It's unfortunate so many people come out of the woodwork to tell people their ideas are terrible or won't work.
I think it's far more interesting to ask how a thing might work, which uses cases might be dramatically underserved today and serve as a beachhead, or the tradeoffs being made rather than just say something is a "bad idea."
A 2012 thread discussing comment negativity where, coincidentally, the top comment is from @iamwil who posted this link and is on the DIRT team: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4363717
To me, the most interesting ideas in the world are the ones that at first blush look like they can't possibly work. But upon thinking through how they might, you learn something.
Props to everyone in the thread who is asking genuine questions and actually trying to understand what the team is building.
This seems like a hilariously bad idea. You're basically building a system where whichever group has the most money to burn gets to decide the "truth". I would love you to change my mind though.
Whoever stakes the most tokens also has the most to lose. There is other side of the moderation - anyone can challenge incorrect data and earn tokens for their work.
Currently, there is no support for moderation at scale. Projects like OpenStreetMap offer a valuable resource, but struggle to maintain quality at scale. This is a relevant article: https://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2018/02/16/osm-is-in-trouble/.
With DIRT's model, we want to create a way to build data sets with a focus on accuracy that can scale.
Climate change is an interesting example. An example of a DIRT registry, would not be the question of "is climate change real". It's unclear what defines "real". Rather a registry could be a list of the average air temperature in a city over time.
Maybe if there was also very aggressive human moderation to remove anything that was even remotely emotionally/economically charged. Basically just stick to information about math and science (and even then you'd have to avoid political bugbears like global warming or anything to do with economics).
Avoiding politics is basically impossible, everything is political to some degree. For example, even if you just focus on the most boring maths, is it overwhelmingly just male mathematicians' work cited? That's political.
>If the data is incorrect, anyone can challenge the data and earn tokens for identifying these inaccurate facts.
How do you moderate censorship or conflicting information ?
if someone uploads my personal info, without my consent. How do I get to purge it ? From the current model, it seems like I ll have to pay money to "request" purging my own data.
Thanks! DIRT is a fundamentally different approach because it removes the middleman and there is no central moderator. Our goal is to move the trust from a central party to a system of rules that anyone can participate in.
I think verified identity could be a registry on DIRT. Adding reputation on top of voting is something we're exploring.
Can someone explain how exactly DIRT protocol will do moderation? From their site [1] it seems like they do some sort of moderating of crowd-sourced structured data. But this is where I am a bit confused: "DIRT maintains accuracy because every contributor needs to deposit tokens to write data. If the data is correct, it is freely shared. If the data is incorrect, anyone can challenge the data and earn tokens for identifying these inaccurate facts." How is the data flagged as incorrect? Who decides that the original data is wrong and the new data is correct?
Also, given that contributors have to put money up to add information, what incentive do they have to add information in the first place?
Hi! Thanks for the question. DIRT works well for objective information. In the cryptocurrency use case, this could be the ERC-20 smart contract address for a token or a list of investors for a project.
To flag information as incorrect, you need to take tokens and challenge the data. A challenge starts a vote and anyone in the DIRT network can vote with their tokens on what information is correct. The vote winner and majority voters earn tokens. The vote loser and minority voters are penalized.
We are planning to publish our protocol design in a few weeks with more details.
>>To flag information as incorrect, you need to take tokens and challenge the data. A challenge starts a vote and anyone in the DIRT network can vote with their tokens on what information is correct. The vote winner and majority voters earn tokens. The vote loser and minority voters are penalized.
You're right this only works well for objective information or facts. Hence, any articles that hint of an opinion (i.e. pick any Wikipedia editing war topic) would result in a mono-culture dominated by those with the most tokens.
I'm really curious to see how this plays out. Best of luck.
So the 'truth' is whichever way the majority votes? Putting side the obvious issues with that, what prevents someone who has the largest warchest from sweeping everything or is it just an assumption that no-one will have a 51% share blockchains are largely based on?
Interesting. It's similar to how Stack Overflow's reputation system incentivizes quality questions and answers, except that in DIRT you use tokens, and tokens cost money (correct me if I'm wrong).
Unsolicited startup idea: build a more accurate Stack Overflow with DIRT.
Do you have any quadratic voting scheme where one can cast larger votes but have to stake a quadratic amount of ERC20 tokens for the vote? Also, do y'all have a Telegram room?
We are building something very similar to this with Rlay[0], though we usually don't frame it with the Wikipedia/Wikidata story. One of the factors that incentivices contribution of data in the first place, is that if you deposit tokens for a propositon earlier, you will be rewarded higher than if you do that later. Thus participants try to be the first ones to submit a certain piece of information.
Thanks for the feedback! One of the differences between DIRT and Wikipedia is that we place a higher value on information accuracy. For example, in the cryptocurrency market project teams often list investors and advisors as affiliated with their project when they are not involved. A Wikipedia list of investors would not be sufficient. You want these project teams to have skin in the game and something to lose if they are spreading false information.
That said - the explanation didn't fit as well into a one liner :)
Seems like a pretty great way to remove the middleman from populist infotainment consumption. Can't be worse than what we already have and by making it explicitly richest party wins it makes the process more transparent. It might not be the Truth but at least it is Honest.
Transparency would be the third benefit. With the blockchain, you can see the entire history of votes. Every transaction is recorded. Today, if a website accepts bribes for reviews, visitors to the site do not know that this happened. With DIRT, if a wealthy token holder had a lot of tokens and tries to throw a vote, you can see the attack happening.
How do you associate a token holder with an actual person or organization?
Is there a method for doing this built into the protocol, or would that be a responsibility for the implementer?
I agree that transparency could be a great benefit of this technology, but if a "wealthy token holder" can create several puppet accounts with their own tokens, throwing a vote can be made to look "organic". Does DIRT do anything to prevent this?
(Thanks btw, it's great to see you active in the comments.)
My feeling is that this is either an illusion ("it will work out somehow") or a sham ("let's milk the crypto craze").
No answer to the question why selling votes should result in more accuracy. Buzzword Bingo. An overly broad approach. Lot's of social proof but thin on content. This reminds me of all those ICOs we see these days.
Looking forward to read the whitepaper. But somehow I have the feeling it will either never come or it will be just another marketing brochure without technical details.
Before Wikipedia, the idea that an openly edited online journal would be better and more accurate alternative to Encyclopedia Brittanica would be surprising to most people.
There's two parts of the design that leads to more accuracy for DIRT:
1. Skin in the game - a token deposit to write encourages accuracy because you can lose the deposit if you are incorrect.
2. Encouraging moderation - moderators can earn tokens. If you vote and challenge correctly, you can earn tokens. This creates an economic reward for moderators that can protects the data accuracy in the long term.
We're posting the whitepaper and more importantly, launching the protocol with a first application in the coming months. Stay tuned!
Can you say more about your project? I was thinking of using it for a project where I'd have to categorize a lot of data and I found the ontologies/modelling and program setup a bit daunting so shelved it for now. Would be curious what others are doing with it.
Readit News
I think it's far more interesting to ask how a thing might work, which uses cases might be dramatically underserved today and serve as a beachhead, or the tradeoffs being made rather than just say something is a "bad idea."
Dropbox launch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
Coinbase launch: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4703443
A 2012 thread discussing comment negativity where, coincidentally, the top comment is from @iamwil who posted this link and is on the DIRT team: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4363717
A classic thread from 2012 where PG talks about negative comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4396747
To me, the most interesting ideas in the world are the ones that at first blush look like they can't possibly work. But upon thinking through how they might, you learn something.
Props to everyone in the thread who is asking genuine questions and actually trying to understand what the team is building.
Deleted Comment
Currently, there is no support for moderation at scale. Projects like OpenStreetMap offer a valuable resource, but struggle to maintain quality at scale. This is a relevant article: https://blog.emacsen.net/blog/2018/02/16/osm-is-in-trouble/.
With DIRT's model, we want to create a way to build data sets with a focus on accuracy that can scale.
…by big oil's dollars.
>If the data is incorrect, anyone can challenge the data and earn tokens for identifying these inaccurate facts.
How do you moderate censorship or conflicting information ? if someone uploads my personal info, without my consent. How do I get to purge it ? From the current model, it seems like I ll have to pay money to "request" purging my own data.
I think verified identity could be a registry on DIRT. Adding reputation on top of voting is something we're exploring.
How would I remove my personal data, or any proprietary data, if someone uploaded that to DIRT?
Also, given that contributors have to put money up to add information, what incentive do they have to add information in the first place?
[1] https://dirtprotocol.com/
To flag information as incorrect, you need to take tokens and challenge the data. A challenge starts a vote and anyone in the DIRT network can vote with their tokens on what information is correct. The vote winner and majority voters earn tokens. The vote loser and minority voters are penalized.
We are planning to publish our protocol design in a few weeks with more details.
Basically, when someone doxxes someone, and dumps the result onto your system, how to you remove it?
If you don't have a facility for rendering intentionally malicious information impossible to access, your system is fundamentally broken.
You're right this only works well for objective information or facts. Hence, any articles that hint of an opinion (i.e. pick any Wikipedia editing war topic) would result in a mono-culture dominated by those with the most tokens.
I'm really curious to see how this plays out. Best of luck.
Unsolicited startup idea: build a more accurate Stack Overflow with DIRT.
[0]: https://rlay.com/
That said - the explanation didn't fit as well into a one liner :)
Transparency would be the third benefit. With the blockchain, you can see the entire history of votes. Every transaction is recorded. Today, if a website accepts bribes for reviews, visitors to the site do not know that this happened. With DIRT, if a wealthy token holder had a lot of tokens and tries to throw a vote, you can see the attack happening.
Is there a method for doing this built into the protocol, or would that be a responsibility for the implementer?
I agree that transparency could be a great benefit of this technology, but if a "wealthy token holder" can create several puppet accounts with their own tokens, throwing a vote can be made to look "organic". Does DIRT do anything to prevent this?
(Thanks btw, it's great to see you active in the comments.)
Please proof. Otherwise good irony.
No answer to the question why selling votes should result in more accuracy. Buzzword Bingo. An overly broad approach. Lot's of social proof but thin on content. This reminds me of all those ICOs we see these days.
Looking forward to read the whitepaper. But somehow I have the feeling it will either never come or it will be just another marketing brochure without technical details.
There's two parts of the design that leads to more accuracy for DIRT:
1. Skin in the game - a token deposit to write encourages accuracy because you can lose the deposit if you are incorrect.
2. Encouraging moderation - moderators can earn tokens. If you vote and challenge correctly, you can earn tokens. This creates an economic reward for moderators that can protects the data accuracy in the long term.
We're posting the whitepaper and more importantly, launching the protocol with a first application in the coming months. Stay tuned!
[0]: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Main_Page