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
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".
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
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
doctrine (from dictionary.com)
noun
1. a particular principle, position, or policy taught or advocated, as of a religion or government
2. something that is taught; teachings collectively
3. a body or system of teachings relating to a particular subject
I purposely left off their examples, which are religious, although there is no reason that doctrine is inherently so.
Maybe I am not so bright, but I am not seeing a definition of the term "scientific doctrine" as anything more (or less) than "a body or system of teaching related to science."
I suspect you may be confusing "doctrine" with "dogma."
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.
...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.
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.
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.