a competitor to Wikipedia based on Popperian epistemology? Larry Sanger (a founder of Wikipedia) has said that he now thinks Wikipedia should have competing articles on the same topic to allow for the fact that people disagree.
The idea of having a Wikipedia equivalent that presents high quality competing articles detailing different alternative explanations for things (with some sort of versioning and methods of criticism) excites me greatly.
I have thought of producing something like this myself, which was part of what drew me to Veritula.
Would it be possible / worth it to produce a competitor to Wikipedia based on Popperian epistemology?
Yes, sure.
The idea of having a Wikipedia equivalent that presents high quality competing articles detailing different alternative explanations for things (with some sort of versioning and methods of criticism) excites me greatly.
Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.
We ‘just’ need to get more users. As I wrote in #628, posting a breaking news story could work. If users submit ideas on events as they unfold and then criticize those ideas, visitors see what’s happening at a glance. It could be easier for them to know which ideas they can adopt than on conventional news channels or even Wikipedia, IMO.
There are also ‘timeless’ debates that have been going on for decades where Veritula can offer clarity. Like on the abortion debate. People shouldn’t have to keep debating that over and over when it’s a matter where objective truth can be found and then acted on.
I have thought of producing something like this myself, which was part of what drew me to Veritula.
I’m curious btw, how did you hear about Veritula?
Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.
One thing that Wikipedia articles are very good for is providing well-structured information on a given subject. Discussion threads are not so well structured (the order of information is not based on how high-level or foundational it is, like an encyclopedia entry would be, but rather on the nested chronology of whatever discussion happened to take place.)
Me, too. I think Veritula’s design allows for this pretty naturally since the topic of a discussion can be general enough for various competing ideas to be posted in the discussion.
Veritula emphasises making one point at a time for ease of criticism and discussion, which is useful in a forum but makes absorbing the totality of an idea a little more tedious compared to a quick glance at an encyclopedia article. (It is possible I have misunderstood some aspect of Veritula here.)
Veritula cautions against making multiple points at once so as to avoid ‘bulk criticism’. But people can write as much as they want in a single idea. For example, you can find several long-form articles in ‘How Does Veritula Work?’. It just depends on how confident people are in their ideas, and how much they have practiced using Veritula.
As much as I dislike LLMs, I’m thinking of using them to show summaries of discussions at the top of the page. Summaries would reflect ideas without pending criticisms.
My vision is for an online encyclopedia that contains complete articles describing the totality of a perspective, with articles for alternate explanations readily available. I see many problems with this idea but I think it is worth exploring.
I’m curious btw, how did you hear about Veritula?
I believe I came across it while exploring your blog. My ‘Popperian Wikipedia’ idea was particularly sharp in my mind in that moment, so I was very excited to see how you had set things up here. I think a tremendous amount of it is transferable.
I’m happy to have you and for your contributions, but I have to ask: do you see yourself building a Veritula competitor at some point in the future?
No, I think the ‘Popperian Wikipedia’ idea is too different to Veritula for it to be a competitor. Veritula is primarily a discussion tool. I envision more of an encyclopedia of competing ideas presented independently of each other, with no (or very little) discussion functionality.
For example, on the topic of addiction, this site would contain different articles explaining different models of what addiction is, how it works, etc. Each article would explain the given model from within its own framework, rather than from some pre-approved framework and set of sources (as is currently the case at Wikipedia).
I realise “methods of criticism” in my reply above may have confused that somewhat.
I think my idea could be made within Veritula, if you would be interested. Different explanations could be cataloged in Wikipedia-style articles (with versioning), which could then be referred to and discussed in threads here. Maybe we should open a discussion for this potential feature?
At the end of the day, I think something like that should exist in the world, and I am indifferent to how it might come about. It wouldn’t bother me if I wasn’t involved. I would also consider financially supporting someone who gave me good reason to think they had the vision, the motivation, and the technical skill to create it.
I would also consider financially supporting someone who gave me good reason to think they had the vision, the motivation, and the technical skill to create it.
I’m interested. Let’s continue this discussion privately for now. Email me: dh at dennishackethal.com
To prevent edit warring and vandalism, maybe Veritula could have a reputation system similar to that of Stack Overflow, where you need to earn enough reputation before you can edit someone else’s post, say.
Password reset is broken
See #595. The form for new ideas is pushed to the very bottom of the discussion page. For long discussion, that means users won’t know where to submit new ideas.
Newly added comments keep animating when hidden and then unhidden.
All emails have unsubscribe links, but people shouldn’t be able to unsubscribe from system emails like password resets.
Friendly IDs for discussions would be nice. With automatic redirects for numeric ID from legacy links.
Include (preview of) content in idea URLs: '/ideas/123-first-30-or-so-chars-of-idea-here'.
That would make idea URLs more meaningful, but there’s something simple and beautiful about the shorter URLs that only have the numeric ID.
Could have backwards compatibility for the short version and continue using the hashtag in the UI. Best of both worlds?
That would mean fetching an idea to compute the path for each hashtag. Overhead?
Seems like minor overhead. It’s not like there are tons of user-generated hashtags everywhere.
This actually helps to prevent rendering links with IDs that don’t point to any existing idea.
Having features to both collapse an idea and hide all its comments seems like an opportunity for unification. Why not just go with collapsing and remove the ability to hide all comments?
Cycling through the revisions of a leaf reveals its gutter, which should be hidden since it’s a leaf.
Make sure cycling between a leaf revision with children and a leaf revision without children properly toggles the gutter.
Feature to collapse all criticized ideas of a discussion? Useful for todo lists.
Or each discussion could have a search/filter form to filter ideas not just by criticized or not but also content and potentially other attributes.
Or the existing search page could be filtered by discussion. For example, I could link to that page with an additional query param discussion_id=1 or something like that.
When you revise an idea to address a criticism, its author should get a notification so they get a chance to verify that the revision really does address the criticism.
For example, I had to manually notify Edwin in #1811 of a revision I had made to address a criticism of his. Without this notification, he might miss the revision. If he disagrees that the revision addresses his criticism, that’s a potential error that might not get corrected.
There should be a feature similar to the ‘single comment thread’ feature Reddit has, where you start with some deeply nested child idea and render all of its deeply nested parents above it:
G
/|\
P1 P2 P3
\|/
I
This feature would be great for seeing an idea in its proper context without having to scroll past a bunch of potentially unrelated ideas.
For parent ideas, cycle only through revisions that lead to the target idea. Communicate accordingly in the UI. For the target idea, its children, and any of its siblings’ children, cycle through all revisions.
Every idea should have a link to a separate page with the single comment thread. This could just be ideas#show. That page should also scroll the target idea into view in case its preceded by too much context that would otherwise push it below the viewport.
This feature would also allow me to remove the buggy ‘context’ feature.
The red ‘Criticized’ label shows how many outstanding criticisms an idea has. For example ‘Criticized (5)’ means the idea has five outstanding criticisms.
But if there are lots of comments, including non-criticisms and addressed criticisms, it’s hard to identify outstanding criticisms.
There should be an easy way to filter comments of a given idea down to only outstanding criticisms.
The red ‘Criticized’ label could be a link leading to a filtered version of ideas#show.
There could be a separate button to filter comments down.
Should I be showing the comment form by default on ideas#show?
To avoid scrolling past content, I could remove the autofocus on the textarea unless a certain query parameter is given.
The ‘Revise…’ button is hidden when the comment form is open. It makes sense to hide it because it doesn’t belong in that context. But once hidden, the user has no quick way to revise an idea. Maybe the first thing they want to do after opening ideas#show is not comment but revise.
As of acb14e3, the revision button is an icon button that lives next to the collapse icon button.
Therefore, the button doesn’t need to be hidden anymore.
That would mean the revise button would be at the top of the idea. But presumably, people would typically want to revise an idea after they finish reading it. Meaning after they reach the bottom.
It could go both ways. Someone may have already read an idea and just wants to revise it, in which case having to scroll to the bottom is cumbersome.
Done as of b423e18.
Having implemented this, a problem has surfaced: when linking to an old version of an idea, the alert “You’re about to comment on an old version of this idea. Are you sure …” shows. That’s jarring if you didn’t want to comment but merely look at the idea.
Add hover effects to schemed buttons so there’s consistency with the existing hover effects for links.
https://veritula.com/activities/1808
Since the discussions starts with an idea, there should be a reply button.
Bug: when clicking the link to the activity in #1953, the idea is replaced with “Content missing”.
Bug: when cycling through ‘filtered’ revisions (meaning there are more revisions that don’t lead to the highlighted idea), the criticism badge can change count for the same revision.
Any filtered idea should always display only the count of shown criticisms.
For all ideas, the total number of pending criticisms (if any) should always be shown, even if they are not all being rendered.
If no criticisms are being displayed, yet the label says an idea has n pending criticisms, that might confuse people. More generally, any mismatch between rendered vs counted criticisms could confuse people.
Any filtered ideas should show a criticism label displaying n / m for the count, where n is the number of rendered criticisms and m is the number of total criticisms.
An explanation could accompany the n / m display, like a title on hover.
That way, there should never be any confusion as to a mismatch between the total vs rendered number of pending criticisms.
In addition, when looking at a deeply nested idea on ideas#show and submitting a criticism on a parent, I need to make sure the updated badges take into account that newly submitted criticism, even though the new criticism would not show after refreshing the page.
By the time someone receives an email notification, they will probably have forgotten whatever they wrote originally that prompted someone to reply to them.
Fixed as of recently. Emails now quote the parent idea.
Veritula should have some way to indicate agreement; some way to indicate that a particular thread of a discussion is resolved, at least for the time being.
People could wrongly think they have epistemological relevance. For example, they might adopt an idea that has pending criticism just because it got positive reactions.
Reactions could be limited to the recipient of a comment.
That limits the scope of the problem but doesn’t eliminate it. A single recipient could still react in a distracting way.
There’s value in reacting to top-level ideas, too.
There’s value in others being able to react as well. Maybe an idea affects them in some way or they want to voice support.
Reactions can be ambiguous. It wouldn’t always be clear which part of an idea someone is reacting to.
I could implement reactions on a per-paragraph basis.
It isn’t clear what would happen during a revision. A paragraph might be changed or deleted. Too complicated.
But presumably, the same is true for reactions to ideas as a whole. Reactions would have to be removed for revisions.
For reactions to paragraphs, at least you could tell if the content someone reacted to has changed, and only then remove the reaction.
Why should reacts persist through revisions?
Then what does somebody do who wants to react to an idea as a whole? Do they react to the last paragraph?
The way I picture it, as you hover over different paragraphs, a reaction button appears and moves between paragraphs. So it would always be clear that reactions are on specific paragraphs. The user would pick whatever paragraph they most wish to react to.
Revisions are complicated. Too many options (superseding a previous version, ‘Is criticism?’, unchecking comments). It might help to have a more guided processes over multiple screens.
I started a discussion earlier, and what I wrote in the “about” section of the discussion was not written well. I would like to revise it. Is this possible? If not, is there an intention to make this possible eventually?
I went ahead and implemented this feature since it was a good suggestion.
You can edit your discussion here.
I notice that when I amend a criticism I have made, I’m not able to see what I am criticising. It would be good if the edit screen showed the comment I am disagreeing with similar to how it does when I first go to write a criticism.
Feature idea: pay people to criticize your idea.
You submit an idea with a ‘criticism bounty’ of ten bucks per criticism received, say.
The amount should be arbitrarily customizable.
How do you ensure the criticism is worthy of the bounty?
I’m not sure yet, but I’m playing with the idea that the criticism can’t have any pending counter-criticisms by some deadline. Each counter-criticism could reset the deadline to give everyone ample time to respond.
But then bad actors could always submit arbitrary counter-criticisms just before the deadline to avoid paying.
The timeframe to address the criticism should start counting down from the moment the criticism is made, rather than the original post. So it would be a continuous thing rather than a single deadline for everyone.
The OP could end the bounty if there are no outstanding criticisms and he no longer seeks a solution.
I suppose that would make it a bit harder for bad actors because they’d need to monitor multiple deadlines, but they could still submit arbitrary counter-criticisms just in time to avoid paying. Or is there something I’m missing?
I would have it that each criticism and counter-criticism resets the countdown on the bounty deadline. This means everyone involved is given fair time to respond at each turn.
If you submit a criticism, you won’t want to wait indefinitely to get paid just because others are keeping the discussion going in a different branch.
Sorry but I don’t see how that solves the bad-actor problem. Bad actors would still be able to draw out the discussion to avoid paying, wouldn’t they?
Yes, but bad actors are a separate problem to solve (as you have alluded to in #2513, where you mention “good citizens”).
The problem we are addressing here is giving people a fair time window to respond to criticisms after they are published.
Edit: after reviewing the thread, I see that you were more focused on the bad actors problem while I was more focused on giving people fair time to respond. I believe what I am saying still stands, but maybe it belongs somewhere higher up the chain.
Idea: when you create a bounty, you set the amount you’re willing to pay per criticism and a ceiling for the total you’re willing to spend (no. of crits * amount per crit).
Your card is authorized for twice the ceiling. In addition, there’s a button to report abuse. If you’re a good citizen, you’ll be charged the ceiling, at most. But if you’re found to submit arbitrary criticisms to avoid paying, the bounty stops early and your card is charged the full authorization.
Yes, that was what I was thinking. Presumably the OP could set their own deadline timeframe too.
Feature idea: private discussions only the creator and invited people can see.