Leaving a Comment? That'll Be 99 Cents, and Your Name 377
netbuzz writes "Anxious to lift a ban on comments brought about by incessant trolling and anonymous slander, a Massachusetts newspaper has begun requiring two things of online readers who want to leave their thoughts on stories: a one-time fee of 99 cents and a willingness to use their real names. Says the publisher: 'This is a necessary step, in my opinion, if The Attleboro (MA) Sun Chronicle is going to continue to provide a forum for comments on our websites.'"
hello! (Score:5, Insightful)
Dept of Troll Prevention.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that you never had free speech rights on someone else's website?
Re:Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
The first amendment to the constitution doesn't obligate a newspaper to print any anonymous inane bullshit one may send in. I don't see how this is much different, paywall aside.
Re:Irony (Score:5, Insightful)
Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one
-- AJ Leibling
Re:Good Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether or not it's a "great idea" it's the newspaper's right as a private business to require whatever they want for someone to post comments on the site. It might not be the best way to encourage comments, but if you look at the comment section of the Washington Post or other newspaper, there is so much spam and garbage that there ought to be a requirement of real name.
Also, a one-time membership fee of 99 cents does not seem unreasonable for a city's daily newspaper. Or maybe just allow subscribers to comment.
Re:Good Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dept of Troll Prevention.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dept of Troll Prevention.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Personal responsibility (Score:2, Insightful)
My local newspaper site, madison.com [madison.com], is pretty new to comments. They disable them on crime stories I've noticed but anything doing with politics, the proposed high-speed rail service between Madison and Milwaukee, or state workers will attract trolls by the dozen. It makes reading the news stories like taking a walk through Craigslist's Rants and Raves section. When it turns to /b/ I'll just quit reading I suppose.
The concept of paying to comment seems a little too far though. That said, I'm all for having to publish your real name, address, phone number, and a JPEG when leaving a comment on a news site. Anonymity breeds stupidity and the best way to combat trolls is to force them to stand by their comments. Slashdot's system works, and I've seen other half-assed attempts to mimic it, but in the end people just need to be held responsible for their own actions.
In fact, I'll start. My name is Jay and yes, I've trolled before. I try very, very hard not to do it now and I've said things in online forums that'd I'd never say to someone's face. I'd promise not to do it again but the dumb republicans are still out there and need to be told what's what.
I'm partially in favor (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It's not so easy (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dept of Troll Prevention.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, "troll" is in the eye of the beholder. Slashdot's system enforces a monoculture of thought as restrictive as any I have seen on the internet. Now maybe that what people want and it's moderately democratic in the way it is done, but to claim it's a bastion of free speech and acceptance of varying opinions and perspective is a huge misrepresentation.
Re:real name (Score:3, Insightful)
No, when they say 'real name' they mean 'name that matches the one on the credit card that was charged $.99'.
Re:Good Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
But he has a point. Part of me would like to see ACs banned on Slashdot. But then I think that sometimes people could want to post something without it being tied to their name. Maybe because of work.
What I would like see is for you to be required to have an account on Slashdot and have the option to post as an AC but still have it count on your Karma.
It would probably reduce the really bad posts by %5 at max.
But I have got to be honest. Have any of you ever read the comments on most newspaper sites? How about on CNN.
On average the posts on Slashdot are far more intelligent and good mannered than what I see on most News sites!
Frankly it isn't a good state of affairs when Slashdot is a bastion of good manners!
Re:Dept of Troll Prevention.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Slashdot's moderation system is terrible! The only thing worse is every other system out there.
Re:Good Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Thing is, online reputation and such works with pseudonymous speech; you don't need real name, you just need a consistent identity.
I've used this nym on /. for about 15 years.
Re:Good Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Someone give this man a cigar. He's divined the actual purpose of the fee. The rest of you, who think that it's $0.99 per comment, you fail reading comprehension.
To be fair, the headline itself is poorly written, and does imply $0.99/comment.
Re:Irony (Score:2, Insightful)
He's also underestimating the credit card transaction fee.
Re:Good Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Irony (Score:3, Insightful)
The Supreme Court has clearly stated that spending money is equivalent to free speech, and since equality is commutative that must mean that free speech is equivalent to spending money. It's really quite logical.
Re:Dept of Troll Prevention.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Slashdot's moderation system is basically a meritocracy, or if you prefer to think of it this way, a syncophantocracy. Anyone who says a lot of things that the existing mods want to hear gets karma points and is then allowed to mod, eventually. If your viewpoints don't line up with the herd and you can't express them with a certain level of politeness, you're screwed.
But, overall, the system only sucks in that it's only marginally better than anything else out there. It's imperfect, but it relies on collective intelligence or ignorance as opposed to being the viewpoint of a small band of people. Still highly imperfect, but less imperfect than any other system I've heard of.
Sure, there are abusive mods, and there are bad moderations, but the bad moderations tend to be fixed over time, and the bad moderators tend to fail metamoderation and remove themselves from the moderation gene pool.
It still means that if you post an anti-(insert viewpoint here) and get a bunch of pro-(insert viewpoint here) moderators on your case, your post will be machine-gunned into oblivion soon. But, by and large, so will their moderator points.
Re:Good Idea (Score:2, Insightful)
Whether or not it is the newspaper's right as a private business, it is everyone else's right to comment on whether or not it is a great idea.
Re:Good Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Irony (Score:4, Insightful)
If they are willing to pay to troll, then they are welcome on my blog. I'd kick them off, and then they can pay to spew again. It's easy money, and if it is consistent, then it would be better than ad revenue.
Re:Irony (Score:3, Insightful)
"if every person who posted "the economy is in the shitter and it's so-and-so's fault" would just *get a job* we probably wouldn't have a recession any more to complain about."
Yes, because the current problem with our economy is too many jobs and not enough people to fill them...
but its poisonous (Score:3, Insightful)
all that time generating content, looking for feedback, and getting back nothing: its debilitating. then they find out they've been tricked. a second negative dose: even more discouragement
the point is to discourage the troll, stop them in their tracks, get them to think before posting. the rubber room is a huge dose of poison for their behavior. of course they will find out what happened, but you've given them a big amount of grief, to make them think about their behavior
and that's really the best you could ever hope to do with some of these cranks
I was gonna flame you, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
I still agree with the newspapers on this, but it sucks that some people will be--justifiably--afraid to speak up.
Re:Good Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Right on, but Slashdot perfected the mod system ten years before these craptacular news sites did (I'm looking at you HuffPost -- uggggghhh). As far as I'm concerned it has been effective and got rid of the GNAAs...
Sure, but the everybody-can-be-a-cop method of moderation means that what's visible on this site is dependent on public opinion. It also creates a race to see who can be the first to post the chair-throwing, overlords, I-want-a-phone-thats-just-a-phone, walled-garden, xhcd-cartoon, privacy, etc comments. The noise level hasn't gone down, it has just had its energy directed into people mugging for that +3 Insightful tag to appear next to their post.
Every other sensible site should follow /.'s model.
All it does is arm people during fanboy wars.
Re:Irony (Score:1, Insightful)
Or this will just prove that comment board spammers, racisists, raving lunatics, and flamewar instigators are too cheap to spend $.99. Local papers seem to be magnets for that special form of troll, the unemployed/retired town know-it-all. They pick a subject matter (taxes, libraries, lighting, etc) and latch onto it like god himself had made it their life's mission. Then they spam every single article with a hysterical comment somehow linking the subject with their pet topic, preferably littered with insults to other writers, local residents, and maybe a racial minority for that special touch.
Re:Good Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
It might not be the best way to encourage comments,
Actually I think rather than discouraging comments it will simply move more single sided bias to the entire story. A news paper attracts a certain readership with certain views that align with the typical views of the writers. Essentially an army of uninformed yesmen who have made the critical mistake of thinking they can get a completely unbiased view from any one newspaper rather than reading several. Your typical comments on news sites with absolutely no moderation will tend to agree with the author. You then have to rely on some outsiders who have chanced by the article to weigh in and give them some balance.
This is very similar to the slashdot moderation system whereby any negative Apple related comments get modded flamebait for the first few hours. Regardless if you have a pro apple stance or hate the company your typical apple post reads like a bitchfight between moderators, +1 informative, -1 flamebait, +1 inspirational, -1 overrated, back and forth till one side or the other wins.
What this comments paywall will do is further alienate the people who provide the balanced view, since only the hardcore daily readership will signup for the commenting section. Though I'm not sure that some news papers will suffer from this since many of them couldn't get more biased if they tried. My local paper's comments section on any typical article about a project going over budget, or behind time, or missing a KPI will be 100 comments all saying how this is all the governments fault and we'd never have had this if we'd voted in the libs. Often you get comments like this even on private projects so I've given up on the comments of these articles a long time ago.
Re:Irony (Score:3, Insightful)
This isn't a debate on the economy, but put simply the problem is too few people *willing to contribute* because they have a salary expectation that cannot be met by currently available jobs. If underemployment benefits were stronger than unemployment benefits (meaning you could earn more by taking a low wage job and collecting benefits than by taking no job and collecting benefits) our overall productivity might start to recover. As it is the only thing keeping 10%+ of the country "contributing" is that they get to spend the government's money...
Re:Dept of Troll Prevention.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Getting downmodded (or upmodded) due to disagreement with the groupthink is typical when your comment is itself purely emotional, or, if factual, does not provide any proof for that. Basically, if you say "Linux sucks", you will be downmodded, and a large number of those downmods will be the "disagree" mods, but is it really a big issue?
But if your claims are factual, the overall tone of the post polite, and you back your points with references, you are much more likely to be upmodded even when advocating opinions that are unpopular here.
The real problem with the moderation system isn't with unreasonable downmods, IMO. It's with unreasonable "+1000" upmods. For example, in any RIAA story, you can post something along the lines of "RIAA can go suck my dick!" in response to some post detailing the abuses, and get heaps of Insightful mods. More generally, for any topic on which /. has a strong group opinion (Linux & OSS, SCO, MS, religion & creationism etc), purely emotional or unsubstantiated FUDish posts that go along with that opinion are upmodded just as fast as those that go against that opinion are downmodded.
I suspect the reason for this is the existence of "Insightful" mod, because it is really bordering on "+1 agree" by definition, and many people seem to use it pretty much that way.
Re:Dept of Troll Prevention.... (Score:3, Insightful)
But what about posts that are obviously factually incorrect? Why shouldn't there be a mod for that? I guess "overrated" would be appropriate, but doesn't really explain why it has been modded down. And often, it's not worth the time trying to talk sense into people who have things completely wrong. That will just spawn an unnecessarily long sub-thread.
If you disagree, don't mod, post instead.
So, why doesn't this apply to the other mod categories? If you find a post insightful, don't mod, post instead.
Bottom line - people will use mod points to note their disagreement. So, why not allow for that, rather than having the troll mod abused until it is meaningless?
Re:Irony (Score:4, Insightful)
Or... we have too few employees willing to hire, because they have a (low) salary expectation that cannot be met by the available candidates to do their job.
Now hiring C# Developers, minimum 5 years of experience in C# development and project management, with deep understanding of C# sockets, multi-threaded programming, remoting, COM object interoperability, Firefox and Internet Explorer extension development, must have college degree, MCSD certification, and MCSE certification. $8/hour. Paid vacation and increase in pay available after 3 years of employment.
Re:Irony (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually they don't exist. Everyone who got paid less than their previous job would like to claim underemployment, even if in fact, they really were not qualified for the higher paying job :-)
Re:Irony (Score:3, Insightful)
As it currently stands, If I am making X on unemployment, then get a part time job that pays Y, my unemployment checks will be X-Y. After a couple months, EDD will see that I am employed, and adjust my benefits so that not only do I no longer get paid X-Y, but if I lose that job, the benefits are based off the lower salary and vastly lower. It's kind of sad because there are plenty of people would be happy to take lower paying jobs to help their unemployment last longer, but if they do so, they're shooting themselves in the foot. The system as written, forces you to wait till you can get a job that pays well, or lose all your benefits.
Re:but its poisonous (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit.
Bullshit yourself
I am under no obligation to post anything you write on my site. none whatsoever.
Wrong. You are if you say or imply you will. Promise to in other words.
By providing a means of posting without warning that the post may deliberately going into a black hole, in fact taking measures to hide that fact from them, you are engaged in fraud. If you explicitly warn a "crank" up front that you've decided to no longer accept their posts then no problem. Just because it's easier for you to engage in fraud rather than be up front about it is irrelevant. You don't even need to give a reason though most polite people would.
The only theft of time is YOU stealing it from YOURSELF it trying to cause grief.
Nope, the theft of time and effort you steal from the person you regard as a crank is not justified by the so-called crank's actions unless the crank has engaged in deception also. Two wrongs don't make a right.
Once I see bad behaviour, I can do anything I want with MY SITE.
Yes, as long as you don't act in a deceptive manner worse than the crank.
I hope you can get that through your head.
It's not about the site, it's about the promises you've made on that site.
As far as "lower ethically" please posit the ethical hierarchy you are working in such that someone out to cause trouble has a higher ethical ranking than someone trying to provide a service to the community.
The "lower ethically" is engaging in deception, not in blocking somebody from using your site. Try to keep the difference clear. Just because you think you're providing a service and you think they're "causing trouble" is irrelevant.
Regards.
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Marketing in a saturated market is a zero-sum game. When one player wins another must lose. In a saturated market; marketing = un-marketing = arms race = parasites.