Veritula – Meta
Discuss Veritula itself. For feedback and suggestions.
Log in or sign up to participate in this discussion.
With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas, and submit new ideas.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.
Now that diffs are formatted, they don’t omit unchanged lines anymore.
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.
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.
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.)
Top-level ideas can be structured any way you as author want them to be. (Any idea at any level can, but top-level ideas are presumably where articles could live.) The structure of any particular idea can be different from the structure of the discussion as a whole.
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
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.
There could then be a page for bounties at /bounties. And a page listing a user’s bounties at /:username/bounties.
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.
The bounty initiator’s card will have to be authorized when starting the bounty. Card authorizations presumably have a deadline, so resetting the deadline won’t be an option.
What if Veritula charges the card immediately and holds the funds?
The initiator of the bounty could choose a ceiling for the total they are willing to spend. They could additionally specify the amount per unproblematic criticism.
For example, a user would indicate that they are willing to spend a total of $100 at $10 per criticism.
But that means that additional criticisms don’t get any payout.
That could be a good thing in that people won’t completely overwhelm OP with criticisms.
Unlike #3424, however, having a set amount per criticisms means there’s zero incentive for anyone to submit more criticisms, whereas divvying up the amount among criticisms means the incentive is gradually reduced, and it’s up to people to decide for themselves whether contributions are still worth making.
Rather than set a fixed amount for each unproblematic criticism (#3421), the ceiling could be divided among all criticisms equally.
But that would mean that the first criticism receives a payout at the same time the last criticism receives a payout. That creates an incentive to ignore new bounties in favor of older ones.
When copying a box quote from Veritula, the box quote formatting (>) is lost.
To be clear, if you copy the entire box quote and paste it into a textarea, it will start with the > sign. I just double checked.
You’re saying you’d still want the > if you only copy/pasted part of the box quote, right?
To be clear, if you copy the entire box quote and paste it into a textarea, it will start with the > sign. I just double checked.
This doesn't work for me the way it does for you. I tried copying the entire quote, and also in a separate attempt, copying extra stuff above and below the box quote, and neither gave me the > sign.
I have tried on my windows computer and my iPad.
… copying extra stuff above and below the box quote, and neither gave me the > sign.
Cannot reproduce, neither on iPad nor macOS.
Feature idea: pay people to address criticisms (either revise an idea and check off criticisms or counter-criticize).
Idea: Links within Veritula could be made bidirectional. While viewing an idea, users could see all the ideas that refer to it. This could be displayed as a list of backlinks at the bottom of the idea’s page.
This could lead to a cool knowledge graph feature down the line, where users could see how ideas might relate across discussions, and which ideas are referred to the most.
I am currently unable to zoom out to the full width when accessing Veritula on mobile.
This change is on purpose. The zoom feature was buggy. After zooming out far enough, the navbar and footer got cut off on the right. So I replaced it with proper scrolling.
Would you say zooming was indispensable or just nice to have?
It means that I have to scroll sideways to see the end of each line in a paragraph, which makes it more difficult to read ideas. It feels quite bad to use, compared to using Veritula on my computer, where the entire width of a paragraph is visible at all times.
A solution might be to adjust the mobile site dynamically to fit the user’s phone width.
‘Discussions’ are too narrow a term for a collection of ideas. See #2878.
While ideas should always be ‘discussable’, that doesn’t mean everyone who wants to share an idea always wants to start a discussion. Maybe they just want to put some information out there.
This makes me think of “discussion topic”.
Why is similarity a bad thing in and of itself? It can be reminiscent of discussions as long as it’s less narrow.
Similarity is fine if it is less narrow, but ‘thread’ doesn’t seem any less narrow than ‘discussion’ to me. A ‘thread’ usually means a reply chain.
Sounds like a voice chat (like Twitter spaces)
I can’t decide if this communicates a grouping of ideas. Seems borderline.
Doesn’t communicate a grouping of ideas.
Doesn’t communicate a grouping of ideas.
Doesn’t communicate a grouping of ideas.
“Go check out the Karl Popper context on Veritula” would only make sense if you are already a Veritula user who is accustomed to using this terminology.
This actually seems anti-discussion. Sounds like a grouping of ideas that are only related by conceptual proximity, rather than building on each other.
Preview links of discussions should show the name of the discussion being linked.
See eg https://x.com/agentofapollo/status/1991252721618547023
h/t @benjamin-davies
@dennis-hackethal see the revision chain on #3164. Revision 5 improved the content but I accidentally removed valuable comments. Revision 6 (a revision of revision 4) brought back the comments but I failed to include the content improvement in revision 5. I then made revision 7 to have both the comments and the improved content.
Maybe it should be possible to amend which comments apply to an idea without needing to make a whole new revision. This could behave weirdly in some edge cases, but it’s food for thought. If you think the way it currently works is going to be best, that seems fine to me.
Idea: voice spaces, like Twitter spaces, except an AI generates a transcript and automatically turns it into a discussion tree, with criticism chains and all.