Saturday, October 04, 2008

Things They Should Invent: mark as "WTF?"

In the reader comments sections of newspapers, you can mark other comments as offensive, and sometimes you can mark them as agree or disagree.

But we also need a WTF option, for when the comment is just way fucking irrelevant, so fucking irrelevant that the profanity is in fact strictly necessary. The thesis of the article: "Look, baby ducks!" Comments: "See, this is what's wrong with the Purple Party!"

I'd also like a mark as factually incorrect option. If someone posts "Acme widgets should be banned because they contain 10 times as many heavy metals as other brands of widgets" you can sometimes mark it as disagree, but that doesn't express that you disagree on the basis that they actually contain the same amount of heavy metals as other widgets, as opposed to disagreeing because you don't think they should be banned. Yes, you can post another comment in response, but you can't guarantee it will be seen by everyone who reads the first comment.

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