Slashdot Mirror
Writer: Internet Comments Belong On Personal Blogs, Not News Sites
sixoh1 writes: Nicholas Jackson at Pacific Standard suggests that internet comments are permanently broken (in response to an issue Jezebel is having with violent misogynist GIFs and other inappropriate commentary). He argues that blogs are a good-enough solution to commentary and dialog across the internet. "They belong on personal blogs, or on Twitter or Tumblr or Reddit, where individuals build a full, searchable body of work and can be judged accordingly."
This seems to hold true for most broad-interest sites like newspapers and magazines where comments can be downright awful, as opposed to sites like Slashdot with a self-selected and somewhat homogeneous audience. It seems unlikely that using only blogs for responsive dialog with authors and peers could come close to matching the feedback and community feel of comments such as we see here. Is there a technical solution, or is this a biological problem imposed on the internet?
This seems to hold true for most broad-interest sites like newspapers and magazines where comments can be downright awful, as opposed to sites like Slashdot with a self-selected and somewhat homogeneous audience. It seems unlikely that using only blogs for responsive dialog with authors and peers could come close to matching the feedback and community feel of comments such as we see here. Is there a technical solution, or is this a biological problem imposed on the internet?
I also find that the slashdot comments are often more useful than the actual article.
I enjoy comments on mainstream news sites. To me, at least, random public sentiment is at least as important as the sanitized news version, if not more so. Public opinion is a lot more likely to affect me, and provides a better indication of what I'm more likely to face in "reality" than what the news writers provide. Does people's anonymous behavior suck sometimes? Yes. But is it more honest? Absolutely. On any given topic, maybe one in four people secretly agrees with the worst of the worst trolls, and it pays to be away that other people around you actually do think/feel that way, even if it seems foreign and alien.
I read the news to prepare for life. Other people (even terrible trolls) exist in real life. I value learning their opinions, even if only to prepare myself for dealing with them.
It sucks that people can be offensive, but... hiding it doesn't help anyone.
Actually, the latest events on Jezebel proves the point of many of Jezebel's authors, which is that much of the internet is openly hostile to women. Jezebel is an awesome blog and has fantastic stories about the crap that women have to put up with in this country and around the world every single day. They call out misogyny on the internet, and are promptly spammed with rape gifs. They aren't the problem at all; it's the jerks who posted the gifs who are the problem, so yes, their example is a perfect example.
As for "militant", I don't think that word means what you think it means.
I don't know if the author realizes this, but Jezebel (along with pretty much every other Gawker-owned site) is essentially a blog and not at all a news site. In fact, this ENTIRE THING sounds like a typical Gawker tactic known as "clickbaiting" or "nerd-baiting" - essentially, blog authors on Gawker get paid by how many times people read their stories, so they have been known to make headlines that are overly controversial and inflammatory in order to get people to click on them.
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As an example, there is one author on Gawker's "Kotaku" gaming blog named Jason Schrier. About a year ago, Jason Schrier wrote a series of articles decrying the game Dragon's Crown (which features stylized characters with exaggerated body proportions) as sexist and an insult to females and the LGBT crowd. 90% of what he posted were pure opinion pieces that were geared toward baiting as many people into clicking and commenting as possible, because this is how Gawker Media makes money. One of his most-clicked "articles" was a photo of his E3 badge (which featured art from Dragon's Crown) and a blurb about him potentially "boycotting" E3 because they used Dragon's Crown in their promotional material. The whole affair was ridiculous, childish, and geared toward baiting as many people into reading as possible.
There's also Patricia Hernandez, who writes long-winded articles about how various video games are sexist. Her articles are pure tripe, and even she knows it - but she wants to bait as many people into reading as possible so that she makes money.
Jezebel is exactly the same thing, but with feminism instead of videogames. They advocate a position that is so extremist as to be unrealistic, and attract a crowd of feminists who have.. less-than-mainstream views. In fact, I would not be at all surprised if these "rape .gifs" are a false-flag to drum up more attention (and thus more money) for Jezebel - it would certainly explain why Gawker Media would refuse to do anything about it.
What it proves is that there are people that find enjoyment in pushing other people's buttons. It has very little to do with hating women and much more to do with entertainment.
There are of course some people out there who do actually hate women, and they may be involved in this as well, but I very much doubt it is anything but a minority.
Global warming is faaaaake!
dickbutt.jpg
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Of course it isn't
the easiest solution is just to not enable posting graphics.
Except in the case of Jezebel, they WANT the misogynist graphics. Very few news sites allow graphics in the comments. Jezebel allows it specifically to keep their readers riled up, and to justify their existence.
The way to have a good comment section is right in front of you: A moderation system, like Slashdot has. It isn't perfect, but good comments (like this one) tend to bubble to the top more often than not, and the filth goes to -1.
I like the irony in your use of stereotypes to exert power
Slashdot, as a site, has been known to pander to fairly extreme, militantly fanboyist views, while trashtalking and flaming any counterpoints or opposition.
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They belong on personal blogs, or on Twitter or Tumblr or Reddit, where individuals build a full, searchable body of work and can be judged accordingly
This bit right here tells me the author doesn't know much about Twitter. Twitter has an almost identical problem. One person I follow (who happens to at least front as an African-American female), has a dedicated Twitter stalker who makes new accounts every day just so he can make sure she gets to greet each new day with a tweet calling her the N-word. Rape threats are endemic there for identified females too. A "searchable body of work" is only a concern for those of us who care about our reputation. Trolls don't care in the slightest.
The only even partial cure I know of for crap like this is reputation-based user moderation, like you find in sites like Slashdot or Stackexchange. This at least allows the manifold eyes of your readers to do some of their own policing, and provides for much more prompt cleanup. A dedicated troll can create a hopeless amount of soul-killing destruction for one or two poor beleaguered individuals. But against a community of hundreds (or more) moderators, the amortized work is manageable. More importantly, the troll isn't going to get much satisfaction, as almost nobody sees their handiwork before someone mods it away.
If you have an online commenting system, you really need a user moderation system to back it up. I'd suggest Discourse, but there are probably other drop-in solutions available.
much of the internet is openly hostile to women.
You (and they) are making this out to be something related to women when in fact it's far more simple.
ANY subject brings in trolls, and the more easily trolled the subject is the worse the trolls will be. Jezebel is not seeing anything different than any other place on the internet does that has people who issue strong opinions. They just have much suckier automated blocking techniques, algorithms for first time users and moderation tools period.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You can do that. You can set your comment preferences penalize "Funny" comments, and then set your threshold accordingly.
https://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm#karma_bonus
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