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> realizing how potent online comments can be in undermining a factual report may help publications to better manage comments on their websites I think this is

> realizing how potent online comments can be in undermining a factual report may help publications to better manage comments on their websites I think this is the wrong thing to take away from this. If you are indeed writing a 'factual report', nothing should be disputable. The problem comes with dumbed-down or poorly written news reports where the 'facts' aren't presented, or are heavily mixed with opinion... The solution is less to 'manage comments' as the article says and more to write better articles, and encourage a good culture of news where readers and commenters are critical and contribute to the conversation (like HN does - sometimes).

dinkumthinkum 14y ago
> If you are indeed writing a 'factual report', nothing should be disputable. The world is just not that simple. >The solution is less to 'manage comments' as the article says and more to write better articles, and encourage a good culture of news where readers and commenters are critical and contribute to the conversation I think it would be very rare to find articles so well written as to prevent jibber jabber from occurring in comments. HN is a very different kind of community from these others as well. Also, HN isn't immune to this. :) On HN, I have found the problem to be more with groupthink opinions rather than outright misinformation ... well that occurs too, especially on articles relating to higher education.