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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..
The idea of capturing the intelligence of the readership was correct! The only problem was the intelligence of the readership...
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.
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.
Cole's Axiom sums it up. The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.
Maybe Gawker, et al, need to come to grips with the terrifying possibility that online comments absolutely do capture the intelligence of the readership.