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>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 p

>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.
skissane 6y ago
> Maybe is because only paid subscribers are allowed to comment. That's certainly not true for all substacks. Authors choose whether each post is paid-subscriber-only or not, and publicly visible posts can be commented on by unpaid accounts. Maybe Substack comments are better because they represent a narrow audience (people interested in the output of a particular writer). Generally it is up to the author of the substack to moderate its comments.

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.

skissane 6y ago

> Maybe is because only paid subscribers are allowed to comment. That's certainly not true for all substacks. Authors choose whether each post is paid-subscriber-only or not, and publicly visible posts can be commented on by unpaid accounts. Maybe Substack comments are better because they represent a narrow audience (people interested in the output of a particular writer). Generally it is up to the author of the substack to moderate its comments.