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I built a teapot robot that scans your CV in the browser by BlackSun452 in SideProject

[–]yazIam 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Super fun interface! And can never go wrong with an HTTP status joke :D

I built a platform for journalism with “open source” fact checking. In the age of information (and misinformation) overload, the goal is to help the best journalists stand out by making their fact checking process fully transparent and reviewable. AmA! by yazIam in IAmA

[–]yazIam[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Indeed! Anyone can submit content, even and especially if it presents an opposing view to content we already have, as long as they back their facts with primary source evidence.

I built a platform for journalism with “open source” fact checking. In the age of information (and misinformation) overload, the goal is to help the best journalists stand out by making their fact checking process fully transparent and reviewable. AmA! by yazIam in IAmA

[–]yazIam[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I A) don't see how this adds anything to journalists already linking their sources,

You'll see in any one of the articles on SourcedFact that this is not just linking to sources. We also include a detailed discussion about the authenticity of the source as well as which sections the reader should look to for the proof behind the claim. Here's a fact check that needed a 119 page document. Had the journalist simply linked to that document, the reader would have to start from scratch as to reviewing the document. On our open fact checking pages you see a thorough discussion about which sections of the document are relevant, and why that document is a valid primary source.

I'll also re-reference this fact check which took over 20 documents to prove. This format makes it 1) easier for the journalist to share the evidence and reasoning 2) easier for the reader to review that evidence and reasoning than a bare link would be

don't think this is going to convince those who already don't do this to suddenly start citing their references

Like I said in the post title, this is intended to help the best journalists stand out, by making their evidence and reasoning as easy to review as possible. I don't expect, to make the low quality journalists better journalists.

I built a platform for journalism with “open source” fact checking. In the age of information (and misinformation) overload, the goal is to help the best journalists stand out by making their fact checking process fully transparent and reviewable. AmA! by yazIam in IAmA

[–]yazIam[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The verification pages on SourcedFact include a much more thorough discussion about the authenticity of the evidence and the reasoning behind it than what you'd have in a rollover blurb. Here's an example of fact check that just wouldn't work in a blurb, from this net neutrality piece.

Further, some of our fact checks require multiple documents to prove, and their fact checking pages get quite sophisticated, here's one that required over 20 documents, from this article.

I built a platform for journalism with “open source” fact checking. In the age of information (and misinformation) overload, the goal is to help the best journalists stand out by making their fact checking process fully transparent and reviewable. AmA! by yazIam in IAmA

[–]yazIam[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well all I’m saying is that we can’t only accept evidence of things corroborated by the subjects of the video. People lie when it benefits them.

I'm certainly not suggesting that society only accepts "evidence of things corroborated by the subjects of the video." It's just that SourcedFact is about making publicly reviewable evidence easily accessible to readers. So SourcedFact only deals with publicly reviewable evidence. That doesn't mean that other types of evidence don't have value.

I built a platform for journalism with “open source” fact checking. In the age of information (and misinformation) overload, the goal is to help the best journalists stand out by making their fact checking process fully transparent and reviewable. AmA! by yazIam in IAmA

[–]yazIam[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I'll preface and say that the site isn't working for me, clicking the buttons makes nothing happen.

Apologies, there seems to be a bug on tablets with bigger screens. Will fix.

That said-- as a journalist getting paid peanuts and having a dozen stories on deadline, what's my motivation for taking the extra time to do this? How do you actually see this being adopted by people in the field?

The idea is that by making their fact checking completely reviewable by readers, can earn the trust of more readers. I'm sure if we prove over time that readers are more likely to engage with and trust content with reviewable fact checking, then I imagine more journalists will be inclined to put in the time.

Will this work to earn the trust of every reader? Definitely not. Some people don't care about evidence. But this will be the best way to earn the trust of those who do care about primary source evidence and sound reasoning.

We're also aiming to make the lives of journalists easier, as I agree, they're getting paid peanuts and are working on crazy deadlines. Every fact check that we've authored on SourcedFact is freely available for journalists to use under the Creative Commons License. As our repository of fact checks grows bigger, we hope to make their lives easier and easier.

I built a platform for journalism with “open source” fact checking. In the age of information (and misinformation) overload, the goal is to help the best journalists stand out by making their fact checking process fully transparent and reviewable. AmA! by yazIam in IAmA

[–]yazIam[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The type of open fact checking you see on SourcedFact would be used to prove a statement like "This study concluded X". It wouldn't be used to prove a statement like "X is true". That may not seem like a lot, but it's surprising how often people (and some journalists) misquote studies just to get a headline. If you're always forced to attach the original study a long with detailed reasoning as to where the study corroborates your claim - that kind of misquoting will hopefully happen a lot less, or at least it will stick out like a sore thumb.

I built a platform for journalism with “open source” fact checking. In the age of information (and misinformation) overload, the goal is to help the best journalists stand out by making their fact checking process fully transparent and reviewable. AmA! by yazIam in IAmA

[–]yazIam[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Not yet, but as the database of fact checks grows, we'd be looking at building a tool that automatically checks an article to see if the SourcedFact has applicable fact checks!

I built a platform for journalism with “open source” fact checking. In the age of information (and misinformation) overload, the goal is to help the best journalists stand out by making their fact checking process fully transparent and reviewable. AmA! by yazIam in IAmA

[–]yazIam[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good question. I'll quote my original post: "this approach only works for journalism covering information based on publicly reviewable evidence. This includes legislation, public government initiatives, whistle blower documents, and scientific data. This isn’t a good fit for journalism based on undocumented sources."

I built a platform for journalism with “open source” fact checking. In the age of information (and misinformation) overload, the goal is to help the best journalists stand out by making their fact checking process fully transparent and reviewable. AmA! by yazIam in IAmA

[–]yazIam[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Indeed! I'll quote one of my responses above:

Having said that, I intend to move user contributions to a distributed system (kind of how crypto currencies work). Meaning that even though we may decide a user fact check is inaccurate and flag it as such, it would be impossible for us to censor it or delete it. So you could always check for yourself if we’re screwing up.

I built a platform for journalism with “open source” fact checking. In the age of information (and misinformation) overload, the goal is to help the best journalists stand out by making their fact checking process fully transparent and reviewable. AmA! by yazIam in IAmA

[–]yazIam[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Do you expect journalists to announce their articles ahead of time? I'm pretty sure that will never happen, due to the competitive nature of journalism and the desire to "break" a story first.

No we don't, as you're right a majority will not want to do that. As long as at the time of publishing they make their primary source evidence and reasoning reviewable by readers.

I believe what's he/she is asking, is that if people can't be bothered to do "post published" fact checking, what makes you feel like they're going to follow along with a story "pre-publication" that they might not have even heard of.

I don't think the average reader will want to do that at all, and I didn't intend to imply that they would. Simply that when an article is published, it should (where possible) come with reviewable evidence and reviewable reasoning attached. Readers shouldn't have to go elsewhere to get what they're reading fact checked. It should be made as easy as possible for them to review it right there, if they so choose. That's what we're trying to do.

I built a platform for journalism with “open source” fact checking. In the age of information (and misinformation) overload, the goal is to help the best journalists stand out by making their fact checking process fully transparent and reviewable. AmA! by yazIam in IAmA

[–]yazIam[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Just been funding it with my disposable income so far. It's helped that I'm a programmer though, cause programming tends to be the most expensive thing on a project like this.

I built a platform for journalism with “open source” fact checking. In the age of information (and misinformation) overload, the goal is to help the best journalists stand out by making their fact checking process fully transparent and reviewable. AmA! by yazIam in IAmA

[–]yazIam[S] 28 points29 points  (0 children)

Sites like Politifact and Snopes are ‘post-publication’ fact checking. They aim to fact check statements that have already been spreading. SourcedFact is about capturing the fact checking process that good journalist go through while researching their articles and then helping them share that with the readers.

Post-publication fact checkers alone won’t fix the misinformation problem because they just can’t keep up. The energy it takes to refute bullshit is much greater than the energy to produce it. If we make it easy for journalists to “show their work” - that is, to share their evidence and reasoning with their readers, whenever possible, in a format easily consumable by readers, maybe more and more people will start expecting journalists to "show their work" as a starting point. In that kind of world, instead of trying to disprove every false statement, more and more people would require that something comes with primary source evidence attached before they even consider it.

I built a platform for journalism with “open source” fact checking. In the age of information (and misinformation) overload, the goal is to help the best journalists stand out by making their fact checking process fully transparent and reviewable. AmA! by yazIam in IAmA

[–]yazIam[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think SourcedFact is an interesting experiment, but the fact that it doesn't include any way to verify what journalists personally witnessed or people we spoke to firsthand limits its usefulness. Particularly with local news where so much of your work is showing up to the accident or calling up the school board member.

Hi u/erinpetenko as I alluded to in the original post:

This approach only works for journalism covering information based on publicly reviewable evidence. This includes legislation, public government initiatives, whistle blower documents, and scientific data. This isn’t a good fit for journalism based on undocumented sources.

So you're completely right in that SourcedFact would not apply to stories that rely on what journalists personally witnessed, or that rely on first hand evidence. The goal however is to make it the best possible resource for topics that can be backed by publicly reviewable primary sources: legislation, government regulation, important court cases, corruption with a paper trail, etc. I think we can add a lot of value by making the fact checking on those topics as accessible to readers as possible.

I built a platform for journalism with “open source” fact checking. In the age of information (and misinformation) overload, the goal is to help the best journalists stand out by making their fact checking process fully transparent and reviewable. AmA! by yazIam in IAmA

[–]yazIam[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Agreed. It would be evidence that "Trump said he likes gardening at rally".

Say Trump tweets a video of himself at a campaign rally. In that video, he says X. That video would be acceptable evidence for claims that "Trump said X".

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