Slashdot Mirror
Have Online Comment Sections Become Specious?
christoofar writes "Gawker founder Nick Denton says online comments have proven themselves to be not worth the trouble, a waste of resources, and contribute nothing to online conversation or even capture the intelligence of readers. From the article: 'In the early days of the Internet, there was hope that the unprecedented tool for global communication would lead to thoughtful sharing and discussion on its most popular sites. A decade and a half later, the very idea is laughable, says [Denton]. "It didn't happen," said Denton, whose properties include the blogs Gawker, Jezebel, Gizmodo, io9 and Lifehacker. "It's a promise that has so not happened that people don't even have that ambition anymore. The idea of capturing the intelligence of the readership — that's a joke."'"
I think discussion sections work great in the small and medium scale special interest category. A number of smaller blogs I frequent, the comment section/side forum becomes a good area for discussion... and often times particularly good bits end up edited into the original post.
I certainly think they work much better in small niche interest groups than on general news sites. When you have a small group of generally like minded people with a certain amount of pre-existing knowledge in the topic .. you get a good discussion. When you get the diverse public with dissimilar views and often a very surface understanding of the topic.. you get the type of shit we see on this guy’s collection of sites and on youtube and so on.
I think at least part of the problem is that most comment sections are poorly designed and provide little ability for actual discussion. Many don’t have threaded replies, a simple feature that makes any comment section _way_ more useful in my opinion. You can’t really have much of a discussion if replies can’t easily be tied to each.
Also sorting by most recent (descending) in conjunction with threaded comments (threads which have had a comment recently get bumped up) I think works well to keep people talking. Again, can’t have a discussion if you can’t even find the current discussion(s).
On larger sites, I think the best approach is to have a forum on the side with topics linked to the post. This eliminated a lot of crap as there is slightly more effort in posting to a forum than posting to a comment section. Forum software is also generally much better equipped for real discussion than most comment systems.
Just look below this post..
Ask a Microsoft or Apple question here and find out. After all, that is our religion.
Of course, he is correct. Most slashdot users only RTFA, right?
The idea of capturing the intelligence of the readership was correct! The only problem was the intelligence of the readership...
*this spot for sale*
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2011/05/10/1008636108.abstract Reputation, Karma... :-)
lol
In this day of Kardashians, Hiltons and Lohans, I find the comments infinitely more interesting than the subject matter itself.
Comments mentioning moderation usually get modded down (oh no I'm speaking about moderation!)
It's the "information superhighway" and, just like a physical superhighway, everything is impersonal. Somebody cuts you off and drives slow in front of you and you mutter an oath under your breath. Because you don't see a mother and her newborn, you see a big hunk of metal. There is no community on the pavement of the interstates, it's basically every person for themselves. On the highway, discourse is one-way and usually pretty foul. If they had budged in front of you in the supermarket, you might say "pardon me but I'm in line" or just let it go and imagine her life to be a lot more hectic with a newborn. I surmise that bumper stickers are an actual attempt to let someone know you belong to their community -- although with my luck it's always some conservative with a Ken Cuccinelli bumper sticker reminding me of how much I absolutely loathe living in The South (but I digress).
... er ... politician. Discourse doesn't happen without community. Community is protected by moderation (usually which affects visibility). And communities seem to thrive or have a feedback effect when discourse is strong, respectful and healthy. Gawker, Jezebel, Gizmodo, io9 and Lifehacker have none of the above -- and if they have moderation it is heavy handed deletionary censorship. So all they get is drive-by shootings or white panel vans with painted over windows offering free candy.
Similarly, sites without a community are going to have absolute crap for comments. These aren't people trying to establish a reputation in a community. They don't want to help people or take time to share their views and vision. They have something to say -- could be negative or positive -- and they will say it with little disregard for others. It will be curt, it will be one sided and it will most likely be harsh. Communities are as rare on the "information superhighway" as they are on the real highways of America. Very few parts of the country have people willing to let you in and rarely you might feel an affinity with another person driving your preferred make or model of car or displaying your bumper sticker for your preferred asshole
Side note: if you've read this far, you've already exhibited a mild disposition towards a community as I don't think this post (in its entirety) would be read by anyone on the aforementioned sites. If those sites don't establish anything they are doomed to have specious comments.
My work here is dung.
Isn't it the job of Moderators to be sure people stay on topic? To me comments are important. They help to either verify the story, or expose the mistakes. Happens on /. all the time.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
I have been a frequent commenter on several sites for many years. I used to enjoy being part of the conversation but now many of the comments are just poor jokes, insults and other foolishness. In particular I've given up on gizmodo.com where even the articles have become offensive.
Or, better yet, a "Frost Pist" or a "GNAA" post...
I suppose it's because the PFMs (Including this one...) is trying to prove TFA author "wrong"...
Denton's opinion tell us a lot about the kind of web site he visits. The internet is a heterogenous place, and this is reflected in the quality of comments posted to various online forums, just like it is in the quality of the content posted by web site editors (CNN.com is throwing stones in glass houses posting an article like this). Look at a web site like Lambda The Ultimate. The quality of posts there is often on par with peer-reviewed journal articles. The Haskell subreddit also often has incredibly valuable discussions, all provided for free by the readers themselves.
Proof of how smart slashdotters are - in title.
....film at 11.
This online comment has proven itself to be not worth the trouble, is a waste of resources, and contributes nothing to this online conversation or even captures the intelligence of readers.
You're good. Comments mentioning comments that mention moderation are generally safe.
Right. Because those sites are the best example of places catering to intelligent readers.
Nick Denton is an idiot. He runs Gawker Media, which is itself a joke of a syndication network. He hires wannabe journalists and gives them bags of cash to bribe industry insiders into leaking stories so he can put them on his blogs. Of course the comments sections on Gawker Media sites are stupid. He also dismisses the politically charged and logically sound comments on Jezebel, which I wouldn't call the epitome of intelligent discourse on the internet, but it's definitely heads and shoulders above anything else hosted by Gawker.
Look at the comments on this Ars Technica piece: all topical and useful. Look at this comment thread (particularly this one! one of the most helpful comments I've ever read) about someone learning how to program in Perl.
In TFA, Denton says:
What a prick. Of course he doesn't believe in the democratic power of anything, because he's authoritarian, narrow-minded, grossly incompetent as a "journalist"—and deplorable as an editor, too—and all Gawker media sites (I'd entertain a counterargument defending Jezebel) operate on one rule: feed the trolls. Not all the examples of good comments I gave above have user-moderation systems in place, but the ones that don't just have good content that attracts good readers. Nick wouldn't know anything about that.
Cole's Axiom sums it up. The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.
Not first! How's THAT for embarrassed?
..but most of the time I find them to be feceous.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
First Comment!
Maybe Gawker, et al, need to come to grips with the terrifying possibility that online comments absolutely do capture the intelligence of the readership.
fivethirtyeight and other specialized blogs can often have worthwhile discussion taking place in the comments section. slashdot itself of course has a long history of being as much a place for discussion as it is for anything else.
however, in places where the comments section is ancillary to the main purpose of the site (primary-source news sites such as cnn, video sites, etc) seem to contain the most dire comments sections.
here is the truth: there is no single activity in which a man can engage more thoroughly disaffecting of the human soul than the reading of youtube comments.
i could live a little longer in this prison
They only work if you have a vote-based, threaded commenting systems like on here, but the best example is on reddit. Then you can see the best comments easily and reply
The ignorant are often more outspoken than the intelligent.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
A comment forum commenting on comments about comments.
So wait, they interviewed a guy from Gawker/Gizmodo as evidence? Their fucking articles are complete shit in the first place, let alone their comments section. That's like citing Fox News as evidence that all TV is terrible and does not work as a communication method.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. - Salvor Hardin
When incompetent people comment on the internet; trolling, flamewars, and even violence is all that will follow.
So wait, they interviewed a guy from Gawker/Gizmodo as evidence? Their fucking articles are complete shit in the first place, let alone their comments section. That's like citing Fox News as evidence that all TV is terrible and does not work as a communication method.
In the early days of the Internet, there was hope that the unprecedented tool for global communication would lead to thoughtful sharing and discussion on its most popular sites.
Who were these early Internet hopefuls? The article sets up a nice straw-man as far as I'm concerned. Did Denton recently stop engaging comments? Goatse didn't persuade him back in 2000? Frankly, this is exactly why I can't quit Slashdot. No one has built a better comment system or a better community. SN Ratio is still bad here in absolute terms, but I can pick my SN by filtering and thanks to moderation, much of the noise has moved beyond Slashdot.
quod erat demonstrandum
HPC for Primates. Read Cluster Monkey
The comments are the only reason I still visit Slashdot. Yes, there is a lot of junk to wade through, but in this community at least there will usually be an intelligent response that offers insight into the issue being discussed that I may not be able to find elsewhere.
Flame wars, trolls, and other santorum ooze up everywhere because there is nothing dissuading commenters from posting. Most mechanisms that attempt to enforce accountability are also open to abuse or require too much effort. possible solution: Forum Mod AI and either track 'anonymous' posts or not allow them at all. You make too many comments that are deemed useless, your account is suspended and eventually deleted. Since user data is already being tracked, cross-referencing new user applications with old user data, would be a viable option. Perhaps even logging last known IP addresses of banned accounts only, to add another field for cross reference. The computation required to achieve this would be offset somewhat by the decrease in comment volume.
Such a statement assumes that intelligence exists in the first place. Comments sections can work. But, as soon as a sufficiently large audience shows up, it devolves into cesspool of ridiculous, poorly thought through, extreme opinions, and personal attacks. *Insert something racist/homophobic/sexist/generally hateful here*
In the early days of the Internet, there was hope that the unprecedented tool for global communication would lead to thoughtful sharing and discussion on its most popular sites.
just like when television first came out we thought it had potential as an unprecedented tool for learning. HA!
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Comments on blogs and news articles (and youtube videos of course) are almost entirely worthless. Almost no one puts thought into their comments, even when it's attached to a well-thought out article. They don't "capture the intelligence of readers", rather they capture the unintelligence. Another example is twitter. Choose a trending topic, read some of the tweets, and weep for humanity.
On the other hand, forums can be extremely valuable. I'd class Slashdot into that category, even though technically these are still comments on news articles. Forums can be excellent at capturing the intelligence, wisdom or experience of its members. Some examples that come to mind are Whirlpool or XDA-Dev. Of course you still get ill-thought out nonsense, but the format encourages continued participation in the discussion, rather than blogs where people write some bullshit and then move on to the next story.
"A week in the lab saves an hour in the library"
Congrats on stealing his thunder.
The only thing that keeps me going to my local newspaper's site is the anonymous comment section. While there are some crazy and trolling comments, the anonymous nature of the system leads people to post more provocative points of view (and possibly even more honest opinions, but in any case, many opposing viewpoints are posted and discussed). Sure, there are sometimes personal attacks, but overall it's interesting to read opinions from other local people. There's a minimal moderating system where abusive comments can be reported (and sometimes that system itself is abused by people that want to get rid of opposing viewpoints), as well as a thumbs-up/thumbs-down system.
When another semi-local paper switched to a non-anonymous facebook commenting system, the usefulness of the comments went way down. (as did some of the more extreme views, but I don't mind reading those extreme views, or even wading through a number of useless "first post!" comments if it means getting more interesting comments).
> "It didn't happen," said Denton, whose properties include the blogs Gawker, Jezebel, Gizmodo, io9 and Lifehacker.
Of course, I see no self-criticism about how awful some of those blogs are, in which a female journalist publicly bashed the World Champion of Magic: The Gathering for being... well, him; they also publicly crucified Dilbert's creator after misunderstanding (I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt) one of his posts, and let's not forget the less-than-smart way in which they handled a security breach which exposed thousands of user's passwords.
I'd say you can't have your cake and eat it too - if your business is based on troll-level journalism, you don't get to complain when the trolls gather around you.
I believe that the whole reason this conception of the comments section as a place which can lead to thoughtful discussion is not misfounded, the problem is they have spread a very wide net when they opened up such a concept to anyone in literally the entire world that chooses to comment. They have captured the intelligence of the average reader because the average reader is a moron who can't grasp anything beyond his personal biases and preferences, and they do not like to be wrong.
Were they to take the comments section seriously, they would have to do what several blogs I read already do: Severely moderate the comments themselves to strictly limit what gets posted to certain users and only then if it has to do with the topic at hand. It sounds draconian but it is actually not much different from what already occurs in actual publications of higher learning and scholarship. They won't publish any idiot that writes in, but if you follow certain guidelines and speak intelligently they will publish your review or response (generally only if you're qualified to speak on the topic, but some of them do allow a more open interchange).
Overall the internet can be a tool of previously uncomprehending exchange of information, but people will not just automatically act like intelligent beings. Given the choice, they'll resort to the same madness that made you wish for a realm in which you could exchange information lacking such interference in the first place. Thinking that the internet would be any different just stems from the idealism of creating something new and believing everything will be perfect in your newly created utopian future.
Comments mentioning comments mentioning comments mentioning moderation are generally modded up. It's the law!
It's true that the average quality of comments in many blogs is generally poor. But that doesn't mean that comments in general suck. I have read many technical blogs with high comment quality, reporting errors in the blog, opening interesting discussions with the blog owner, coming with new insights, or linking to other blogs/websites with interesting and related material.
I know it is popular to rail on against slashdot and how horrible it is, but for certain topics, I often learn something new, or get a different perspective on things. Many different people with many different technical backgrounds frequent slashdot. And I value the different perspectives that crop up once in a while. While I personally am uncertain about how effective the modding system here on slashdot is, and if it could be improved, I don't find it too difficult to filter through the comments to find those comments *I* find interesting or insightful.
I think the readership of a blog or site definitely affects the general comment quality. And for certain sites, that might mean that restrictions or even removal of comments for readers in general are a good idea. But just because the comment quality on certain sites is generally poor or horrible, it does NOT mean that comments in general are of poor quality, or that online comment sections in general are useless or a joke.
Look at the comments on a random story here at Slashdot, and then look at the comments on a random story at CNN or Fox News or, if you dare, YouTube.
There is a right way to do comments and there is wrong way to do comments. In my mind, "moderation" is key. Slashdot has a well thought-out moderation system and the others have absolutely zero moderation, at best a "Like" button.
Forums with dedicated moderators often have excellent discussion/comments as well.
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
"Censorship is not American. "
"Nick "Hitler" Denton, wants control over media and free speech....What a patriot."
"seriously!!! what else is there to talk about when baseball is only 23 days away!"
"Like cruddy old people music. We should ban that, just because I want to."
"Obama's fault."
"i am not reading that novel." (In response to a three-paragraph comment)
"Where can i get the cliff notes to this post?" (Likewise)
"Go PHILLIES!!!!"
I use several sites where each article generates hundreds of very erudite comments per day, too many to read, often. Most are moderated but with a gentle touch. No I'm not saying where in case they get overrun by idiots.
nick denton is an ignorant hypocrite.
gawker media is garbage.
You speak French!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
because he went to /b/
I think the quality of the posts are directly related to the average intelligence of the article posting. I also think that as soon as you have to log in with a real name/facebook account, the quality of the postings does go up. I have participated in many insightful threads on /. and other tech forums. However, usually daily, I read the threads on virtually any FoxNews article just to make sure that their posters are just as racist, bigoted, niece, and hateful as they were the day before. I would assume that their readers think slightly different than the rest of us here. So while as a whole, I think Gawker was right in saying that forums are a bad idea.
Even CNN won't let Anonymous Coward comment. And we know Anonymous Coward is the most prolific commenter around, both good and bad, agree and disagree, intelligent and just outright stupid.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
This guy is a fucking joke.
You run sites that thrive off of cheap troll bait hits and you end up with a bunch of trolls.
How about Denton pulls his head out of his ass and looks at the content of the sites before he paints the entire internet as flame bait for commenters.
I find forums and comments to be an invaluable resource for technical help for many things. I'm in Process Controls and use web forums all the time for obscure questions. And when migrating to Linux for the first time, I was very grateful for the help that I recieved from that Community. The general trend toward ditching older, experienced tech support hands and throwing long existing tech libraries into dumpsters make forums the last bastion of searchable help. Couldn't live without them.
"If the only tool that you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail." Donny Rumsfeld
Comments mentioning Fire-breathing Chicken of doom usually don't get any kind of moderation.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
JC! A BOMB!
Personally I have read some truly insightful and thought provoking comments on slashdot.
Many times I find myself learning new bits or discovering new interests from readers comments here.
I don't read slashdot for the article itself, its just a stub, i read it to see what others have to say about it.
It takes "Pain in the ###" to a whole new level.
I'm quite sure Nick Denton doesn't like user comments. Gawker doesn't like opinions that they weren't paid to show on their site. And they REALLY hate it when you tell them their site redesign was awful, or that time-sloting Kotaku was a moronic idea. And they have just about the worst commenting system out there.
All bitching about Gawker sites aside, their comment system was truly abysmal. Anyone can comment, but if you don't create an account your comment goes into a deep hole for potential approval by an unknown entity on the 5th of Never. Then if you make an account, your comment will show but it won't show by default unless it's been "featured" by having a starred member promote it at whim or reply to it. And if you're VERY lucky and catch an author on a good day and agree completely with him, you might even get elevated to a star of your own. And then you get some kind of moderation power, assuming you don't get it removed for not kissing Gawker's ass enough. And before you say it, yes I have a star and no it hasn't been removed (at least until an editor reads this, I suppose).
There is no system for obtaining or losing a star that I can tell aside from author/editor whim. There are no obvious rules for promoting comments. There are no guidelines given if you get a star. The community guidelines are open to potentially abusive interpretation that doesn't always reflect the clear intent. The entire thing is a mystery box that panders to Gawker and censors anything they don't like.
The system here at /. is much more orderly, I can eliminate all the chum comments just by browsing at +1 or +2. And moderation is clearly defined and passed around in time to everyone who joins the club. We have freedom to post, clear self-policing, and even reward consistent quality. Plus, you get similar article quality and policing of content (with its own slant, but then that's what communities are all about).
I do think Reddit has probably the most pure and free-form overall model for generating, filtering, and promoting user-generated content, but the quality mileage does vary and there's practically no fact-checking. Something like a "front page" with editor-approved threads might help the mainstream web surfers more easily accept it.
I just wish I didn't find Gizmodo/Kotaku articles as entertaining as I do. They do bring me bite-sized news with entertaining content and more often than not are teh funny. I can't stand Nick Denton though - he's a greedy shithead whoring out the integrity of his editors/writers with every ad-article, bad design, and site-wrapper he shoves down their throats.
"Not all who wander are lost" -- JRR Tolkien
Slashdot, it must be said, continues to be a great source of insightful comments
Me too!
I though the problem was that the intelligence was captured and forced to live in a cage reading YouTube comments.
Most comment sections are completely worthless. Wired is a perfect example of that. Every article is just a section of completely retarded crap.
Most comment systems are badly implemented. The builders implement whatever they think would work, and when it fails they throw up their hands and say "it can't work". Their main purpose isn't the commentary, so they have no incentive to make a good system.
Slashdot, on the other hand, directly relies on commentary. As a result, they have gone through several rounds of "we need to make this better". The current system is now robust and useful.
For example, many sites allow anyone to add commentary to a story. With no filtering, these tend to fill up with noise posts. Beyond the typical spamming, random users simply don't add much to the conversation. Agreement/disagreement with the points made, anecdotal evidence, "me too" posts, and so on. Lots of well-meaning posts with no substance.
Many sites require an admin to approve the comments. The admins tend to only allow comments which are favorable to a particular viewpoint. Posts which support the article, amplify or extend the central ideas - all well and good, but generally uninformative. You don't get a lot of contrast from Fox News, for instance.
Slashdot has the best of both worlds - the cream floats to the top. An insightful post will be modded up for all to see, while the noise gets relegated to the dungeons of +0 Troll.
Furthermore, since Slashdot itself isn't doing the moderation (with one notable exception), well written opposing viewpoints get modded up and stay there.
Reading Slashdot is, dare I say it, a mind expanding experience. It's a great way to get exposed to alternative viewpoints and learn their logical strengths and fallacies. It's much more enlightening than any of the mainstream newspapers.
Gawker is a stinking pile of shit; and its mods are the biggest piles of human shit. From the moronic mods who dont like when you point out their post on life hacker should have been sanity or fact checked to the dumb cunts at jezebell who think everything is either sexist or racist. I can only hope they all die in a car accident that involves a honey wagon. If there is any lack of 'intelligent' conversion or honest discussion its because of the mods. there. Their twisted and biased slant often does not reflect reality and the promote those who cheer lead their folly and censor/silence any detractors. Not to mention almost everything posted on the gawker network is of questionable worth to anyone to begin with.
Places like tom's hardware are good examples of forums that work for their communities and where intelligent conversations can be had. Slashdot not so much. The mod system just makes it so cheer leaders are heard and detractors are silenced by the majority. I often wonder how much crack cocaine it takes to keep the user forums here going, because I read some of the most retarded shit here.
Quality comments take time and effort to write, and require time and effort to read. It's not a surprise that sites which deal with random and changing groups of vistors find few willing to invest the time to write a good comment... or even read a good comment (tl;dr anyone?)
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
Have gnu, will travel.
For a good laugh, read the comments on any newspapers online editions.. especially any political comment (yeah, xkcd got that right: http://xkcd.com/1019/ )
I have submitted some ideas to our local paper, and got a brush off.. but the anonymous nature, plus people thinking others are WRONG and have to be corrected seem to make it all pretty much unreadable..
Simple fixes to make an online story's comments normal again:
1 - Limit the times a person can comment on the same story in a 24 hour period.. I have seen too many times, when there are pages and pages of comments in online newspapers where 4 people are calling each other idiots.. Yes, they have a freedom of speech, but everyone else gets drowned out....
2 - make it very easy to see all posts made by a person... hey, that makes finding astro-turfers really, really easy..
3 - maybe make it slightly less anonymous.. possibly post the first 3 octets of the ip address or something.. People start being nicer when they know they are being watched... (hence the spots for camera's ever 12 feet in wal-mart's ceiling)
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
I think having comments on sites like msnbc and cnn provides a vital public service. It keeps people busy who would otherwise be shooting guns out of their windows or mailing homemade bombs to strangers.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
That is all.
From the mid 70s to the mid 80s, America was in the thralls of a love affair with a little two way radios that would let you talk with people a few miles away, while remaining mostly anonymous. You created a "handle", and learned to speak the language. The fad got so popular, movies were created around it. Eventually, the fad died out when people finally got tired of talking to other people without ever saying anything.
Sound familiar?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
"He said that commenting on his own sites (which he's seen make reporters cry) has gotten so bad that he doesn't engage."
There's the answer right there. He is running away from the conversion just because idiots are posting. It's bad enough he let idiots post. Other's are turning away when the comments get flooded by idiocy.
And I don't like to have to sign up just to comment. Nor do I like my identity from another place used. So for a place to be as free and open as Usenet WAS, it needs to be open.
Include moderation. Let the reporter (poster of the article or blog, etc) be king/queen moderator. Allow community moderation, too.
And make comments work. I just tried all this guy's sites, and the comment button didn't even work.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
It does not take long in reading to see what his real propblem is.
When it comes to improving open discussion threads, Denton seemed quicker to shoot down ideas that others are trying than to provide proposals of his own.
Well now, lets beyatch about all possible solutions instead of doing something? Really that's his mode? And yes, it is...
Having editors and reporters engage their readers in the comments? "The writer of the piece has to move on to the next piece. They don't have time to moderate all those comments."
Valid point, but at least let them pop on and make sensible comments if they want to do so.
Require readers to post using their real names? "My own view is that anonymity is at the heart of the Internet."
I agree in a way, but if you have troll problems the way to fix it is require some information to track users. Just making people think that you can track them is generally enough to stop the "DIE YOU F^&*(*ER!" comments.
Give other commenters more power to "up-vote" or "down-vote" posts? "We don't really believe in the democratic process of decision-making when it comes to discussion," Denton said
Ahh, the truth comes out. It's his dictatorship, his www, his blogs, me, me, me, me, me. The problem makes so much more sense now.
For example, he said, Jezebel has made lots of hay off of sexual harassment accusations against American Apparel Chief Executive Officer Dov Charney. Denton said he'd love to see Charney come into the comments section to defend himself. "If you put it to a vote, 90% would vote to ban him. They hate that guy," Denton said. "If Dov Charney went into the Jezebel comments, he'd be torn limb from limb; his limbs aren't all that would be torn off."
Wait, your only option for user action is to allow them to ban people? WTF is he talking about?
And the gem...
The answer? Denton said his sites are planning to post some stories that allow only a hand-picked, pre-approved group of people to comment on them. That, he said, would make the comment section an extension of the story and allow people, like Charney in the above example, to have their say without fear of being piled onto by others
Because if he hand picks people it will make for unbiased and better news.. Riiiiight. No wonder I don't read or visit any of his work.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Commentception!
A certain online businessman has lately maligned his audience for not providing insightful discussion about the mindless, rubbernecking rumor-mongering papparazzi-type material he shovels onto the web each day. Guess who?
But even with a sophisticated & long improving moderation process, it is still difficult to find the wisdom among the bull.
"Bishops and Bookies live off the irrational hopes of mankind." Bertrand Russell
What a same
Slashdot is just as likely to make good posting invisible at -1 or 0 as happened to a very good reply of mine to a dimwit, but that dimwit was one that spouted pro-GPL nonsense claiming that people who want the BSD licence want to take advantage of others etc. Complete BS! But as there is a pro-Linux/GPL attitude here, those who are pro-GPL come in and downmod anything they don't like. Whether it's true or insightful doesn't matter. This is bullying, not really different than making nasty comments and chasing people away from newsgroups.
You might want to read this about this problem:
http://swhs.home.xs4all.nl/kritiek/linux/
And for more about the problems on forums and newsgroups (which are autists, bullshit artists, zealots, people who feel the need to defend and expensive purchase and do so in a stupid way, ditto for viewpoints, and more), see this page:
http://swhs.home.xs4all.nl/kritiek/discussies/index.html
I find most postings to be really poor on slashdot, very little information content and the nutters who come up with silly stuff that it essentially made up (be it about global warming or about BSD people wanting to take advantage of other people's work), keep posting the same shit over and over again.
I don't know why but I just had an uncontrollable urge to post a link to this comment (that I'm writing now). Couldn't predict the comment id used in the url to get this recursion to work though :-)
Denton's sites are a big collection of troll-baiting link farms which occasionally do have something cool, but are usually just short little pieces designed to get as many comments (good or bad) as possible. The writers explicitly get paid for that.
So yeah, he gets bad commenters.
I'd say it also serves to prove the point that "common sense" really isn't that common.
Comments on a site with a name like, 'Gawker, Jezebel, Gizmodo', etc, etc, may not be taken seriously. Same as I have a hard time taking a guy who takes the time to make sure he has the correct amount of stubble when he does a presentation all that seriously.
Look at /., most of us just read the articles and doesn't care about the comments at all.
Slashdot is populated by intelligent, educated engineers and programmers for the most part. Yet even here there are specious and flawed arguments, knee-jerk reactions, dogmatic dictators, and all the other ills of society.
Yet I wouldn't want Slashdot to go away (obviously), and I wouldn't want the comments at newspaper sites and such to go away, either. There are some people who stick to discussing the article at hand and it's impacts, and for those few worthwhile comments, we'll just have to put up with the trolls, bigots, racists, and the rest of the trash.
The biggest advantage of the Comments sections is that anyone and everyone can have a say, whereas only a very few can have their rebuttal published as a Letter to the Editor.
You may not read the comments, but I do. Taking away that thread of discussion because it didn't work out the way some had hoped would be censorship for no other reason than "I don't like what's being said."
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
^^^ Look up ^^^
I want this account deleted.
What Nick Denton is really saying is that commentors, embarrassingly, don't echo the opinions of the purveyors of the articles. There is a lot of noise in comment sections, but they do tend to contain opinions that media gatekeepers suppress or downplay. Naturally, those suppressed opinions are characterized as unenlightened, uninformed and not important or useful contributions to the exploration of an issue by those who wish to control the terms of the discussion.
Comment sections work great if those reviewing them, remember a few basic rules.
1. Don't require people to login, or at least not into Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, or Yahoo, etc. etc. Often people with some really helpful information will not post anything because it requires them to login.
2. Comments are usually critical of your service or information. If you don't learn and adapt from the comments, it's your own damn fault.
3. It's your responsibility to learn to parse and filter the the comments so you can get useful information from it.
Some shit-hole "news" network is complaining that its user comment section is a shit-hole.
Doesn't he have more important things to do, like overseeing the posting of tubgirl on one of his own sites over a Halo 3 rivalry?
As much as I dislike the commenting community of Gizmodo, Gawker, etc., I love the community on Lifehacker. There's a lot of discourse between the authors, mods, and readers, and a definite lack of hatred. This probably comes from the smaller audience, both targeted and attracted, which allows a user to build a reputation and get to know each other. Give it a look, before you damn his whole system. I just wish that if he goes down, Lifehacker somehow gets spun off into something independent.
Which is odd, because Fire-breathing Chickens can easily start the flaming.
There are worthless communities of comments (ala youtube, engadget, most general blog sites) and then communities where real discussions and interactions and even friend-like relationships develop almost like a true forum (slashdot, to a certain extent, wonkette, and - formerly - gizmodo). Gizmodo had one of the most tightly knit but still open, responsive, and interesting commenter communities of any blog I had ever seen. It even rivaled some forums. And then the entire Gawker family of blogs got their now infamous redesign, and the comment system was broken. You could no longer get notices of replies, conversations died before they even started, and most of the "starred" commenters left the site (and many of those who didn't immediately, and who spoke out against the changes and the brokenness of the new design, had their star removed and/or their accounts banned). So yes, Mr. Denton, there ARE online communities whose comment sections are worthless (like yours). But there are those whose comment sections are not, and for a man whose single minded drive to "better and newer" when in fact you were only achieving one of those (and only by virtue of it being later in time) to claim that all comment sections are worthless (because yours are) is just as disingenuous as what you did to your commenters.
Visit the forums on medhelp (like the hepc forum), or visit earthclinic, or any 100(0)'s of sites that actually have specific and relevant merit (AOT pointy-headed opinion and gossip) and you'll find that the signal2noise is very low.
His site, meh.
resist propaganda
mentally dislexic this AM
High signal - Low noise - sorry
resist propaganda
Didn't simply say 'First!!1!'
Gawker founder Nick Denton says online comments have proven themselves to be not worth the trouble, a waste of resources, and contribute nothing to online conversation or even capture the intelligence of readers
It's all about a) execution, b) niche/focused topic, and c) clearly defined target audience. If Gizmondo, CNN's comments, or God forbids Yahoo Answers are the only examples of online comments under consideration, of course, all that is shit. But then when we consider things like Stack Exchange, or say, the comment sections on Coding Horror (or even here in /.) then the story is different.
IMO, these are the problems I see with online comments:
1. A lot of people who would ordinarily clam up in a social situation feel free to spew their vile on a form. These sorts of people don't have the usual social reinforcement that you get in a face-to-face to self-police their impulses.
Similarly, people with mental disorders that manifest in the form of severe anti-social behavior seem to enjoy using the Internet to disrupt hundreds or thousands of quality conversations in a day or a week, due to the nature of easy access to lots of people the Internet.
2. People who are paid to astroturf or shill for a particular product or political issue. This is common on review sites for products and businesses. This is also common on political discussions as well. In political discussions, especially w/r/t the middle east, you can literally find 5 or 6 dedicated members of the Israeli Hasbara who are either paid for by the government of Israel or by loosely associated organizations who share similar views drowning out civilized debates with copy/paste diatribes, fill-in-the-blank responses to hot-button issues, and predictable ad hominem. Hasbara has pretty much made websites like Digg and Reddit impossible to have civilized debates about hot-button political issue on certain topics.
3. Spam bots and human spammers. Even websites that have captchas are not immune - some spammers pay 3rd worlders pennies for each spam they post, so you can't stop them with a captcha. Also, with all of the unemployment that is out there, a lot of people are now peddling pyramid schemes and MLM scams in the middle of discussions. Some people implement filtering (plugins on blogs for example), but its far from perfect - post too many links and you're post might get flagged as spam and never posted.
Moderation can help all of these, if the moderator is worth his salt and is fair. Set a high bar for allowing a comment through. Comments that just say "this" or "+1" don't get through. People who do nothing but post state propaganda and Hasbara mad libs are banned. I prefer moderators who are employed by the website rather than group moderation. Group moderation is too prone to abuse and groupthink (or circlejerk) effects.
That's just my $.02.
... the readership of his sites? I think he's just mad because he found out the ugly truth.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
you mean.... like this online comment?
Wow, just wow. Unfortunately this story captures the utter technical ignorance of the "business" side of much online operations.
I don't know who Denton is talking about, but among the people who actually knew how to use the internet in the early 90s, there was a lot more than "hope." These people ("we") were actually using online forums ("comments" in the language of MBA-legacy-journalism-old-media jerks) perfectly fine.
If you build a bathroom wall and place a marker next to it, you should expect nothing more that what you get. The problem here is that in the mid-to-late 90s, a bunch of people who knew relatively little about online communications poured into the online world, hoping to get rich. And they really didn't know much about what they were doing.
And so in their rush for dollars, they build things that really didn't work very well. In essence, in a "rush to market" and to "show investors something" (the oft-proclaim "results" which aren't "results"), they built flat forums without moderation.
And in essence, this is like trying to open a college without hiring professors, and telling the students just to read the assignments and show up in room X and have a discussion. "Good luck with that," as it is said -- it's not going to work, because college frosh aren't accustomed to behaving in that way. Heck, I'd be surprised if many grad students in many disciplines, could have effective discussions without some form of organization (for instance, a participant or two acting as forum moderator).
Flat (forums without the ability to reply to other participants / poorly implemented or non-threaded forums) are not only simply ineffective, but do not model actual human interaction (much less complex interactions and discussion) well. They almost guarantee the "drive by" kind of one-shot comment, which is often inane and more-than-often, the writer performing a solioquy to themselves.
Anonymousness, too often over-touted, leads to a lack of community and long-term relationships -- I really can't imagine that people like Denton paid much attention to the example of "the Well," (which was a great early community, for those of you who don't know). The point that building an online persona (identity) for a particular forum has a value, and fosters better relationships, even if that persona is not clearly linked to an offline "identity," hasn't really gotten through.
Of course-- I don't think Gawker is really new media, or that Denton is particularly interested in building new media or online discussions. It's "Gawker." It's there ot make money, and to stuff the form and content of old media into the new. It's one way; it's mass produced by the talking head of a journalist; it's not at all collective; and at its high-point, it's a freak show. It's GAWKER.
Why are any of us talking about it, anyway? Surely we're not stay-at-home-unemployed-not-moms whose other options are the soaps, Oprah and Dr. Oz's latest rehash of mumbo-jumbo mystics and "sex therapy."
As others have said, it depends on the members.
I fly model helicopters.
I frequently read helifreak.com, a members-only discussion forum.
Most of the posts are informative.
Some are very opinionated.
Lots of collaborative problem solving.
Almost none are trolls, angry or insulting.
It's mostly just guys that love model helicopters teaching, learning, joking and ranting.
... the websites where, when the blog writers in question actually read their comments, they go as mad as The Master himself.
Seriously, I have seen so many damn hissy fits on those sites over the years.
What the hell is the point of having discrete sites when half the damn people write off-topic crap a good deal of the time?
Then when people moan about it, they get told several expletives, or in the very rare cases, people agree, in which case the blog writer sometimes goes nuts because nobody agrees with their ego-boost attempts of a blog article.
I forgot which site it was where someone started to bring their personal life about suicide and abuse (from a parent I think it was) on to the site for absolutely no reason, then everyone throwing a fit at him, then him throwing an even bigger fit.
It was so embarrassing.
You guys all remember that we read this back in 2010, right?
I mean, s/Fark/Gawker/ and all that, the only notable difference is that the Fark guy said only 1% of the comments were worth anything, while the Gawker guy says 1 in 5. Which would be a huge improvement if it had any basis in reality.
you should read everything on the internet as if it had "but I'm probably talking out of my ass" appended to it.
Just look at all the Youtube intellectuals in video comments. Logical fallacies and personal attacks everywhere.
I often find myself drawn to comments becuase i think of them as a window onto peoples psyche about a subject. Unfortunately, almost without exception, I find myself feeling like an insect drawn to a bright light, wish I hadn't wasted the portion of my life reading comments, amazed at the amount of time some people spend loudly commenting (when they really should try reading instead), and occasionally feel like I need a shower due to the experience.
...I will say that the only "problem" is the level of intelligence of most commenters. Please note that I make that observation without regard to political categories or labels. The tea-baggger crowd might have the edge, but there's more than enough flawed reasoning to go around in those comments. So, yeah, without a reasonable amount of, well, reason, it's pretty tough to say that these forums are a place for "thoughtful discussion".
I know most of you are new here, and new to teh intertubes. But this is really old news. This decline began in September 1993.
I agree that's part of the problem. Take the fact that he's the guy who founded Gawker. So you post a story on Gawker about how Jon Hamm Hates Kim Kardashian, and you wonder, "Why am I not getting the most elite brilliant comments in response?" Even sites like CNN are full of trash. How can you be surprised that your comments are ignorant flamebait with no dignity when they're in response to stories that are ignorant flamebait with no dignity?
But also, honestly, if there were an interesting story on CNN, I wouldn't want to bother commenting on it on CNN. I'd wait until it got posted someplace like Slashdot, and then I'd comment there. It's a better audience for my comments, and there's a better moderation system.
But there's more to it than just that-- Slashdot is *where I have my discussions*. If I post on a million different web sites, I can't keep track of who I'm talking to and who has responded to my comment. Even if the people on cnn.com were great and their discussion system was great, I wouldn't really want to post comments on Gawker *and* CNN *and* MSNBC *and* wherever else an interesting story pops up. I'd rather wait until the story shows up on an aggregation service I'm used to, and then comment there. The consistency of having one site (or a couple) to engage in discussions is part of what makes it work.
So essentially, I agree that comments may be a waste of time on Gawker and CNN. It's better to assume that there will be news aggregation and discussion sites (like Slashdot) and people can go there for discussion.
You just need those funny Torx screwdrivers, and about 15kg of a mixture of 1 part Portland cement, 3 parts ball bearings and water to make a medium thick mud. Attach a threaded 12mm eye through the top, put some really big nuts loose on the shank, fill with the concrete mix. Re-attach back, wait a week. You have now upgraded a not very good doorstop to a reasonably good mud anchor.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Overheard one of my kids say this "That is dumber than a youtube comment"
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Then what does? Bots?
They have a site named after the Gizmondo, of course it's inane!
Why am I even posting a comment? I'm not going to add to the discussion. Or am I?
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
Posting comments to political stories and blogs is my worst habit - a total time-suck I might as well have spent shouting into the wind. But then I read some stupid comment and feel compelled to "set him straight". Why, I have no idea, and I believe I'm slowly getting a grip on the neurosis.
However, I agree that slashdot's moderation system works very well, if you surf along at only 4 in full, 2 for the one-liners. Informed comments from experts on technical matters in particular.
The other that really works for me is the NYT, which combines editorial moderation of the real crappy stuff, and call-outs for the "best" ones (always with a couple of right-wing call-outs to prove their 'balance'), plus a user-moderation system. NYT comments that get recommended by many are invariably thoughtful and serious and well-informed; the top ten are generally as worth reading as the story or column commented upon.
Why others can't follow the slashdot or NYT models, I have no idea. I read a lot of Salon.com, but their comments are worthless, and a major new revamp allows "reply threads" that quickly become tiresome (or repulsive) arguments - and there's still no moderation or scoring that allows useful comments to rise to one's attention.
Online comments used to be somewhat entertaining. Now it's just the same poster who camps out under different names posting the same idea or rebutting ideas over and over all day long. It's get tiresome and hard to read and it happens on almost any article now. I know someone who had a column who said a lot of them have strangely very similar ip address for people who refute all comments all day long.
I used to like to read the comments for the entertainment, now I skip it, its all formulated things like telling some to "get educated", "your ignorant", "go back and re-read the article", "did you read the article"...and basically everyone is racist and anyone who patriotic is ignorant and evil.
The Knight-Mozilla Open News partnership (a collaboration around tech and news) ran a competitions entitled, "Jesus Fucking Christ have you read the Comments section lately? who are these assholes? We have to change this immediately!"
Actually, it was called "Beyond Comment Threads" but the you get the idea.
More here:
https://drumbeat.org/en-US/challenges/beyond-comment-threads/full
Rome wasn't build in a day. The same is true for global interaction and world peace through comment sections. Just give it some time.
They can still be useful if your audience is small enough and professional. However, if you just open it up to the general public then yes, you will get mostly shrill vitriol or nonsensical crackpot comments of the "millennium hand and shrimp" variety.
Proverbs 21:19
It's quite a stretch to conclude "online comments are a joke", based on the quality of comments on your own social network sites.
I think one of the biggest problems with online comments, and especially one that we're seeing in a presidential election year, is that a lot of them seem to be politically-motivated. If you look at CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, or even Yahoo, any news story that is on the topic of politics sees a lot of comments (if comments are enabled). I don't have any proof, but I would bet a good amount of money that most of those comments are not from regular people reading the story, but are posted by individuals working in one of the campaigns, probably in their "social media" departments. This is where the campaigns hire a few truckloads of twentysomethings at $10/hour to sit around in cubicles on their notebook computers posting the same old talking point nonsense that the candidates spew out. And they do this because they need to be able to convince the public that they "understand the new media" and are "llstening to the younger generations and the future of news". Ron Paul seems to be an "expert" on this approach -- though he seems to have toned things down since 2008. The unfortunate thing about this is that the comments sections become dominated by this crap being posted by all the campaigns out there, so the decent comments by regular folks get lost in this shuffle.
If you have a dedicated group of users that will volunteer like the people here are /., great. If you have prestige, deep pockets, and interns to moderate like the New York Times you can moderate yourself. However, I have a small site where I very occasionally post about small business valuation http://freevaluationsonline.com/blog and I had to shut off comments because I can't wade through 1,000s of spam bot comments and trolls to get a few real comments.
Personally, I've been using manual div hacks and ABP's element hider plugin to remove comment sections from virtually every site I visit. Except for sites with a very focused interest, I find the average comment to be ignorant, mean-spirited, racist, or otherwise not worth wasting any time or bandwidth on.
Most people don't agree with the standard liberal view-point, therefore comments are worthless...
? I wouldn't read /. if it wasn't for the comments ?
Very strange.
Now, if the comments are not in any way organised, summarised and moderated then that is a failure of the system, not a reason to throw the whole idea out the window.
A problem with comments is that it's often got political, religious, or philosophical issues and that tends to create tension that causes people to flame each other.
Discussions that don't have that focus tend to be more productive.
Controlling trolls or extreme and hostile opinions is difficult. Something like the yelp system but for commentators might be useful. That is, some system that actively sorts posters using some kind of algorithm.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
comment makes YOU!
Yes, Slashdot has its memes. There are the inside jokes. Those things can be annoyances, but they're also part of what makes this a community with an identity.
But there are many insightful comments here that I rely on to stay abreast of technologies and developments that aren't in my critical path. Whenever something comes out I haven't heard of before, I turn to the discussion on Slashdot to get informed opinions on the relative merits and demerits. I have never found that anywhere else.
I don't have time to be a karma whore. I don't have the energy to be terribly clever at humor. I am too self-conscious to mimic memes for mods. But when I do get a 5 mod (a rare thing) on Slashdot, it makes me feel good because I respect the quality of my peers here.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The OP is only correct in a subset of online data.
Actually the term "comment" is the problem. By definition practically, a comment is a throwaway expression of one's opinion and "comments" are just a whole lot of them.
There is a field called Computer Assisted Meetings. I researched a bit of it and worked on some software designs.
At the time my project did not go through due to the extremely high cost of buying enough data input terminals, one per attendee, and there were no smartphones or cheap terminals worth mentioning. Still is a bit of a problem considering older attendees would not be comfortable sending email from their phones, etc.
As someone mentioned, online forums are useful, and I think the reason is Google.
Arxiv is a good example of what happens when people who single-mindedly want to concentrate original information actually are given a tool to do so. However it is based on individual uncoordinated actions, in other words knowledge is concentrated here but the discussion side occurs prior to publication in research teams not at this website.
My own aim was for people to gather and solve problems together. A group at Harvard tried this and closed down.
My idea was to create a lens to concentrate information, and it was sparked by wanting to make an ad hoc site for people to bring different things needed to respond to an earthquake when government related institutions were paralyzed. This was a while back. You could imagine people picking slots to put their information into, but without a live person to organize the data it would quickly devolve into a BBS. And this is all we have mostly today.
This was before say, Twitter which is basically just shouting out into the cloud, or Facebook which is based on a friends metaphor.
So the metaphor you choose is a big deal.
A Facebook "Wall" page is not the best way to run a discussion. Twitter is not aimed at finding conclusions, and so on.
I believe the second term that is a problem is "moderator". In Slashdot, a moderator is someone who feels like trading in posting his own comments to score other people's comments. However in a real live discussion a moderator would be someone who is actively controlling the dynamic of the discussion.
In CAM there are actually methods and tools (some software) such as those developed at Eindhoven U. and there are more advanced methods, wielded by a meeting moderator or guide, to organize brainstormed ideas, find key topics, and pose followup questions in other words to concentrate knowledge.
So it is really a mistake to listen to this gawker guy. It is a lot more important to think about the kinds of interaction you want to enable, and then find a way to do it. Technology is not necessarily the most important part of the equation even.
The WWW is a small part of what is possible, and you know it is just one protocol among many. Currently you can do a video conference among a small number of participants but there are no good models for large gatherings which is what I was interested in, so there is a broad field available for research and experimentation.
Well...comments on the Gawker network sites have certainly, for the most part, become specious. Some of their pages have enthusiastic and knowledgeable communities (e.g. Jalopnik), while other sites, that have suffered the so-called use of the ''ban-hammer" (e.g. Gizmodo) are now mostly trolled by drooling morons. Even Lifehacker seems to have gone downhill.
Comments or Forums are a joke, the problem I have with Nick Denton's words, are the simply fact he is a decade late and about 10 dollars short.. Why are these stories on Slashdot, as if readers have not figured this out already. You are talking to slashdot users not the idiot that use yahoo, google or MSN to get there news over stupid shit.
Forums had the idea that a discussion or exchange of ideas could take place, but now you have nothing but jack-offs arguing over petty bullshit. Comments should be constructive but often are comprise of some idiot right or left wing bullshit and are in no way related to the article they commented on.
What the fuck was Nick Denton talking about? Another over educated goon who is just now figuring it out?
Having said that I am in no way commenting towards you... or users of slashdot towards forums. I am a metal worker, forums and comments on videos, or pictures or even just general dialog are often constructive and very helpful. Anything I can do to add to my knowledge and skills from those who stick to the subject are great.
If you read forums for reasons beyond adding to your skills, you are wasting time. If you are reading comments that do not have a different (constructive) opinion you are wasting your time.
It was great knowing you all. I guess it's time we all pack up and leave now that we've been shown the error of our ways. bye.
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
gawker media seems devoted to the concept of celebrity... implicitly devaluing their readership as non-celebrity miscreants.
nick denton is an ignorant hypocrite.
gawker media is garbage.
Woo! You're back!
<warm fuzzies>
I was worried you'd skipped out on us!
..Mullah or Pope, Preacher or Poet, who was it wrote: "Give any one species too much rope and they'll fuck it up"?
Way back in January 2008, in a comment slashdot user mike449 proposed using the built-in camera to detect gamma-radiation by "look[ing] for bright dots". It actually happened last year. Who says comments are useless?
Interestingly, one of the few communities of commenters that I can put up with are on Jalopnik.com, which is a gawker blog. By and large they're both informative and funny.
I think their daily 'comment of the day' feature does a good job of highlighting the good stuff in the community.
I run a web forum (with admittedly, a very narrow automotive focus) and I find that there is a HUGE volume of knowledge regularly shared. We have the occasional troublemaker, but myself and 3 other moderators can handle the situations easily, and questionable behaviors/users are essentially sent before a democratic panel of the rest of the users to determine what to do with them.
I think the issues come when you have a very general site, which attracts, to be blunt, less intelligent users (my site is >20% engineers among active posters), you slowly push out the worthwhile posters until you're left with nothing but poor grammar and LOLcats. The worse it gets the harder it is to moderate and deal with and the less useful the information becomes.
Just another ignorant American.
Nick seems to have forgotten where he came from. Gawker Media sites are known for literary excellence or even good investigative reporting. In fact, the only thing they are known for is hyperbolic articles intentionally designed to be inflammatory and generate page views. This works best when there are open comments pages for the masses to foment cyber rioting. That formula has made Nick millions of dollars. But, now he wants to put on ears and kill his cash cow.
Genius.
Yep, this is what I came to point out as well. Maybe comments are bad on Gawker sites... Hah! Slashdot, Techdirt and a few others have comments that are actually worth reading.
If you write silly puff pieces, you shouldn't be surprised when you get silly puff comments.
On-line comment sections are clearly not regarded as useless by the political flacks that inhabit the boards at places like the New York Times. Clearly, they regard it as critically important to get their talking points in the first ten posted remarks, and they have people hired to post at midnight when the OpEds go live.
I submit that the lesson we are slowly learning everywhere is that anonymity is a losing proposition: we really need to know who we're talking to for any half-way serious purpose, and places that refuse to acknowledge this (slashdot, wikipedia) are gradually drifting toward irrelevance.
He's talking like a fucking old man.
First, I find online comments to slashdot stories to be the best part of slashdot and when i say best part I don't mean amusing or entertaining but rather educational and informative.
Second, it's not just slashdot I feel this way about.
Third online discussions are only just beginning to meet really clever technology where they will be elevated above the flamewars spam and mindless ejaculations that yes, do pepper the substantive stuff that fills all current online forums.
Finally this is old man talk. What would anyone every need a home PC for? Why would anyone want more than 64 k memory? If man was meant to fly then he'd have wings.
Blah blah blah
fucking blah blah blah
fuckin' blah
fuckin' blah
fuckin' blah blah blah.
This is the voice of a a guy whose shot his load and is out of ideas. That's why there's retirement, so people like Nick Denton can get the fuck out of the way and let young people with fresh ideas and unstale aspirations solve the problems he failed at.
Fuck you Nick. Go order some more viagra and head down south where you belong.
Combined, this post is one of the greatest spec doc collections for building an impressive comment engine I've ever seen. Anyone up to unifying the needs (or listing possible reasonable forks) so that coders can get started?
Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
If you want to see how comments and threaded conversations should be handled you don't have to look any further than Reddit and their platform is open source.
Oh fuck is /this/ not the site to use as a basis. :)