SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Averting Toxic Chats: Computer Model Predicts When Online Conversations Turn Sour
The internet offers the potential for constructive dialogue and cooperation, but online conversations too often degenerate into personal attacks. In hopes that those attacks can be averted, researchers have created a model to predict which civil conversations might take a turn and derail.
After analyzing hundreds of exchanges between Wikipedia editors, the researchers developed a computer program that scans for warning signs in the language used by participants at the start of a conversation -- such as repeated, direct questioning or use of the word "you" -- to predict which initially civil conversations would go awry.
Early exchanges that included greetings, expressions of gratitude, hedges such as "it seems," and the words "I" and "we" were more likely to remain civil, the study found.
"We, as humans, have an intuition of whether a conversation is about to go awry, but it's often just a suspicion. We can't do it 100 percent of the time. We wonder if we can build systems to replicate or even go beyond this intuition," Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil[*] said.
The computer model, which also considered Google's Perspective, a machine-learning tool for evaluating "toxicity," was correct around 65 percent of the time. Humans guessed correctly 72 percent of the time.
[...] The study analyzed 1,270 conversations that began civilly but degenerated into personal attacks, culled from 50 million conversations across 16 million Wikipedia "talk" pages, where editors discuss articles or other issues. They examined exchanges in pairs, comparing each conversation that ended badly with one that succeeded on the same topic, so the results weren't skewed by sensitive subject matter such as politics.
[*] Cristian Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil: assistant professor of information science and co-author of the paper Conversations Gone Awry: Detecting Early Signs of Conversational Failure. (pdf)
The technique sounds useful for non-internet conversations, too... is there an app for that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @08:16PM (5 children)
You make his point for him. What happened in Charlottesville was not limited to one single reprehensible incident. You choose to focus only on that and justify the down modding while overlooking all other activities from both sides. That was his point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 25 2018, @11:51PM (4 children)
So focusing on the vehicular murder is the wrong thing there? You are insane.
We could argue all day about which violent group was how wrong, but in the end the neo nazi running people over with is car was the most important part. Saying "both sides" is stupid and we're tired of hearing you defenders of Nazis.
VLM is well known for spewing hateful lying garbage he gets from whatever nutty outlets, that is just a fact at this point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @09:33AM (2 children)
When the right wing death squads emerge and begin the new holocaust, should I be there to defend you?
Maybe I should focus exclusively on the preceding terror attack from "your side" and simply accept that this response was inevitable.
You people are well known for spewing hateful garbage you get from whatever nutty outlets, that is just a fact at this point.
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Thursday July 26 2018, @01:19PM (1 child)
When the left wing death squads emerge and begin the new cultural revolution or Khmer Rouge purge, should I be there to defend you?
Maybe I should focus exclusively on the preceding terror attack from "your side" and simply accept that this response was inevitable.
You people are well known for spewing hateful garbage you get from whatever nutty outlets, that is just a fact at this point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @07:10PM
The left wing death squads are already here. We've seen what they can do, and it's nothing.
When the right wing death squads appear, you will be very aware.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 26 2018, @01:55PM
Painting everyone on "the other side" in broad strokes based upon the actions of one nutcase is the wrong thing there, yes. Should ALL progressive movement proponents be judged based upon the actions of Yvette Felarca, Nasim Aghdam, Eric Clanton, or any of the violent extremists that associate with them? Just because you disagree with the ideology of "the other guy" doesn't mean that the actions of one murderer is representative of everyone.
Look at it this way. When a Middle Eastern person drives over a bunch of innocent people and "the other side" paints all Middle Easterners as terrorists, do you jump up and down screaming "Nuh Uh"? Or do you say, we shouldn't have any Middle Easterners here because they are all like those Islamist murderers in Toronto, Columbus, Boston, New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona, Ft Hood, Orlando and everywhere else these things occurred? Maybe they didn't all participate in the action, but "They all agree with the philosophy." This is exactly how the left is behaving.
When everyone who disagrees with you is a "Nazi" you ought to realize you are not seeing clearly. Take a good look in the mirror and maybe you will see that you are blinded by your own ideology.