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StupidFilter - Time to Fight Back the Imbeciles Monday, December 10, 2007 - Sarah Gingichashvili Home >> News >> Computer Technology   
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A team of American scientists are developing the “StupidFilter” – an open-source filter software that will be able to detect “rampant stupidity” of web-content in written English. Similarly to the way spam recognizing software detects suspicious e-mails, the “StupidFilter” will look for pre-fed words or sign combinations that characterize stupidity, assigning particular tokens with different weights based on how often they occur in hand-picked examples of idiotic comments. The developers are using weighted Bayesian analysis along with some rules-based processing, similar to spam detection engines, in order to efficiently distinguish unacceptable messages among the submitted texts.
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The project is still in the design and analysis phase – scientists have already gathered over 255,000 real user comments, primarily from “YouTube”. These comments are ranked on a five-point scale by a web-based ranking system and the results are ‘fed’ into the StupidFilter’s database. This database forms the basis for the analysis of incoming comments in terms of diction, not content. An alpha source code release date is set for late December 2008, and the creators say they are likely to adhere to this deadline. Once the research is complete, the developers plan to release core engine source code for incorporation into content management systems, blogs, wikis and the like. Additionally, they look forward to developing a fully implemented Firebox plug-in and a Wordpress plug-in. To the question “Isn't filtering stupidity elitist?” the developers’ reply: “Yes. Yes, it is. That's sort of the whole point. Effective textual communication requires at least some formal rigor, and we feel such rigor is worth encouraging and, at times, enforcing.” You can find more information about the StupidFilter on the official website. |
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| what about sarcasm, what about short-hand, what about taking creative license to prove a point? there are too many human elements easily factored out by such a filter. | |||
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| Yay. Finally. I hope I can download the results to my blog, The Stupid Files. | |||
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| Case in point: your\'s. It is not hard to be THAT punctual while proving a creative, sarcastic or nonsensical point. | |||
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| such a filter may pick up a substantial amount of legal language, given that legal arguments typically conform to their respective source of authority; ie, statutory language and elements within case law are often repeated to death by both sides to an issue. i\'m just sayin. | |||
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| I look forward to this being implemented and the internet regaining its intelligence. | |||
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That will be something like:You can say whatever you like, as long as it is what I like and think intelligent. But who is going to filter the "intelligent" comments? |
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| You could reduce the whole internet into one file that would fit on a single flash card! | |||
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It is about time that someone stood up to these stupid stupid people. I once listened to these people's taunts and it put me in jail. I have no time for these stupid and I hope they die. |
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| What happened? Your posting was blank. | |||
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| what if you fictitiously quote something stupid to make a point. \"penises smell like black people\" thats stupid im making an example | |||
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| it would be nice if this could be applied to the science channel and to text books written by the scientists. filtering shit should be left to the perpetrators. | |||
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| Maybe they should apply the filter to the Bible. Well, at least try. I am sure it would just be easier to chuck it in the trash. | |||
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Hah, calling them "scientists" is quite charitable. What do they think? Programming in a method of calling trolls stupid is going to make them happy and not blinded with rage? Do they think it won't provoke more insidious ways of board disruption? Language is developed in real time and the only rigor necessitated by it is hard wired neurologically and does not require a filter. So, in lieu of developing filters, why don't you sit back and cry about it and stop trying to censor human expression based on how intelligent YOU say it is. |
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O.K. People, these postings are pretty good proof that it would be useful. As to infuriating stupid posters--who cares? They will be unable to post and no one will know! As to the rest of your questions about sarcasm, legal language, etc. This is a TOOL folks. Like any tool, how you use it is up to you. What is probably bothering you is that, while you read the title of the article, you neglected to find out the goal of the program. This is badly named, it is NOT a "stupidity filter" it is a language structureal checker. "Effective textual communication requires at least some formal rigor, and we feel such rigor is worth encouraging and, at times, enforcing." Given that our universities are full of freshmen who cannot write a complete thought in a paragraph--much less even a short paper on a topic. That if asked to do so, they call home to Mommy & Daddy on the phone glued to their head and whine. I'd say it's past due. A FF add-in? |
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I wish this will be able to prevent people to comment about things they don't know anything about. Those bastards. That's almost what it will do, for example, no more "FAAAKE D8" comments on UFO videos without solid arguments. That's cool! |
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The name may be misguiding, but the concept is still moronic in itself. The idea that you can reject a comments content as self-evidentially useless solely because of ‘’gross prose style’’ is too one-sided to be practical. A person can seriously lack grammatical skills and still make valid points, and a comment can be within a context where more emotionally rather than formally constructed language is desired. Far from all internet conversation, even by die-hard internet pseudo-intellectuals on a self-image trip, seek to strictly live up to all these grammatical rules or even be smart to begin with. |
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Effective textual communication really does not requires this type of formal rigor unless you have beyond average difficulties understanding written text or got an uncontrollable urge to reject/feel superiority over things that aren’t ‘’perfect’’. Even on their website they’ve used relaxed pronunciation. Since their idea of filtering useless comments is measuring lack of grammatical formality, why not count relaxed pronunciation as stupid as well? Oh well. Since being elitist for the sake of it is ‘’sort of the whole point’’ I guess this whole project doesn’t really has to make much sense. The creators and people actually using this can have fun with the self-image fulfillment, though. |
