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
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"?
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
Like democracy, Slashdot's moderation system is the worst one out there, except for all the other alternatives.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
it's designed to foster group-think.
Bullshit, the group-think already exists, moderation mearely highlights it, that's it's fucking job! The higher the number you browse at the lower the resolution you have on slashdot's opinions. If you want to see what 'slashdot thinks' then browse at a high number, if you want to know what every troll and drunkard thinks, browse at -1. Unpopular posts are modded to hell because they are unpopular, not because they are wrong. Unpopular posts are often rated interesting if they're well written and there's is a grain of truth in them.
The comment system here is far from perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than any other site I've visited in the past decade, part of that is the moderation performed by those " unusually intelligent commenters", plus the fact that it's difficult for "unintelligent commeters" to spam the moderation system with phoney up/down votes. If you still think your being treated unfairly then reword your argument or better still perform a bit of self-skepticisim on your own ideas to work out why everone else thinks your post sucks.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Like democracy, Slashdot's moderation system is the worst one out there, except for all the other alternatives.
I'd have to say this is absolutely the case as well. I've been pretty disillusioned with the simple up or down vote system that Ars Technica implemented just recently. It absolutely highlights the problems of down voting due to simple disagreement when it was initially instituted to help stem obvious trolls or abuse. Devolved down into the "downvote, don't agree" syndrome immediately and has led to some very strange groupthink because of it.
Funny part is that the real conversations/debates just happen further down the list/next pages where only the crickets chirp and the freaks are too stubborn to let things go while they speak out into an increasingly empty chamber. Not sure why I've been finding it so fascinating.
Slashdot, despite all its flaws, has been the best site I've known to watch it as it evolves. I applaud /.'s use of complexity in the commenting system and wish more sites like Ars would fucking use it. Not the simple up or down popularity contests that the majority of disqus using sites have become before entropy in the 4th dimension just wipes it all clean for another day, another article.
For good or ill, the human race is engaging in debate on a massive scale now that we didn't before. All the good learning and counter points that have helped me grow, or pissed me off entirely, have been in forums and comments. Not in books. For despair I read the comments under news articles. For absolute hope, the comments and forums in MOOC's are amazing!
Our roots as humans are completely on display in commenting systems in a way never before possible. Taco and all you fuckers here on /. have absolutely been pioneers in this fascinating area of computer science meets cultural chaos.
I don't think I could ever quite do it justice, other than to say thank you and fuckoff! I absolutely say that with love to each one of you bastards. Slashdot is broken and always was, but I know my thinking and knowledge has grown and is better off for even the small amount of participation I've engaged in here.
PopSci are pussies for giving in too soon without adding the complexity to the system like we have here on good, old, aggravating Slashdot.
Forgot to add this: Downvote and down page syndrome in commenting systems is absolutely why I view even the -1's, all the time. Whenever I get Mod points, which seems to be often lately, I always travel down to the bottom comments where the crickets chirp, with a few stops back up the page to try and get some of the older ID's stuck at 1 along with some of the more brilliant AC comments.
It's the very least I could do to try and repay the unique culture we collectively have here....
The problem is step (2), which is a lot of self-serving bollocks.
No, step 2 is correct. It's just that "unusually intelligent" should be read like "differently abled" rather than "very intelligent".
It's unusual to see people as dumb as many slashdot posters.
(Whether this applies to this post or not is up to the reader to decide).
Watch this Heartland Institute video
While you will often see an unpopular posts quickly modded into near oblivion, an hour or a day later the situation is totally reversed.
There are entire mod armies out there that run dozens of accounts knowing that a few of them will have mod points on any given day. They pounce on their topics, mod it to hell, and move on.
Later the thinking crowd arrives and the ship is righted. But the mod army has moved on. They never notice that their graffiti and tags have been painted over.
So, read posts a day or two later, and the landscape is much better.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
*** What is a decent alternative that would remove the "I disagree" button mentality and promote good well-thought-out content? ***
Well, it's so obvious that it is staring us right in the face. To get rid of the abuse of moderation options to serve as a "I disagree" button, just add that ff-ing "I disagree" button and make this a second counter next to the standard moderation. It would instantly point out the (interesting?) comments that are counter to the group-think.
# touch universe # chmod +rwx universe #
If you disagree, you should write a comment explaining why, otherwise, what have you added to the conversation? You're just taking part in a popularity contest at that point.
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.