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Open sourcing the elimination of stupidity

Can one open-source project rid the online world of stupidity? Let's hope so.

Matt Asay Contributing Writer
Matt Asay is a veteran technology columnist who has written for CNET, ReadWrite, and other tech media. Asay has also held a variety of executive roles with leading mobile and big data software companies.
Matt Asay
2 min read

Carrying the tag line "Because the internet needs prophylactics for memetically transmitted diseases," StupidFilter just launched to rid the world of inane comment spam, wasted messages on mailing lists, etc. I'm wondering if it will simply filter out my entire blog.... :-)

Here's the project's aim:

The solution we're creating is simple: an open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English. This will be accomplished with weighted Bayesian or similar analysis and some rules-based processing, similar to spam detection engines. The primary challenge inherent in our task is that stupidity is not a binary distinction, but rather a matter of degree. To this end, we're collecting a ranked corpus of stupid text, gleaned from user comments on public websites and ranked on a five-point scale.

Eventually, once the research is completed, we plan to release core engine source code for incorporation into content management systems, blogs, wikis and the like. Additionally, we plan to develop a fully implemented Firefox plugin and a Wordpress plugin.

This sounds pretty elitist, no? Well, yes:

Isn't filtering stupidity elitist?
Yes. Yes, it is. That's sort of the whole point.

Do you really expect to be able to detect and filter anything that's conceivably stupid?
No, of course not. You'd need real AI for that, and beyond a certain point it's simply subjective; after all, a sufficiently advanced AI would probably filter out the whole of human discourse, which isn't the idea.

I'm not sure there's a business in here - not a venture-backed one, anyway. But if the project does anything to raise the bar on quality for user-generated content, count me in. Even if I'm a target.

Now if I could just get this to run at book club....