Community Notes on Twitter have become an important part of
the platform in terms of moderating the information that is shared by users. What
makes the process great is that users are directly involved in providing context
to the content shared, so as to limit the spread of misinformation.
Twitter has recently updated Notes with a new option that
requires contributors to first rate other Notes as helpful and unhelpful before
writing their own. “To unlock the ability to write, new contributors need to
earn a Rating Impact of at least 5,” explains Twitter.
When a contributor rates a note before it has reached a
status, it helps increase the ‘rating impact,’ whereas the impact decreases
upon the contributor’s rating after the note reaches a status.
Twitter advises contributors to look for and rate notes that need more ratings. “The best ways to do this are by browsing the ’Needs Your Help’ tab in Community Notes, and by looking out for alerts when a note needs your rating,” the social company adds.
Contributors’ ability to write notes is dependent on ‘writing
impact’ as well. Writing impact increases or decreases based on feedback from
the audience, and a low writing impact could result in losing the ability to
post notes.
These options seem to be a valuable addition to Notes, as
they can help reduce chances of bias – if majority of the users don’t find a Note
helpful, the contributor will eventually be disallowed from writing more Notes.