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> The problem is that anonymity leading to great conversation is disproved by reality. How ironic that you are posting this on Hacker News. Or pick reddit for

• snogglethorpe 13y ago
  > Create forums where mature people are inclined to participate and you will get great discussions, whether these posts are authored by anonymous people or not No doubt that works well in some cases, but the average YouTube video is not such a forum. Google has a problem ("The comment section on many YouTube videos is an insane cesspool"), and they need to address that problem. They don't really have the option of just moving the goalposts. Moderation is another option that can work, but it may not be practical with something as enormous as YouTube. They certainly could have done a better job of this, because the reaction is fairly predictable (people go insane over far more minor changes... OMG-CHANGE!1!), but it doesn't seem an unreasonable move in the abstract.
  • laureny 13y ago
    > No doubt that works well in some cases, but the average YouTube video is not such a forum. Yes, and that's the mistake that Google is making: thinking the problem is procedural ("Just have people log in with their real name") instead of social. I'm not sure what the best solution is but their current one is obviously wrong. Maybe they could start by doing a better job at sorting/upvoting/downvoting so that only the best comments get shown on the front page and not the most recent ones.