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Perhaps the biggest crime is the lack of a comment section, which The Economist removed - without notice - a few months back. The comments almost always contai

Perhaps the biggest crime is the lack of a comment section, which The Economist removed - without notice - a few months back. The comments almost always contained additional insight, knowledge or healthy pushback against the article they sat below. Much of what the user A. Andros wrote is a good example - https://www.economist.com/user/5518230/comments https://www.economist.com/user/5518230/comments. Vice did the same, as did The Guardian in some cases (on their 'comment is free' section, no less!). Information invokes discussion. Just look at us here on HN. Removing readers' ability to discuss and question one's editorial stance is a bad, illiberal trend, and makes websites a little less worth visiting. Oh yeah, and the popups are pants too. That screenshot is missing a mandatory GDPR and cookie notification btw. Somebody please inform the EU data protection czars.

zazen 8y ago
HN is a fairly rare exception among news-commenting forums, in having a reasonable level of polite and intelligent discussion. Perhaps the Economist's forums were another such exception, I don't know. But I know that most newspapers' online comments sections are cesspools. I earnestly wish that ft.com, for example, would just eliminate its comment section. Every time I make the mistake of scrolling past the end of an ft article and into the comments, I regret it. Thoughtful articles are regularly followed by mindless dismissals from arrogant users. Questioning of the editorial stance is only valuable if it's done with a bit of intelligence. Maybe the newspapers should decide to either "go big or go home" with their comments section. Either work hard to establish a HN-like community, with a working community moderation system and meaningful reply nesting, or abolish the comments section. I think abolishing comments is better than trying to have a comments section "on the cheap" which gets filled with low-quality content.
smsm42 8y ago
If The Economist has a decent comment section, that would be the only major publication I know (that is not a dedicated discussion forum like HN) that would have it. In most places, comments are terrible. Mostly because there's no resource to moderate them, and no community cohesion to expert any social pressure on bad players. And no expectation it's the place to behave decently.

zazen 8y ago

HN is a fairly rare exception among news-commenting forums, in having a reasonable level of polite and intelligent discussion. Perhaps the Economist's forums were another such exception, I don't know. But I know that most newspapers' online comments sections are cesspools. I earnestly wish that ft.com, for example, would just eliminate its comment section. Every time I make the mistake of scrolling past the end of an ft article and into the comments, I regret it. Thoughtful articles are regularly followed by mindless dismissals from arrogant users. Questioning of the editorial stance is only valuable if it's done with a bit of intelligence. Maybe the newspapers should decide to either "go big or go home" with their comments section. Either work hard to establish a HN-like community, with a working community moderation system and meaningful reply nesting, or abolish the comments section. I think abolishing comments is better than trying to have a comments section "on the cheap" which gets filled with low-quality content.

smsm42 8y ago

If The Economist has a decent comment section, that would be the only major publication I know (that is not a dedicated discussion forum like HN) that would have it. In most places, comments are terrible. Mostly because there's no resource to moderate them, and no community cohesion to expert any social pressure on bad players. And no expectation it's the place to behave decently.