Proposal: Community Sourcing

Eva
Tue, 27 Aug 2019 22:21:47 +0000

The Problem

A large problem in internet communities is internet debates that devolve into metadiscussions on credibility. This likely isn't bad, because the default alternative is generally large-scale misinformation campaigns.

Examples

Tildes hasn't been free of this, naturally; for a (very) recent example, see this thread on Andrew Yang's climate change proposals.

I, personally, have partaken in a thread that seemed as if it might head in the same direction; take a look at this thread, on gun suicides of a certain population & aggravating factors of them. A third-party delivering a breadth of sources seemed to have stopped it in its tracks, however.

Solution

It does seem to me like something that could be solved—or at least mitigated—at the platform level, with a feature that would allow other users to cite sources for a comment in question, ideally with community ranking of those sources.

Getting rid of the question of credibility in casual discussions in a way that doesn't interrupt the flow of dialogue seems like something that would undoubtedly help The Conversation™ flourish, while simultaneously preventing disinformation catastrophes.

Comments URL: https://tildes.net/~tildes/h15/proposal_community_sourcing

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