Slashdot Mirror
Another Wave of Publications Shut Down Online Comments
AmiMoJo writes: The debate about comment sections on news sites is often as divisive as the comments themselves. Recently outlets such as The Verge and The Daily Dot have closed their comments sections because they've become too hard to manage. And they're far from alone. Moderating comments is a full-time job (or several full-time jobs) at many news organisations. Nicholas White, editor at The Daily Dot, noted that "in our experience, our community hasn't evolved in our comments. It's evolved in our social media accounts. To have comments, you have to be very active, and if you're not incredibly active, what ends up happening is a mob can shout down all the other people on your site. In an environment that isn't heavily curated it becomes about silencing voices and not about opening up voices."
Riese, co-founder and editor-in-chief of LGBT site Autostraddle, adds, "I completely understand why The Daily Dot wouldn't want to have comments — or in fact why most websites wouldn't want to have comments. I think 75% of the time they're more trouble than they're worth, and for us it's still a lot of work to keep up on. Not all of our users are necessarily on Facebook or are out as gay on Facebook, or are comfortable talking about queer stuff on Facebook. We keep comments on the site which is a safe space for people to exchange ideas — and that's a big factor for us."
Riese, co-founder and editor-in-chief of LGBT site Autostraddle, adds, "I completely understand why The Daily Dot wouldn't want to have comments — or in fact why most websites wouldn't want to have comments. I think 75% of the time they're more trouble than they're worth, and for us it's still a lot of work to keep up on. Not all of our users are necessarily on Facebook or are out as gay on Facebook, or are comfortable talking about queer stuff on Facebook. We keep comments on the site which is a safe space for people to exchange ideas — and that's a big factor for us."
Yeah, well, at least fucking Slashdot still allows fucking comments. Can you imagine Slashdot without all our fucking insightful comments?
Of course, that's primarily because censoring viewpoints tales quite a bit of work and the more reflective an echo chamber you want to built the more censoring there is to be done.
Thanks for editing the summary Soulskill. You improved it considerably over what I submitted.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Where everyone is a moderator and the points don't matter!
Defiantly the way things should be. Other websites you receive 'karma whores' where they try to farm and get points, I've liked Slashdot's setup because it encourages good thought-out ideas vs who can have the most shock value.
I would never post comments on a web site.
I've a lot of sympathy. Some sites - like Slashdot - are all about the comments (for which the stories act as little more than a prompt). But those sites tend to have well-throught-through community structures and moderations in place. Much as we all gripe about Slashdot sometimes, its moderation system remains best-in-class.
A lot of other sites I frequent have been "going toxic" over the last couple of years, often as a result of their comments sections (I'll highlight Eurogamer and Kotaku as partial examples and Animenewsnetwork as an uber-example). The comments threads usually descend into two (or sometimes more) camps of people, yelling "SJW!" or "MRA!" at each other. Over time, the site's editors and authors get pulled into one side or the other and the site stops playing for a general audience and just becomes another factional advocacy site.
Blocking comments therefore makes a degree of sense for sites which want to preserve the quality of their writing but which don't have the resources (or a sufficiently engaged readership) to make Slashdot-style community moderation work. It's actually pretty admirable in some respects, because it is actually incurring an immediate financial penalty for the site, assuming its business model is advertising based. After all, if somebody reads a story once, you get a single page-view. If they reload the story two dozen times to participate in a flame war in the comments, that's two dozen page-views. Indeed, it's hard to read some articles on the sites I mentioned above (and many more besides) and see them as anything other than flamebait designed to encourage high page-view wars in the comments.
I am reasonably certain this is happening because people are starting to wake up to the bullshit. Propaganda is beginning to fail and when you have people pointing out the bullshit propaganda in the comments, you must obviously shut that down. This has nothing to do with negativity and everything to do with controlling the narrative.
Of course, that's primarily because censoring viewpoints tales quite a bit of work and the more reflective an echo chamber you want to built the more censoring there is to be done.
That would imply there is a viewpoint to be censored instead of a troll just out to cause trouble. I think the latter happens FAR more often than the former.
Yes, it is a full time job to manage a comment section - but there are huge economies of scale here. The odds of there being a mob on two different comment sections at the same time are minute. One company can manage comments for 10 different online publications almost as easily as it can manage 2 online publications.
Even more so if you use the same login, as Facebook has been pushing.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The real problem is that these sites define trolling as merely having a contradictory opinion. They don't want anyone to threaten their echo chamber. They don't want people posting sincere, meaningful comments that defy the media narrative they are trying to push.
The Verge in particular suffers from this.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
We're going back to the old ways!
WE SAY, YOU LISTEN!
Thank you,
Old media (and now new media too)
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
Everyone is going to miss those valuable insights.
Well, if they want to base their community in a single social medium, so be it.
When that community withers on the vine, hopefully, so will these dinosaurs.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I've been vaccinated against global warming, so I'm good.
Comments are the people's voice.
Disallowing or removing contents is to censor the average person's thoughts, ideas and opinions - often in favor of biased information or propaganda.
Political correctness is really just herd psychology pushed by insecure people who desperately seek social conformity.
And this is why I come to Slashdot for the comments.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Where is the guy with the cows when you need him?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Which is the real problem these media outlets face...
People want to read the comments on articles just as much as the articles themselves. Censoring comments, and then shutting down online comments completely, means people will go to other sites where they can find out the truth...
Didn't bank on the internet coming into existence, did you, Jews...
Or, they're news sites, not in the business of designing a comment system, and don't want to waste resources policing the assholes and idiots.
If their core competencies aren't designing a good comment system, WTF should they bother with it for if it's just a lot of work to keep out the trolls?
I mean, really, how is your news site going? Or are you just assuming just because they have a news website they should give a damn about supporting a comment system?
The internet doesn't need every site to have comments, and making all of the internet "teh social" is a waste of time. In fact, it's making the internet a crappier place.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
This is the problem. It seems like most Internet users act like morons. I'm not saying they ARE morons, but we all know how a degree of anonymity can cause people to lose control of their inhibitions about what they say. I've seen comment threads that were extremely informative, but that's rare, and mostly on the more obscure websites. Any website that attracts a broader spectrum of users is going to get a lot more moronic posts. People misunderstand the content, flame the content, flame each other, post SPAM, and just generally cause havoc. It's hard to find a signal in the noise. Even when people are well-meaning (which a lot of them are not), discussions can completely devolve.
Sites like slashdot and reddit, which are built on comments, have to have elaborate systems of moderation in order to keep the crap in check. Imagine a completely unmoderated system. It would be completely useless. Oh wait. We had usenet, and from the moment the AOLers got access, it went into decline, and now it's basically dead.
99% of everything on the Internet is crap. Statistically, that includes my comment as well.
http://xkcd.com/386/
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Amen to that - especially where moderation is allowed on threads where the user is also posting.
I once had a conversation with the editor of a site that used that system. He knew how broken it was as a means of managing discussion, but said that their metrics showed that it produced the highest number of page-views. There's a certain class of user that goes elsewhere when they aren't allowed to downvote at will (and it is downvoting that is the draw, not upvoting).
I knew someone would say something like this. There's always some yutz who thinks that freedom of speech means that other people are required to provide them with a platform to speak from.
You can sit there and preach 'Freedom of speech!' all you want, but trolls, people who start arguments just for the sake of arguing and not because they have a point to make, and other idiots are abusing 'freedom of speech' and ruining it for everyone else. Note that I'm estimating that the 'trolls and other idiots' are only a tiny percentage of everyone, but they're still wrecking things for everyone else; isn't this how things usually work? So because of jackasses, everyone has to pay. Does that make the 99.999% of the rest of you as mad as it makes me? Sure it does. Go find the trolls and idiots and punch them in the mouth until they learn they can't get away with fucking things up for everyone else. And to the inevitable jackasses who are going to attempt to flame me for allegedly advocating censorship: Go punch yourself in the mouth, you're no better than the other jackasses I'm referring to above.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
We've seen flame wars and trolling since the original Usenet days. Also, spam is one of the problems in running a comments section. While you may not want to silence thoughtful dialog, sometimes it really is more trouble than it's worth due to spammers and trolls. For sites that have a local user base, like Slashdot, this is a little easier to manage. Others, not so much.
If you aren't questioning you aren't sciencing - it's called religion.
And when you don't listen when your questions are answered in detail it's not skepticism, it's denial.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Essentially the argument against free, anonymous speech is that people will show the world exactly how they feel deep down inside. They won't filter, they won't self-censor, they won't be politically correct. And that's A Bad Thing(tm) according to the powers that be, so we have to shut it down. What a cowardly fucking attitude to have.
Grow a fucking set and learn to deal with criticism. Some people don't like me for whatever reason. A few even probably HATE me. And that's absolutely their right to do so. In fact, it's a pillar of free society to be able to have whatever opinions you like, whether or not it hurts someone's feelings, or (gasp!) makes someone uncomfortable or shatters the fragile little ego of some useless millennial* leech who can't attain respect on their own merits so they have to demand respect from society through the control of thought and language to protect themselves from the truth.
I think pure, unadulterated, uncensored, open speech is the most beautiful thing in the world. As hateful or unpopular as much of that speech is, it's how someone really feels and that person deserves to have their say just as much as any special snowflake or "safe space" dweller. In fact those snowflakes are the majority amongst the millennials of my generation due to their narcissistic addiction to social media and their tendency to be "followers". Where are the safe spaces for the minority of us who can still think critically and for ourselves, peer pressure and popular opinion be damned?
And if comment sections are so overrun with said incorrect thoughts, you have to wonder if maybe the people censoring them are the ones that are "incorrect".
So, if my questions are answered by someone who has financial interest in the answer given should all skepticism be put aside?
Oh look! It's about vaccines, but it has nothing to do with Autism so it doesn't really count.
What happens when the historical records are altered to fit the modern imposed belief? But the science is settled. The science was settled when the global cooling scare of the 70's was settled science, we're in an ice-age already, right now. Then the global warming scare of the 90's was settled. New York City is underwater, right now. Now climate change is settled - I'm on-board with that.
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Actually, I think its because many of the comments disparage the reporters writing the articles. Usually for good cause... the quality of most news articles these days is pretty horrible. But news organizations don't like to be told that they are idiots.
But there are certainly also lots of instances where the commenters start fighting among themselves... usually it devolves down into politics or religion. People with very strong views often come up against the hard, harsh wall of reality and the result is typically fireworks.
-Matt
News outlets that heavily moderate or have removed their comment sections are those i stay away from. It's unfortunate when journalists do such a poor job writing a story that it takes readers to fill in the grand canyon sized gaps.
It's not hard to moderate a comment sections. It is hard to maintain a spin on a story when your commentators are calling your paid writer a troll, shrill, or just an idiot for being plain wrong.
I remember it being pretty tolerable through most of the 90s, although I think it really varied by newsgroup as the decade moved on. There really wasn't a ton of non-IT access to the Internet before 1995 or so. It was a big deal when the university I worked for in 1992 got us MacSLIP and IP dialup. Did MSDOS have dialup IP access prior to Win95? Most of those technology obstacles would have prevented most people from even getting access to USENET.
You're forgetting Trumpet Winsock. Good Lord: how did we have patience for all that back then?
But that causes autism!
Any day now, you're going to find yourself making really stupid comments on slashdot.
When you look at most places that have disabled comments its because they're talking shit and are tired of having of having sand rubbed in their dead little eyes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The funniest examples are youtube comments. Comments on youtube are permitted pretty much everywhere.
Where you see them disabled is when someone says something really stupid like
"video games cause young men to rape the womenz"... and anyone making that statement almost always disables comments.
You also see it with many other types of comments but they're typically fucktwits making stupid comments that can't be defended. So they disable comments to protect their echo chambers and hug boxes.
Fuck em.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
So uhmmm, Wikipedia is a denier blog.
Got it.
The New York Times is a denier blog, I thought it was a left wing propaganda machine.
As for Watts up with That? I generally referenced it for the collection of references. I don't actually read the site, I did a search for something mentioning the fact that records were altered. The one incident in particular I recall involved people actually getting information directly from a weather station's archives in Antarctica that disagreed with what NASA/NOAA published as what that very station said.
Nothing creates exceptions to the rule like an emergency.
If you don't have an emergency sometimes it pays to create one.
For those who see through the cloud, call them crazy, it will keep everyone else from paying attention to them. Then you can use the propaganda to control the people.
I'm a conservationist, I do believe we're generally screwing up the planet on which we live. I like doing "green" things. I try to minimize packaging, which goes right out the window when I order off the web, but still "family size" is my choice. I prefer as fuel efficient of a vehicle as I can get, for multitudes of reasons and can't wait for a chance at an Elio. I'm a cyclist when I can be. I try to minimize my pollution and foot print for the same reason the hippies say I should. Fortunately I have a wife who's really into natural cleaning products and what have you, we're shifting towards those, we were already doing less harmful stuff, but now she's making all sorts of household products. I admit to having mixed feelings towards some of those. I go non-GMO/organic as much as possible. I think doing these things makes sense. I think green energy, like wind and solar, when done properly, is the right thing to do for the environment and for capitalistic reasons, free fuel.
I think most climate alarmism is bullshit and it's being used to implement Agenda 21, which is not completely bad, but at it's core removes freedom when implemented through trickery and manipulation. I think there's a lot of great ideas with Agenda 21, I just don't like forcing them on people. There's some really bad ideas in there too. I don't like forcing those on people either. Yes, I do think the government would lie to us. If you don't I'm not the crazy one.
So once again I ask:
Should I always trust the results a scientist who's research is funded by someone with a financial interest in a particular outcome?
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
The fact that you try so hard makes me incredibly suspicious of your motivations.
Invent a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.
Why are you coming to my door?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Greetings, rare person with a smaller UID than mine.
I'd like to see a semi-anonymous mode, where you show up as A.C. but are still able to track replies.
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
On the vast majority of sites the comments are the only parts worth reading.
I never once attacked science. I'm a fan of science, I love science, the results of science, combined with a little I implement when problem solving, are how I make my living. It's how I've made my living since I've been making a living.
What I'm really attacking - and I've been pretty straight forward about it, is politics masquerading as science.
That was the point of the vaccine link I gave. You're the reactionary "if you don't agree with what's handed to you, you're a conspiracy theorist nut-job! who hates science!" type. I linked to that one to prove science isn't always what you're being handed.
Let me point out - a few years ago anyone who went around saying we would be forced to buy healthcare - AKA a breathing tax - in the United States was a tin-foil hat nutjob.
As recently as the early 80's anyone who talked about the secret government agency, the NSA, was a conspiracy whacko.
When did the existence of Area 51 finally become acceptable to believe in? 90's? 2000's? When was it built? Oh yeah, much earlier.
You're trying to label me as some moron who doesn't think vaccines work because I don't believe in science. In fact I do think many vaccines work, I think they've been very instrumental in wiping out Small Pox and saving us from a variety of other diseases. Is believing some of them aren't made in the safest manner, or believing some of them, like the Gardasil shot, are completely dangerous denying science? Have you seen the drug recall list by any chance?
So yeah, I don't think everything that's been blessed by the globalist "If we say it is good it is holy" mainstream "because it's science!" propaganda machine is true. If you wait long enough, the same propaganda machine often confirms what the conspiracy theorist say, when a drug gets recalled, a patsy takes a fall for false data, or a formula gets changed.
You're so blinded by your religion that anyone who actually has an open mind offends you and gets attacked as a non-believer.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I never once attacked science. I'm a fan of science, I love science, the results of science, combined with a little I implement when problem solving, are how I make my living. It's how I've made my living since I've been making a living.
Good. Then we are apparently in agreement.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Most sites require 2345234 different CDNs and other sources for their comment section to work. By the time you allowed those all in NoScript you forgot what you wanted to comment and then abandon the site. Yes, managing comments is a tough task, but I fail to see how that is any better on FB or other social media garbage blasters. I abandoned those sites because there was 99.9% stuff that I really don't care about. Finding the neat bits within the "I'm on the toilet now" and "I just had a big fat fart" posts is just as difficult. The only difference is that the mods do not have to bother with that, that responsibility is pushed to the readers. I like comments and especially /. which for the most part consist of comments...if I could just figure out how the voting system works here and what the heck I am supposed to do with my five moderator points.
Books and libraries, also newspapers & periodicals, are quickly becoming obsolete. With the internet, cellphones, Kindles, Tablets, Blackberries and a few other things... info has become easier and more plentifully obtainable (and more fun) than what a boring environmentally burdensome library or newspaper can provide! Say goodbye to books, especially phonebooks! This is the best example: We're all online reading news websites every day. We don't buy newspapers. This is more fun and more updated and more colourful and less messy and less burden AND it's interactive. We save money and the environment. These days, "libraries" are just about little more than free "internet cafes". People go there when their home PCs are on the fritz or they don't own one. This is the age of technology! Besides, don't the reporters WANT to know what the people are thinking?
And then they're asking, why people read their news on shady facebook pages instead of the media sites.
On 80% of all news articles, the comments are more informative than the article.