Day 6 Predictions

Daniel: Our guests will probably discuss at length the challenges that Dispute Finder and most web-based cooperative tools bump into while attempting to harness input from virtual crowds. I guess they will talk about Dispute Finder’s design difficulties, such as costs and trade-offs (between precision and recall, between user-friendliness and number / quality of features, etc). They’ll most likely also summon stories from the interviews discussed in the document we received, perhaps to illustrate content-layer problems with measurement of "information sources reliability"; users’ misunderstandings / trouble with logic operations; and group biases. I would love to hear their views on the proposed use of Turks to improve the database of disputed claims and arguments, as well as on the current biases of the disputed facts / arguments presently listed by the software.

Jason: I predict that there will be a good deal of discussion of what Daniel calls the "user-friendliness" aspect of these tools - and I hope there is, because it's critical. Specifically, what is the necessary ratio between DisputeFinder or Herdict "passive users" and "active reporters" to make a project successful? I say this because both Herdict and DisputeFinder look somewhat sparsely-populated for them to be maximally-useful right now. For example, Herdict is reporting that 2 Chinese users have reported YouTube as inaccessible. How do I interpret that? What percent of people who might know about and like Herdict in China are reporting back to Herdict? We know that Wikipedia is successful in spite of the fact that only a very small portion of readers become really regular editors - but Wikipedia is also one of the most visited sites in the world. I hope we discuss what strategies these organizations are employing to build participation for these more niche offerings. Jharrow 18:20, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Reuben: When Daniel talks about the challenges of web-based cooperative tools, my first thought is about the challenge of a achieving a critical mass. I poked around with Dispute Finder for just over an hour this morning and during the entirety of my browsing the New York Times, Washington Post, Miami Herald, and Slate I only came across one disputed claim. No offense to the America's news media, but my guess is that what I read is more disputed than that, but that there just aren't enough people trolling the news sites and adding claims to the dispute finder database for the service to actually be that helpful yet. Jason's point about passive users versus active reporters is important. I too would like to hear about how to reach a critical mass and how many active users are needed in order to have a useful service. I'd also like to hear about the potential for users to participate in a more passive manner - notwithstanding the privacy issues, if Herdict could just monitor my browsing and automatically send a report whenever I come across an inaccessible website, something akin to a Last.fm for my click stream, the data would seem to be much more complete than simply recording whatever I choose to report. Never underestimate the laziness of the average person. My prediction is that our guests acknowledge the shortcomings in their current offerings while remaining optimistic about the possibilities of community based technology. ReubRodriguez 18:49, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Tyler: I completely agree with above thoughts about Herdict and DisputeFinder needing to collect a critical mass of users before becoming useful. This seems to echo the idea that wikipedia was not useful for its first several years because it did not possess a critical mass of articles. However, I think there are some differences because individual pieces of wikipedia could become useful before wikipedia as a whole in that individual articles could become independantly useful before wikipedia became as comprehensive as it is today. I don't see that Herdict or DisputeFinder have the same capability to be useful while scaling because they require users to explicitly decide to install plugins and begin using their services before any benefit can be gained by that user. Wikipedia was able to gradually grow in prominence as users occasionally found information on wikipedia that they wanted through web searches. I am wondering if Herdict or DisputeFinder can take advantage of automated solutions to increase their seemingly as-yet sparsely populated databases? For example, could web crawling robots be used to identify at least some inaccesible sites with the expectation that this list could then be pruned by users rather than expecting it to materialize entirely by user submissions? Could DisputeFinder use a web crawling robot, in conjunction with sophisticated text parsers to begin identifying at least some topics that clearly involve dispute? I expect and hope that the guests will discuss some strategies for increasing the datasets of their projects to the point that they can obtain their critical mass of users and data more quickly. TylerLacey 19:49, 11 January 2010 (UTC)

Emily: Dispute Finder bears an inherent flaw: individuals, not algorithms, decide whom and what to trust for information. Consider the watch on your wrist. If your watch starts to get the time wrong, you might try to fix the watch. You hope and pray your watch starts giving you accurate, dependable information because you like your watch. You might even love your watch. But, if it continues to betray your trust, and the people in your trusted circle insist your watch is wrong, you give up. You decide to trust a new watch, but your new watch will probably be reminiscent of your old watch with respect to personal taste, experience, and preferences. Most people are intuitive enough (though they don’t necessarily convert insights into complex conclusions about source x versus source y) to know that 120 seconds of live, relatively unedited sound on Fox News Live or MSNBC Dayside is less likely to contain factually accurate information – even if relatively unimportant, like the location of a fire, or the total number of casualties in a mass shooting— than a compulsively edited, fact-checked tome in the Sunday NY Times magazine, the Economist, or the New Yorker.

Article 3.5 of the Dispute Finder document, “Determining Trustworthy Sources,” seems a bit absurd. It actually acknowledges the marketability challenges of its own software: “Unfortunately…the sites people actually trust are often those that share the person’s own point of view.” So, again, what is this software and what, really, is the point? Segway into ‘Cross-cutting themes.’ Save the world. How? Is Dispute Finder intended to help people sue other people for libel? Richard Jewel (now deceased) had a reasonably compelling case. That’s probably why he successfully sued (for libel) every organization, from CNN, to NBC, to the NY Post. All settled. He collected from each of them. But Richard Jewel didn’t need help from Dispute Finder. Richard Jewel had a case.

Cross-cutting themes: “Change the technology, save the world.” Okay, why not? Isn’t there something else smart people at Intel and UC Berkeley could be doing to make the world better? Last November, the New York Times produced an alarming story [1] about the food stamp program in America(“now expanding at a pace of about 20,000 people a day.”) Also no shortage of children in custody. Last December, the New York Times obtained – and reported on [2]— a “confidential draft report” prepared by a task force appointed by NY gov David Paterson: “New York State’s current approach fails the young people who are drawn into the system, the public whose safety it is intended to protect, and the principles of good governance that demand effective use of scarce state resources.” Story also says the situation was so bad that the DOJ, at one point, was threatening to “take over.”

So, if Intel is interested in contributing, how about addressing real problems—helping real people— that could affect real, collective societal change and improvement? Children and education seem like obvious places to start. Basics like hardware and mentors could go a long way. Children in poverty struggle with range of issues, including asthma, low self-esteem, obesity, and depression. Consider children in places like the South Bronx (Jonathan Kozol’s children [3]): allocation of resources in places like this (and/or lower-middle class communities), especially from companies like Intel, could change lives; give voices to people from whom we do not often hear.

Interested to hear thoughts on Internet privacy, though I'm not sure adults have an expectation of privacy anywhere [4] on the Internet. If you want privacy, don't put yourself on the Internet. Finally, on the subject of online harassment, if we accept that the Internet is a public place, to what extent is it acceptable to regulate online communication, including but not limited to comments deemed 'offensive' on blogs?

Predictions. Guests will be nice. Class will be nice. Hope to hear more about Dispute Finder's business model.