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."
Without having read TFA (hey, it's a venerable Slashdot tradition!), I'm not sure what they actually hope to gain by eliminating anonymous comments. Surely as long as people are free to create throwaway accounts that are not actually tied to their real identities, trolling etc. will persist?
Signed, an AC of many years (by choice)
I really don't understand why more news sites don't implement a threaded and user moderated comment system. Sure, the slashdot system isn't perfect, but the comments here are far more interesting/productive than the mainstream news sites. Removing anonymous commenting sounds like throwing out the baby with the bathwater, there are plenty of people who might have a valuable comment, but don't want to be bothered by registering for yet another web site.
In addition, I'm sure there are plenty of comments from registered users that just aren't that valuable. A threaded and user moderated system similar to slashot would vastly improve/filter the quality of comments on most sites, and long term would increase readership, so it just seems like an obvious solution.
Slashdot's system has plenty of room for abuse.
There are people who maintain a dozen or more Slashdot accounts in order to play the 'mod point lottery' more often and get around the prohibition on modding and commenting on the same topic.
There are people who regularly abuse the theory of downmodding, using "flamebait" or "troll" to replace "disagree." Do it fast enough, and insightful comments get buried to -1 just because someone disagreed with it or decided it was politically or philosophically something they wanted to bury.
There are people who get their hands on mod points and go into histories, applying every single mod point as a negative to any old post just to ding down their max on someone's karma.
If they got rid of "troll" and "Flamebait" and simply raised the upmod ceiling to 15 or so, the system would work better. More room for upmodding, more room for posts to rise to the surface, no worries about the "early bury and never recover" problem.
I've studied anonymous commenting for a while... And while I wrote passionated blog entries in its defence in my younger days (=a few years ago), I can't say I'm for it anymore. In blogs, etc... sure. In newspapers or any other "high quality" media? No.
The flaw in your reasoning is this: The problem isn't intentional trolling. The problem is "too many idiots with too much time". The people who have jobs, relationships, hobbies, etc. don't waste much of their time arguing online. What this means? People who don't have jobs, education, hobbies, relationships, etc. form a large part of the people who browse news stories and choose to comment on them. The vocal minority that is more prone to extremism (be it left, right, whatever...), doesn't really have anything intelligent to say and post in pretty much every news story. Then a sane person appears and he goes "I might have something to contribute to this story about astronomy... Whoa. 76 comments and they are just all flaming each other about immigration? I'll just leave". It is a positive feedback loop of idiocy.
Now, there are three common answers to that. One is "strict editorial policy, such as an employee approving all comments before they show up" but this is really quite unoptimal solution. It takes a lot of manhours, works well only during office hours and generally isn't good for a live conversation where people react to each other, etc. etc.. The second one is "disable all commenting" but some people actually have something important to add. The third one is "Force users to register first".
The last one reduces the amount of comments but this is a good thing: There is a lot less crap to go through when you want to see if there is anything worthwhile. Even more importantly, you can see "Oh, that idiotic comment is written by P4triot86... And that one... And that one..." so the comments section will imply "There are a few idiots regularly posting here" instead of the false "People really think this way".