rbutr - Inter-website rebuttal tool for skeptics

[Belgian thought]

Have joined.
But really try and work on having it work in FireFox and Internet Explorer.

Does getting W3c validation, and fixing the stated errors help in this?

if so - http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=h...(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0 - resovling these errors might help.

 

[Aegist]

One difference between Wiki-style and this is that in rbutr one person cannot decide that something is rubbish and delete it as they can in Wikipedia. Nor does the rbutr have to be "neutral."

Well, rbutr has to be no more neutral than wikipedia has to be. If either want to be successful they have to be.

rbutr is a neutral tool.

Does getting W3c validation, and fixing the stated errors help in this?

if so - http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=h...(detect+automatically)&doctype=Inline&group=0 - resovling these errors might help.

Funny that most of the validation errors come from the default Youtube embedding code.

I'll look in to it, but I think most of them are less then pressing in urgency...

 

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Hey everyone,
I want to introduce you all to rbutr, a new project I am working on which I will be taking to TAM with me to introduce to the Skeptic Community at large as best I can!

RDFRS article on rbutr.

 

[Foolmewunz]

RDFRS article on rbutr.

This is a great addition... just adding rbutr.com to the address of the page you're reading works very nicely. It also doesn't come in as an obtrusive pop-up but a toolbar.

This is of particular interest. I'm gradually becoming the rebuttal source for a lot of retired folks in my area. I suppose the demographics and the word "retired" should've given me a clue, but (gasp!) many of these old codgers are conservatives of the ilk who pass around Jerome Corsi "discoveries" like Obama's secret Mooslim ring. Stuff like that easy enough to debunk with a cursory search (I remember Snopes not having anything at the time on that one), but when it gets to stuff like generic discussions of reiki or acupuncture, I like the kind of links rbutr comes up with.

I'll give it some more testing, but it works nicely, so far.

 

[zooterkin]

Shane himself spoke at TAM last year, btw.


P1080815 by zooterkin, on Flickr

 

[dlorde]

You rebutr guys should get together with the hypothes.is people, who seem to be doing something very similar...

 

[krelnik]

Yeah, I've thought the same thing - that there might be some ways to interact there. hypothes.is is open source for one thing.

 

[blutoski]

The good news though, is that we can manufacture a crowdsourcing community to work on adding rebuttals for us

Are the rebuttals supposed to be customized for the pages they're displayed on?

ie: would there be universal rebuttals for topic X that would be displayed on all pages involving topic X?

And one more thing on breaking out of preaching to the choir - this is EXACTLY what rbutr is about. The whole point of it is to get, for example, Skeptical articles in front of people reading a homeopathy article. People who read homeopathy articles do NOT read skeptical articles.

I think what they're getting at is that people who don't like dealing with opposing views would not use the plug in at all. The target market might be ironically precisely the people who are not interested in the product.

Coming from this side of the coin: If it turned out that Scientology mobilized its members to post rebuttals all over Skeptic websites and blogs, I'd never read them. I'd just consider the plugin a distraction and remove it. I suspect our opponents would behave similarly. It's human nature.

 

[steenkh]

I think what they're getting at is that people who don't like dealing with opposing views would not use the plug in at all. The target market might be ironically precisely the people who are not interested in the product.

As I understand it, the target market is skeptics who want to know what they can expect when they open a new web page. They can immediately see if this page is to be trusted or if it has already been rebutted. It is one of the strengths that woo-woos are unlikely to install rbutr, and so will rbutr largely be kept sound.

 

[Foolmewunz]

Thus far in the trials I've made, the links are not to articles debunking the specific website you're looking at, but to generic counter information, e.g. a CSI article on accupuncture or a Quackwatch article on Reiki,.... not a specific write up about We R Acupuncture or Reiki 4 Everyone.

 

[pharphis]

I installed this when I saw the TAM video about it a few months ago (october?)

I've found it useful though I'll admit I rarely look up in the corner anyway
However, if i'm particularly bored or curious i'll go search through the rebuttals in there anyway and learn about some specific pseudo-science I've yet too hear about.
I'll keep pumping the idea to install rbutr out to people, though

thanks for your work and vision