Slashdot Mirror
Popular Science Is Getting Rid of Comments
Daniel_Stuckey writes "From an article announcing the sites' decision to do away with comments: 'It wasn't a decision we made lightly. As the news arm of a 141-year-old science and technology magazine, we are as committed to fostering lively, intellectual debate as we are to spreading the word of science far and wide. The problem is when trolls and spambots overwhelm the former, diminishing our ability to do the latter. ... even a fractious minority wields enough power to skew a reader's perception of a story, recent research suggests. ... A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics. Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again. Scientific certainty is just another thing for two people to "debate" on television. And because comments sections tend to be a grotesque reflection of the media culture surrounding them, the cynical work of undermining bedrock scientific doctrine is now being done beneath our own stories, within a website devoted to championing science.'"
This comes alongside news that Google is trying to clean up YouTube comments by adding integration with Google+. "You’ll see posts at the top of the list from the video’s creator, popular personalities, engaged discussions about the video, and people in your Google+ Circles."
In other news, Slashdot has decided to get rid of the commenting system, noting that most comments are not informative, and only serve to derail the important points with discussions of overlords, hot grits, and first posts. Instead, only the Slashdot team will be able to comment, limited to which "dept" the story came from.
The change on slashdot was well received according to the poll asking about it. The one choice, Cowboy Neal, which was explained to mean "yes", was the overwhelming choice by voters. The change is expected to make it easier on new users.
Erstwhile administrator and founder Cmdr Taco, said simply, "In Soviet Russia, this is how we did it."
Have you read my journal today?
"Everything, from evolution to the origins of climate change, is mistakenly up for grabs again"
And here I was under the impression that everything in science was always up for grabs. This is just the mag trying to silence dissent. I happen to agree with evolution but I have no problem debating it with people who do not. Nor do I believe evolution is settled science, we continue to learn a great deal and there is always a possibility of some groundbreaking new development to come along and rock the whole foundation.
Between these sites slamming the door shut on public comments, walled login gardens, and NSA slimy fingers on everything, it's just super depressing. Feels like a mortal wound.
Seriously, critique the Slashdot comment system if you like, but it's a thousand times better than 99% of the sites out there. And it's pretty simple. Sites not ripping off this system seem like they conscientiously want a reason to slam the door on public conversation.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
And this why we can't have nice things. Thanks a lot!
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Seriously. I can't think of a better system for comment handling. Just move the sliders aaaaaaall the way to the right and never see another troll!
For some reason The Register also seems to have good quality comments. As does The Guardian, so it can be possible to build a commenting community that works. Maybe it's a British thing?
On the other hand it's been years since I bothered looking at comments on any Canadian media site..... CBC pays a lot of money to contract out comment moderation and still manages to have a worthless stream of dreck.
Three Squirrels
All the better to just push an opinion.
A meaningless comment. In fact, pretty much a troll.
PopSci brings up a lot of good points, and they have made a decision that I think more and more on-line pubs will make. You are free to send them a Letter to the Editor, but these ugly snipe-fests that go on in many forums have little if any value.
The comments at the Seattle Times are a great example, having been taken over by extremists who apparently have no voice anywhere else.
The fact is that in most forums that don't have a "moderation system" become flooded with trolls that render the whole forum concept useless for any real conversation.
PopSci isn't the first to ditch forums, and will not be the last.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
As a long-time user who sometimes choses to post AC and is always logged in, I start at 2. It's my understanding that the 2 comes from having good Karma. I've been around long enough to remember when numeric Karma was visible to users. This resulted in contests to see who could rack up the most points, which became a problem. Sometimes people like myself would get bored and commit "Karma Suicide" to re-start the game. They hid numeric Karma to stop that. I haven't read SlashCode; but I understand the number is still lurking in there so that the system can decide where to start our posts.
Anyway, I digress. I don't want money factoring into the equation. The Slashdot moderation system went through several changes early on and has stabilized quite nicely AFAIK. Would any actual Slashdot employees care to comment on the last time a major change was made to the algorithm? It isn't broken. Don't fix it.
I don't think it's patented either. I too wonder why more sites don't adopt it.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
> A politically motivated, decades-long war on expertise has eroded the popular consensus on a wide variety of scientifically validated topics.
True worldwide, alarmingly so in the US, where "it inconveniences my politics" carries the same weight in discussions as "there is no evidence for this hypothesis".
But the only people who really control discussion these days are the pig-headed dolts who won't give up a lost argument for anything, and the trolls, who aren't there for legitimate argument anyway.
Anything else sane is lost in the noise.
I'm not mourning the loss of comments on a lot of sites. As a matter of fact, to protect my sanity I have been avoiding comments for the most part.
There are precious few places that have a comments section that have a decent moderation system.
And lastly, your post is content-free BS.
--
BMO
there are no "bedrock scientific doctrines", the teachings and models of science get replaced or refined. Scientists want that and are glad when it happens.
there's a safari plug in that hides comment sections on sites. it's nice.
It's time for scientists to come down from there ivory towers and let the masses participate, rather than treat them as audience.
Don't confuse academia for science, even though most of the latter happens in the world of the former.
That said, the masses count as complete idiots. They will prefer the argument by the guy with the best hair over the one with actual supporting evidence. They prefer to hear about how great everything looks over the possibility that we as a species have caused an ongoing global extinction event which may yet climax with our own extinction. The give more weight to what their friend Steve's mother's best friend heard about Fukushima Daiichi at the hairdressers than they do to the IAEA with boots-on-the-ground in Futaba.
If the masses count as mere audience, they do so out of choice - "Math is hard, let's go shopping!"
And to keep in the spirit of comments in general, they're Worse Than Hitler, Satan And JarJar Binks All Rolled Into One!!!!!!!!!
I couldn't agree more. My time is valuable and its too precious to waste on wading through troll droppings.
There really are many with an ideological bent, who are actively seeking to disrupt sites discussing science for purposes that have nothing to do with science, but rather to influence discussion that may come from the consequences of scientific findings.
The reality is that modern science has become so specialized that few commenters are really capable of adding anything to a meaningful discussion anyway. For example, what kind of meaningful input might one expect of the average commenter provide say on the discussion of the importance of Uryshon's Lemma or Gershgorin's Circle Theorem to modern bioinformatics or aerodynamics? It is a shame that the electronic equivalent of graffiti artists have vandalized so many useful commenting sites to suit their own personal and ideological fantasies, Particularly, since it denies so many a peek into the intrinsic beauty inherent in such discussions.
You're right, however, and without some form of moderation or peer review the entire effort takes on the character defined by the lowest IQ posting. Many may complain that scientist are retreating to their ivory towers, but the sad fact is that the vandal's sacking every website they can overrun make such towers the only safe haven to continue to do science. If they want into the ivory towers, they will first have to develop the credibility to enter.
Its far better to submit "letters" to the editor, with comments and let them make the best judgement as to which most advance the topic under discussion. This can be done by a few moderators on most sites. I would be quite happy not to see my own posts or questions, if I knew I was instead reading better or more informative ones.
In the earlier days of the internet, forums and news groups and such led to incredibly brilliant discussions. And I think some people at the time felt this would eventually lead to a paradise of "mass human thought engine" resulting into some sort of "hive brain" of human collective thought.
But in the real world, most people are just bored or bigoted or want attention --- and humans as a whole are more Homer Simpson or Miley Cyrus than Albert Einstein or Carl Sagan.
And this reality won. For now. Scientific and intellectual thought will find a new way to win again. Given enough time.
Priest: "Universe from nothing, no laws of physics, sped up time"+ huge discrepancies. Creationism? No. Big Bang Theory
Popular Science's headlines are way too sensationalistic, many commenters only comment on the headline and never read the article or its references anyway. Like the one about not teaching higher algebra in school as a default, headline was something like: "Let's stop teaching math in school". What a disaster in the comments. Some people just want to be able to say [in their own minds]: "I'm smarter than these obviously stupid experts". That's the kind of thing that needs to stop or be downvoted into oblivion.
..."bedrock scientific doctrine"
Do they even realize the inherent contradiction between "scientific" and "doctrine"?
Science is the ruthless pursuit of truth through falsifiable hypotheses, and *requires* challenges to any "doctrine", and *requires* the admission of error.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
I too wonder why more sites don't adopt it.
Because it still rewards group think and creates a popularity contest rather than a forum for actual discussion. I can say this as one of the first people to ever post on slashdot back when it was hosted in Cmdr Taco's dorm room in college. I even contributed some of the code once upon a time.
That said most comment systems have this issue. In reality, all they need to do is allow you to block anyone you wish. No points, no popularity contest. Just block the people you dislike and move on. You dont see them, they dont see you, everyones happy in their bubble.
Gag me.
Did someone really just use that term?
cf. http://www.edge.org/conversation/a-philosophy-of-physics
The term scientific certainty almost always comes up in terms of the Global Warming debate these days, although evolution has been in there as well. I'm sick of either side using it as a debate point, its unscientific.
You can almost never be certain of anything. That's not how science works.
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
Meh, fuck the per-site user comments. Content is what counts. Their content isn't in the comments. As you say, they did "let the masses participate", however, the masses weren't actually being scientific at all. You have the concerted trolling flood leveraged by creationists to blame, not the scientist. If you want to participate, simply pick a subject, come up with some repeatable experiment that proves it wrong or right. Cite some other resources that lend credence towards or away from the other experiments conclusions. It's not like anyone's in an ivory tower, scientists are at the ground floor, scrapping for funding, living one paycheck to the next like any below average joe. You don't do science for the money...
I'd take no comments too over having every article flooded with baseless misinformation, logical fallacies and the never ending Gish Gallop. Like you say, the commenters can go elsewhere and discuss things, perhaps somewhere with better moderators.
Additionally, it's the Unix Way(tm): Do one thing and do it well. Not every damn site has to have a comments section. That's dumb, seriously. Slashdot and other aggregation hubs are great for comments, you don't have to have a load of different accounts.
Since when does consensus determine the truth of anything? I would side on open discussion because even the pros are human, and can make mistakes, and/or deliberately misstate things for emotional reasons. Open discussion prevents any one party from controlling the dialog for political reasons. Close it down, and one party gets entire control of the floor. The internet was about P2P interaction, and yes that includes dealing with people who don't agree with the stated position.
The term 'troll' has been abused so much now by free speech critics that I'm not sure it has any meaning than as a pejorative for someone who uses whit and sarcasm to score a good point. If science is about extracting truth from the ether, then this person is no different. He's correct, or not. His style is irrelevant. 'trolling' is not an excuse to shut down communication. If that's what popular science wants, maybe they shouldn't publish on the internet and give monologues on public television.. I'm sure all 3 people watching will agree, wringing out their emotional tampons in sympathy.
I'm with you but I used to work in print and a decent editor would have have been able to mitigate the trolling.
It's 2013 not 1813 and *any* editor-level staff member at Popular Science should have known that trolling on the comments can be mitigated with a points system or if need be require a login. Sometimes its not that easy but the solutions aren't expensive or prohibitively time consuming.
Here's the thing: COMMUNICATING WITH READERS IS A NECESSITY
Newspapers can't afford *not* to have a comments section. It's 2013...my grandma is on facebook.com...the expectation for interactivity and social networking integration is higher and growing...
Part of the problem is that media *owners* have no idea what they are doing and just do the standard cost-cutting algorythm whenever they buy a newspaper. They cut out every function that isn't associated with ad revenue until the publication is so shitty and uninformative no one uses it.
Popular Science is no different. Really it's just a brand name anymore...one of dozens of 'titles' owned by a conglomerate. In this case the The Bonnier Corporation out of Sweeden
Usually a company like Bonnier will contract with someone like Disquss or even Facebook.com to integrate all the comments on all pages to one system (that will then sell the commentors data on the advertising grey market).
Just for comparison's sake, imagine if Apple were run by a person whose only business experience is running a casino....
That is the kind of step down in management quality that crippled and ruined print media.
The whole notion that 'print is dead' is bullshit excuses to cut staff and make generic news not local news. People are reading more text than ever before. People are writing more text than ever before. People have an expectation for distraction like never before. People want quality media in all forms across platforms.
Thank you Dave Raggett
I much prefer the popularity contest, that is: a democracy.
One problem with the "blocking bubble" method is that it promotes a partial balkanization of the site. In theory, I would actually want to know if opposition poster X ever wrote something that people found interesting, because I'd want to consider it and possibly respond publicly. But it's simply beside the point because on Slashdot I've never encountered anyone that I was motivated to block. The moderation system has already pre-fixed that problem without any effort on my part.
So is there any site you think does it better?
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I keep hearing people say this, but I have found the comments on Slashdot to come from quite a diverse group. There's no doubt that there's some deep groupthink such as the anti-Apple and anti-Microsoft sentiments on this site, yet you can still find comments praising both of these companies modded up despite the overall bias against them.
I am strongly against this idea. First of all, there are so many people commenting on the site that it would be nearly impossible to block out all of the noise one commenter at a time. Secondly, there are some people that have very rational viewpoints and make great contributions to the discussion 90% of the time, but there's one or two topics in which they go off the deep end. The current moderation system allows you to mod them up when they're making good points and mod them into oblivion when they go mental.
I imagine that the reason Dice Holdings purchased Slashdot is to find ways to maximize profit from the company. Then why is it that they haven't attempted to license out the comment moderation system currently available on Slashdot? Yes, it might cannibalize some of their current readership, but they could limit that by licensing to web sites that do not specialize in technology.
It's not like they would run into a lot of competition either. Right now, the most popular comment hosting site seems to be Disqus. Every site that uses Disqus lists the comments in reverse chronological order. That means that every poster is reading the last few comments and then chiming in with arguments that have already been made and maybe even debunked much earlier in the conversation. And the moderation system has no concept of karma or the capability to moderate posts via categories. Dice, use what you've got and start making money off of it from other web sites already!
...and that's why perfectly good comments are modded down, the equivalent of "I disagree" but also, because of Slashdot's thresholds, the equivalent of one user hiding another's comments.
That's also why high quality comments from anonymous posters are often buried from the moment they are posted -- because moderation isn't designed to foster high quality, it's designed to foster group-think. Fortunately, a bunch of very smart posters means that "group think" here isn't nearly as uniform as it is elsewhere.
Slashdot's moderation/metamod system is BADLY broken. The site survives because it has unusually intelligent commenters overall; not because moderation is working.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
JarJar Hitler is the worst. "mesa going to send you to hella"
In the early days of the internet, only those involved with academia were online. Even the least-educated were at the very least students in higher education.
i LIKE strange comments. i love youtube AS IT IS. i DO NOT want to see featured comments from "personalities." I like the offensive and non-PC stuff from unknown. That's why I watch YouTube and not other forms of media. I want the raw, uncensored, the good and the bad. I wouldn't be surprised if Google ruins it, as they're on a streak of ruining all of their products lately.
Maybe it's not a bad decision. Not because of the reasons listed, but because sites like this doesn't provide a decent comment structure to allow any kind of useful discussions. Maybe it's better to use slashdot, reddit, etc. for discussions. I'm not against separating content production from discussions. Social media features (commenting, sharing, connecting, etc) are a hype now, every site is trying to add something. Most of the are not really useful. Maybe instead of trying to providing social media they should focus on the content.
Pay some people or give the better commenters the ability to temporarliy ban trolls. That's how you solve the problem, not by removing commenting.
No: JarJar Hitler actually says:
"mesa got a Final Solution for de Jedi Problem". . .
I almost never mod stories when I have mod points. Why? Because the stories that I have enough interest in to read through I want to post in and you can't mod in stories you post in. Stories I don't post in I usually don't have any interest in.
This leads to a paradox where things you have knowledge of you can't mod, and things you don't know about you can mod.
I think you should be able to apply mod points into stories you post in, but make the limitations more specific -- ie, you can't mod the parent you replied to and you can't mod the replies to your post. This would prevent the self-promotion and group think because you wouldn't be able to promote favorable responses, either.
Let’s say you’re watching a video from Justin Timberlake. What type of video comment would be awesome to see: one from JT himself, one from people you care about who love the video ...or one from just the last random person to stop by?
Note the emphasis; "people you care about" (e.g. fellow groupthinking fans defending Lady Gaga to the death against those who say her latest weird-ass dressing up video for an otherwise relatively normal pop song isn't the best thing since sliced bread) and "who love the video" (i.e. pro positive comments). Very adolescent.
Frankly, if I stop by to see the video and I decide to say something negative about it for an entirely legitimate reason, I consider it mod abuse if it's clearly downvoted purely because it's not the majority and/or fan opinion. (And one must remember that rabid fans in small groups can push above their weight if they're aggressive in pushing their views against a less obsessed majority who disagree- or at least don't agree- with them; this doesn't make it legitimate however.)
But it appears that YouTube are now encouraging this behaviour.
We know this already happens (and that YouTube comments frequently descend into moronic flamewarring) but it's disappointing to see that YouTube (i.e. Google) are officially condoning it. This is likely to encourage the spread of this attitude even to videos on less fan-oriented but still divisive topics (e.g. controversial science and politics). It's also likely to legitimise such mod abuse elsewhere as people now think that's what they're for... if they didn't already.
I can't wait.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
This would matter a lot more if the quality of comments weren't better than the quality of half the trash that Popular Science prints now. Used to love it, but I don't think I'll be renewing again due to the constantly falling "standard" for articles and the blatant paid articles. The "Best of What's New" section in the last issue I read had 2, maybe 3 actual innovative new products. The rest (about 10 or so) were all uninteresting, non-innovative, paid trash. I don't even read half to 3/4 of the articles in an issue anymore because they are so pointless. I used to read every article from front to back. Sad to see my once favorite periodical going the way of the dino.
AJ Henderson
So, a science based publication can't come up with the technology needed to effectively deal with spam bots? Trolls will troll, but, really?
". . . with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. . . . "
So Began the introduction every time the Science Fiction television series called, "The Outer Limits" came on. But isn't that how television always was? There was no way to jump in the screen and add your input or comments. It was just there. But this isn't television - It's the internet. Input back and forth is available, unless the content side refuses to allow it.
I can understand having some filtering of comments which are insulting or inflammatory in a personal manner. Sure. But I don't want to be forced to always listen to this or that person's opinion or theory. There's a box with news I can turn on for that. Thomas Jefferson once said he would rather deal with the inconveniences of too much liberty than the bigger problems of too little. How about you? When you read someone's opinion that you disagree with, do you stay calm and thoughtful . . . or get steaming mad and upset because other people read it and they might get 'converted' from what you believe? Remember, some of these people you consider trolls, may also be on other sites where 'people like you' are considered trolls when you post your opinion. Do they allow you to post when you post thoughtful opinions? Then maybe you should do the same. Let's use the internet as the internet and not as a TV - - as much as possible.
"We now return control of your television set to you. Until next week at the same time, when the control voice will take you to – The Outer Limits.
Yes. We know god deliberately put those fossils there to fool us and entice us to doubt the preacher/mullah.
We know for a fact that climate cannot change because we know volcanic CO2 has no effect on the atmosphere (sarcasm) and we also cannot find any records whatsoever of other climate changes occurring in the fossil record (also sarcasm)
If this response were written by a true believer, it would not be a trolled post but since I wrote it, consider it a troll comment.
Politics haven't gotten extreme on both ends in the United States, they're moved far to the right under a know-nothing Republican party, and a pro-big-business, center-right Democratic president who would be leading the conservative party in a sane country.
It's very difficult to find a left-wing extremist with any power in the United States, but the far-right extremists own the Republican party, and it's these Creationist, global warming denying, birther, Republican nutjobs that disrupt comment sections on sites they're intellectually unprepared to actually participate in with their superstitions, ignorance, and hate.
There's been no increase in distrust of science among the sane, just distrust of individual researchers, which is why we have peer review.
The general distrust of science is just from the religious nutters, who are trying to cling to beliefs that are completely absurd to those who have learned to reason and evaluate evidence.