Ooh, this is a good one. It's an open source project to create software that will eliminate stupid comments automatically. It's called StupidFilter. They say this.

StupidFilter was conceived out of necessity. Too long have we suffered in silence under the tyranny of idiocy. In the beginning, the internet was a place where one could communicate intelligently with similarly erudite people. Then, Eternal September hit and we were lost in the noise. The advent of user-driven web content has compounded the matter yet further, straining our tolerance to the breaking point. It's time to fight back.

Eternal September sounds like the coolest guerilla army ever, but actually it's net slang for the persistence of online dumbness. The term comes from the very early history of the Internet, back when the Internet was called Usenet, and was the exclusive, and exclusivist, domain of American universities. Every September there would be an influx of new students who'd never used the Internet before, and didn't know how to behave on it, so September was known as the month of greatest online ignorance.

In 1993 AOL started up, and suddenly the Internet was full of hoi polloi. The old guard call the modern age of the Internet Eternal September, because they see it as a torrent of newbie ignorance, so far unmitigated by the passage of time. Some of them imagine that one day the Internet will again be sensible, mature and educated, and they refer to this longed-for day as October 1, 1993.

I've no time for that kind of elitism, actually. There is a problem, but ordinary people aren't it. As our regular commenter Keren showed in this post about Big Brother, people in the mass are much smarter and nicer than is often suggested. The problem, as I've previously argued in this piece about Guardian comments, is a small minority of people who spoil it for everybody else. No, it actually is. I know that's the kind of thing public school headmasters used to say when withdrawing tuckshop privileges, but in this instance it really does apply.

Having said that, there is a real problem that the good people at StupidFilter are trying to address. Not in here, obviously. You're my lovely readers, I won't hear a word said against you. Nor on 'quality' sites like Pharyngula, where the conversation is reliably informed. Nor even on mainstream low brow sites, inasmuch as it wouldn't be an actual problem if they sank beneath the cyberwaves.

No, I'm specifically referring to highbrow sites that are still mainstream enough to attract comments from the monobrow fringe. Actually that sounds like a haircut you regretted, but you know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the Guardian.

StupidFilter have an interesting approach.

The solution we're creating is simple: an open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English. This will be accomplished with weighted Bayesian or similar analysis and some rules-based processing, similar to spam detection engines. The primary challenge inherent in our task is that stupidity is not a binary distinction, but rather a matter of degree. To this end, we're collecting a ranked corpus of stupid text, gleaned from user comments on public websites and ranked on a five-point scale.

Eventually, once the research is completed, we plan to release core engine source code for incorporation into content management systems, blogs, wikis and the like. Additionally, we plan to develop a fully implemented Firefox plugin and a Wordpress plugin.

Bayesian analysis is a kind of probability theory, and in this case appears to mean that comments will be assessed by their similarity to comments which have been rated as stupid, plus some hardwired rules.

By assigning their sites a comments stupidity threshold of 1 to 5, admins will be able to set a threshold for what is and isn't allowed. One could imagine a gradation something like this.

Stupidity = 0  The argument in this piece is flawed, because [good reason]
Stupidity = 1  The argument in this piece is flawed, because [stupid reason]
Stupidity = 2  This piece is crap, because [no reason]
Stupidity = 3  The author is a jerk, and should be killed
Stupidity = 4  Random tirade of abuse
Stupidity = 5  Bigger penis will open exciting new horizons of sexual pleasure for you

And by setting your filter accordingly, you can filter out abuse, spam or gibberish.

I used to be against anything which might be construed as censorship on the Internet, but after ten years of nonsense I weary of my hard line. If anyone can give us back the Guardian, I'm all for it.