So last night around 10 o'clock or so, Wil, Lucas, and I were sitting around Jalisco talking about the problem of blog comments.
 
  1. Wil: It's not the spam that's the problem. It's not even the assholes. It's the idiots. It's the people who obviously didn't even read the post, yet who feel the need to leave their thoughts.
  2.  
  3. Lucas: Seriously. Someone should make some kind of barrier to entry, so that you'd need to at least be of average intelligence. Like, a captcha for idiots.
  4.  
  5. Me: You know, I think it would be pretty easy to do. You could have like, a couple of questions from one of those IQ tests that they have online. Just something simple like, which one of these things doesn't match the other one.
  6.  
  7. Wil: Yeah, but those are all basically the same question, and where are you going to get a bunch of pre-made IQ tests? Besides, the real problem is they aren't reading the post.
  8.  
  9. Lucas: You could probably generate some math problems pretty easily. You wouldn't need an online source. You could just write an algorithm that could do it for you.
  10.  
  11. Me: Or you could write some reading comprehension questions, like the SAT. You could just sort of make sure people actually read and understood what you were saying.
  12.  
  13. Wil: Yeah, but it would be pretty hard to generate those automatically. You'd have to take the trouble to write them.
  14.  
  15. Me: I've got it! You could write reading comprehension problems, or some general knowledge questions, but in the meantime, you could extract a couple of sentences from the blog, mix in some random sentences from the internet, and say pick the three things I actually said. I think that would be pretty effective.
  16.  
  17. Wil: Yeah, I guess you could.
  18.  
  19. Lucas: Yeah, whatever.
  20.  
  21. Me: No, I'm telling you. This is huge. This is an amazing invention right here. This is going to change the internet. We could do this tonight, and have it tomorrow. We would be famous.
  22.  
  23. Lucas: I'll make you a bet: make a captcha for idiots, and if you get on Digg tomorrow, then I will believe you. If you don't get on Digg tomorrow, you have to pay us each $100.
  24.  
  25. Me: Oh, you are so on! Woohoo!
  26.  
  27. Wil: I... don't think he knows how gambling works.
  28.  
  29. Lucas: Whatever. Tomorrow we drink on Mike.
 
Thirteen hours and 12 energy drinks later, I am pleased to present Lemur CATTA: Comment Annoyance Trapping by Testing Aptitude. Very simply, it pulls three random sentences from my current blog entry, and six random sentences from a different entry, and mixes them up.
 
If you want to comment, you simply pick the three sentences that are from the entry you just read and press submit. I might be a little biased, but I honestly find it about 100 times easier to use than a standard captcha, and with any luck, it will keep the idiots at bay.
 
Lemur CATTA also happens to be the scientific name for the Ringtailed Lemur, which, aside from being the cutest animal on earth, was recently the subject of an intelligence study wherein scientists discovered that lemurs are actually a lot more intelligent than previously thought.
 
It turns out that lemurs aren't very good with their hands, but if you design an interface that they can manipulate by poking at it with their snouts, they actually do pretty well.
 
Lemurs are also among the most endangered animals on earth. Lemur species are still being discovered, but many species are already extinct by the time we find out about them.
 
As such, I'm also pleased to introduce something I've been thinking about for a really long time, which is my charity license. It's a very simple licensing model which basically states that you can use the idea and the implementation of Lemur CATTA by simply making a donation (or, in the case of a commercial endeavor, a small cut of the profits) to help save the lemurs.
 
There's a great organization called the Madagascar Fauna Group who have actually changed the way I think about charity. They basically bum around at zoos, so they have no real expenses. That makes them 99% efficient, which means that 99 cents of every dollar they get goes to help the people and animals of Madagascar.
 
This is an unheard of efficiency for a charity organization, and it's even more impressive when you realize that Madagascar is so poor, that even the deflated American greenback has tremendous buying power.
 
That also means that even a miniscule amount of money can make a huge difference. I always felt like 35 cents a day or whatever really wouldn't do anything, regardless of what Sally Struthers is trying to tell me, but in Madagascar, pocket change literally saves lives.
 
Right now Lemur CATTA is more of an idea than anything else. I've mocked it up on my site at http://atomicwang.org/catta. I've hooked up a simple content management system and an extremely basic comment system.
 
All told, it's a few lines of PHP and a lot of duct tape. Still, I think it's a really cool idea whose time has come, and if people like it and can get some use out of it, that will be awesome. If it can raise awareness and a couple of bucks for the lemurs, that would certainly help me sleep at night.
 
I've also set up a subversion repository at http://boondoggle.atomicwang.org/catta where I'll be upload the source code and all of that in a little bit. If you can't tell, I'm pretty loopy right now from the not sleeping, so it might be a little while.
 
The code is also pretty hacky around the edges, so I hope you won't make too much fun of me.
 
Finally, I just want to give a huge, huge thank you to Bobby Andersen, who, despite being up to his elbows in work took a couple of hours last night to make me a logo. He even told me to donate his fee to the cause. That's a man who loves his craft.
 
Well, put her through the paces, and if you want to talk to me about it I'll be around. Oh, and if you want to put it on Digg so my wife doesn't kill me when she gets home that would be cool too.
 
Thanks!
 
Tuesday, September 25, 2007 12:05 a.m.
 
First, let me just say WOW! Response to Lemur CATTA has been tremendous and I appreciate you all taking the time to come check it out, to play with it, to leave your comments, and to spread the word. As such, you've coaxed, if not forced, me into doing something I really didn't think I'd be able to do without at least taking a nap.
 
It is my great honor to roll out a demo of Lemur CATTA Phase 2. I say demo, because even more than the first, this is really hacked together, but, I know: you get it. PHP and duct tape. Let's move forward while I explain what I'm on about.
 
One thing Wil has taught me is not to worry about problems that don’t exist. The example that sticks in my mind was a conversation we had that he later repeated with Lucas and eventually even rehashed on his blog. It went something like this:
 
  1. Wil: So you type your friend's name, and just like that, you can share their library.
  2.  
  3. Me: But... what if there's more than one person by that name.
  4.  
  5. Wil: Then we present a list, and you can pick the right one.
  6.  
  7. Me: But... How many Mike Lees do you think there are in the world? What about John Smith? We're talking about a list of thousands of people.
  8.  
  9. Wil: You know what? If we ever get to the point where we have so many users that this is actually a problem, we will be so rich we can pay someone else to deal with it, while we sip rum on a beach in Tahiti.
 
A lot of you have brought up a lot of good points about the limitations of the automated content recognition test. It's really easy for humans and machines. It would require adjustments for 1-sentence blog entries (because, you know, those tend to really bring on the comments).
 
Thing is, none of that stuff worries me at all. All the fully automated version of Lemur CATTA is intended to do is provide a minimal barrier to entry. It's not meant to foil anyone. People are always going to be assholes and beat the system just because they can. If you let that occupy your life, you're not going to be very productive.
 
So what? This is a blog. You come here to hear some guy's opinions. For some reason, a lot of you like to comment about that. If you are the kind of person who's going to give up halfway through the title and post "Nuh-uh!" I think Lemur CATTA is going to slow you down enough to encourage you to go bother someone else. If you're actually willing to waste the minute it takes to defeat Lemur CATTA, that's fine. I'll just delete your comment anyway. You're the one who has to live with yourself.
 
 It's like The Club. That dorky red retractable pole has been repeatedly demonstrated to be, at most, a mild nuisance to someone who really wants your car. And yet, statistics show using The Club really does prevent theft. Same thing goes for door locks, padlocks, alarm systems, smart cards, passwords, PINs, you name it. If half the number of people who rely on WEP on a daily basis gave a dollar to the Madagascar Fauna Group, I'd be ecstatic.
 
That said, sometimes a blog entry reaches a tipping point. Maybe you get on Digg (thank you all very much), or maybe it's just a slow news day. Eventually, you just get too many comments. Suddenly, it's a five hour chore to read through them all so you can speak your piece. It's so much easier to just skip ahead and say what you want to say, despite the fact that exact issue has already been brought up and addressed.
 
That's when it's time to break out the .357 Magnum of aptitude tests: reading comprehension. The advantages of reading comprehension over a simple matching problem are obvious. You really have to understand what those sentences mean, and chances are, by this point in the dialogue, I've got a pretty good idea what it is people have to say.
 
It also serves as a kind of disclaimer. If you have to literally check off a box that says "I understand that this point has already been addressed" and you address it anyway, well... I really don't have a problem deleting your comment.
 
Unlike the EULA we all ignore when we start up a new piece of software, however, there's very little chance of pretending with a multiple choice test. You really are going to have to read and understand what's already been said if you want to add to the conversation.
 
At the end of the day, Lemur CATTA is about more than just keeping idiots off a blog. It turns out there are a lot of idiots, and many of them are frighteningly resourceful. No, Lemur CATTA actually fights the natural disintegration of discourse that occurs as a page grows longer. It forces a thread to either maintain a certain level of merit, or to gracefully do what anyone should do when they have nothing new to say: shut the hell up.
 
Now, you might say, why would I design a system to shut people up when I can just do what I did up to, and including, most of yesterday? Why don't I just turn off comments? Indeed, just as Lemur CATTA does not negate the need to cull the comments of assholes and goofballs, it doesn't prevent anyone from saying, OK, this discussion is closed. It's time to move on.
 
Lemur CATTA doesn't end the conversation. It just changes the subject. It strongly encourages people to stop saying "but I can just type command-f durrrr" like they're the only person on earth who knows how a browser works, so someone else, someone interesting, can have their turn. If it ends up that no one does, then we can go outside and take a walk.
 
Lemur CATTA might slow you down as an individual (though, if you've been paying attention, it really shouldn't slow you down too much), but it helps us all along as a group. Hell, I don't think I'd be going too far to say, in its own little way, Lemur CATTA makes the internet a better place.
 
So, let's review (because after all, there will be a test). Let's say you're Golden C. Sifaka, webmaster extraordinaire. You install and run Lemur CATTA on your blog. Most days, there's nothing else to do. Lemur CATTA runs in automated mode and keeps the riffiest raff away. Actually, even the only mildly riffy will have gotten bored of proving their point by then, so things should be kept pretty civil.
 
On the off chance your tamarind chili recipe gets a nod from Alton Brown and your blog explodes, all you have to do is flip a switch, vent your spleen into a few test questions, and suddenly your site's back under control. That, my friends, is the simple, but powerful idea that's kept my animated corpse banging out code for 26 straight hours. That is Lemur CATTA.
 
It turns out that lemurs aren't very good with their hands, but if you design an interface that they can manipulate by poking at it with their snouts, they actually do pretty well.
Monday, September 24, 2007 1:30 p.m.
Lemur CATTA