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> What are your thoughts on incentivizing constructive comments? I've seen publishers (The Guardian, if memory serves) select thoughtful comments and re-print t

> What are your thoughts on incentivizing constructive comments? I've seen publishers (The Guardian, if memory serves) select thoughtful comments and re-print them as micro-articles in their own right. I don't think you're correctly identifying the problem. In my experience, the problem with comments, especially on news sites, is a glut of bad comments, rather than a lack of good comments. This solution doesn't disincentivize bad comments.

dageshi 10y ago
The slashdot system for categorising comments seemed to work really well at making the highest quality comments stand out, I wonder why other sites haven't tried something similar, I don't think I've seen it used elsewhere.
- basch 10y ago
  it seems sites find it to complex to implement. slashdot nailed moderation, no one has attempted something similar. most systems are simple up/down vote or like/report i am also starting to wonder if the agegroup being hired to implement "social" for websites is now young enough to have missed slashdot in it s prime. the fact that people are still brainstorming from scratch instead of talking about how to improve slashdots model reeks of reinventing the wheel because they never heard of it.
  - edraferi 10y ago
    > i am also starting to wonder if the agegroup being hired to implement "social" for websites is now young enough to have missed slashdot in it s prime. That's me! Can you explain the Slashdot model and why it worked? Or point to a good write up about it somewhere else?
    - flomo 10y ago
      Slashdot's method of scoring comments was overly complicated and probably did not produce any better results than reddit-style voting. However, Slashdot's killer feature was that the reader could filter by comment score and thus only read the 'good' comments, and not have to wade through hundreds of replies.
      - basch 10y ago
        correct, they were better than reddit because they let the user sort based on their preference. slashdot generated a ton of metadata that described their content, and then gave you the power to intelligently utilize that metadata.
    - qu4z-2 10y ago
      Been a while, may not be entirely correct: Slashdot's model was perhaps a little overcomplicated, but my favourite feature was the ability to tag up/down votes with flavours. +1 Informative was different to +1 Funny, and "Factually incorrect" was a different downvote to "Off-topic spam" (whatever they were called). Other quirks off the top of my head: it capped at +5 and ... -1, I think? The score represented a thing closer to the up/down ratio than "Facebook likes". There was a dedicated -1 Overrated moderation for "I don't disagree that it's interesting, just not +5 interesting". Also, logged in users got a fixed number of moderation points at random intervals, and you couldn't moderate in a story that you commented in. I'd like to believe this discouraged "throwing away" points on low-effort joke comments, but I'm not sure the facts of Slashdot comments entirely bears that out. EDIT: And then there was meta-moderation...
    - basch 10y ago
      I suggest reading the FAQ https://slashdot.org/faq https://slashdot.org/faq especially all the Moderation, metamoderation, and Karma sections!!
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Slashdot's moderation system was vaguely effective. Complete crap rarely rose to the top. A great deal of high-quality commentary was buried, however, often the best and most informative. That's fairliy much par for the course. Much the early vibe on the site came from the fact that it was simply where intelligent people were commenting online -- especially the early Free Software crowd (well, early in terms of Web 1.0 -- there was the whole 1980s and early 1990s contingent as well). ESR (before he went fully whackjob mode), Ted T'so, Alan Cox, Bruce Perens, Rasterman, and others. Much that group seems split amongst HN, LKML, LWN, and Google+ these days, along with some blogs.
  - showerst 10y ago
    Interestingly for this discussion, CmdrTaco is now at Wapo, after a brief spin through their various internal startups.
    - dredmorbius 10y ago
      And WashPo's clickbaitism is getting unbearable. I'm about ready to blackhole that domain.
r0muald 10y ago
The solution to bad comments is deleting them before they are even visible to other users. Deleting aggressively, as is done in certain subreddits (r/science) may seem offensive towards naive users who just want to add their "2 c" to the discussion, but it's the only effective AND honest strategy: if your comment adds little of interest, it's worth nothing. The bar should be very high, the more popular the website the higher the required quality. But in the end I think NPR are making the right choice. Comments on websites are not a constitutional right, after all.
- snerbles 10y ago
  The aggressive moderation in /r/science is quite honest compared to other subreddits, which is partly why its moderators attract less controversy when compared to others such as /r/news.

dageshi 10y ago

The slashdot system for categorising comments seemed to work really well at making the highest quality comments stand out, I wonder why other sites haven't tried something similar, I don't think I've seen it used elsewhere.

basch 10y ago
it seems sites find it to complex to implement. slashdot nailed moderation, no one has attempted something similar. most systems are simple up/down vote or like/report i am also starting to wonder if the agegroup being hired to implement "social" for websites is now young enough to have missed slashdot in it s prime. the fact that people are still brainstorming from scratch instead of talking about how to improve slashdots model reeks of reinventing the wheel because they never heard of it.
- edraferi 10y ago
  > i am also starting to wonder if the agegroup being hired to implement "social" for websites is now young enough to have missed slashdot in it s prime. That's me! Can you explain the Slashdot model and why it worked? Or point to a good write up about it somewhere else?
  - flomo 10y ago
    Slashdot's method of scoring comments was overly complicated and probably did not produce any better results than reddit-style voting. However, Slashdot's killer feature was that the reader could filter by comment score and thus only read the 'good' comments, and not have to wade through hundreds of replies.
    - basch 10y ago
      correct, they were better than reddit because they let the user sort based on their preference. slashdot generated a ton of metadata that described their content, and then gave you the power to intelligently utilize that metadata.
  - qu4z-2 10y ago
    Been a while, may not be entirely correct: Slashdot's model was perhaps a little overcomplicated, but my favourite feature was the ability to tag up/down votes with flavours. +1 Informative was different to +1 Funny, and "Factually incorrect" was a different downvote to "Off-topic spam" (whatever they were called). Other quirks off the top of my head: it capped at +5 and ... -1, I think? The score represented a thing closer to the up/down ratio than "Facebook likes". There was a dedicated -1 Overrated moderation for "I don't disagree that it's interesting, just not +5 interesting". Also, logged in users got a fixed number of moderation points at random intervals, and you couldn't moderate in a story that you commented in. I'd like to believe this discouraged "throwing away" points on low-effort joke comments, but I'm not sure the facts of Slashdot comments entirely bears that out. EDIT: And then there was meta-moderation...
  - basch 10y ago
    I suggest reading the FAQ https://slashdot.org/faq https://slashdot.org/faq especially all the Moderation, metamoderation, and Karma sections!!
dredmorbius 10y ago
Slashdot's moderation system was vaguely effective. Complete crap rarely rose to the top. A great deal of high-quality commentary was buried, however, often the best and most informative. That's fairliy much par for the course. Much the early vibe on the site came from the fact that it was simply where intelligent people were commenting online -- especially the early Free Software crowd (well, early in terms of Web 1.0 -- there was the whole 1980s and early 1990s contingent as well). ESR (before he went fully whackjob mode), Ted T'so, Alan Cox, Bruce Perens, Rasterman, and others. Much that group seems split amongst HN, LKML, LWN, and Google+ these days, along with some blogs.
- showerst 10y ago
  Interestingly for this discussion, CmdrTaco is now at Wapo, after a brief spin through their various internal startups.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    And WashPo's clickbaitism is getting unbearable. I'm about ready to blackhole that domain.

r0muald 10y ago

The solution to bad comments is deleting them before they are even visible to other users. Deleting aggressively, as is done in certain subreddits (r/science) may seem offensive towards naive users who just want to add their "2 c" to the discussion, but it's the only effective AND honest strategy: if your comment adds little of interest, it's worth nothing. The bar should be very high, the more popular the website the higher the required quality. But in the end I think NPR are making the right choice. Comments on websites are not a constitutional right, after all.

snerbles 10y ago
The aggressive moderation in /r/science is quite honest compared to other subreddits, which is partly why its moderators attract less controversy when compared to others such as /r/news.