Respectify – a comment moderator that teaches people to argue better

My partner, Nick Hodges, and I, David Millington, have been on the Internet for a very long time -- since the Usenet days. We’ve seen it all, and have long been frustrated by bad comments, horrible people, and discouraging discussions.

We've also been around places where the discussion is wonderful and productive. How to get more of the latter and less of the former?

Current moderation tools just seem to focus on deletion and banning. Wouldn’t it be helpful to encourage productive discussion and teach people how to discuss and argue (in the debate sense) better?

A year ago we started building Respectify.

We create healthy communication. Instead of just deleting bad-faith comments, we suggest better, good-faith ways to say what folks are trying to say. We help people avoid:

* Logical fallacies (false dichotomy, strawmen, etc.)

* Tone issues (how others will read the comment)

* Relevance to the actual page/post topic

* Low-effort posts

* Dog whistles and coded language

The commenter gets an explanation of what's wrong and a chance to edit and resubmit. It's moderation + education in one step.

We want, too, to automate the entire process so the site owner can focus on content and not worry about moderation at all. And over time, comment by comment, quietly coach better thinking.

We hope the result is better discussions and a better Internet. Not too much to ask, eh?

Our main website has an interactive demo: https://respectify.ai

As the demo shows, the system is completely tunable and adjustable, from "most anything goes" to "You need to be college debate level to get by me".

We love the kind of feedback this group is famous for.

We can both be reached at [email protected]