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 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.