Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
I beg to disagree. A First Post is the perfect place to put a reply where it will be seen.
No one reads anything beyond the twentieth or so reply to an article, if you don't reply to one of the first posts it doesn't matter how funny, interesting, or insightful it is, no one will read it.
And it helps if you change the subject line. From my experience, a reply with a new subject line is much more likely to get a positive moderation than a "Re: ... " subject.
Journalist learns that other peoples opinions count. News at 11!
As one who frequents it...frequently...the Washington Post comment section really is a cesspit. Imagine what you would get if the Slashdot mod system worked in reverse, and people were karma whores for "flamebait," "troll," and "offtopic" tags. It isn't 4chan. But it's amazing that it's on the same site as one of the country's most respectable news outlets.
Of course, Feaver's points would carry more weight if the boards were structured differently. For instance, if WaPo had nested threads instead of a flat message board, you might see more of the "correction" and "dialogue" between different posters than you otherwise do. As opposed to ranting, which is what happens when I...I mean, some person...stands on a soapbox without having dialogue. Empty flames cast into a void.
On the other hand, I'll say with a straight face that I think Slashdot has the best comment section around, if not for the quality of the posters themselves, then because it's good at suppressing and elevating voices based on the wisdom of crowds.
But yet I go back there again and again...
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
We are torn. This does present a great chance at ruining another thread with our tripe, but we are also morally opposed to posting anything that could actually be taken as on-topic.
This type of interaction is what used to be part of the Letters to the Editor section of the newspaper. Before we could spam online forums with our unmoderated comments, newspapers used to publish the best responses to their stories on the old Opinion page.
Nowadays, with that removal of editorial moderation, we are exposed directly to the effluvium and vitriol that was so carefully screened away from our eyes in those old days. Whether this is a good thing or not, I don't know.
What I do know is that opinions of low or nil value are exposed to the light of day. With this shining light most of these errant posters are shouted down and pummeled (figuratively) by right-thinking mainstream posters.
Whether this represents a significant change is debatable, though. Whereas unpublished letters to the editor forced these people to seek out each other underground, the new method still forces these posters to seek out forums where they are the majority. Perhaps it is Slashdot with its geeks and nerds. Or it is Free Republic with its right wingers, or its counterpart LGF. On the extreme ends you have StormFront and the ADL.
The result is a polarization of the web, people talking only to themselves, and less of a conversation than before. When you become a "troll" for holding a contrary opinion, how easy it is to decide to seek out communities that support you rather than shout you down.
what if these online people express a view that does not flatter one of your advertisers. Would you take them seriously then.
The Washington Post has merely realized that it needs to allow ignorant posters their forum in order to compete with talk radio. I have seen little evidence that ensuing discussions necessarily iterate to rational, informed conclusions.
Providing a forum for extreme ideas is a bit like teaching creationism in science classes.
Woverly Harris Gooch, IV CTO American Fire and Bomb, LLC
I am somewhat surprised that a longtime editor would make such an absolutely ridiculous statement. Apparently, the journalist (OK, editor) did not do much research before publishing his view. It is pretty common knowledge that comments on a story are not a cross section of the readers views. Most readers are passive, and do not comment on every story they read. They will only respond to those which strike at their sense of values, or that the reader strongly oppose as false (obviously, this is my reason for commenting now). If everyone who read a Slashdot story commented on it, Slashdot would need far more storage space than they use now. Almost any Blog or News Site would have ample material to reference from their comments section to demonstrate the fact that the fringes of the audience's views are echoed in the majority if the responses, and that only an exceptionally striking article will receive more of a balanced response (yes, Virginia, there is an audience).
By definition the world is mostly made up of average people. For those of us that were products of public schools and other institutions that accepted everyone regardless of their abilities or backgrounds we can probably think back on groups that showed exactly what "average" means.
This combines with the most common failure of unfettered democracy, the tyranny of the loud (and perhaps underemployed/bored/obsessed), to create a perfect storm of vitriol, ignorance, and selfishness in places like an open forum online.
Quite simply, people without knowledge or experience in a field deserve less speaking time than those with knowledge and experience. If those people that are excluded from a discussion because they are ignorant or inexperienced want to participate than they should take the time to become knowledgeable and experienced in the field.
I always like to see open discussions but I also like to see comments rated and organized so that I can sift through the crap to get to the gold, something that guyminuslife mentions is missing from the Post's website system.
And to speak directly to a comment from the original article, the fact that the comments show the true feelings of the citizens of this country is interesting from a polling/election point of view but the details of those comments don't add much, if anything to the discussion at hand. This is especially true of indefensible positions like racist or sexist comments.
Like trees blowing in the wind.
Journalists should report the news as objectively as they can. Paying attention to their readers is pandering, and it results in a feedback loop with predictable consequences. We need a thoughtful critical press capable of asking hard questions and not settling for non-answers from those in the news. We need a system in which the President (and others in power) cannot exclude a journalist because he/she asks those hard questions.
Anonymity is an interesting concept, but we should recognize that the guy up on his soapbox in Hyde Park is not anonymous even if we do not know his name.
The US government have made it clear that we have no inalienable rights; any we do not defend vigorously will be taken.
Sadly, the constitutional guarantee is not equivalent to a practical ability to make anonymous comments. Yes, anyone is legally allowed to anonymously comment on whatever they want, but the question of whether or not anyone will see that comment is entirely different. You can create a website and write everything under a pseudonym, but unless you manage to get to page 1 on Google, your opinion will never be heard. On the other hand, if you write a comment on a popular website (such as slashdot), your comment will at least have a fighting chance. This is what is being defended: the system that allows you to post anonymously on the Washington Post's website, where lots of people will see the comment.
Of course, the whole situation is a bit twisted, since you now need the permission of large media companies to make anonymous comments in a meaningful way. As the Internet becomes more popular, that will become more true.
Palm trees and 8
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I started using the Internet when it was the ARPANET. Nice place. Interesting people. Cool projects. Then it became the Internet, then AOL hooked in, and suddenly I discovered that a large percentage of my fellow countrymen are ignorant, illogical, paranoid, quasi-literate, parochial, xenophobic, homophobic, sexist, racist, anti-intellectual believers in UFOs.
I mean I knew they existed, but not in such numbers. The Internet is democratizing, and it sure as hell shows what's wrong with democracy.
I piss off bigots.
Online media, unless operating purely on subscription basis, needs ads. Ads are priced according to unique clicks and time spent on that page by readers (reader's interest). A lot of posts indicate interest. Controversial, or even flamebait articles frequently generate the longest comment trails. Scholarly, analytical articles go with scarcely a comment. Thus the tendency of some online media to adjust their content downward.
This is not a new phenomenon. TV has learned it a while ago - witness daytime shows, Ricki Lakes, Montel Williamses, Jerry Springers, and other tabloid trash programs. The difference now is with the immediacy of feedback, hence this spiral happens much faster. Anonymous posts (and to a lesser degree even nicknamed posts, like mine), only add an accelerant to this process.
End anonymous moderation and posting on
The BBC has it's own reader's comments section called "Have Your Say". It's moderated by a BBC team and it's notorious for censoring completely valid and non-abusive opinion. For example, when they had a topic on Google's participation in censorship in China, some posters pointed out that the BBC also censors things. The BBC responded to this by removing their posts (the topic that day had pre-moderation switched off, something that virtually never happens now). This prompted other people to point out the irony of the BBC removing posted about BBC censorship on a topic about censorship. The BBC then quickly pulled those posts. This prompted more similar responses and eventually the BBC gave up.
These days all of the topics are premoderated and if they don't like your opinion, it won't go up. Those posts pointing out cases of BBC censorship would never have made it onto the website. For example, I made a recent post on the topic of How should the police handle protests? (coming after a protester died after being assaulted by the riot police). I pointed out that assaults on unarmed and non-violent protesters are routine, that the media knows it and that they are only writing about it this time because someone died. The post was rejected without explanation (as all rejections are).
I firmly believe that members of the public should be able to make posts on news stories without being pre-moderated by some faceless team of people with rather nebulous posting rules. I think if we could make posts on any news topic (e.g. each news item could have a discuss button) on the BBC (or any other outlet) it could really affect the way they report. For example, during the massive Israeli military assault on Gaza earlier in the year, the BBC website was plastered with images clearly showing the use of white Phosphorus. The problem was that despite these clear images, and despite people writing in and pointing it out, the BBC refused to use the term "white phosphorus" for a whole week. Would they have been able to get away with that if the top-rated post under their Gaza news stories was about White Phosphorus being used?
In my personal opinion, there's no other way to experience Slashdot. The folks who don't browse at -1 have no idea what they're missing, or maybe they're the easily offended and want to reduce their stress not by becoming less easily offended (that'd be too straightforward) but by refusing to read the posts that are most likely to be trolls and such.
At -1, I see all kinds of crap and laugh at the prospect that people actually get upset at such blatant attempts to stir shit up, and I also see the more insightful posts. A third thing I see is the very poor quality of some of the moderators. Most of them are pretty good but some of them have zero capacity to handle anything remotely controversial. It's as though they want to live in a world where all 6.5 billion people agree with them on every issue in order to avoid upsetting them, and cannot understand why this would be a horrible existence and would lead to complete stagnation of all ideas.
Anyway, if you don't currently browse at -1, try it on for size. See if you like it. Maybe you won't like it at all or maybe you'll wonder why you didn't do that a long time ago.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein