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Another Wave of Publications Shut Down Online Comments

Posted by Soulskill on from the your-loss dept.

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."

5 of 226 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I completely understand why [...] most websites wouldn't want to have comments. I think 75% of the time they're more trouble than they're worth[...]

    Yeah, well, at least fucking Slashdot still allows fucking comments. Can you imagine Slashdot without all our fucking insightful comments?

    1. Re:Slashdot by MouseR · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Slashdot with comments is dying.

      When I first signed up, stories hard hundreds, if not thousands of comments and most where relevant.

      Now, it's just fucking kiddy trolls that dont even bother signing up or maintaining their passwords. Stories dwindled down to less than 100 comments, most of which are anonymous garbage.

      To save Slashdot, posting as anonymous should require still being logged in. This way, most posts would be accountable to someone and you'd still have the possibility of anonymity for protection against reprisal from peers. (And even that is debatable... not like this is wikileaks).

    2. Re:Slashdot by NotDrWho · · Score: 5, Funny

      Slashdot without comments would die.

      Nonsense! I bet there's a huge market for poorly-edited summaries of week-old news. And if that weren't enough, they've got Bennett Haselton too!

      --
      SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
    3. Re:Slashdot by steelfood · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Slashdot's not a publication. It's a community with links to articles as topics of conversation.

      The raison d'etre of publications is producing articles and other pieces of content. The raison d'etre of Slashdot is the community and the discourse of other people's content.

      tl;dr: Without (an effective system for) comments there is no Slashdot.

      --
      "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
  2. propaganda doesn't work well when called out by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.