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Why we’re removing comments on most of Inquirer.com
- camdenlock 6y ago> Racism has been a persistent presence in Inquirer comments. The Inquirer is committed to making the changes required to be an actively anti-racist news organization. Removing comments is a step in the right direction, with many more to come. This is a naked statement of religious affiliation. Pretty sad to see.
- Y_Y 6y agoWhat if there was a service where you could get bots to post sterile, on-message chitchat instead of leaving it up to gross human volunteers?
- jeremysouthard 6y agoWhat purpose would that serve, exactly?
- wang_li 6y agoHe’s fishing for an xkcd link.
- ampdepolymerase 6y agoTo give the illusion of healthy discourse. GPT2 is excellent for this. See subreddit simulator.
- jeremysouthard 6y agoSure, GPT2 could do it, but again - it won't stop the trolls and wouldn't be actual discourse. I think the other comment about fishing for an xkcd link sounds more likely.
- Y_Y 6y agoNot this. The idea is you don't allow any humans. I'm not fishing for anything either.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- WalterBright 6y agoIs it that hard to simply delete comments that don't meet the forum guidelines?
- MattGaiser 6y agoThe volume of such comments can be enormous and unless you are watching 24/7 it does not work as the trolls will happily do it at 3AM.
- JdeBP 6y agoThis is answered under the subheading "Why not just invest in more moderation?".
- WalterBright 6y agoOr all comments can only be posted once approved by the moderator. This obviates the need for 24 hour vigilance.
- krapp 6y agoNo it doesn't, you'll still need someone moderating to approve posts 24 hours a day or else the site stops working. No one wants to have a conversation through hours-long gaps in a moderation queue.
- WalterBright 6y agoI've participated in such forums before, such as comp.lang.c++.moderated, and it works.
- JdeBP 6y agoA counterpoint to that was given in Philadelphia Magazine back in 2013. The Philadelphia Inquirer also tried a system of moderation by volunteers in 2015. The headlined article tells us that they did not work.
- booleandilemma 6y agoI’m happy with the trend of removing comments from online publications. Too many are outright spam (“I make $500 per day on Facebook and so can you!”) or they’re the opinions of ill-informed people who try to spread one agenda or another. I think having comments everywhere possible was an idea from the web 2.0 era that’s proven to be not all that worth it in most cases. Moderation is hard and it doesn’t make sense for newspapers and magazines to be spending resources on it. There are other forums (reddit, hn) for this sort of thing.
- hshshs2 6y agoyeah people should ask “is a substantive conversation likely to happen here” and if not, don’t have comments
- darkerside 6y agoThe irony of posting this as a comment on an online message board is tangible.
- faitswulff 6y agoAh, but comments on well moderated news aggregators is a different story altogether than sites that just happen to have comment forms.
- darkerside 6y agoYes, that's right. We're different. It's everyone else that's the problem. /s
- unethical_ban 6y agoYes. Unironically. Without the s. Seriously. Very few news orgs devote the resources needed to curate messages for relevance and filter trolls and flames. Furthermore, places want to make money on subscribers so potentially have an incentive not to remove postsade by subscribers (no substance behind that theory). Nytimes is the only news site I see that doesn't have absolute trash for dialogue quality.
- podiki 6y agoVice also doesn't have comments [0] on their articles. What other big venues do this (NPR, Atlantic, NJ.com are listed in the Inquirer article)? Or I guess many just embed Facebook comments or some other outside network and consider it someone else's problem? [0] https://www.vice.com/en/article/vvdjjy/were-getting-rid-of-comments-on-vice https://www.vice.com/en/article/vvdjjy/were-getting-rid-of-c...
- lstamour 6y agoAlso: The Economist (for most articles, if not all): https://medium.com/severe-contest/help-us-shape-the-future-of-comments-on-economist-com-4bc968b5d0d4 https://medium.com/severe-contest/help-us-shape-the-future-o... and https://www.reddit.com/r/theeconomist/comments/81zwcw/whatever_happened_to_the_comments_section_in_the/ https://www.reddit.com/r/theeconomist/comments/81zwcw/whatev... Bloomberg: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/28/bloomberg-switches-off-comments-in-website-redesign https://www.theguardian.com/media/2015/jan/28/bloomberg-swit... That said, this doesn't seem to be the norm yet. A number of news sites I frequent try to solve this by hiding the comments section by default. NYT sometimes hides comments on articles posted on weekends when they have fewer content moderators available, they say. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/reader-center/comments-moderation.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/27/reader-center/comments-mo...
- Chris2048 6y agoVice probably doesn't want anyone correcting their articles or pointing out bias/hypocrisy either..
- Jermaine_Jabi 6y agoHow about requiring a $5 deposit to post, refundable at the end of your posting tenure, and confiscated on falling foul of the guidelines? An additional benefit would be fewer low content posts
- sien 6y agoDon't make it a deposit. Just charge people to do it. Metafilter has done this for years quite successfully.
- tempestn 6y agoMaking people pay to comment removes certain types of low quality and spam comments, but I believe it can actually worsen polarization. Most people with moderate points of view aren't going to be nearly as motivated to comment as those who have extreme views, and therefore will be even less likely to do so with more barriers in place.
- samatman 6y agoI agree with this, but doubt that a refundable deposit vs. a nonrefundable entrance fee changes this calculus significantly.
- riffic 6y agomaking comments subscriber-only would at least alleviate the "paywall" issue.
- logicalmonster 6y agoI hate this trend of shutting down comment sections. Only very establishment public opinions will now be allowed to be shared on mass media. What good is freedom of speech if you’re not allowed to publicly assemble because of COVID and social media is cut off from you? Next time there’s a destructive unpopular war or bank bailout or police shooting or event that threatens corporate profits there’s no public ability to call the corporate press out on their BS.
- pron 6y agoFirst, the comments that cause this are so from "establishment opinions" that you can be well outside them and still not come close to what they're talking about. Second, what good is freedom of speech if a platform is not free to choose which speech to amplify? Seems like some have started to understand freedom of speech as "you're free to publish exactly what I tell you to publish!" Freedom of speech also means that I'm free not to repeat what you say. This understanding of freedom of speech is the one that has been at the very core of media companies and educational institutions for ages; they're free to shape their reputation by choosing which speech they publish.
- notsureaboutpg 6y agoFree speech sounds a lot like free market when you put it like that. I mean, there's "technically" a free market, but advertising works and thus clearly it's possible for poor quality, expensive products to beat out cheap, good quality ones. Same way, there's "technically" free speech. But if corporations can use their billions to trumpet specific politics only, then it's also possible for poor quality, expensive opinions and speech to beat out cheap, good quality ones. Note: I am not saying the comments are good quality ideas, just making an analogy based on parent's comment.
- throwawaysea 6y ago> what good is freedom of speech if a platform is not free to choose which speech to amplify What good is freedom of speech when powerful and influential organizations (like Twitter or Facebook) control virtually all speech in society? Above a certain size, these platforms are public utilities and public town squares. For the right to free speech to be at all practical and meaningful, they must be required to platform all legal speech.
- aimor 6y agoIt would be neat if there was a forum that provided a comment section for every website url. Users could use a browser add-on to display the comment section when they browse to a page. The key point here is that there is only one comment section per url. I think this is different enough from reddit. HN, etc that it could be interesting in a unique way.
- ceejayoz 6y agoI've seen a number of attempts at this. They tend to either be ghost towns or dumpster fires.
- slig 6y agoThere is (was?) a browser extension to do almost that.
- loloquwowndueo 6y agoGab dissenter does that. Of course it’s geared toward the kind of crowd that frequents gab.com - take that as you may, I’m just saying.
- Huwyt_Nashi031 6y agoPeople who follow the state religion (diversity, anti-racism, equality, etc) don't need additional tools to exercise their freedom of speech. You have all of social media to signal your faith.
- dane-pgp 6y agoDissenter also got banned from the Mozilla and Google Chrome web stores[0]. I can't help wondering, though, if banning software for allowing people to access offensive web content might be a policy that browser makers wouldn't want selectively applied to their products in OS app stores. [0] https://hub.packtpub.com/mozilla-and-google-chrome-refuse-to-support-gabs-dissenter-extension-for-violating-acceptable-use-policy/ https://hub.packtpub.com/mozilla-and-google-chrome-refuse-to...
- deleted 6y ago
- dredmorbius 6y agoI'd be curious to compare early rationales arguing news sites should run comments sections wth the reality that's transpired. There are numerous articles from the past decade arguing against. (These turned up searching fror the "pro" argument.) Why comments sections must die (2018) https://www.salon.com/2018/11/17/why-comments-sections-must-die/ https://www.salon.com/2018/11/17/why-comments-sections-must-... Is it really wise for news websites to stop people from commenting? (2015) https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/sep/25/is-it-really-a-good-idea-to-turn-for-news-websites-to-turn-off-comments https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2015/sep/25/is-... Comment sections are poison: handle with care or remove them (2014) https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/sep/12/comment-sections-toxic-moderation https://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2014/sep/... No Comment! Why More News Sites Are Dumping Their Comment Sections (2018) https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/29720/no-comment-why-a-growing-number-of-news-sites-are-dumping-their-comment-sections https://www.kqed.org/lowdown/29720/no-comment-why-a-growing-...
- cibyr 6y agoGet your readers arguing with each other - makes pageviews go up, which makes ad revenue go up, all without spending more money on those pesky journalists.
- rgoulter 6y agoI'd guess the rationale for comments would be implicit before then. e.g. it's not strange to see that there's a chat alongside livestreams on Twitch, or a comment section beneath YouTube videos. There's a natural community of people interested in the content enough to comment. - I'd guess the difference here is that newspapers get significantly more traffic from social media. I'd also think it comes from a positive vision of technology. The internet as a means of "making the world more connected". Empower people to communicate in ways which weren't possible before. - Turns out this wasn't as positive as expected.
- wyattpeak 6y agoFrom memory, published arguments have only been against right from the start, because it was so popular that the pro side needed no support. Comments and social sections were the big in-thing in the latter part of the noughties, if you were trying to make your site modern and hip, it was assumed you'd have comments and share links on everything. I recall a degree of belief that social media was the future and if you didn't integrate with it you'd get left behind, but I think as much it was just a design fad.
- Huwyt_Nashi031 6y ago>The Inquirer is committed to making the changes required to be an actively anti-racist news organization. Removing comments is a step in the right direction Further confirming the pattern that the greater the freedom (of speech), the greater the tendency right. Think of any social media company or news outlet and its relationship between censorious zeal and sociopolitical bias is likely to fit this trend. So much so that it's become a bit of a meme on the far right any time an egregious propaganda piece is published to simply joke: "Comments disabled" Perhaps it's even seen as a trophy of sorts, that a publisher has conceded their position, they've shown their hand, and the opinions they share may now be immediately dismissed. So fragile are they that they cannot even permit the possibility of critique, ridicule, or debate. A yardstick for progressive bias: are comments disabled?
- zapt02 6y agoThe best solution to the toxicity issue of anonymous internet comments I've seen relates to identifying the users. In Sweden there is a country-wide ID system called BankID. You can authenticate towards any website using a mobile app which validates your identity (through your bank). One of the regional comment platforms has adopted this and requires you to sign in using BankID, thereby confirming your identity. I don't know if this is solving the problem or if it's just masking it a bit better by introducing a "shame" aspect, but it's working on the sites that I've seen using it.
- offby37years 6y agoThe US won't even mandate ID for voting, requiring verification for internet comments is a stretch.
- tehjoker 6y agoIt's the kind of thing people would say an authoritarian regime would do anyway.
- throwaway2048 6y agoFacebook is full of complete toxic garbage posted by people with their full real identities.
- dopeboy 6y agoThough this is true, I've noticed the temperature goes significantly down when your true identity is on the line.
- tehjoker 6y agoI think that depends on your social group. I imagine there are many cases where the heat gets turned up when you know your real-life enemy is online.
- throw_m239339 6y ago
- dmingod666 6y agoHN is a site that for the most part is the comment section of an article.
- GhostVII 6y agoBut HN has active moderators, and also is a much different subset of people than the people who are reading the article. Also you don't see HN comments by default on articles, so even if the comments are bad they won't detract from the article itself.
- nicklecompte 6y agoThe crucial difference is that HN doesn’t spend any resources creating the articles so it can focus its actual resources on cultivating a healthy discussion. The “toxic a-holes in the comment section” problem is difficult for small blogs where commenters sustain the bulk of the public discussion surrounding each post. But, even for small local newspapers, the conversation about the articles happens outside of the newspaper, and very rarely is there anything useful or substantively original in the comments section on a newspaper website. So while there are arguments for keeping a moderated comments section, it is a lot of cost for probably little benefit (and, as the Inquirer says, they would rather focus on reporting).
- lawwantsin17 6y agoComments have always been toxic and anonymous. Bad UX, the medium is the message.
- ajarmst 6y agoThe decision to disable comments is not one that requires an explanation to anyone who has used the internet in the last decade. I’m still amazed that this site hasn’t yet turned into a garbage fire.
- Loughla 6y agoIt's burning at the edges. The mods here do a great job, but the fire is there. For proof - turn on dead comments and take a read through of that mess.
- dukeofdoom 6y agoThere's a huge load of hypocrisy, when you write articles critical of other people. But will not let your self be criticized on what you just wrote. Given how skewed and inaccurate the articles are becoming. At least the comments can point outright lies and biases. It somewhat levels the playing field. So I'm of the opposite opinion. I think comments should be possible on all news articles. If you're given section 230 protection, you must allow all public comments. However, I would allow moderation in the style slashdot does. Where you slide a bar, to determine how much moderation you want.
- throwaway2048 6y agoThere is a difference between substantive criticism and monkeys flinging shit at a wall. Section 230 says nothing about "you must allow all public comments." Its not very long, go read it. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/47/230
- yspeak 6y agoThanks I've never read 230 before. This is why I love HN. Who would have thought or considered to read it ? And of course we do want moderation because moderation done right will generate a consistent, knowledgeable (moderate even ?) editorial voice, just what 230 envisioned, not the messy internet we have now.
- orhmeh09 6y agoOne of the things I miss from Slashdot moderation is the tag that would accompany the score — Informative, Funny, etc. I’ve never really seen it take off anywhere, and hashtags or emoticons don’t convey the same.
- theamk 6y agoI think what makes Slashdot tags work is that they are not assigned by the comment's author -- the community decides on what is funny/insightful instead. When the ratings are assigned by users (like github comment "reactions") they are sometimes pretty helpful.
- jaimex2 6y agoHow does HN have such a sanitary comment system?
- bluetwo 6y agoMeta-moderation, which also required oversight to minimize abuse.
- macintux 6y agoI suspect that the relatively narrow targeting helps as well. General news sites have a much broader audience with (generally) less subject-matter familiarity than HN. And most stories here are far less controversial than most news stories these days.
- pitay 6y agoThe old Slashdot comment system before the original creator left worked very well. It was proud to say that the only comment they were forced to delete was one that criticised Scientology. That was because they took Slashdot to court. Users moderated comments with a set amount of mod points, usually only having 5 points to moderate up or down at a time (every few days I think for people with excellent score), there was metamoderation there as well, user metamoderation mind you. Not sure if metamoderation was there at the start, but the comments I generally saw were generally quite good. It was great to get various viewpoints without all these people trying to stop people saying their piece like we find all the time today. Not that no comments were removed, comments were hidden if they were below a specific score that you set. You could set the score to -1 if you wanted and see all the comments, and it was nice to do so sometimes. Note that it really did work like a democracy to show what comments people really thought were worth upvoting. It worked. Now with the new owners there is a link to flag a comment on the bottom right of each comment. Sad.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- 3131s 6y agoBecause people here wrap their offensively stupid opinions in polite language.
- iorrus 6y agoI like the substack model, in order to comment you must be subscribed to the newsletter (say $5 per month), while others can read the article and comments.
- _0o6v 6y agoUnfortunately a lot of people are quite happy to pay to post absolute nonsense online, because it's their only outlet and makes them feel validated.
- dylan604 6y agoI don't know if that's the best method though. If some PAC decided it was going to pay for the subscriptions of its members as a campaign, then that subscription model isn't really a big barrier.
- rfw300 6y agoI’d imagine that’s substantially less common than your everyday racist spambots in news comment sections. I doubt the amount of influence you can gain from astroturfing a news comments section is worth the cost of dozens of newspaper subscriptions.
- dylan604 6y agoBut are the owners of spambots going to pay subscription fees for their bots?
- nxpnsv 6y agoAnd most news papers already have a login for paid subscribers. Seems like a nobrainer. Certainly will attract less bot spam if you need to be a paid subscriber.
- alex_g 6y agoIf you're not willing to go all in on community, this is the right decision. But you are giving up something. Rather than focus on the small commenting audience as a detraction, look at it as an opportunity to grow. 2% seems small, but I bet a huge portion of that is paying subscribers. There are publications that have a healthy commenting section, so we know it's possible. At one point in time Digg (which has gone to the dogs now) had a thing where they'd have a sort of AMA with the author of an article featured on their front page. I thought that was fantastic. I wonder if the Inquirer considered allowing subscribers to ask questions of journalists, which (if answered) would appear as a comment below the article. You take the money you're paying your moderators, and you pay your journalist more for the time they're spending on that.
- jaimex2 6y agoCan't they just limit commenting to paying subscribers?
- jb775 6y agoNews article comments are usually low quality, but I think this decision is partially rooted in setting up a system where any discussion on a topic is dissuaded because the news organizations feel like they're the end-all be-all for defining public narratives.
- theamk 6y agoRelated XKCD link: https://xkcd.com/1019/ https://xkcd.com/1019/ "First Post" (The problem with posting comments in the order they're submitted) (transcript: https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1019:_First_Post https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1019:_First_Post)
- jawns 6y agoI used to handle comment moderation for a metro newspaper, and I was floored by the amount of time and effort people put into posting racist diatribes. We had some who must've been script kiddies, because they started automating their comments, just like spammers. But they were selling hate, rather than ED pills. I had proposed charging a nominal amount for comment account creation, but I got a hard no. Too bad. It certainly would have thwarted the worst offenders, who were creating dozens of accounts a day.
- garbagetime 6y ago>I had proposed charging a nominal amount for comment account creation, but I got a hard no. Too bad. It certainly would have thwarted the worst offenders, who were creating dozens of accounts a day. Urbit ID solves this problem, too.
- smt88 6y agoJust read their FAQ[1] and was optimistic until reading that it runs on the Ethereum blockchain. This is not a problem that requires blockchain to solve, and it makes me wonder what other issues are built into the project. 1. https://urbit.org/faq/ https://urbit.org/faq/
- garbagetime 6y agoIt seems to me one of the few real projects using blockchain technologies in a sensible way. Honestly not sure why it wouldn't use blockchain technologies. Urbit has been using blockchain tech since before bitcoin or Ethereum existed.
- 3np 6y agoBitcoin precedes Urbit by several years.
- garbagetime 6y ago
- cratermoon 6y agoLet me also suggest that sites have found that comments don't provide any useful input or data for measuring "engagement" or anything else that contributes meaningfully to ad revenue.
- axguscbklp 6y agoIf you don't like racism, sexism, and so on, you can always just let your eyes slide past those comments and focus on other ones instead. But we see that the Inquirer wants to be proactively censorious. Why? Economic reasons? A religion-like desire to police what they suppose is morality? A desire to avoid giving their political opponents more power?
- mbg721 6y agoIt's bad for branding; the Inquirer is hand-wringing about having their name and logo next to things that they don't want to defend. This kind of organization really shouldn't be in the comment business at all, but got convinced it was necessary in order to keep up with the future.
- axguscbklp 6y agoYeah, personally I don't think that platforming implies endorsing, but I can understand why a company would be concerned.
- mbg721 6y agoIf not for "platforming = endorsing", cancel-culture wouldn't exist and we'd all live happier lives. It's all corporations acting like really shallow teenagers.
- cozuya 6y agoWhy does "racism, sexism, and so on" need to be platformed?
- axguscbklp 6y agoA lot of supposed "racism, sexism, etc..." is not actually bigotry, it's just people saying true things that happen to be taboo to say. As for real bigotry, as long as it stays just words, personally I don't mind it much or at all even when it's directed against groups that I belong to, at least as long as I'm free to fire back. Sometimes I find it amusing. As long as it doesn't cross over into people actually hurting others, I'd rather it be open to say. Words don't bother me.
- monksy 6y agoI think that newspapers are dying due to a lack of good leadership and direction. It's a hard job to do right and theres no incentive for it. Instead we have a bunch of idealists who's dream is to influence people. (But they don't have the experience to understand why their position is misfounded and harmful) [This is where you get vice and other extreme positioned based papers] Anyways, journalism never really caught up on the idea about online news and tried to go the ad revenue route. They didn't innovate and they degraded their product. (Clickbait). Then they tried to put the genie back by doing paywalls. (Expensive and they've been using dark patterns to try to prevent you from cancelling) They've had their chance to understand what the context of their work is and to innovate. But all we're seeing is a profit driven approach with no clear acknowledgement about how people want to interact with them.
- tehjoker 6y agoIirc, Matt Taibbi said that newspapers are dying because the news never made money. Some of it was subscriptions, but most of it was the classifieds, ads, and other non-news items that were obliterated by the internet. This means that subscription models (like NYT) and media consolidation are the only viable path forward. Subscriptions mean that papers will cater to a wealthy audiance and lock out the poors. Advertising makes news available to the poor, but makes their opinions unrepresented because newspapers can't say anything that would upset their advertisers. Given the news doesn't really make money and is necessary for a functioning society, we might need to look towards public funding and ways to include the public. EDIT: As a side benefit, a publicly funded news agency doesn't need to maximize eyeballs on it and so can afford to be less sensationalist. That is, it can be, but it has no life-or-death obligation to do it.
- keystation49 6y agoWith the constant ramping of propaganda and lies, it becomes too problematic to have hundreds of people disagreeing at the end of each article. The public sentiment must be known, and as such I am reversing this decision.
- tentacleuno 6y agoReversing which decision?
- tomphoolery 6y agoLove it. Screw the comments section on ANYTHING. - A commenter
- crtechmbd 6y agoFor people who need to comment where the publisher has blocked, you can use Anywyse which is a chrome extension that lets users ask or answer questions on any webpage. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/anywyse/gfohefaikkfjlddgdigfpjhijljmneik https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/anywyse/gfohefaikk...
- jwmoz 6y agoMost news is essentially toxic so it's unsurprising that comments are also.
- peterthehacker 6y ago> Our review found that the commenting climate in Sports is better than elsewhere on the site. The conversations are more relevant to the stories, and there are fewer personal attacks. We’ll now be focusing all of our moderating resources on Sports, and our Community Guidelines will be strictly enforced. I wonder if this is a common pattern. Perhaps sports stories naturally encourage healthier discussion. Intuitively it makes sense. Talking sports with someone can be a great icebreaker if they come from a totally different background.
- Hard_Space 6y agoI don't know about this - it seems to me that all you need to do to shut down a community that threatens you is harass it systematically. I think we should be looking at more intelligent solutions.
- Mengkudulangsat 6y agoA popular newspaper in Malaysia was fined recently because of their readers comments [1]. It is wise for the Inquirer to do this. Newspapers are regulated entities and it is more sustainable for comments to migrate to 3rd party sites like Reddit / Facebook / HN. [1] https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2021/02/19/malaysiakini-fined-rm500k-for-contempt https://www.thestar.com.my/news/nation/2021/02/19/malaysiaki...
- input_sh 6y agoDepends on the jurisdiction of the website. In the US, it is protected by the section 230 ("no provider [...] of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider"). In other words, you can sue the commenter, but not the platform hosting the comment. In the EU, there's an opposite precedent (Delfi AS v. Estonia), in which the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) confirmed that fining Delfi (Finnish web portal) for comments doesn't go against the platform's freedom of speech. Of course, that's not a law, but it might impact future EU-wide laws that aim to regulate that sort of thing.
- stadia42 6y agoInstead of disabling comments, why wouldn't they use one of the techniques that successful discussion forums employ to filter out spam, extremism, and other noise? HN being an obvious example, but there are plenty of others, each with its own approach. Many successful online discussion forums rely on user moderation, which makes it feasible without Inquirer hiring a huge dedicated staff.
- sneak 6y ago> Only about 2 percent of Inquirer.com visitors read comments, and an even smaller percentage post them. Most of our readers will not miss the comments.
- stadia42 6y agoPresumably because the comments are mostly spam or other noise? If they cleaned that up, more people would read the comments, maybe?
- dspillett 6y agoBut maybe not. And cleaning it up (for existing comments if they didn't just junk everything prior to now, and in terms of ongoing moderation) would be more effort than they are currently spending on the matter. Also, a large part of it may be that the comments are at the bottom and a large part of their readership don't get that far on many articles. Some will read the headline & byline, some complete the opening paragraphs, and only then if it seems interesting enough (or they are otherwise lacking anything to do) will people read on further (never mind all the way to the end of a long article). Getting around that by putting the comments higher up probably isn't a good answer. I've seen some places have a "<number> comments below" link near the top but I can't imagine that drawing people through unless they would read that far anyway or the <number> is high enough to suggest some interesting controversy.
- dspillett 6y ago> why wouldn't they use one of the techniques that successful discussion forums employ to filter out spam, extremism, and other noise? They have done. Removing comments will reduce some engagement, but as pointed out they've come to the conclusion that the sort of engagement lost is of low value to the majority of their target audience and comes with a cost (in terms of moderation effort) that isn't worth, to them, any residual "good" value the comments sections have. >HN being an obvious example I think a key difference between HN and news pages like those in the enquirer in this matter is that their comments area is more of an afterthought to start with where much of the purpose of many visiting HN, good sub-reddits, and do forth is for the comments. This means removing them would be much more sufficient a loss. It also means that for a greater part community moderation works, reducing more costly (for the need site) central effort (it is still needed, of course but the cost/benefit balance is very different).
- nicbou 6y agoI removed comments from my websites and I don't miss them. Now I invite people to email me. I only receive questions and praise, no spam at all. It makes my websites smaller, faster and more focused. It also lets me address reader mail like any other mail.
- qwerty1234599 6y agoInteresting how the word "toxic" is mainstream nowadays. Considering the term originated as a way of describing aggressive/angry kids on the videogame League of Legends.
- blowski 6y agoI’m not sure it originated there. My first manager in the late 90s described one of our clients as toxic, and I don’t think he invented it either.
- jiofih 6y agoIt’s been in use as in “toxic relationship” or “toxic behaviour” for maybe fifty years. If you’re thinking of “salty”... that goes even further back. And both were definitely popular in Counter-Strike a decade before any other game!
- Annatar 6y agoMore cancel culture and censorship is exactly what we need, because that's been proven to be so immensely effective in humanity's past. Let us also not forget that we are not allowed to be politically incorrect, we all have to be namby-pamby because nobody's feelings are allowed to get hurt for any reason: we cannot have gentle sensitivities having to deal with how other people really feel or view things. Truth about how people feel deep down is ugly and dangerous, therefore sweeping the ugly side of humanity "under the carpet" is far preferable to dealing with it, especially since that has also been proven to work extremely well in the past. This is simply grand, just imagine the possibilities: anyone can now label anything one does not like as toxic and use that as an extremely effective method of censorship and oppression in a special propaganda war, while people sit in a bubble hoping all of it will go away! What could possibly go wrong?
- habosa 6y agoThis is great. I don't know why every site thinks it needs comments or ratings/reviews. Allowing user-generated content on your site is a big responsibility and attracts a lot of bad behavior. Adding comments should be a careful last step, not part of every Wordpress template.
- bkor 6y agoNU.nl used to be famous (in a bad way) for the comment section. After closing the comment section for a while they reopened it again using software 'Talk' from the Coral Project. This software was made by a few and for news organizations. The difference is quite drastic. They still need to moderate a bit, but the effect is quite good. It also learns from the moderation, thereby lowering the amount of moderation required. The site does close the ability to comment during the night, comments are closed after a certain period, plus commenting is sometimes not possible (if they don't expect the article to be visible during the day). See (Dutch, use e.g. google translate) https://www.nu.nl/blog/5226107/nujij-terug-weer-reageren-nunl-artikelen.html https://www.nu.nl/blog/5226107/nujij-terug-weer-reageren-nun... for details; it includes a link to this Talk software. People still often complain about the comment section of NU.nl, but for me there's been a drastic change. There's almost no trolling going on. They allow different opinions, even if those comments are badly researched. People tend to focus on the poorly thought out comments. Though I appreciate them (not everyone knows everything or can easily find the answer).
- ohduran 6y ago"You get the commenters you deserve" is a common joke on Marginal Revolutions.
- RickJWagner 6y agoIt'd probably be nicer if everybody just had to use a moniker that's publicly traceable back to the owner. In that way, everybody could still have a voice and the narrative isn't just owned by the media owners. There's a small price to pay-- even Benjamin Franklin distributed papers anonymously-- but I think it'd be worth it.
- dwardu 6y agoThis just makes it a good case for platforms like dissenter to continue the conversation.
- tclancy 6y agoIt is a damning indictment when someone says, “The social behavior in our main comment sections is worse than Philly sports fans.”
- rdtwo 6y agoThe comment section often has the actual news story hidden in it if you look hard enough. Most of the news stories I read are 30-40% accurate, if you scroll though the comments it’s often you will find the corrected story at 70-80% accuracy. So at least in that regard they have value
- misterbishop 6y agoAs if the Inquirer didn't cultivate a toxic, racist audience intentionally. They published the thoroughly mediocre Christine Flowers basically weekly for 17 years. https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/philadelphia-progressive-conservatives-thinkfest-20191121.html https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/philadelphia-progressive-co...
- JSeymourATL 6y ago> Only about 2 percent of Inquirer.com visitors read comments, and an even smaller percentage post them. A few bad apples spoil the bunch. :(
- rchaud 6y agoWould allowing only paid subscribers to comment help keep comments open? The NYT seems like one of the last remaining organizations that offer moderated comments on its articles. The Guardian UK dumped comments a long time ago (except for sports). Comment spam and hate speech is a huge issue that I'm surprised anti-spam tech has not been able to address. The cost of human moderation is why websites, blogs and community groups ceded their audience to Facebook a decade ago. We've been paying the price ever since.