Veritula – Meta

  Benjamin Davies submitted idea #2305.

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?

  Benjamin Davies commented on idea #628.

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.

#628·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 year ago

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.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2243.

There could be an explanation somewhere stating that emoji reactions do not have epistemological relevance.

#2243·Dennis HackethalOP, 29 days ago

Hardly anyone reads those, and many of those who do forget.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2160.

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.

#2160·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago

There could be an explanation somewhere stating that emoji reactions do not have epistemological relevance.

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #2159.

How about emoji reactions?

#2159·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago

Those run the risk of turning Veritula into yet another social network like Reddit or messenger like Telegram.

  Dennis Hackethal revised criticism #2158.

Maybe somebody just forgot to reply or doesn’t know what to say.

Not necessarily. Maybe somebody just forgot to reply or doesn’t know what to say.

  Dennis Hackethal revised criticism #2156.

Veritula should have some way to indicate agreement.

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.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2167.

That only happens if people submit bulk ideas, and people shouldn’t do that anyway.

#2167·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago

But not everyone will always use the platform in an ideal way, and I don’t want to make it easier for issues to compound.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2166.

Reactions can be ambiguous. It wouldn’t always be clear which part of an idea someone is reacting to.

#2166·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago

That only happens if people submit bulk ideas, and people shouldn’t do that anyway.

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #2159.

How about emoji reactions?

#2159·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago

Reactions can be ambiguous. It wouldn’t always be clear which part of an idea someone is reacting to.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2161.

Reactions could be limited to the recipient of a comment.

#2161·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago

That limits the scope of the problem but doesn’t eliminate it. A single recipient could still react in a distracting way.

  Dennis Hackethal revised criticism #2162.

Revisions are complicated. Too many options (superseding a previous version, ‘Is criticism?’, unchecking comments). It might help to have a more guided processes with multiple screens.

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.

  Dennis Hackethal submitted criticism #2162.

Revisions are complicated. Too many options (superseding a previous version, ‘Is criticism?’, unchecking comments). It might help to have a more guided processes with multiple screens.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2160.

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.

#2160·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago

Reactions could be limited to the recipient of a comment.

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #2159.

How about emoji reactions?

#2159·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago

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.

  Dennis Hackethal commented on criticism #2156.

Veritula should have some way to indicate agreement.

#2156·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago

How about emoji reactions?

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2157.

If there’s no criticism, that implies agreement.

#2157·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago

Maybe somebody just forgot to reply or doesn’t know what to say.

  Dennis Hackethal addressed criticism #2156.

Veritula should have some way to indicate agreement.

#2156·Dennis HackethalOP, about 1 month ago

If there’s no criticism, that implies agreement.

  Dennis Hackethal submitted criticism #2156.

Veritula should have some way to indicate agreement.

  Dennis Hackethal submitted criticism #2155.

By the time someone receives an email notification, they will probably have forgotten whatever they wrote originally that prompted someone to reply to them.

  Dennis Hackethal revised idea #2006.

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.

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.

  Dennis Hackethal revised idea #1990. The revision addresses idea #1989.

When cycling back to the revision, it should continue to display only the count of the shown criticisms.

Any filtered idea should always display only the count of shown criticisms.

  Dennis Hackethal revised idea #2003. The revision addresses idea #2005.

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.

That way, there should never be any confusion as to a mismatch between the total vs rendered number of pending criticisms.

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.

  Dennis Hackethal criticized idea #2003.

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.

That way, there should never be any confusion as to a mismatch between the total vs rendered number of pending criticisms.

#2003·Dennis HackethalOP revised about 1 month ago

How will people know what n / m means?

  Dennis Hackethal revised idea #1998.

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.

That way, there’s never any confusion as to 1) whether a filtered idea has any pending criticisms, 2) a filtered idea having more criticisms than are being rendered.

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.

That way, there should never be any confusion as to a mismatch between the total vs rendered number of pending criticisms.