newsletter • 3 minute read

Stop commenting, start editing

Constructive conversations require a common, collaboratively created reference. Reasonal Entries are edited, and refined by anyone to create the necessary reference for every conversation.

Subscribe to our mailing list →
to receive our blog posts one week earlier in your inbox.

Behzad Tabibian

ON THIS WEEK’S LETTER

Online arguments on social media are often heated and exhausting; one comment after another, refuting, rejecting, rebutting the opponent in pursuit of victory and dominance. Commenting arguments often end with bitterness and resentment without any desirable outcome.

If you argue and rankle and contradict, you may achieve a temporary victory some times, but it will be an empty victory because you will never get your opponent’s good will.
Benjamin Franklin

Editing, the remedy for online arguments

Unlike commenting arguments, constructive conversation requires learning and strengthening different perspectives collaboratively. This often means adding the missing context, strengthening crucial arguments, and removing the weak ones.

When the “reply” button is replaced with the “edit” button and a new space is created for opposing views to come together, it will be possible to pursue clarity through collaboration.

Editing and continuous refinement is a core tenet of Reasonal and how Reasonal Entries work. Every Reasonal Entry is open to be edited, and refined by anyone, making it more clear, up-to-date, and relevant.

Edit reasonal entries, create context of the web

With our Twitter Spot Checker you can get the entry for any Tweet, edit the entry, and display it publicly wherever the same Tweet appears. You can sign up now to start editing Reasonal Entries.

For us this is only the beginning, as we roll out Reasonal for other platforms, every entry will carry the relevant and same information for every digital content, wherever it goes.

Highlight from the news

Every week we bring you one story from the news related to misinformation on the Web. This week’s story is from Nature Magazine. This article recounts how bringing people’s attention to the accuracy of information they interact with can help reduce the spread of misinformation on the Web:

[Scientists in Canada] showed two groups of people from the United States a series of news headlines about COVID-19. Half of the headlines were true and half were false; the participants were not told which was which. On average in the first group, 47% of the accurate headlines and 43% of the inaccurate ones were considered worth sharing. The second group was asked to rate the accuracy of a single headline unrelated to COVID-19 before performing the same task. This seemed to make them more discerning, because they went on to say they would consider sharing 50% of the true reports and 40% of the untrue ones.

Read more →

If you have already installed Reasonal extension on your browser, you will have the necessary context to identify potentially unreliable sources of information on Facebook and Twitter.

SHARE

We’re only as good
as our network

Join our growing community of fact-checkers, researchers, publishers, and supporters.