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Artisanal Ricochet: Where We Still Bust Trolls by Hand
Remember how everyone laughed at me when I proposed that we automate the spirit of civility on Ricochet?
One of my “bosses” suggested the problem might defy automation. He insinuated that it might require more “work” on my part. “Get out there and be a beat cop, Claire. Go smack ‘em down (politely) if you see anyone disgracing our honor with so much of a hint of an insulting or emotive comment.”
To which of course I said, “Don’t be absurd. We are American. Nothing defies our automation. We build better mousetraps. We build them bigger, better, faster and open longer. “Defies automation?” That’s what they used to say about flying.”
I put our dispute to you. Remember that? And you roundly (but very politely) shouted me down. I slinked away with my tail between my legs. Ah well, I thought.
So imagine how I felt when I came across this item: “Antisocial behavior online can make people’s lives miserable. So an algorithm that can spot trolls more quickly should be a boon, say the computer scientists who developed it.”
Today, Justin Cheng at Stanford University in California and a few pals say they have created just such a tool by analyzing the behavior of trolls on several well-known websites and creating an algorithm that can accurately spot them after as few as 10 posts. They say their technique should be of high practical importance to the people who maintain online communities.
Cheng and co study three online news communities: the general news site CNN.com, the political news site Breitbart.com, and the computer gaming site IGN.com. …
Interestingly, Cheng and co say that the differences between messages posted by people who are later banned and those who are not is so clear that it is relatively straightforward to spot them using a machine learning algorithm. “In fact, we only need to observe five to 10 user posts before a classifier is able to make a reliable prediction,” they boast.
That could turn out to be useful. Antisocial behavior is an increasingly severe problem that requires significant human input to detect and tackle. This process often means that antisocial users are allowed to operate for much longer than necessary. “Our methods can effectively identify antisocial users early in their community lives and alleviate some of this burden,” say Cheng and co.
My heart sank. First, yet again, I had the idea–I can prove it!–but someone else had the follow-through.
Second, you know what that means, don’t you. I’m about to lose my job. To a machine.
There’s only one way out: I’ve got to persuade you that that dang machine ain’t ever going to be as good as my home cooking. And I should be able to, right? After all, you didn’t like the idea when I first suggested it, so why should you like it any more just because someone else has proven it can be done?
So I’ve switched sides. You were right in the first place. I am completely against this inhuman, soulless, job-killing algorithm. Ladies and gentlemen, our selling point on Ricochet is hand-made, all-natural, whole grain, farm-fresh, organic, artisanal, troll-busting–just like Mom used to do. No artificial flavors, no chemicals, and no algorithms. If you’re busted for trolling, you know a real human being was genuinely annoyed.
Real troll busting takes time. It’s imperfect, but that’s what makes it special, you see. Like April McGreger, a respected pickle- and preserve-maker based in Hillsborough, N.C., “I feel like wildness is one of our values. Supporting local agriculture. Preserving local land, that’s a big part of it.”
Ms. McGreger is my new role model:
“I’m judging and tasting, using all of my senses every day,” McGreger says. “I’m using a lot of experience and intuition. It’s something you learn and craft over time.” The Robot Coupe, she adds, will never process plums for her cardamom jam or figs for her preserves. “We never run fruit through it,” she says firmly. “Those shortcuts lead to a degradation of quality. Our goal is that every batch is the best batch we ever made.”
Here on Ricochet, we will never use a Robot Troll-Buster to enforce the standards of our cordial conversation. We will never run you through a machine: Those shortcuts lead to a degradation of quality. Our goal is that every conversation be the best conversation we’ve ever had.
So join today and use the coupon code APRIL for your discount!
Otherwise, I bet they’ll replace me with that machine. (And that would be really unfair, seeing as it was my dumb idea in the first place.)
Published in General
I find myself strangely drawn to this.
Is Busted Troll a traditional dish, if so from where, is it sweet or savoury, what colour is it, is it seasonal or can you get it all year round and most importantly does it go well with tea and cucumber sandwiches? Less importantly, is it gluten free?
It’s completely traditional, sweet and savory; and whatever color it is, it’s natural color, not artificial. We use acai berries and ginseng; we’re 100 percent gluten free, and we’re suitable for whatever orthorexic dietary fad is fashionable today–except the ones that will result in me being replaced by a machine.
Claire, you will always be welcome here, even if your job is taken over by a machine. That being said, troll busting requires judgement, discrimination, not just detection. The metal detector alerts the human agent to the presence of a significant amount of the substance; the human agent must judge whether the form is dangerous.
I think Claire means to say that traditional Busted Troll is always troll-colored.
I confess that am not up on my troll zoology and consequently–not knowing the full extent of troll bio-diversity–I am not 100% sure there aren’t colorless trolls.
Can I use it to make a Troll Roll?
I am overcome by the culinary possibilities….
Absolutely! Here, this one’s gluten-free, too.
Organically Busted Troll WBAGNFARB.
Don’t worry Claire, you won’t become like Max Goolis, the Street Sweeping Man.
Never! I demand that all my Trolling Control be performed by an impartial, artificial, chemically obtuse, machine! Hand-made things are junk. Machine troll spotting will be faster and more efficient, leading to a 53.6% reduction in trolling at a fraction of the price of the hand-made version.
Don’t be fooled by Claire’s Whole Food’s troll busting pitch. What you want is a genuine all American, made in China troll spotting algorithm. One that will run on AAA batteries rather than some antiquated windup mechanism. Made of injection molded high strength polymer plastic rather than shoddy hand-lathed Norwegian birch.
I feel a marketing campaign coming on…
Claire,
My Uncle Fred has retained counsel and is demanding that from now on your posts have a “trigger warning”. Yes he would like them to be clearly labeled MAY CAUSE SEVERE ANXIETY FOR THE UNDERBRIDGED. Really Claire the Underbridged (what they prefer to be called) have feelings too. You must think before you so blatantly slander a culture. Poor Uncle Fred has been going to group therapy for years to try to overcome his shyness. Now you’ve done it. He’s had a relapse.
Oh the humanity (or whatever).
Regards,
Jim
Hmmm. Looks nautical. Are those Sea Trolls?
Could I say something as a troll, in defense of trolling? We’re not all that bad & hopefully we will not end up being removed far away from the right-kind-of-people. Being stupid & obnoxious is a sterling defense of humanity! I get up in the morning to be stupid & obnoxious–& for breakfast–& I need a reason to get up in the morning.
Everyone else can feel better for the comparison & then again everyone has bad days–is it really worth it to make things such that one angry rant is enough to ruin a life? Support me–& angry rants will be laughable stuff, mere nuisances, & whoever needs to shout at some politician or celebrity will have an ally!
&, too, we trolls serve a purpose–admittedly, there is harm in trolling, people’s feeling get hurt, & real suffering is not really avoidable. But not all suffering is bad, you know, a little pain never hurt nobody! There’ll be a majority of right-thinking people to ignore us few or put us in our place. There will be a few heroes of the cause making a name of troll-hunting, & how else to win acclaim?, like Miss Claire, to do the jobs that non-ex-pat Americans won’t do.
& would you really like a world without anti-social behavior? It’s bad enough to call it that, but to have it detected & removed from people’s lives–don’t America love an underdog, a conversion story, the mending of mendicant ways? Ain’t there something to be said for laughing at us instead of, well, sending in the machines to set us straight? Couldn’t we be a kind of problem that don’t need fixing? Could we work something out–I’d tell you about sticks & stones, but I’m a little wary of puttin’ ideas in anyone’s head…
I can’t believe the end of me is going to be some techno-geek I sneezed at in repulsion! I’ll tell you, their brand of enlightenment is bad for the complexion, to say nothing of what it does to your healthy inclination to immorality! Say it isn’t so, average Joe! I’m depending on our shared & shameful love of the vulgar, our certainty that we’re nobody’s fools & nobody’s damned dirty apes!
& without us, who’s going to mock the techno-geeks when their mothers mother them & their professions professionalize them? Who’s going to laugh at all the narrowminded creature comforts? Who’s going to reject out of hand everything too clever by half?
I’m telling you, to sum up a conclusion, we’re no good & that’s gotta be worth something! We complete you!
Claire,
Aside from the whole sensitivity issue there is the problem of “false positives“. Cheng admits as much. It takes a very special kind of discernment to separate the wheat from the chaff.
You don’t get to be King of the Britons without knowing a thing or two.
Regards,
Jim
Claire’s post bothers me, because she assumes that somehow organic and natural trolls are better.
We know better, of course. Ricochet-trolls are highly developed, processed, and refined, and are never found in a state of nature.
From the saints to the trolls (and everyone in between), Ricochet is the site that transcends nature-worship.
Claire,
I asked you to be careful! Now you’ve gone and done it. We’ll be getting an angry letter from Hobbit. They are that new pressure group who are pushing TRGNFAHO (Trolls, Gnomes, Fairies, Hobbits) rights. They’ve hired that super lawyer Gandalf. Wait till you hear what he did to the last web site he went after!!
I’m going to be sick.
Regards,
Jim
What’s wrong with mechanized trolls?
What’s wrong with mechanized trolls?
What’s wrong with mechanized trolls?
What’s wrong wUnhandled Exception-NameSpace Error: Status = 01A7 D4D6
See syserr for detailed information.
Damn it, Hill, some of us were hoping to get some work done today…
Can’t we do better than a Buche de Noel with plastic trolls attached?
Like what, some science-y algorithm?
Hey! I have that same picture of Claire as my desktop background. Did you hack my computer?
One day my son came home and told me that there was troll under bridge to orchards. I told him there is no such thing as trolls. Trolls were from fairy tales and he was too old for nonsense. But Eiros (first born son always has same name as father) never lied about anything, and I wondered if he maybe had mistaken big animal for troll. Could be dangerous to children! (There is still wilderness in Balkans.)
Two neighbors and I got rifles and headed to bridge. We saw big living thing with white head, sitting with feet in water. He was half dressed only with last scraps of army uniform, had long beard, and he had crazy eyes that we could see when we got closer.
When he saw us, he jumped up, tried to run but slipped on mossy rocks and fell face down into water. Water was not deep and he wasn’t hurt. On his knees he raised his hands and surrendered. We took him back to town to clinic.
He never remembered who he was or why he was under bridge. The only thing left from past life was that he could fix shoes, so he worked for shoe repairman, and was deliverance for Brenna, who needed extra help.
We gave stranger name of Eiogha. He was not stranger for long. Always he had candy for kids who would come into shop. We missed him when he died 10 years later.
Long story to say that machine would have just seen troll and would kill him. We people would have killed a troll, too, but we found nice man instead.
The above video on robot chefs was made in 2009. That’s six years ago.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1aeBnXNNL4
This robot chef video was released last week. It will be available for rich folk to purchase (for about $14,000) by 2017.
—
For those of you on a budget that doesn’t yet allow for the purchase of a robot chef, you can always buy the cookbook that was written by IBM’s Watson. I’m not aware if it has a chapter on jams and preserves:
http://www.amazon.com/Cognitive-Cooking-Chef-Watson-Innovation/dp/149262571X
Well, maybe we need a troll icon, that can be clicked before posting angry, derisive posts and comments, so Trolls can acknowledge their true selves. I for one would be more accepting of Trolls, if they would just acknowledge their tactics. Otherwise, Auntie Claire and her R>2.0 troll hammer will be…BAM. BAM. BAM. A new online game, “Whack-A-Troll.”
Come now. Who among us can say that they’ve never lurked under a bridge eating billy goats?
Hmm, sure are a lot of hands going up. I may be an outlier on this one…
;-)
(FYI: This is NOT intended as a reference to the story in comment #23, which I just read!!! Gosh, now I feel like a J-Hole.)
Science has been trolling me ever since Pluto was demoted and dinosaurs were given feathers.
Well, maybe I’d be a bit reluctant–I get the sense, it would be an unattractive icon… But if there is honor among trolls, surely, it means that we troll & take our chances, in sickness & in health, till somebody has enough us, & then it’s that cold good night again, not like in Casablanca-
Looks more like Sigourney Weaver to me.