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I’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’r

I’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 ago
yeah people should ask “is a substantive conversation likely to happen here” and if not, don’t have comments
darkerside 6y ago
The irony of posting this as a comment on an online message board is tangible.
- faitswulff 6y ago
  Ah, but comments on well moderated news aggregators is a different story altogether than sites that just happen to have comment forms.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    Yes, that's right. We're different. It's everyone else that's the problem. /s
    - unethical_ban 6y ago
      Yes. 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.
      - monoideism 6y ago
        > Nytimes is the only news site I see that doesn't have absolute trash for dialogue quality. Oh, it has plenty of trash comments, they're just expressed in a manner acceptable to the urban elite. All the comments from hoi polloi are filtered.
        unethical_ban 6y ago
        >all the comments I disagree with are expressed with cogency and respect, and those that show disrespect or a lack of RTFA are deleted
      - darkerside 6y ago
        Credit to the mods here. They have a vision for a culture, and they've done a good job at it. It doesn't mean it's the only way to have a conversation. I recognize this sentiment is going to be unpopular here. There are probably other places that would feel the opposite, that HN is a groupthink SV bubble with any diversity just a riff on that theme. I like it here, but I swear some people here think they have a monopoly on truth.
- everdrive 6y ago
  Not really; it's ideal. Comment sections on news sources are mostly a dumpster fire. Individual message boards, small, and well regulated can be a wonderful gift. Commenting away from the primary publication, but about the primary publication seems ideal.
  - darkerside 6y ago
    There's no reason these are mutually exclusive. We can be happy that we have our own little forum for discussion while still feeling others should have the right to discuss content where it is. Alternative isn't better than mainstream, it's just different.
  - barbacoa 6y ago
    >Comment sections on news sources are mostly a dumpster fire Except for substack. In an interesting twist the comment sections on substack are thoughtful and polite with the authors chiming in -- at least in my experience. Don't know how to explain that compared to most sites. Maybe is because only paid subscribers are allowed to comment.
    - abhiminator 6y ago
      Just give it some time. Once the user base swells up I'm sure the site will witness a general decline in quality, unless the moderation tools catch up. This is something I've seen with countless forums and message boards over the years, i.e. Quora, Yahoo Answers, etc.
      - phlakaton 6y ago
        Add The Athletic, a subscription service, to the pile. Early adopters were enthusiastic and polite in the comments section. Even just one year in, the tenor had changed significantly.
      - benlumen 6y ago
        So true. I was thinking about Clubhouse recently and realized there are two basic forces that conspire against successful new platforms: 1) Going mainstream / mass appeal means the lowest common denominator drops, whether that's content or quality of conversation 2) Commercialization incentivizes the wrong things - see Twitter and how its been optimised for "engagement" above all else (not quality of content, or user happiness etc). Interesting things are happening at Clubhouse but surely they know how this will go. I think successful new platforms that want to maintain their integrity should be looking at paid membership. Substack might be OK because of that.
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  I think this is exactly the model we should have. I don't want 50 different accounts and comment sections. I want to take articles I'm interested in and bring them to the town square or pub to talk about. This is that.
  - Nursie 6y ago
    That's basically what fark.com is (was? is it still as popular?). Obviously with an eye on stupid stuff and snark.
- thereare5lights 6y ago
  HN has heavy moderation. It's not the same.
- kmeisthax 6y ago
  Hacker News specializes in being an online message board, so they actually have the moderation staff to manage the platform they're running. A news site running a comments section is sort of like a restaurant deciding they should also sell groceries. Can it work? Maybe - but more likely most people didn't want to pick up groceries at your restaurant, while people looking to steal food know that it's unattended most of the time, so you have a massive shrink rate problem. That doesn't mean groceries are a bad idea, it means it's something people need to specialize into.
  - rapnie 6y ago
    The HN moderation is (AFAIK still) a 1-2 man show, with @dang doing fantastic work as a moderator, but also much helped with the upvote/downvote, flag and a whole bunch of algorithms.
- we_the_elite 6y ago
  We're between good people here, not like the uneducated masses who comment on online news.
JdeBP 6y ago
If you build a public scribbling board, people will indeed come and scribble on it. (-: It's a lesson that definitely pre-dates computer-mediated communication. I've seen freely accessibly physical noticeboards quickly fill up with advertisements and suchlike, posted over the notices for which the noticeboards were actually for, for one.
- bravura 6y ago
  And, of course, graffiti has existed even before written language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffito_(archaeology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffito_(archaeology) [edit: top comment on the top comment's top comment!]
Guthur 6y ago
What's the level of informed that's required? And if you need to be informed to comment online should also require the same levels for voting. It seems it would be just as if not more so for the latter. Also, who's deciding the truth so that we know what informed is?
- gumby 6y ago
  I think the point is that there are enough outlets, and the barriers creating them are so low, that you, Guthur, could create one with the threshold you wish. If others agreed it would become popular. And that seems to be the position of the Inquirer (and nj.com that they reference): they are outsourcing comments to Twitter, FB etc)
jimbob45 6y ago
I’m amazed you’re not getting more comments of agreement. There was a period of two years where every single 538 article had a “I’ll make you $500” comment and 538 couldn’t/wouldn’t take them down. Newspapers struggle to exist as is without devoting more resources to an obsolete forum system. Better to retreat to a BBS system for overall discussion of the newspaper and let HN/Reddit/4chan provide platforms of discussion for your articles.
- JdeBP 6y ago
  There is a middle ground of outsourcing the comments handling to companies like Disqus. But the Philadelphia Inquirer does say that (a) it has tried everything, presumably including considering this option, and (b) the comments have proven to be not actually useful to the publication nor widely used (outwith a small group) by readers outwith two specific areas. "BBS system" is RAS Syndrome, by the way. (-:
  - skissane 6y ago
    > But the Philadelphia Inquirer does say that (a) it has tried everything, presumably including considering this option They claim they tried "everything", but did they actually try everything? For example, did they try limiting commenting to paying subscribers only? They don't mention in this post whether they actually tried that or not.
mynameishere 6y ago
Thanks for explaining what spam was--I think a lot of the people here probably were unaware. It's always good to learn things. Anyway, more to the point: First, the comments are almost always the most interesting part of a mainstream article, to the point where I will scroll down to see if they are there (if not--don't bother). Are there idiots posting? Yep--just scroll past, no problem. Second, Mainstream media dislikes comments because they don't like people pointing out their errors. (No one does, of course.)
mbg721 6y ago
That seems completely reasonable, as local newspapers were never two-direction mass-communication before, but it's somehow harder to justify removing a comments section once you've decided to have it.
- User23 6y ago
  Local newspapers were the inspiration for comments sections, specifically the “letters to the editor” section.
  - function_seven 6y ago
    Sure, but letters to the editor required the paper to read them and choose which ones were worth printing. Comments on most news sites are typically just assholes making every story about whatever they're obsessed with. Letters to the editor are still an active thing.
    - IPTN 6y ago
      Jinx
    - throwawaysea 6y ago
      That curation is also a problem. In an era where every news outlet is biased, and most of the major ones are lurching ideological leftward, and journalists bring their personal politics to work, the lack of equal and uninhibited reach for opposing viewpoints is a problem.
  - CalChris 6y ago
    Yes, but letters to the editor were picked by the editors for their ideas and for their writing. It was a high bar, often higher than the newspaper itself. So I used to enjoy reading them because of this.
  - IPTN 6y ago
    Sure, but that is a moderated communication channel. They pick and choose what to publish and, unlike most comment sections, unmoderated content is not visible to your audience. The opaqueness of the moderation process in a world without instant mass communication (i.e. the internet) would also likely have made it unlikely for your readers (users) did not have an expectation for their messages to be quickly reviewed or published. The other big advantage is that the only participants in channel are the newspaper and the submitter; no interaction between third parties on your platform means no flame wars or the like.
m-p-3 6y ago
Agreed, and most of there comment sections are badly moderated in the first place. I find more insightful comments on Reddit and other platforms anyway.
monksy 6y ago
Sounds like they should outsource their commentary to reddit.
xahrepap 6y ago
I agree. I remember years ago a friend of mine was found dead (took his own life) and a local news site reported it and had a comment section. It was beyond horrible. People were commenting about how glad they were that this person they *didn’t even know* was gone. “One fewer idiot” type of comments. It was one of those things where it was so bad you didn’t want to look away. The moderation was non-existent. I just don’t get why a website would want to harbor a community that toxic.
- JdeBP 6y ago
  Indeed, the Philadelphia Inquirer has not, for at least 10 years. * https://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/07/25/inquirer-daily-news-website-commenters-vile/ https://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/07/25/inquirer-daily-new... * https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/Our_Comments_Are_Changing_Tell_Us_What_You_Think.html https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/Our_Comments_Are_Changi... * https://www.inquirer.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20100707_Letters_to_the_Editor.html https://www.inquirer.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20100707_Le...
  - tomphoolery 6y ago
    everybody knows the real hot goss is in the NBC10 comments section
- neartheplain 6y ago
  It's not just local news. Even the Washington Post's comments section is awful. Not just in terms of the content, but also the UI. For example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/coronavirus-stimulus-check-calculator/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/coronavirus... Who wants to scroll through 1k comments in a narrow, awkwardly-paginated column? They also allow posts from anyone with an email account (mitigated somewhat by the paywall on most articles) which results in a lot of high-emotion, low-information spam. By contrast, the Wall Street Journal limits comments only to people with a subscription. Perhaps as a result, the WSJ comments section is generally of higher quality with e.g. better spelling/grammar, less flamewar, and a higher signal-to-noise ratio.
victorbstan 6y ago
Social media was a mistake.
- faeyanpiraat 6y ago
  Maybe, but it is probably something that would’ve emerged naturally, even if the guys running the current shows haven’t been born. Its a step in the human evolution in the capitalist internet era.
- lstodd 6y ago
  No it wasn't. The idea that one can meaningfully socialize with more than several hundred people is.
chupchap 6y ago
I remember when Facebook insisted on real names as a way to ensure there was no spam
ekianjo 6y ago
> they’re the opinions of ill-informed people who try to spread one agenda or another You mean like journalists themselves ?
brightball 6y ago
Now they just need to do the same for business reviews on Google, Yelp, etc
Iv 6y ago
That actually makes me sad: good automoderation tools are decades (plural, yes) old and yet most website haven't caught on the fact that you need some sort of ranking to filter out spam or bots. Thing is, newspapers as their business model currently is, have zero incentives in having quality comments. Negative incentives actually. Journalism is 20% facts reporting, 80% comments and that's generous: comments are the cheapest to write, some news website/papers are closer to 99% comments. If you have quality comments by your readers, what are you selling then? We need to move to a business model where facts reporting and facts checking (careful: talking about facts checking, not analysis checking) are the primary services that journalists would get paid for. Comments, even quality comments can be done through a good enough moderation system and a big enough community.
- euske 6y ago
  This makes me wonder: how can forum sites (like HN or Reddit) can actually make a money. I guess that HN isn't trying to, but I don't know its balance sheet. Likewise, I believe that Reddit is selling ads and app subscriptions. How do they even stay in business? And what are the fundamental difference from their business model and that of news sites?
  - ogre_codes 6y ago
    Hacker News sells inline advertising. Job posting adverts crop up pretty much daily on here which are adverts. It's a recruiting tool. As for expenses, HN seems like a lean site and likely doesn't require a ton of resources. I think there is only 1 full time moderator, dang. I have no idea whether YC makes money on HN or not, but I'd be surprised if it didn't at least break even.
    - Freak_NL 6y ago
      Also the free advertising for the brand of Y-combinator. With the reach HN has these days having your name out there right in the domain means that the on balance positive reputation of HN rubs off on your enterprise. It's basically a huge 'sponsored by' byline. This doesn't necessarily translate into a net positive for a company, but in this case I am willing to bet it does. It's honestly a fairly transparent transaction, and much preferable to the opaque world of on-line targetted advertising. I like how my ad-blocker just sits here twiddling its thumbs.
throwawaysea 6y ago
I couldn’t disagree more. Many people don’t have accounts with these other websites like Reddit, or don’t want to make them, or don’t want to deal with the biases of those various echo chambers. Having a community of news readers has a lot of utility. And from the news sites that I read (both local and national), I see very few outright spammy comments. I see a lot of legitimate push back and diverse opinions that provide different shades of perspectives on issues. What I do see as an increasing and disturbing trend is newspapers selectively turning off comment sections on stories that are controversial. The Seattle Times does this, and in 2020 the readers were robbed of the opportunity to discuss controversial situations freely (like CHAZ or a violent BLM riot). This was presumably done to avoid the trouble of moderation of PR, but a less charitable and very believable take is that this amounts to controlled manufacturing of public opinion by disallowing a dissenting viewpoint. In the absence of comment sections, all that’s left is one journalist’s biased take and characterization. With news houses across the country experiencing left-leaning employee activism and newsroom revolts, the opinions of readers is extremely important to not just platform, but feature prominently as a balancing force. And yes, anonymous comments in particular must be permitted, so the voice of those who aren’t in power is heard.
wirrbel 6y ago
Never quite understood why comment section wasn't one of the premium subscription features for direct monetization. It could cover the moderation costs directly, provides an incentive for some to buy a subscription and sock puppet accounts are less likely if they cost money. Then, I would assume that if your comment is tied to your billing account, you may be more inclined to not write the worst comments (insulting, etc.).
- csydas 6y ago
  Why pay to comment on site when someone can just repost it to social media and you can comment there for free? It's a sweet idea, but I don't think it's at all in line with how people think/utilize comments sections.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Because you reach roughly the same audience as the original article with your comment when it's published directly below it, whereas your social media post is read by your contacts only unless it's exceedingly successful.
  - silverpepsi 6y ago
    Why would anyone pay $5 a month subscription to a YouTube channel that is already free? The idea of selling things online was never about how to sell them to people who don't want them. You're clearly not the target market. It would be for people who are so fiercely loyal they don't think twice about how nice of a bonus it is to be able to be in the select audience that CAN comment. I don't know if people are this loyal to publications, but I've certainly felt it towards YouTube personalities that align with my thinking so strongly that I feel supporting them is promoting my values.
    - afc 6y ago
      > Why would anyone pay $5 a month subscription to a YouTube channel that is already free? To support the content producer. Maybe $5 is too high, but what if it was $2 or $3? I pay that to a few producers.
smsm42 6y ago
> they’re the opinions of ill-informed people who try to spread one agenda or another. So, like most of the content above the comments?
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
I agree, but there’s this screaming cage match, euphemistically called “engagement,” that is the vein of gold for Web site owners. As has become clear, “engagement” means public brawling. It generates clicks, and clicks are gold. It also encourages people to sign up for accounts, just so they can jump into the cesspool. Those accounts are quite valuable, as they are fodder for data miners, correlators, and aggregators. Making those accounts free, and easy to create (but not so easy to delete), is a natural. That’s why so many of these sites wait until their comment fighting pits reach brand-destroying levels of rancor, before they do anything about it; sometimes, too late (remember when SlashDot was the HN? It’s now the place to go, if you want ASCII-art swastikas). Yeah, I’m cynical.
- Contax 6y ago
  > I remember when Reddit was caught paying trolls. I've been there for like 10 years and I don't remember this. Was it even before? Do you have a link or something? I tried some searches but didn't find any relevant result. Thanks in advance.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    I'll remove the reference (I can't be bothered to spend the time to hunt down the sources), but it was a huge (but brief) stink. It wasn't that long ago. The guy was a paid subreddit mod, and an engineer in Arizona or New Mexico, or somewhere. The story destroyed his career. I know he was immediately fired by his day job. Maybe it's a good thing that the story is hard to find. We all deserve a second chance. I actually felt a bit sorry for him.
    - Contax 6y ago
      Never mind. I was just curious.
    - WolfRazu 6y ago
      > paid subreddit mod They used to pay moderators?
theknocker 6y ago
Yeah I’m so happy with the trend of traditional media turning the internet into a unidirectional pipe for marketing and propaganda, i.e. the traditional media. I couldn’t stand all that contrarian “other viewpoints existing.”

hshshs2 6y ago

yeah people should ask “is a substantive conversation likely to happen here” and if not, don’t have comments

darkerside 6y ago

The irony of posting this as a comment on an online message board is tangible.

faitswulff 6y ago
Ah, but comments on well moderated news aggregators is a different story altogether than sites that just happen to have comment forms.
- darkerside 6y ago
  Yes, that's right. We're different. It's everyone else that's the problem. /s
  - unethical_ban 6y ago
    Yes. 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.
    - monoideism 6y ago
      > Nytimes is the only news site I see that doesn't have absolute trash for dialogue quality. Oh, it has plenty of trash comments, they're just expressed in a manner acceptable to the urban elite. All the comments from hoi polloi are filtered.
      - unethical_ban 6y ago
        >all the comments I disagree with are expressed with cogency and respect, and those that show disrespect or a lack of RTFA are deleted
    - darkerside 6y ago
      Credit to the mods here. They have a vision for a culture, and they've done a good job at it. It doesn't mean it's the only way to have a conversation. I recognize this sentiment is going to be unpopular here. There are probably other places that would feel the opposite, that HN is a groupthink SV bubble with any diversity just a riff on that theme. I like it here, but I swear some people here think they have a monopoly on truth.
everdrive 6y ago
Not really; it's ideal. Comment sections on news sources are mostly a dumpster fire. Individual message boards, small, and well regulated can be a wonderful gift. Commenting away from the primary publication, but about the primary publication seems ideal.
- darkerside 6y ago
  There's no reason these are mutually exclusive. We can be happy that we have our own little forum for discussion while still feeling others should have the right to discuss content where it is. Alternative isn't better than mainstream, it's just different.
- barbacoa 6y ago
  >Comment sections on news sources are mostly a dumpster fire Except for substack. In an interesting twist the comment sections on substack are thoughtful and polite with the authors chiming in -- at least in my experience. Don't know how to explain that compared to most sites. Maybe is because only paid subscribers are allowed to comment.
  - abhiminator 6y ago
    Just give it some time. Once the user base swells up I'm sure the site will witness a general decline in quality, unless the moderation tools catch up. This is something I've seen with countless forums and message boards over the years, i.e. Quora, Yahoo Answers, etc.
    - phlakaton 6y ago
      Add The Athletic, a subscription service, to the pile. Early adopters were enthusiastic and polite in the comments section. Even just one year in, the tenor had changed significantly.
    - benlumen 6y ago
      So true. I was thinking about Clubhouse recently and realized there are two basic forces that conspire against successful new platforms: 1) Going mainstream / mass appeal means the lowest common denominator drops, whether that's content or quality of conversation 2) Commercialization incentivizes the wrong things - see Twitter and how its been optimised for "engagement" above all else (not quality of content, or user happiness etc). Interesting things are happening at Clubhouse but surely they know how this will go. I think successful new platforms that want to maintain their integrity should be looking at paid membership. Substack might be OK because of that.
Waterluvian 6y ago
I think this is exactly the model we should have. I don't want 50 different accounts and comment sections. I want to take articles I'm interested in and bring them to the town square or pub to talk about. This is that.
- Nursie 6y ago
  That's basically what fark.com is (was? is it still as popular?). Obviously with an eye on stupid stuff and snark.
thereare5lights 6y ago
HN has heavy moderation. It's not the same.
kmeisthax 6y ago
Hacker News specializes in being an online message board, so they actually have the moderation staff to manage the platform they're running. A news site running a comments section is sort of like a restaurant deciding they should also sell groceries. Can it work? Maybe - but more likely most people didn't want to pick up groceries at your restaurant, while people looking to steal food know that it's unattended most of the time, so you have a massive shrink rate problem. That doesn't mean groceries are a bad idea, it means it's something people need to specialize into.
- rapnie 6y ago
  The HN moderation is (AFAIK still) a 1-2 man show, with @dang doing fantastic work as a moderator, but also much helped with the upvote/downvote, flag and a whole bunch of algorithms.
we_the_elite 6y ago
We're between good people here, not like the uneducated masses who comment on online news.

JdeBP 6y ago

If you build a public scribbling board, people will indeed come and scribble on it. (-: It's a lesson that definitely pre-dates computer-mediated communication. I've seen freely accessibly physical noticeboards quickly fill up with advertisements and suchlike, posted over the notices for which the noticeboards were actually for, for one.

bravura 6y ago
And, of course, graffiti has existed even before written language. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffito_(archaeology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graffito_(archaeology) [edit: top comment on the top comment's top comment!]

Guthur 6y ago

What's the level of informed that's required? And if you need to be informed to comment online should also require the same levels for voting. It seems it would be just as if not more so for the latter. Also, who's deciding the truth so that we know what informed is?

gumby 6y ago
I think the point is that there are enough outlets, and the barriers creating them are so low, that you, Guthur, could create one with the threshold you wish. If others agreed it would become popular. And that seems to be the position of the Inquirer (and nj.com that they reference): they are outsourcing comments to Twitter, FB etc)

jimbob45 6y ago

I’m amazed you’re not getting more comments of agreement. There was a period of two years where every single 538 article had a “I’ll make you $500” comment and 538 couldn’t/wouldn’t take them down. Newspapers struggle to exist as is without devoting more resources to an obsolete forum system. Better to retreat to a BBS system for overall discussion of the newspaper and let HN/Reddit/4chan provide platforms of discussion for your articles.

JdeBP 6y ago
There is a middle ground of outsourcing the comments handling to companies like Disqus. But the Philadelphia Inquirer does say that (a) it has tried everything, presumably including considering this option, and (b) the comments have proven to be not actually useful to the publication nor widely used (outwith a small group) by readers outwith two specific areas. "BBS system" is RAS Syndrome, by the way. (-:
- skissane 6y ago
  > But the Philadelphia Inquirer does say that (a) it has tried everything, presumably including considering this option They claim they tried "everything", but did they actually try everything? For example, did they try limiting commenting to paying subscribers only? They don't mention in this post whether they actually tried that or not.

mynameishere 6y ago

Thanks for explaining what spam was--I think a lot of the people here probably were unaware. It's always good to learn things. Anyway, more to the point: First, the comments are almost always the most interesting part of a mainstream article, to the point where I will scroll down to see if they are there (if not--don't bother). Are there idiots posting? Yep--just scroll past, no problem. Second, Mainstream media dislikes comments because they don't like people pointing out their errors. (No one does, of course.)

mbg721 6y ago

That seems completely reasonable, as local newspapers were never two-direction mass-communication before, but it's somehow harder to justify removing a comments section once you've decided to have it.

User23 6y ago
Local newspapers were the inspiration for comments sections, specifically the “letters to the editor” section.
- function_seven 6y ago
  Sure, but letters to the editor required the paper to read them and choose which ones were worth printing. Comments on most news sites are typically just assholes making every story about whatever they're obsessed with. Letters to the editor are still an active thing.
  - IPTN 6y ago
    Jinx
  - throwawaysea 6y ago
    That curation is also a problem. In an era where every news outlet is biased, and most of the major ones are lurching ideological leftward, and journalists bring their personal politics to work, the lack of equal and uninhibited reach for opposing viewpoints is a problem.
- CalChris 6y ago
  Yes, but letters to the editor were picked by the editors for their ideas and for their writing. It was a high bar, often higher than the newspaper itself. So I used to enjoy reading them because of this.
- IPTN 6y ago
  Sure, but that is a moderated communication channel. They pick and choose what to publish and, unlike most comment sections, unmoderated content is not visible to your audience. The opaqueness of the moderation process in a world without instant mass communication (i.e. the internet) would also likely have made it unlikely for your readers (users) did not have an expectation for their messages to be quickly reviewed or published. The other big advantage is that the only participants in channel are the newspaper and the submitter; no interaction between third parties on your platform means no flame wars or the like.

m-p-3 6y ago

Agreed, and most of there comment sections are badly moderated in the first place. I find more insightful comments on Reddit and other platforms anyway.

monksy 6y ago

Sounds like they should outsource their commentary to reddit.

xahrepap 6y ago

I agree. I remember years ago a friend of mine was found dead (took his own life) and a local news site reported it and had a comment section. It was beyond horrible. People were commenting about how glad they were that this person they *didn’t even know* was gone. “One fewer idiot” type of comments. It was one of those things where it was so bad you didn’t want to look away. The moderation was non-existent. I just don’t get why a website would want to harbor a community that toxic.

JdeBP 6y ago
Indeed, the Philadelphia Inquirer has not, for at least 10 years. * https://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/07/25/inquirer-daily-news-website-commenters-vile/ https://www.phillymag.com/news/2013/07/25/inquirer-daily-new... * https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/Our_Comments_Are_Changing_Tell_Us_What_You_Think.html https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/Our_Comments_Are_Changi... * https://www.inquirer.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20100707_Letters_to_the_Editor.html https://www.inquirer.com/philly/opinion/inquirer/20100707_Le...
- tomphoolery 6y ago
  everybody knows the real hot goss is in the NBC10 comments section
neartheplain 6y ago
It's not just local news. Even the Washington Post's comments section is awful. Not just in terms of the content, but also the UI. For example: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/coronavirus-stimulus-check-calculator/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/coronavirus... Who wants to scroll through 1k comments in a narrow, awkwardly-paginated column? They also allow posts from anyone with an email account (mitigated somewhat by the paywall on most articles) which results in a lot of high-emotion, low-information spam. By contrast, the Wall Street Journal limits comments only to people with a subscription. Perhaps as a result, the WSJ comments section is generally of higher quality with e.g. better spelling/grammar, less flamewar, and a higher signal-to-noise ratio.

victorbstan 6y ago

Social media was a mistake.

faeyanpiraat 6y ago
Maybe, but it is probably something that would’ve emerged naturally, even if the guys running the current shows haven’t been born. Its a step in the human evolution in the capitalist internet era.
lstodd 6y ago
No it wasn't. The idea that one can meaningfully socialize with more than several hundred people is.

chupchap 6y ago

I remember when Facebook insisted on real names as a way to ensure there was no spam

ekianjo 6y ago

> they’re the opinions of ill-informed people who try to spread one agenda or another You mean like journalists themselves ?

brightball 6y ago

Now they just need to do the same for business reviews on Google, Yelp, etc

Iv 6y ago

That actually makes me sad: good automoderation tools are decades (plural, yes) old and yet most website haven't caught on the fact that you need some sort of ranking to filter out spam or bots. Thing is, newspapers as their business model currently is, have zero incentives in having quality comments. Negative incentives actually. Journalism is 20% facts reporting, 80% comments and that's generous: comments are the cheapest to write, some news website/papers are closer to 99% comments. If you have quality comments by your readers, what are you selling then? We need to move to a business model where facts reporting and facts checking (careful: talking about facts checking, not analysis checking) are the primary services that journalists would get paid for. Comments, even quality comments can be done through a good enough moderation system and a big enough community.

euske 6y ago
This makes me wonder: how can forum sites (like HN or Reddit) can actually make a money. I guess that HN isn't trying to, but I don't know its balance sheet. Likewise, I believe that Reddit is selling ads and app subscriptions. How do they even stay in business? And what are the fundamental difference from their business model and that of news sites?
- ogre_codes 6y ago
  Hacker News sells inline advertising. Job posting adverts crop up pretty much daily on here which are adverts. It's a recruiting tool. As for expenses, HN seems like a lean site and likely doesn't require a ton of resources. I think there is only 1 full time moderator, dang. I have no idea whether YC makes money on HN or not, but I'd be surprised if it didn't at least break even.
  - Freak_NL 6y ago
    Also the free advertising for the brand of Y-combinator. With the reach HN has these days having your name out there right in the domain means that the on balance positive reputation of HN rubs off on your enterprise. It's basically a huge 'sponsored by' byline. This doesn't necessarily translate into a net positive for a company, but in this case I am willing to bet it does. It's honestly a fairly transparent transaction, and much preferable to the opaque world of on-line targetted advertising. I like how my ad-blocker just sits here twiddling its thumbs.

throwawaysea 6y ago

I couldn’t disagree more. Many people don’t have accounts with these other websites like Reddit, or don’t want to make them, or don’t want to deal with the biases of those various echo chambers. Having a community of news readers has a lot of utility. And from the news sites that I read (both local and national), I see very few outright spammy comments. I see a lot of legitimate push back and diverse opinions that provide different shades of perspectives on issues. What I do see as an increasing and disturbing trend is newspapers selectively turning off comment sections on stories that are controversial. The Seattle Times does this, and in 2020 the readers were robbed of the opportunity to discuss controversial situations freely (like CHAZ or a violent BLM riot). This was presumably done to avoid the trouble of moderation of PR, but a less charitable and very believable take is that this amounts to controlled manufacturing of public opinion by disallowing a dissenting viewpoint. In the absence of comment sections, all that’s left is one journalist’s biased take and characterization. With news houses across the country experiencing left-leaning employee activism and newsroom revolts, the opinions of readers is extremely important to not just platform, but feature prominently as a balancing force. And yes, anonymous comments in particular must be permitted, so the voice of those who aren’t in power is heard.

wirrbel 6y ago

Never quite understood why comment section wasn't one of the premium subscription features for direct monetization. It could cover the moderation costs directly, provides an incentive for some to buy a subscription and sock puppet accounts are less likely if they cost money. Then, I would assume that if your comment is tied to your billing account, you may be more inclined to not write the worst comments (insulting, etc.).

csydas 6y ago
Why pay to comment on site when someone can just repost it to social media and you can comment there for free? It's a sweet idea, but I don't think it's at all in line with how people think/utilize comments sections.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Because you reach roughly the same audience as the original article with your comment when it's published directly below it, whereas your social media post is read by your contacts only unless it's exceedingly successful.
- silverpepsi 6y ago
  Why would anyone pay $5 a month subscription to a YouTube channel that is already free? The idea of selling things online was never about how to sell them to people who don't want them. You're clearly not the target market. It would be for people who are so fiercely loyal they don't think twice about how nice of a bonus it is to be able to be in the select audience that CAN comment. I don't know if people are this loyal to publications, but I've certainly felt it towards YouTube personalities that align with my thinking so strongly that I feel supporting them is promoting my values.
  - afc 6y ago
    > Why would anyone pay $5 a month subscription to a YouTube channel that is already free? To support the content producer. Maybe $5 is too high, but what if it was $2 or $3? I pay that to a few producers.

smsm42 6y ago

> they’re the opinions of ill-informed people who try to spread one agenda or another. So, like most of the content above the comments?

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

I agree, but there’s this screaming cage match, euphemistically called “engagement,” that is the vein of gold for Web site owners. As has become clear, “engagement” means public brawling. It generates clicks, and clicks are gold. It also encourages people to sign up for accounts, just so they can jump into the cesspool. Those accounts are quite valuable, as they are fodder for data miners, correlators, and aggregators. Making those accounts free, and easy to create (but not so easy to delete), is a natural. That’s why so many of these sites wait until their comment fighting pits reach brand-destroying levels of rancor, before they do anything about it; sometimes, too late (remember when SlashDot was the HN? It’s now the place to go, if you want ASCII-art swastikas). Yeah, I’m cynical.

Contax 6y ago
> I remember when Reddit was caught paying trolls. I've been there for like 10 years and I don't remember this. Was it even before? Do you have a link or something? I tried some searches but didn't find any relevant result. Thanks in advance.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I'll remove the reference (I can't be bothered to spend the time to hunt down the sources), but it was a huge (but brief) stink. It wasn't that long ago. The guy was a paid subreddit mod, and an engineer in Arizona or New Mexico, or somewhere. The story destroyed his career. I know he was immediately fired by his day job. Maybe it's a good thing that the story is hard to find. We all deserve a second chance. I actually felt a bit sorry for him.
  - Contax 6y ago
    Never mind. I was just curious.
  - WolfRazu 6y ago
    > paid subreddit mod They used to pay moderators?

theknocker 6y ago

Yeah I’m so happy with the trend of traditional media turning the internet into a unidirectional pipe for marketing and propaganda, i.e. the traditional media. I couldn’t stand all that contrarian “other viewpoints existing.”