Rethink for discourse

[Silvanus]

Hey, the discussion in our forum tends to get flamey from time to time. I was thinking: how hard would it be to make a plugin like rethink for discourse? Maybe a simple plugin that can be turned on when there seems to be some “flame in the air”. The plugin would request a popup verification that your message is good manners & stuff…

Cyberbullies Have Met Their Match With New App

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

There has been discussion of a lockdown mode for contentious discussions:

BBS Thread/Topic trigger warnings

[Silvanus]

(What is that boingboinb-forum?)

@codinghorror mentioned at that forum that “The key observation is that regulars, known users, are generally OK and can be trusted with these kinds of topics but the general public… notsomuch”. I’m not really sure that this applies to our forum. As our forum tries to be a bridge builder between several extremes, flamy discussions take place every now and then. I don’t want to throw out our regulars because the friction inherent to our forum simply appears.

I’m pondering how “high risk discussion mode” would work.

• HRD level 1: popup when sending message to verify that the message is good manners (maybe popup could show the message you’re responding to and ask whether your message responds to it?)
• HRD level 2: trust level limitations & new user limitations
• HRD level 3: N minute time limit for the same user to post multiple messages (e.g. 10 minutes)
• HRD level 4: temporarily closed thread

I’m thinking that the high risk mode could, at first, be simply manually turned on and at different levels (by admin/mods, maybe even leaders (TL 4)). The next phase would be for it to be automatically applied with an algorithm.

[grahamperrin]

@Silvanus

(What is that boingboinb-forum?) …

A complement to http://boingboing.net/ (http, not https; take care).

[Silvanus]

@Silvanus

The next phase would be for it to be automatically applied with an algorithm.

I suggested an example of how the process might work:

@Silvanus

For example:

• Topic has a hotness score, which dilutes 1 point every 10 minutes. Every flag in the thread (for recent messages) adds 20 points to hotness. If the same writer posts short messages (e.g. less then 200 chars) within 20 minutes, add 10 points. Every time a post is sent and there are 2 other posts within the last 10 minutes, add 10 points.
• When hotness reaches 60, mark the topic as hot topic, efefctively limiting posts to one per 30 minutes per same writer. When hotness decreases to 50, remove limitation.
• If hotness reaches 100, temporarily close the topic. When hotness decreases to 90, open topic.

I’m wondering if such a diluting job would be too heavy on discourse?

I’m also torn on whether to continue this discussion here or in that other thread…

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

It’s unclear how rethink works. Maybe put some screenshots in here of how it works?

[Silvanus]

I know ReThink only from the link above given. The basic idea of ReThink app is, as written there:

The program detects when a user types something potentially offensive, and asks in a pop-up window, “Are you sure you want to post this message?”

Here’s a screenshot (taken from the link in the first post):

Of course, this is only one idea how “woooah slow down mode” could work.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

Seems a bit primitive and goofy to me… something like civil comments is more sophisticated.