Mozilla Working On a New Website Comment System

sfcrazy writes Mozilla is working on developing a content and commenting platform in collaboration with The New York Times and The Washington Post. The platform aims to be the next-generation commenting and content creation platform which will give more control to readers. Mozilla says in a blog post, “The community platform will allow news organizations to connect with audiences beyond the comments section, deepening opportunities for engagement. Through the platform, readers will be able to submit pictures, links and other media; track discussions, and manage their contributions and online identities. Publishers will then be able to collect and use this content for other forms of storytelling and spark ongoing discussions by providing readers with targeted content and notifications.” The project is being funded by Knights Foundation.

Comments

A return of Google's comment bar?

[pecosdave]

Remember the comment bar plugin Google had for Firefox back before the Chrome days? It let you comment on ANY webpage? Anyone who had the plugin could see you comment. Side Wiki or something? I can't recall the name.

Yeah, this sounds a little like that.

Re:A return of Google's comment bar?

[Ozoner]

Some further info on Side Wicki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...

"A good substitute could be the Google Chrome Extension: "Plus Comments" or "Site Comments":

Re:A return of Google's comment bar?

[jez9999]

How many times, though, so people complain about a Youtubs vid or a BBC article having comments disabled? I like the idea of a "fuck you, we're discussing this anyway" service.

Core competency

[LordLucless]

Web browser maker decides to create a disqus competitor, instead of working on their web browser.

Re:Core competency

[Hognoxious]

Given how increasingly shite recent versions of firefox have been, that's probably a good thing.

Re:Core competency

[Tridus]

Great, the Linux users are covered! That's going to guarantee Firefox 1% worldwide market share.

Re:Core competency

[Warbothong]

Mozilla wants an 'open Web'. Making an open source browser is a big part of that.

Protecting users from mass surveillance is another. Crippling third-party systems by default is a big part of that.

Unfortunately that kills some existing services, like unified commenting systems, which users want. Someone *could* come along with a unified commenting system which doesn't conduct mass surveillance, but that's an unlikely business model at the moment. Hence Mozilla's solving the chicken-and-egg problem themselves, by making a unified commenting system which (presumably) doesn't do mass surveillance.

If this works, it will go a long way towards making the third-party-crippling an effective default. Hence the Web becomes more 'open'.

Re:Core competency

[Quantum gravity]

Tom's Hardware did a performance comparison of Chrome 25, Firefox 19, IE10 & 9 and some version of Opera. Firefox and Chrome were neck and neck, clearly ahead of the others.

Re: Core competency

[gbjbaanb]

meanwhile people are leaving Google's Chome in droves because they fear it's used to violate their privacy. And nobody is adopting Google's new products - which is why Google keeps cancelling them.

See, its easy to make generalised statements about something. Firefox is a good thing, although it makes some people get all bothered about UI changes that are pretty inconsequential (hell, the last set of UI changes made it look *more* like Chrome, yet you say they leaving *for* Chrome....)

Anyway, I think a "standardised" discussion system could be a handy thing, any web site gets comments instead of the crappy commenting system they currently use. And if it means fewer people use twitter, the better!

Re:Core competency

[Rakarra]

It's change... some of the neckbears just don't like change...
Now, to return to our regularly scheduled "back in my day, I used lynx and you didn't hear me complain"... followed by "god damnit you kids, get off my lawn"

Not a neckbeard, but in general, change for change's sake is not a good thing.
If you throw out the good as well when getting rid of the bad, you'll just keep coming up with mediocre products (firefox, gnome, etc).
I liked some of the more stable Firefox builds before they went on their arms race with Chrome. But now, I find hideous Firefox memory leaks, removal/hiding of long-established and very useful features, and a poorer interface. This is not progress.

Re:Core competency

[Hognoxious]

Why the hell should I need to install some plugin (that'll probably steal my passwords or poison my cat) to unfuck-down something that shouldn't have been fucked-up in the first place?

A thousand times no

[drinkypoo]

Single sign-on is a fine thing. But let's encourage people to run their own message bases, because I'm tired of having to figure out which domains I need to permit scripts from, and because I don't really want one company aggregating all my comments without even having to work for them.

The Slashdot comment system

[wiredog]

is probably the "least bad" one I've seen. It would be nice if multiple ratings could be applied to a post, ("+1 funny, +1 insightful, -1 Troll") but it is fairly good at reducing the trolls and flamage.

Re:The Slashdot comment system

[Thanshin]

The system is overrated because of the user composition.

If Slashdot was a forum about games, movies and cars we'd have posts from five year olds with +5 insightful and infantile internet memes with +5 funny.

Re:The Slashdot comment system

[Richard_at_work]

How is that any different from Slashdot at any point over the past 15 years?

Re:The Slashdot comment system

[Charliemopps]

is probably the "least bad" one I've seen. It would be nice if multiple ratings could be applied to a post, ("+1 funny, +1 insightful, -1 Troll") but it is fairly good at reducing the trolls and flamage.

It's got its problems though...
When there's an article, there are some obvious things you can post and get high mod points for. You just have to be the first to post that particular comment.

Article: Something about patent trolls
Post: Patent trolls should be strung up by their thumbs!!!
+5 insightful

So basically, if you want higher mod points, you're just racing to make that post. That's dumb, and ensures the top 5 comments on any story are going to be very predictable and Slashdot comments have an obvious tendency to stay within a certain worldview and promote "group think" It'd be one thing if "insightful" meant something other than "I agree with you" but it doesn't. And I don't know how to fix that.

The problem with Discus... is basically everything. It's the worst system ever and is overwhelmed by trolls from news aggregators like DrugeReport. Any story about politics turns into a nightmare of who can post the most offensive left/right leaning viewpoint. Any post with post that actually has anything interesting to say gets dozens of highly offensive replys almost immediately. Though, if you enjoy correcting idiotic beliefs and infuriating people with IQs bellow 90, Discuss is heaven.

Re:The Slashdot comment system

[Desler]

Article: Something about patent trolls
Post: Patent trolls should be strung up by their thumbs!!!
+5 insightful

Or make the "hilarious" joke about patenting the process of filing patents.

Re:The Slashdot comment system

[UnknownSoldier]

Some of the subreddits are very good.

However the rest of the site is full of emo redditards who downvote by group-think just because they "disagree" with the status quo.

Reddit is the 4chan of /.

Re:The Slashdot comment system

[Quirkz]

I've often wanted +0 "inciteful" - a combination of insightful and flamebait, for those posts that blend useful information with a barrage of unnecessary name-calling.

Re:A more vague description, there ain't

[Anonymous Coward]

So decentralisation of commenting, with a unified account?

Sounds a lot like Disqus to me, which most people thoroughly hate.

All this...

[ilsaloving]

At a time when news organizations are shuttering their comment sections?

One news agency after another are realizing that comments actually *hurt* readership because there are enough asshole commenters out there posting crap, that it's actually turning off readers from their service entirely.

Re:All this...

[RivenAleem]

Aww man, I started to read that in "Epic Movie Trailer Guy" voice.

"At a time when news organizations are shuttering their comment sections, one news agency took a chance to engage with it's readers. This summer watch how The Washington Post turns the tables on big media. Clint Eastwood reprises his role as the pilot of the Firefox (*cut to scene of him clicking on a hyperlink*). From the Director of Mozilla vs Mothrasoft. Commenting will never be the same."

Re:All this...

[bjdevil66]

At the same time, I have found that comments on news sites were actually some of the best information out there - just like here on Slashdot. Yes, there are ahole trolls and idiots, but there aren't as many as some make it out to be - and there are usually sides to a story that aren't being told by the story itself where commenters fill in the blanks.

To be fair, though, the quality of comments overall - including here at Slashdot - has declined, simply because people don't spend the time typing up large treatises anymore. More people want a Twitter-like soundbyte more than information, and won't read comments more than a few lines long. They have better thing to... squirrel!

Re:All this...

[theskipper]

My local McClatchy-owned news site recently went to strictly Facebook login posting. Which whittled out the obvious trolls but as a byproduct, resulted in the same set of commenters on every article.

But what's interesting is that even with their full names, pictures and even employer names showing alongside the posts, they still submit inflamatory and trollish stuff. Especially politics and religion. Like one adjuster for Allstate recently went on a rampage about an unmarried female congressional candidate. Lots of religious invective and called her son illegitimate, etc. Not a joejob either, I actually know this person tangentially and it jives with her meatspace persona.

So I suspect you're right that comments will eventually have to die to maintain revenue generating subscribers. Because no matter how they try to reign in the trolls, there's always a constant flow of average joes who really haven't figured out the implications of exposing yourself through social media. And most likely never will until it hits home (i.e. getting fired).

The Slashdot comment system

[nashv]

You've never been to reddit. That commenting system is close to perfect. It does it's job, and it's scaleable.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:A more vague description, there ain't

[Tridus]

It's the Internet. "People" hate everything.

Re:Not a bad idea at all

[Desler]

Disqus already exists and it's terrible.

Re:Back to the future

[ais523]

You can set a karma modifier for foes and for friends; if you set your foes to have -6 karma, then they're going to be at -1 forever to your view and thus not show up. I know there's at least one Slashdot user who sets their friends to +1 karma, and their foes to +6 so as to not mod them up by mistake, which strikes me as a pretty backwards way of doing things.

Re:Back to the future

[Rakarra]

What I want is a 'foe' system that cuts out not only the foe's posts but the entire comment tree started by them.

I've found kill-files are somewhat useless when well-intentioned troll-feeders reply and I end up seeing the troll's nonsense in the first place.