This doesn’t work, because people here say controversial things. By definition, controversial means that many people think they are wrong, but they do not think they are wrong themselves. Anyone who finds a mistake might have found one of the intentional mistakes, or might happen to disagree on a controversial issue and believes the community member made a mistake where the community member thinks otherwise.
Unless you think that community members are perfectly correct 100% of the time on controversial issues or at least always recognize their own mistakes when pointed out to them (and no human being is like that), the idea will become unworkable. Everyone will have to think “is this an intentional misake, or is an unintentional mistake that the community member won’t recognize as such, earning me demerits for pointing it out?”
There are objective ways of finding out some classes of mistakes. Fallacies are well-defined and most of them can be easily diagnosed. I often do this at Facebook to blow off steam.
Even better: the website can accomodate for this. It’s as easy as adding a “report logical fallacy” button next to each comment. Moderators can award points to all who noticed the correct fallacy. A leaderboard can be put up. It can be made a sport.
Another benefit is that those who make mistakes receive detailed feedback.
Edit: I’d like to learn why this was downvoted. How might I be wrong?
This doesn’t work, because people here say controversial things. By definition, controversial means that many people think they are wrong, but they do not think they are wrong themselves. Anyone who finds a mistake might have found one of the intentional mistakes, or might happen to disagree on a controversial issue and believes the community member made a mistake where the community member thinks otherwise.
Unless you think that community members are perfectly correct 100% of the time on controversial issues or at least always recognize their own mistakes when pointed out to them (and no human being is like that), the idea will become unworkable. Everyone will have to think “is this an intentional misake, or is an unintentional mistake that the community member won’t recognize as such, earning me demerits for pointing it out?”
There are objective ways of finding out some classes of mistakes. Fallacies are well-defined and most of them can be easily diagnosed. I often do this at Facebook to blow off steam.
Even better: the website can accomodate for this. It’s as easy as adding a “report logical fallacy” button next to each comment. Moderators can award points to all who noticed the correct fallacy. A leaderboard can be put up. It can be made a sport.
Another benefit is that those who make mistakes receive detailed feedback.
Edit: I’d like to learn why this was downvoted. How might I be wrong?
Nothing makes me want to upvote someone like a downvote-without-comment on a post that seems vaguely reasonable.