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In Defense of the Anonymous Commenter
Hugh Pickens writes "Doug Feaver has an interesting story in the Washington Post 'in defense of the anonymous, unmoderated, often appallingly inaccurate, sometimes profane, frequently off point and occasionally racist reader comments that washingtonpost.com allows to be published at the end of articles and blogs.' Feaver says that during his seven-year tenure as editor and executive editor of washingtonpost.com he kept un-moderated comments off the site, but now, four years after retiring, he says he has come to think that online comments are a terrific addition to the conversation, and that journalists need to take them seriously. 'The subjects that have generated the most vitriol during my tenure in this role are race and immigration,' writes Feaver. 'But I am heartened by the fact that such comments do not go unchallenged by readers. In fact, comment strings are often self-correcting and provide informative exchanges.' Feaver says that comments are also a pretty good political survey. 'The first day it became clear that a federal bailout of Wall Street was a real prospect, the comments on the main story were almost 100 percent negative. It was a great predictor of how folks feel, well out in front of the polls. We journalists need to pay attention to what our readers say, even if we don't like it. There are things to learn.'"
If this autorefresh / click to unpause crap doesn't stop soon, I'm outta here. This isn't the only place on the net.
Journalist learns that other peoples opinions count. News at 11!
This is your time to shine! Bring on the Tsarkon Obama reports, Yoda doll insertion tutorial, "*BSD is Dying" announcement, and the GNAA recruitment posting. Don't disappoint me!
Well, Speare, since you went out and did your research, (and I don't have class until 6 tonight) I went out and did mine. A hamster weighs approximately .12kg, and the height of my zeppelin (how else would it be portable?) is 7700m. Assuming that I used frictionless turbines in a vacuum environment and superconducting wires, the hamsters would take about sqrt(2*7700/9.81)=39.62 seconds to reach the bottom. The power generated is .12*9.81*7700/39.62=228.78 watts (enough to power a laptop). The amount of hamsters I require for the day long supply is 60^2*24/39.62=2180.72 (yes .72, it's en evil contraption, use your imagination). This does not include the hamsters required to provide the mechanical energy to grind up the other hamsters and move them up a conveyor belt. Now you may ask, "isn't this going a bit far? Do you have a grudge against hamsters? Isn't This device terribly inefficient?" Well I just happen to be a humble college student that works part time at a farm that's run near an over-efficient hamster breeder (which is where the mind control device herds them from). Hamsters nearly ruined my dads farm, and the soft hum of my laptop is a nice replacement for the reminder that even though I cant hear the sound of hamster entrails crashing to the bottom of the hamster feeder, those little bastards are paying for what they almost did. And just to shove a little more spite in their face, I waste a profuse amount of time on the internet posting on Slashdot.
=Smidge=
Is it just my observation, or is eldavojohn an idiot?
Great posts are often lost at low ratings, and terrible posts get modded up.
Yes, all those AC posts which are apperantly great because they're racist and off-topic are lost!
And I'm guessing you weren't a statistics major.
Imagine if the uncommonly intelligent were the majority!
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Can't capitalize, can't punctuate. The shift key is just there for decoration, isn't it?
People like you were extremely few and far between when it was just the ARPANET.
I piss off bigots.