Roku is an app that lets you take sides. Check it out.
Roku is the latest project by Janith, with some ideological input from me. If he’s Prabhakaran, I’m Balasingham. Here is his introduction, which I excerpt below. Roku (working title) is a new type of commenting debate/system. Instead of just commenting in one big thread below, you can take sides (for, against, or neutral). You can upvote each comment, which creates a final score, a ‘winner’ for that particular debate.
It’s just outta betta. Janith’s done a very interesting platform but we’re not sure if it will be used for the intended purpose or how it will be used. I invite you to check it out (kottu.org/roku), you can login with Your Facebook account.
When you first log in, you will be presented a list of “Threads”. These are the discussions which you can post on. You can create a new thread using the top menu.
Things to keep in mind when creating a thread:
* Post a view, not a question: Always state a point of view in your title and description, so that people can vote for or against it.
* Write your own view or try to give a background to the statement made in the title in the description.
* Use hashtags: it makes threads easier to find. You can use many hashtags like this: #hashtag1 #hashtag2Ok, now that we covered threads, let’s move on to posting.
There are two kinds of posts that can go on a thread:
* Regular posts
* Inline repliesRegular posts are what’s created when you don’t click ‘reply’ to someone elses post. Remember to pick a side in your comment: it’s set to neutral by default, but if your comment agrees with a thread topic, select ‘for’. If it’s against it, select ‘against’.
Inline replies are when you want to reply to a post, or to its replies, and you want your reply to nest beneath the post you’re replying to. You can click the ‘reply’ link on a post to go into inline reply mode.
Remember: You can only upvote a regular post, not inline replies. We’ll see why this is important next.
Voting:
It’s important that you express your side because it’s ultimately the votes that posts ‘for’ a thread gets, and votes that posts ‘against’ a thread gets that get shown on the top bar, as being votes for or against a topic. Also, every upvote that you get gets added to your upvote count, which we’ll be using for badges and stuff later. :) (Roku Read Me)
To get things started, I’ve posted a thread stating that ‘flogging is bad’. You can agree or disagree.
Hiii Anton! :D
To those curious few: Please, do use (and abuse) the system as much as you can. We won’t bite. :) Roku is your oyster.
Looks like a cool idea!
I’m already wasting too much time on the internet since Kottu’s recent facelift, and now I’ll be tempted to have a look at this too.
Congrats, Indi and Chavie and wish you all success on the new project.
I roku
I am concerned that sometimes the focus on “winning” debates prevents us from understanding (and respecting) each other, and thus prevents necessary cooperation on solving problems together. Particularly in the online forums where I see a lot of the serious issues being hashed out. I see people being dissed and insulted, seemingly as a way to score points in the debate. Not to say we should gloss over our differences in an attempt to pretend like everything is fine and we all agree. But just to say that sometimes the win/lose dynamics of these discussions may not be helpful.
So it makes me wonder how an app could be designed to also take into account the points where people agree, the points of commonality, and what else could be designed in to support mutual understanding, as distinct from win/lose thinking.