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I sympathize with the desire to avoid racism, sexism, and the other forms of abuse the writers mentioned, but people with nasty opinions should be discouraged w
by stirner 11y ago
I sympathize with the desire to avoid racism, sexism, and the other forms of abuse the writers mentioned, but people with nasty opinions should be discouraged with voting systems, not with complete silence.
By all means, go ahead and remove comment sections from your site. But I imagine there are people beside me who will move on to other sites when they see discussion being shut down.
- jrnichols 11y agoI used to think the same way, but re/code has done just fine without comments. On most regular news sites, they always seem to devolve into mud flinging anyway. The signal to noise ratio went way off the chart. Disqus has a rating system but that hasn't helped much either as well written opinions are voted down simply because they disagree with the hivemind that has way too much free time.
- mozumder 11y agoVoting systems are probably the worst option, since it just encourages negative group behavior. The entirety of Reddit is a good example. The best thing is to just shut down the comments, and encourage trolls to move elsewhere. Remember that advertisers don't want all audiences - they want quality audiences. No advertiser is interested in placing their ads on a train wreck, even though a lot of people are looking at it. It just doesn't help their branding.
- stirner 11y agoWell, I agree that Reddit's voting system encourages groupthink, but I'd rather that unpopular opinions were silenced by other commenters rather than all opinions being silenced. Do you think that comments belong anywhere on the web (on aggregator sites, for example)?
- mozumder 11y agoUnmoderated commenting doesn't belong anywhere that relies on advertising as a business model. At the very least, have a human editor filter out comments, based on editorial guidelines.