Have Online Comment Sections Become Specious?

christoofar writes "Gawker founder Nick Denton says online comments have proven themselves to be not worth the trouble, a waste of resources, and contribute nothing to online conversation or even capture the intelligence of readers. From the article: 'In the early days of the Internet, there was hope that the unprecedented tool for global communication would lead to thoughtful sharing and discussion on its most popular sites. A decade and a half later, the very idea is laughable, says [Denton]. "It didn't happen," said Denton, whose properties include the blogs Gawker, Jezebel, Gizmodo, io9 and Lifehacker. "It's a promise that has so not happened that people don't even have that ambition anymore. The idea of capturing the intelligence of the readership — that's a joke."'"

Re:Use forums instead

[vlm]

When you have a small group of generally like minded people with a certain amount of pre-existing knowledge in the topic .. you get a good discussion.

Examples: thehousingbubbleblog.com bbs.homeshopmachinist.net zerohedge.com

When you get the diverse public with dissimilar views and often a very surface understanding of the topic.. you get the type of shit we see on this guy’s collection of sites and on youtube and so on.

Examples: instructables.com "Every freaking website for a local newspaper I've ever seen that is exclusively populated by paid political astroturfers sniping at each other"

Re:Use forums instead

[Anonymous Coward]

Many don’t have threaded replies, a simple feature that makes any comment section _way_ more useful in my opinion. You can’t really have much of a discussion if replies can’t easily be tied to each.

Do you have any idea how bitterly the threaded comment war was fought? There are people who insist, violently, on the chronological ordering of posts.

They are probably the same people who hold repetitive flamewars amongst themselves over top-posting versus bottom-posting or inline responses.

threads which have had a comment recently get bumped up

This encourages people to post pointless posts like "bump" to try and keep their thread on top.

Implementation

[travdaddy]

Look at the comments on a random story here at Slashdot, and then look at the comments on a random story at CNN or Fox News or, if you dare, YouTube.

There is a right way to do comments and there is wrong way to do comments. In my mind, "moderation" is key. Slashdot has a well thought-out moderation system and the others have absolutely zero moderation, at best a "Like" button.

Forums with dedicated moderators often have excellent discussion/comments as well.

Re:obviously

[TheRaven64]

There are a great many things wrong with Slashdot's comments system, which makes it all the more surprising that everyone else seems to manage to implement something even worse...

Re:Use forums instead

[CastrTroy]

Or even OpenID with the delegate feature. Get your own domain name, or set up a URL on a friend's domain name, and just post a page that delegates to some other open ID provider. That way if the OpenID provider gets hacked, disappears, or just needs to be replaced for whatever reason, you don't have to change your credentials at every web site. Plus it's easier to set up than being your own OpenID provider. It's the same reason I strongly discourage people from using their ISP or even things like Google/Yahoo/Hotmail for their email address. If for whatever reason they disappear, have unfavourable terms, or whatever the problem, you end up having to change your email address. The safest solution right now seems to be to have your own domain name. You can always switch hosting providers, switch registrars, and you almost never lose your domain name (somebody will probably point out a case where it's happened, expiry dates, name stolen, etc...).

Re:Cole's Axiom

[MisterMidi]

If you actually believe that, guess on which side of the bell curve you are... Fact: the average IQ is 100. Fact: IQ tests have to be adjusted because scores increase by roughly 3 points a decade (the Flynn effect); we are actually becoming more intelligent. Fact: the world population has more than doubled in the last 30 years. If Cole was right, we'd all have less than half the intelligence of 30 years ago. Conclusion: it's bullshit.

Re:Ooh!

[NotPeteMcCabe]

Just wanted to acknowledge the Thomas Dolby reference. Very subtle but appreciated.

Re:obviously

[GameboyRMH]

It's like Playboy, nobody really reads it for the articles...

Re:Use forums instead

[GameboyRMH]

Sounds like you got the karma bonus, then got modded down and lost it.

On your user page you should see your karma level, once it's above a certain level you get the bonus and post at 2 (you should have been posting at 1 when your account was new, unless you were messing with the karma modifiers, which only affect how YOU see comments). It's all in the Slashdot help pages.

Just keep it climbing until it hits Excellent and then you won't have to live in fear of the downmod - BUT get modded down too many times, and even if your karma score stays Excellent, you may lose the ability to moderate. That's not in the help pages.

Re:obviously

[cffrost]

Bullshit. Popular opinion is what gets modded up around here.

You can get an unpopular opinion modded up like this:

I know this will get modded down, but [insert unpopular opinion here]

Re:Use forums instead

[samzenpus]

It means that I can more quickly mod down the most egregious trolls (GNAA, goatse.cx, that sort of thing), and ban spammer accounts that get reported. The abuse report it generates is really good at finding spammers, but is unfortunately filled with a lot of comments other readers don't like. This one for example. Contrary to some opinions we won't delete your comments or mod you down if we don't like your tone. You're perfectly free to have your opinion and express your views, (yes even the paranoid ones.) We like it that way.