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The Guardian Publishes Comment Abuse Stats, Invites Debate On Moderation (theguardian.com)
AmiMoJo writes: British newspaper The Guardian has published some stats on its popular comment sections attached to each story. So far the Guardian's site has received 70 million comments, of which around 2% were removed for violation of community standards. Articles written by women tended to get the most blocked comments, especially if they were in male-writer dominated sections like sports and technology, while fashion was one of the few areas where men got more abuse. Further down the article the reader is invited to moderate some sample comments and see how their actions compared to those of the paper's staff. You can leave suggestions for improvement here.
Well they've got to go down this path bu choice, they're only 5 years out from complete bankruptcy that includes the money from the trust. They need to try showing people that they know how to remain solvant and can get their head on and fix the problems...and see...those problems? We want your opinion!
Personally, I think them having Jessica Vallenti was a great idea, it was a really good comedy section. I mean look at these examples: One week she gets to tell the idiots that wolf whistling is sexist, a few weeks later, she says it's sexist not to wolf whistle at someone. Then she starts going off about how air conditioning is sexist, but it's really not sexist all in the span of 3 weeks.
Om, nomnomnom...
It looks like The Guardian just got a first-hand lesson on the flaws of "diversity". When allow racism and sexism to dictate your hiring policy, you'll inevitably get people who wouldn't have been hired on their merit alone.
I wonder how much of the "abuse" was of the "you suck" variety. Maybe The Guardian needs to ask the UN to censor their critics as well.
Same experience on Scientific American. No violation of their own stated policies. Not even mentioned global warming.
Comment deleted.
I complained and their reply was that I lost my "privilege" to post.
I cancelled the renewal of my subscription and unsubscribed from any of their mailing lists.
Absolutely disgraceful.
What I've found from the news sites that have gone to Facebook is not only a much smaller set of comments, but a great increase in spam. By putting their faith in Facebook to weed out the malcontents, many sites literally destroy their comment sections.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Unlike The Guardian, Slashdot doesn't answer to political grievance groups (and has only removed one thing for Scientology).
I'm not sure that this is debate as much as it is a justification.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It's not about the gender of the author, it's about the agenda of the author. Regardless, most flamebait/troll posts are aimed at other comments anyway - at least that's apparent in watching this play out in other papers' comment areas. Also, the straight reporting or analysis vs. op-ed will make a huge difference.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
For what it's worth, my comments to the Guardian are these days are now in the category of: "Your comments are currently being pre-moderated".
This is because I disagreed (in a fairly reasonable way - certainly not aggressive and not obscene) with the remarks of a British reporter, based in New York, who was making remarks about the situation in my home town of Baltimore. In that case it appeared that the reporter himself may well have been the person removing the negative comments. The fraction of comments removed from all posters for that article was a huge fraction of all those posted. However the Brit reporter (who may not even have visited B'more ) was apparently very sensitive to criticism - even if it wasn't that different from the criticism he was dealing out to some of the locals. One factor may be the "knee-jerk" anti-Americanism of certain segments of British society - who are surprised to receive similar criticisms back themselves.
Those comments that they showcased in the article were in many cases perfectly legitimate debate.
The comment was:
“A 12-year-old boy, out at night, waving a BB gun? What sort of parent allows that? What happened is the product of a fucked up
society/community/culture/upbringing. I'm sorry to say, but often black people are their own worst enemies.”
You answered allow. We thought differently.
This was removed for racism (“black people are their own worst enemy”; “fucked up community/culture” etc).
Yeah, nice going Guardian. Don't allow a healthy discussion on black culture, just silence any controversial or unpopular opinions. Slashdot may have its groupthink, but comments are almost never deleted. A certain rarity on the net in this day and age of 'safe spaces'.
The only comment I would have deleted was the very last one, "“stupid ugly woman writes stupid ugly steaming pile of dog-shite”, because it was just an insult without saying anything to back it up.
Slashdot's only real weakness is that people, especially groups of like-minded people, can use the -1 mods to try to silence people they disagree with. While I think having down-mods is a good thing generally, once a post gets a single +1 all the -1s should only count for -0.1 each.
Controversial != troll.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC