Have Online Comment Sections Become Specious? 429
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:obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
It's the opposite, actually (Score:2, Interesting)
In this day of Kardashians, Hiltons and Lohans, I find the comments infinitely more interesting than the subject matter itself.
Community on the Information Superhighway (Score:5, Interesting)
Similarly, sites without a community are going to have absolute crap for comments. These aren't people trying to establish a reputation in a community. They don't want to help people or take time to share their views and vision. They have something to say -- could be negative or positive -- and they will say it with little disregard for others. It will be curt, it will be one sided and it will most likely be harsh. Communities are as rare on the "information superhighway" as they are on the real highways of America. Very few parts of the country have people willing to let you in and rarely you might feel an affinity with another person driving your preferred make or model of car or displaying your bumper sticker for your preferred asshole
Side note: if you've read this far, you've already exhibited a mild disposition towards a community as I don't think this post (in its entirety) would be read by anyone on the aforementioned sites. If those sites don't establish anything they are doomed to have specious comments.
I don't agree (Score:5, Interesting)
Gawker? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:obviously (Score:4, Interesting)
I disagree that it's the moderation system (which often punishes people for "wrongthought" such as not liking Apple or Google). I think the superiority of Slashdot is the threading, which makes it easy to jump from topic-to-topic and read in a coherent manner. It's not a mess of confusing posts like Youtube and Facebook and other sites often resemble.
Says the guy with a terrible comment system (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm quite sure Nick Denton doesn't like user comments. Gawker doesn't like opinions that they weren't paid to show on their site. And they REALLY hate it when you tell them their site redesign was awful, or that time-sloting Kotaku was a moronic idea. And they have just about the worst commenting system out there.
All bitching about Gawker sites aside, their comment system was truly abysmal. Anyone can comment, but if you don't create an account your comment goes into a deep hole for potential approval by an unknown entity on the 5th of Never. Then if you make an account, your comment will show but it won't show by default unless it's been "featured" by having a starred member promote it at whim or reply to it. And if you're VERY lucky and catch an author on a good day and agree completely with him, you might even get elevated to a star of your own. And then you get some kind of moderation power, assuming you don't get it removed for not kissing Gawker's ass enough. And before you say it, yes I have a star and no it hasn't been removed (at least until an editor reads this, I suppose).
There is no system for obtaining or losing a star that I can tell aside from author/editor whim. There are no obvious rules for promoting comments. There are no guidelines given if you get a star. The community guidelines are open to potentially abusive interpretation that doesn't always reflect the clear intent. The entire thing is a mystery box that panders to Gawker and censors anything they don't like.
The system here at /. is much more orderly, I can eliminate all the chum comments just by browsing at +1 or +2. And moderation is clearly defined and passed around in time to everyone who joins the club. We have freedom to post, clear self-policing, and even reward consistent quality. Plus, you get similar article quality and policing of content (with its own slant, but then that's what communities are all about).
I do think Reddit has probably the most pure and free-form overall model for generating, filtering, and promoting user-generated content, but the quality mileage does vary and there's practically no fact-checking. Something like a "front page" with editor-approved threads might help the mainstream web surfers more easily accept it.
I just wish I didn't find Gizmodo/Kotaku articles as entertaining as I do. They do bring me bite-sized news with entertaining content and more often than not are teh funny. I can't stand Nick Denton though - he's a greedy shithead whoring out the integrity of his editors/writers with every ad-article, bad design, and site-wrapper he shoves down their throats.
Re:Maybe not a joke, unfortunately. (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe Gawker, et al, need to come to grips with the terrifying possibility that online comments absolutely do capture the intelligence of the readership.
Strongly agreed. I'd never visited any of the listed sites. Hmm, wonder why? Well OK I'll go look today for the first time, I'm going in cold, no preconceived assumptions about content or quality or anything. Just here's a list of URLs and here's my first 10 second introduction to each site.
www.gawker.com - > title is "Todays gossip is tomorrows news" except its yesterdays news about afghanistan gunman. Then there's just flim flam trash filler like "Your Morning Cry: Dad Comes Home From Afghanistan and Surprises His Daughter" and "The Perfect New York Times Magazine ‘Lives’ Essay" Who reads this mental chewing gum, and how intelligent can their commentary be?
www.jezebel.com -> title is "Celebrity sex and fashion for women" well that explains why I never went there, although I should enjoy the second topic. Lets examine the deep intellectual discourse of the site. Hmm... "Bobbi Kristina Is Lovingly Haunted by the Ghost of Whitney Houston", OK BZZZZT next!
www.gizmodo.com -> "the gadget guide". OK sounds interesting, maybe I'll like it, but the field is absolutely flooded with astroturf gadget news/blogs so I donno if I need another. Lets scan the gadget guide's headlines "The Plaid Shirt: Rebellion, Grunge and a Touch Flamboyance" "Taco Bell Doritos Locos Taco Lightning Review: Love and Vomit (Updated)" "Faux Loko: The DIY Drink I Shouldn't Be Telling You About" WTF is this and how is any of it gadget? Maybe the word gadget has changed in my old age, from interesting expensive luxury in my youth, to boring stuff that sucks in my old age. Let me know when they redefine "nerd" because if it gets changed to mean male pr0n star its going to be awkward if you don't warn me first.
I lost interest about there. Does the list of URLs get any better? Did anyone else do field research like I did?
Its kind of like putting up a pr0n site exclusively containing pics of sheep rear views (I'm talking species Ovis Aries not sheep as in psychologically, like, American Women) and THEN noticing your audience is nothing but weirdos, and finally publicly complaining that "The Internet is full of nothing but weirdos". No, sir, try posting something other than pictures of sheep behinds and get back to us, OK?
Re:Use forums instead (Score:4, Interesting)
Only works if you can get Usenet access somewhere. Most of the ISP's are shutting that down; Google Groups "usenet" is pretty much unusable.
Welcome to this www.google.com thing.
If you wanna pay there's easynews.com and I can personally guarantee that in the six years I've been a member I've not had a single complaint. Just freaking works. That's all there is to say.
I haven't set it up but eternal-september.org supposedly is a good free text only provider.
I know my way around a INN and even ye olden cnews and I guess for decades now I've been thinking about creating something like a usenet 2.0 using off the shelf software to shove articles around and all articles would be signed in a WoT to keep the spammers away (and probably inadvertently keep the alt.binaries. people away). A new hierarchy from the very start ordered by posted language at the top level. Various standards to be upheld to a somewhat higher level than old fashioned usenet. Oh, all kinds of interesting ideas. In my infinite spare time...
Re:Use forums instead (Score:4, Interesting)
Disqus doesn't have good notification about follow up (replies, etc.) I don't want that stuff in my mailbox (and signed up with my spam account that I never check) and there's no easy way to see it. Slashdot, I can go to my account page and see what my comments were rated, how many replies, etc. Even Gawker products show me a little number in the upper corner.
When Engadget switched over to DISQUS, my participation there went down drastically. I still skim the headlines, but I almost never click the "read more" link and certainly don't read the comments. I like the comments at Gizmodo and Slashdot because I glean more info from them than I would from reading the article......I have the comments unfiltered, but I know how to skip over the worthless comments (but would miss the as-yet-unmoderated good stuff if I didn't).
Re:Use forums instead (Score:5, Interesting)
You may like and prefer that, but it turns out that no one else wants to even see (much less have to mod) 500 posts of your bullshit anonymous trolling. I say "your" because in this context anyone who is anonymous is basically the same shitty asshole of a person, and in "free/open" comment sections from Kalamazoo to Cucamonga the anons turn a thread into a 5 mile long shit fest before you can even blink.
After trying to make sense of my local news outlets' comment sections for about a week, I realized how downright amazing Slashdot is (no, I am not being sarcastic) because the moderation system is effective enough to not make the comment section completely useless (only mostly useless.) Slashdot's mod system does require a dedicated and reliable userbase though, something most podunk local newspaper web sites don't have so I get that it is just not scalable.
Small comment/forum operators have basically all begun turning their back on anonymous offerings for this very reason. The anonymity of the internet means you can shit in the pool and get away with it, and it turns out that enough people are gross as hell and actually enjoy doing just that.
Re:obviously (Score:4, Interesting)
The slashdot moderation is a meritocratic method to increase the signal:noise ratio for the lowest common denominator, not to only show you the opinions you agree with. So perhaps the problem is, on the whole, people who have nothing useful to say can't bring themselves to say nothing at all. I believe this could be applied to TFA as well.
The entire Internet is just lonely voices screaming in the void.
Re:Implementation (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, please note that I didn't state that everyone on Slashdot is smart, nor did I state that reading Slashdot makes you smart. All I said is that a site like Slashdot is likely to attract smarter readers.
Re:obviously (Score:5, Interesting)
Yep, I think the main reasons why Slashdot works:
* proper threads, allowing in depth discussion
* a very large limit on maximum post size
* all posts on a single page, so no flipping through webpages needed
* a large line width that makes it easy to skim over content quickly
I think the moderation system is important as well, as it provides some incentive for good posts, while punishing bad ones. But ultimately it's really the usability that matters. If you have a system that makes it hard to read and write interesting discussion, no moderation system can fix that. That said, bad moderation system can do some harm, as they turn things into a popularity contest. The ability to have highly voted post on top on Youtube for example has basically turned into a game, it doesn't lead to interest post being promoted, but in people writing jokes specifically targeted at that spot. The front page of Reddit is also dominated by memes, cat images and other mostly useless stuff, as it is simply much easier to up-vote a short joke then a long article.
Re:obviously (Score:4, Interesting)
Unlike most like/unlike, agree/disagree systems, a registered user does not always have moderation powers, and when they do it's limited to 5 or 15 points.
Like any system there are flaws and room for improvement, but there's a lot to like about the /. mod system and why I keep coming back here. I haven't seen a discussion system that comes even close, if you happen to know of one I'll check it out.
On another site I recently tried injecting some reasonable points into a story that had been hijacked by political comments, and non-registered trolls and flamers (all of whom were fundamentalist right-wing zealots) called me every name in the book and then some, and sneered at my attempts to keep things civil. The only reply that was remotely intelligent came from a registered user, even though we disagreed with each other.
Re:Use forums instead (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Maybe not a joke, unfortunately. (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want a disturbing example of an effective comment system, look at the neo-Nazi forum Stormfront.
Stormfront is a logical consequence of the big promise of the Internet, to allow people in small and sometimes unpopular groups to reach out to others like them across the globe and form *virtual* communities. This necessarily includes groups we might not consider *deserving*.
I did some research on Stormfront for a satire I was writing in set in the 1930s, and it was quite useful because the ideas, even the same sources of information used by the respectable racists of the 30s are still alive there. But Stormfront is not what you'd expect. You have the obvious heavy-breathing nut-cases, but they're consistently upbraided by voices of pseudo-reason. It's not they disagree in the least on things like the racial inferiority of blacks or Asians, or the wickedness of Jews, it's that they object to expressing these beliefs in a manner that reveals the hatred and ignorance behind them.
What they do at Stormfront is train commenters to sound more reasonable; to take people stuck in isolated fringe groups like the KKK or the neo-Nazis and equip them the rhetorical tools to pursue their agenda in more mainstream political groups. I suspect this may be quite an influential radicalizing force in some near-mainstream groups. Nothing encourages people to give pursue otherwise taboo ideas is the presence of other people who've already taken the plunge. This is a double-edged sword.
Re:Use forums instead (Score:4, Interesting)
Please understand my concern that this will be abused. How many times have Slashdotters been burned by other websites betraying their principles in one fashion or another?
I understand that it is now used to assist in flagging posts for spam or trolling so accounts can be banned, but I have a difficult time seeing the necessity of it given the moderation system. As you've stated, it can be abused just as easily as the moderation system is abused. Couldn't a moderation of "-1, Spam" be added and essentially accomplish the same thing without making anyone feel uncomfortable?
I'm sure to you it's a convenience thing for moderating a massive and complex comments section, but (to myself at least) a flag is a symbol that a post can be reported and eventually "disappeared". Until someone writes up a scraper tool to hunt Slashdot for dead PostIDs, we'll have to trust you guys and that's rarely worked out for the geek community.
Since it was you that replied, though, I'm not remotely as worried as I once was. At least someone still gives a shit around here. Thanks samzenpus.
(Please don't aim the Geeknet Orbital Ion Cannon [slashdot.org] at me... my roof is leaking enough as it is.)