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Comment by MarkPNeyer | Hacker News Reader

i've built an algorithmic system to help people who are civil connect to each other.

it's like pagerank, but personalized. Rather than have a top score for the 'most civil person', you use the system to record who you find civil and who you don't.

When you interact with a stranger, you can quickly find out "should i bother talking to this person, or are they just going to troll me?"

if a bunch of your friends say "hey this guy is worth talking to", then maybe you will.

if a bunch of your friends say "this guy is a troll", you'll probably think the same thing.

https://github.com/neyer/respect

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Wow, I see this as inevitably, extremely useful, but at the same time as the ultimate filter bubble. Much like Facebook, but more controlled by peoples own prejudice and less by FB advertising. Frightening, and cool.

I have a lower than average Uber rating for this exact reason. I've never been anything but polite. If anything, a little quiet, and untalkative if I'm tired. You're right - these systems generally select for the wrong things.

I'm sorry to hear that, but I think in this case you can't blame the algorithm. If the customers want a gregarious driver, this is what they select for. It's similar to if you were in any service profession. For example, a bartender would be expected to be even friendlier.

Passengers also have Uber ratings. I read wjagodfrey's comment as talking about their passenger rating, not their driver rating.

Does your ranking also work for actions? The most dangerous people are often very civil. Civility is an essential means to construct and keep a power pyramid in place.

Wow, this is very cool stuff. You could even guesstimate how likely two strangers are to respect each other using a weighted sum of the n-th order implied respects. It wouldn't be too different from calculating a power series.

Your project has earned my respect. :-)

idk maybe anyone who uses internet karma points to determine whether someone is worth talking to is both the jerk and the asshat

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