Slashdot Mirror
Reuters Ends Anonymous Comments
eldavojohn writes "In an effort to retain civility, it appears that Thompson Reuters has ended anonymous web comments. You may recall the defense of the anonymous commenter, but you need look no further than Reuters' own Dean Wright (Global Editor, Ethics, Innovation and News Standards of Reuters) for two lengthy editorials arguing against anonymity online. After reading his complaints against anonymous readers, it almost seems like they need a moderation system to decide what's worth reading and what's trash."
Frankly, Reuters as a news organization has, like all of them, gotten a lot sloppier as competition for online eyeballs has squeezed all the value out of anything other than eye-popping headlines.
There's really not much you can do to keep commenters from hiding their identities, and it's somewhat hypocritical to do so when you omit bylines from many of your stories, and when your reporters, columnists, editors, and editorial writers are just fronts for the attitudes of the corporation.
Allowing people to remain anonymous to readers, but insisting that they give you identification you can use to trace them if they violate the TOS, seems a reasonable compromise.
Why is this under "yro"? You and I have no inherent right to make comments on their website. If they choose to invite comments, they have every right to attach conditions to that invitation. Anyone is free to setup their own site to comment on Reuters news coverage, if they don't like the conditions attached to commenting on Reuters sites.
A little comment moderation does go a long way, though. Reading the comments on articles on New York Times' web site, the only real moderation is that readers can "like" certain comments. You can then open the "Readers' Recommendations" tag to read comments rated by order of the number liked. This tends to make the comments much faster to read, putting the more useful ones near the top. It's not as robust a system as you get on Slashdot, but it's far and away better than comments systems that just sort comments by time and leave reading to pick through scores of trolls looking for any sign of intelligent life.
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
having just read a local paper's comment section to an opinion piece and seeing the first comment intentionally rude, you'd think i'd agree that with Reuters. but i don't. the anonymity of blog and news site commenters probably is not the engine of incivility in politics. there are people who are just outright angry about certain things, justifiably so or not, and they don't care how they express themselves. especially when so many of those people seem to lack an education or even knowledge of etiquette.
"To stop the terrorists."
Here on Slashdot in the Old days: anti-MS, Pro-Apple, pro-F/OSS got you points - guaranteed. Posting anything opposite got yo modd'ed "Troll" or something else "-1" - regardless of the merit.
Now, the Apple fanboys have chilled and with Apple's success, they're not such the under dogs as they once were. Posting anything that's critical of F/OSS will get modd'ed down unless it's really something specific that's also a criticism of folks in the F/OSS community.
The Libertarian bent here has been chilling too - I think it's the economy and seeing Mr. Rand or drank the Randian Cool-Aide and went back for seconds Alan Greenspan and others admitting that deregulation wasn't such a god idea.
Building up karma wasnt' as easy as it was in the old days - I abandon accounts when I get bored and start new ones .... like I'll eventually do with this one. When I have an account I spend way too much fucking time on Slashdot or any other posting site spewing my two-bit, ignorant, no nothing opinion.
It's kind of a sick sort of entertainment really. Although, unlike TV, I do learn a bit more on very rare occasions. Sometimes - very rare times, the corrections to my two-bit ignorant opinions are quite educational.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
One thing /. could do to improve slightly would be to outright prevent AC from being the first poster for an article. That would mostly eliminate the "first post" crap.
Remember to maintain your supply of
As a semi-regular AC, all I can tell you, is that I first of all don't need yet another account to keep track of with a user name that might be rubbish anyway, since most names are taken anyway it seems, and an associated password, and furthermore, I'd hate to leave a track of what I've posted so people could use that to eventually track me down or use my previous posts to somehow "infer" the value of the _current_ post, which is another important part of anonymity; Nobody gets a free pass because they are Sir That or professor This, and good posts from people without a reputation still might get read rather than discarded because of the senders ID. Every posting is judged on its own merits, which is exactly how it should be.
In practice, I don't think it works that way. We've got a local paper, we've got some toxic anonymous commenters. It's local enough that the anonymous asshole knows who other commenters (using real names), makes personal remarks (accuses woman whose child has CP of being a "mooch" on the system, tasteful stuff like that). Newspaper editor is the corporate golden boy for all the controversy and fuss this causes, because hey, hits. Most people aren't smart enough to follow through on this, and don't boycott (I do).
And if you look, I've got a consistent pseudonym wherever I go, a relatively consistent political position, fine karma here at slashdot, and I try hard as heck to stick to facts, and avoid (well, minimize) use of dirty words -- that is, if you want to check my judgement on whether this guy is toxic or not.
And as a practical matter, we know that there are people out there who think like this, just as we know that pigs like mud. Doesn't mean we like muddy-pig-wrestling.
I disagree. The problem is that comments in such places are not at all a realistic representation of what most people who read the articles think.
There is a vicious circle involved, where only the most hateful tend to be likely to comment, because so many of the other commenters are posting vile stuff. This is not the same thing that happens in "real world" environments, where social pressures that have evolved over centuries tend to keep things in check -- rewarding those who are diplomatic and follow decorum, and punishing those who aren't/don't. This is a GOOD THING....imagine if the discussion in a university class always degenerated into the sort of things you find in unmoderated, anonymous comments threads.
Even people who are nice in other environments may end up posting hateful comments. The Stanford Prison Experiment can give insight into why.
Well, the system does have its problems, but it sure beats all the others I've seen. I don't think you can ever achieve the "perfect" system, especially since we are talking about the quality of the comments, an inheritly subjective issue.
In the ideal system all the comments I deem worthwhile should rise to the top, but since each person's definition of worthwhile is different, by definition you cannot have such a system.
Example: I do not completely agree to your post, but I think it is interesting and thus I wish it to be modded up so I can see it. Someone else will think you wrote a pile of shit and would want to see you buried to oblivion. etc.
Whenever in an argument, remember this.
I've actually seen a fair amount of what you describe on my local paper's comment boards. Since I live in Nevada, every single news article inevitably devolves into a "Well, if Harry Reid did his job, then..." vs. "Well, if the Republicans didn't destroy the country, then..." flame-fest, and this is without anonymous commenting enabled. The best part? Guess who recommends comments - that's right, people willing to slug through that crap and recommend the viewpoints they agree with. The result is a self-perpetuating cycle of idiocy and venality, with all of the reasonable people staying away from the comments section like the plague it is.
Unfortunately, I don't know what a good solution to this situation would be. Personally, I'd lean toward "nuke it from orbit - it's the only way to be sure" and just eliminate online commenting entirely from most news sites - it's not like newspapers were known for their willingness to post anonymous content before the Internet anyway.
Allowing only up-modding definitely works better. The behaviour of people more likely to up than down mod is different. One is constructive, the other less so.
I am surprised how well the mod system here works (most of the time) though. Slashdot has a unique user base, and what works here wouldn't necessarily transfer well to a less involved and less informed base.
If you make the mistake of digging through comments on any popular news site, it is incredibly depressing. Even more so than reading /. on -1. Makes me lose a little faith in the human race every time.
This is the voice of World Control. I bring you Peace.
I heartily second this. Slashdot does have the best moderation system I've ever experienced online. Yes, there is still noise in the signal, but it often happens here that when there's an article on, say, rockets, that actual rocket scientists who know what they're talking about provide a lot of incredibly well-informed insight. Or, when the file-sharing debate crops up, we have actual lawyers who are or have defended accused file-sharers comment on the legal distinctions under consideration. Compare that with any other site with comments (eg. Digg), where every discussion resembles the holy wars between vi and emacs back in the day.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Haven't met many news site editors, have you? Knowledge of Strunk and White doesn't translate into an infallable understanding of world or even local politics.
Blizzard already doesn't allow anonymous postings, and never did. Their proposal was to involuntarily switch from handles to real names pulled from original account information that could not be changed and up until then was kept confidential. If all these people were paying a monthly fee to access the news site they might also feel more invested in how it was run. You're not seeing the same reaction because the situations have nothing in common except the word "anonymous," which never actually applied to Blizzard's forum anyway; Blizzard has always known exactly who every poster was. That entire debate was a smokescreen to keep the entire conversation revolving around whether Blizzard should use the information to plug their players' accounts into Facebook, which was the real reason for the proposed change.
I predict that eliminating anonymous commenting will bring an end to commenting in general. Sure, there will be a handful of people who will still be compelled to comment, but most wont venture. It's no different than most people, when in public, avoiding sensitive subjects. The people who will comment will more likely be those who already are compelled to post political commentary on Facebook.
Then there's the whole other issue of having your name plastered on every site you post comments.
The big problem is that the vast majority of people are nowhere near as well informed as they'd like to believe they are. There's an interesting problem society faces today: people know a little about a lot of things. We're probably exposed to more information than we've ever faced before. But it's all disseminated in bite-sized chunks that offer little to no substance. So we're aware of many things without really understand the complexities behind them. And I haven't even gotten into the issue cherry picking and bias. Compound these problems with the fact that humans tend to polarize everything. It's all or nothing.
So we have millions of misinformed, occasionally ignorant but very passionate people commenting on everything. And far too often, because they're incapable of cogent arguments the proceedings devolve into irrational name-calling. Of course, this is all facilitated by the fact that generally these interactions are anonymous.
Slashdot offers the best solution I've seen so far on any site. That said, it's dependent on three few factors:
1) The maturity and knowledge level of those posting.
2) That the site isn't heavily dominated by a particular mindset. All the moderation in the world wont help if group think takes over.
3) There's some level of responsible oversight by those running the site.
It may just be that news sites don't make for the best discussion forums anyway. Discussion forums might be better left to sites like Slashdot where there's a more specific draw.
I agree with you that the people reading and writing comments on slashdot are not exactly the same as the general population. But there are plenty of insightful/funny/informative comments on regular news sites. The problem is that these comments tend to get buried under a haystack of flames and spam. I think even a halfway decent user moderation system would at least hide these comments from the general readers. As the system is used more and more, it forces people to take a little time to think before spouting whatever garbage comes into their head. Even the unwashed masses can learn to think before they post. But the problem with most of the mainstream comment systems now is that the reward for a flame is exactly the same as the reward for an insightful post that takes some thought and effort.
The #1 thing I hate about news websites anymore is the comments I happen across at the bottom of stories. I really wish these were hidden, BY DEFAULT.
Why? because the comments are so predictable it is annoying. Rarely is there any thought provoking comments or perhaps relevant technical insight, say a petroleum engineer commenting on an oil spill story or a medical professional on a medical article.
Typical comments
Kidnapped or injured child? Parents fault
Unsolved crime story? The perpetrators must be minorities or immigrants!
Business story? Nobody should make over 50K! Everyone else is just lucky
All negative stories : [current president name here]'s fault!