Stupid comment filter 9 Nov 2007

CNN Money / Fortune reports on Gabriel Ortiz and co's efforts to build a filter that does to stupid blog comments what spam filters do to junk email:

"Ortiz's team is readying a free, open-source version they hope to release by year's end and make available as a standard plug-in on the popular Firefox browser by early next year.

"How does it work? Say a user wants to post a really, really dumb comment on, for example, cnnmoney.com, where some of you might be reading this now.

"If cnnmoney had the filter installed on its servers, it would intercept the comment just before it was published and flash a little alert at the author that reads: 'This comment is more or less unintelligible. Please try to restate it.'

"The writer would get another crack at it, and another, until at last he was able to muster a few words of intelligence, or in frustration wandered off to inflict those LOL!!!!!s and OMG!!!!s on some more tolerant site."

Sounds simple, but separating the intellectual wheat from the chaff ain't gonna be easy. The "value" of the majority of comments is surely very much in the eye of the beholder.

[via Neatorama]