"Comments", free-floating on the bottom of news articles, end up being pretty much the opposite of a community. They're a venue for long running partisan fights. People running pages have realized that they're the equivalent of putting up a sign saying "please tell me I suck" in public - everyone with any kind of complaint is all over them.
It's increasingly clear that if you want to have a community on the internet, rather than just host a warzone on your lawn, it has to have defense mechanisms in place. This post from Doreen the other day resonated with me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639182
Just read this yesterday from Fred Wilson talking about Tumblr founder resisting the idea of comments. Only thumbs up and reposts were allowed. The founder said it was a wasteland for negativity.
> They're a venue for long running partisan fights.
Worse, they tend to be completely uninformed emotional ramblings. I often wonder just how many of those comments and votes are from bots that only exist to provoke gullible people.
Personally, I've always preferred moderation controlled by the client (i.e., a killfile in a NNTP client) rather than relying on moderators. That way, I can decide what I see.
Theoretically, bad actors would end up in everyone else's killfile, but in reality, it never really happened. Some clients at least allowed hiding a subthread so that you wouldn't see messages that were essentially a dispute between two people.
But one way to slow down the flame wars would be to rate limit the number of comments that can be posted. If you require people to wait 10 minutes to post a subsequent comment, that would definitely slow down the discussion and probably would lead to them moving on to something else.
It's been interesting to watch the rise and fall of internet comment sections. They used to be found at the bottom of just about every page. But the moderation burden has led to their removal in more and more use cases.
News sites started stripping comments from articles so long ago. When you see a comment section on the bottom of an article or blog, it contributes to that feeling that the website hasn't had a remodel in a long time. Like an animated gif spacer from the 90's web.
Now we are seeing the social media hubs, technically places that are entirely comment threads, abdicating moderation responsibility to thread creators. Twitter users can hide replies to their tweets. Youtube creators can as well. Now this.
Overall a good trend, IMO. Moderation responsibility was so diffused that no one did it well.
The emerging pattern is that the site owner can provide global moderation of clear cut illegal activity. This doesn't meet anyone's bar for civil discourse, and there's not a good global solution for how to achieve that, so the site owners will place the next level of moderation in users' hands. This starts to model how it works in the physical world, so I think we're on the right track.
I still look for comments on any article I find interesting. If the site owner takes the time to moderate the comments you can usually find some really good info there. I like to offer comments on my own sites because it's an easy way for readers to give me feedback and to start a discussion.
It also highlights how valuable communities that do have good moderation can be. HN being the major example. I would probably include some (emphasis on the "some") subreddits.
I assign very little value to anything on the web that can't be commented on. Sure, a solid piece of journalism does have value but more so if people can add to the conversation.
Users should be able to moderate though and moderation points should be earned and spent and provide some context. Users should be able to browse comments based on their preferences, revealing those posts which have been down-voted out of sight, or made anonymously, if they choose.
> News sites started stripping comments from articles so long ago. When you see a comment section on the bottom of an article or blog, it contributes to that feeling that the website hasn't had a remodel in a long time.
I've noticed that this is correlated with AMP adoption. Many news sites still have comments on the "full" page but not the AMP page.
The only comments section I have recently seen that were filled with thought provoking, insightful comments and/or constructive criticism were the New York Times and the Athletic. It's no coincidence that both require me to pay to subscribe and get access to them.
I'd like to see even more fine grained controls for comments on posts for social media. Facebook should emulate what Twitter has done and let me maintain an "Allow List" of friends that are allowed to comment on my posts, links, etc. The friends system was originally designed the way it was because you weren't supposed to open your Facebook friends to everyone, but 15+ years and the shifting of connections that time brings (good friends may now just be acquaintances) makes this feature a necessity.
This already exists. Remove them from being connections. It's exactly the same outcome - what do you think these people will think when they see one of your posts and notice you've barred them from commenting?
I would just remove the connection instantly in that scenario.
The next stage is to let people remove likes and hide share counts. I think we have systems which pay way too much attention to these numbers, considering how trival they are to fake.
Well, it might be a mistake, but I find that the best communities I'm a part of are echo chambers.
I like urbanism Facebook groups where we can discuss how to improve a specific intersection, for example. Where we are like-minded people and we try to find the best solution.
When we have the same discussion in the neighborhood group, the thread becomes a shouting match with drivers requesting to be able to run through the intersection at full speed with no inconvenience and to get cyclists and pedestrians out of the way. With the usual "they don't pay taxes". So it is less interesting.
Gawker/Kinja - and specifically Jalopnik.com - seemed to have figured out how to build community in the comments. They simply have the author review them in batch form before they make it to the public.
Jalopnik has it's fair share of memes and repetitive in-jokes (BMW blinkers, Mustangs hopping curbs). But there are are also some pretty insightful and knowledgeable threads. I've seen a couple of technical comments on certain vehicles that I'm absolutely convinced were written by an engineer that designed that vehicle.
[+] [-] pjc50|5 years ago|reply
It's increasingly clear that if you want to have a community on the internet, rather than just host a warzone on your lawn, it has to have defense mechanisms in place. This post from Doreen the other day resonated with me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639182
[+] [-] nashashmi|5 years ago|reply
https://avc.com/2019/08/tumblr-2/
[+] [-] sharken|5 years ago|reply
https://www.reddit.com/r/somethingimade/
[+] [-] austincheney|5 years ago|reply
Worse, they tend to be completely uninformed emotional ramblings. I often wonder just how many of those comments and votes are from bots that only exist to provoke gullible people.
[+] [-] amelius|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] u801e|5 years ago|reply
Theoretically, bad actors would end up in everyone else's killfile, but in reality, it never really happened. Some clients at least allowed hiding a subthread so that you wouldn't see messages that were essentially a dispute between two people.
But one way to slow down the flame wars would be to rate limit the number of comments that can be posted. If you require people to wait 10 minutes to post a subsequent comment, that would definitely slow down the discussion and probably would lead to them moving on to something else.
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnnameblah365|5 years ago|reply
News sites started stripping comments from articles so long ago. When you see a comment section on the bottom of an article or blog, it contributes to that feeling that the website hasn't had a remodel in a long time. Like an animated gif spacer from the 90's web.
Now we are seeing the social media hubs, technically places that are entirely comment threads, abdicating moderation responsibility to thread creators. Twitter users can hide replies to their tweets. Youtube creators can as well. Now this.
Overall a good trend, IMO. Moderation responsibility was so diffused that no one did it well.
The emerging pattern is that the site owner can provide global moderation of clear cut illegal activity. This doesn't meet anyone's bar for civil discourse, and there's not a good global solution for how to achieve that, so the site owners will place the next level of moderation in users' hands. This starts to model how it works in the physical world, so I think we're on the right track.
[+] [-] uberswe|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andybak|5 years ago|reply
Anywhere else?
[+] [-] datavirtue|5 years ago|reply
Users should be able to moderate though and moderation points should be earned and spent and provide some context. Users should be able to browse comments based on their preferences, revealing those posts which have been down-voted out of sight, or made anonymously, if they choose.
[+] [-] colejohnson66|5 years ago|reply
I know what a “GIF spacer” is (a 1x1 pixel image resized to the desired width and height), but what’s an “animated GIF spacer”?
[+] [-] tdeck|5 years ago|reply
I've noticed that this is correlated with AMP adoption. Many news sites still have comments on the "full" page but not the AMP page.
[+] [-] sylens|5 years ago|reply
I'd like to see even more fine grained controls for comments on posts for social media. Facebook should emulate what Twitter has done and let me maintain an "Allow List" of friends that are allowed to comment on my posts, links, etc. The friends system was originally designed the way it was because you weren't supposed to open your Facebook friends to everyone, but 15+ years and the shifting of connections that time brings (good friends may now just be acquaintances) makes this feature a necessity.
[+] [-] ChrisMarshallNY|5 years ago|reply
I like that.
[+] [-] sol_invictus|5 years ago|reply
I would just remove the connection instantly in that scenario.
[+] [-] dreen|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mlacks|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Demoneeri|5 years ago|reply
I like urbanism Facebook groups where we can discuss how to improve a specific intersection, for example. Where we are like-minded people and we try to find the best solution.
When we have the same discussion in the neighborhood group, the thread becomes a shouting match with drivers requesting to be able to run through the intersection at full speed with no inconvenience and to get cyclists and pedestrians out of the way. With the usual "they don't pay taxes". So it is less interesting.
[+] [-] mlacks|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] datavirtue|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsomctl|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chris_wot|5 years ago|reply
Just how many missteps can one company make?
[+] [-] nikolay|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dr-detroit|5 years ago|reply
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