7 ms·

The threat facing online comments

59 points by 1337biz 12y ago

deleted 12y ago
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just_observing 12y ago
"Bad behaviour online is so common that it has generated its own typology of abuse. “Flaming” is to engage in a deeply personal and angry war of words across an online discussion." So common? Does this journalist have no knowledge of Usenet? It's not common, it's older than most websites these days. To suggest Flaming and Trolling are unique to comments is false. They predate comments by years.
- was_hellbanned 12y ago
  I think it's safe to say that modern Web commenting utterly dwarfs the entire history of Usenet posting, making the latter pretty much irrelevant except as a historical note. Look at the article's definition of trolling. They use "troll" as a codeword for "asshole". Real trolling is an art. You put some bait on a hook and see who bites.
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paulgb 12y ago
If you hit the paywall this link should work https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=aZSAU9qoLcqa8AGP44GYAQ&url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9c0cf256-e197-11e3-b7c4-00144feabdc0.html&cd=1&ved=0CCcQqQIwAA&usg=AFQjCNGBGX3UZdRomoTQBLQ2nh5BYkn1_g https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=aZSAU9qoL...
- octoploid 12y ago
  This can also be automated with a simple script: // ==UserScript== // @name FT Free articles Hack // @namespace // @description redirect FT to content via google // @include http://*.ft.com/* // @include http://www.google.co.uk/url?* // ==/UserScript== var s = window.location.href; if (s.indexOf('google')>0){ var mylink = document.getElementsByTagName("a"); mylink[0].click(); } else{ if (s.indexOf(',Authorised=false')>0){ var t = s.substring(s.indexOf('s/')+4,s.indexOf(',')); var y = "http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F"; var z = ".html"; window.location.href = y+t+z; } if (s.indexOf('registration')>0 && s.indexOf('location')>0 ){ var y = "http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&url="; var z = s.substring(s.indexOf('location=')+9,s.indexOf('&referer')); window.location.href = y+z; } }
deleted 12y ago
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amr 12y ago
Good discussions online happen in established communities, something news websites don't know how to build.
- privong 12y ago
  In support of your statement, see the recent discussion on why online communities decay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7790755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7790755
noir_lord 12y ago
I read the front pages of a bunch of different newspaper websites (thedailymail, guardian, mirror etc) as it's interesting to see what they are all focussing on. I use adblock to block the comments sections on each as I find them just completely useless (I also do the same on youtube and a few other sites).
- deleted 12y ago
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- DanAndersen 12y ago
  Along those lines, I recommend a Chrome extension called "Shut Up" [0] which hides most sites' comments by default. I have it allow comments for a few sites like HN but most of the time I know I'm not missing much. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shut-up/oklfoejikkmejobodofaimigojomlfim?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shut-up/oklfoejikk...
  - pyre 12y ago
    What would be the point of hiding comments on HN, where the entire point is the comments?
    - DanAndersen 12y ago
      Hence why I enable comments on HN. But most sites are mostly article+comments and in those cases the comments are often pointless.
      - pyre 12y ago
        Is it just using some sort of heuristic to determine the comments? I was thinking that that might have 'rules' for each site individually, which would make no sense for HN (because why bother for a site where the comments are the whole point).
JacobAldridge 12y ago
I certainly see a distinction between Comments and Conversations, and probably spent many years online struggling with online interactivity features before I realised it. I honestly see little value in the former, which seems to be the prevailing mode on news sites, in facebook groups etc. Opinions being like assholes (ie, everyone has at least one), I suppose I must be grateful so many people choose to share theirs in a location where I will never inadvertently bump into it. Conversations, however! Where people will read my response (and I theirs), and possibly provide feedback, support, constructive criticism, or some other form of dialogue (from the latin meaning "two assholes"[1]) - when that's underway, I don't miss pre-internet days at all. [1] Citation needed.
- insky 12y ago
  They are pretty much the same thing though. A comment on something like a news story page, is a conversation with the author about the article pretty much. Conversations that take place without threading are tricky to follow without additional tools. I'd prefer ontopic comments. Interesting conversation can errupt from interactions though. My biggest issue with online comments is that there are just too many. cap amount of posts, or cap posts by author? Some people hang around the comment sections and just can't help but post. And some just repeat what others have already said and bring nothing new. But I'm not surprised that people haven't waded and read through every comment before they comment. My local online newspaper has the same small collection of people regurgating their predictable opinions on pretty much every article posted, and it's very tiresome, and puts off other people commenting. They are a negative and contrary bunch. I understand the want to hang out in a particular internet locale (I do it on two forums, my online haunts), but people could do with holding themselves back. On one forum I'm a member I've postend about 400 comments, and I could probably boil that down to about 5 themes. If I had time it would be worth me whittling them all down. Less is sometimes more.
hkmurakami 12y ago
It seems that quality dialogue amongst users happens in communities where the people have a decent amount in common. (The more civilized reedit forums are smaller, niche places, and places like hn or gaming forums are similar). Are news sites simply too broad in audience to ever get past this, perhaps?
mixmax 12y ago
The problem isn't bad comments - it's the publishers that don't understand the medium. The article is a great example of how most newspapers and old publishing houses are barking up the wrong tree. It talks about using real names, court decisions and expecting people to read and comply with guidelines. That's simply not how the Internet works. I see plenty of examples of excellent comment sections - often better than the article. HN is an example, some of the subreddits I'm subscribed to another. Interestingly I have never seen an old media outlet that has mastered comments. The problem is that old media (or at least the people at the top) don't understand how to solve this problem because it involves a heavy dose of technology. I've never heard terms such as hell-banning, karma and vote-ring detection in a discussion by old media houses. Heck, many of them haven't even mastered threaded comments yet. It's a problem that can be solved by a savvy combination of technology and psychology, but the old publishing houses seem to be clueless about both.
- thenmar 12y ago
  Which subreddits are you talking about? (out of curiosity, since my experience with reddit, even with smaller subreddits, is almost entirely negative)
  - hkmurakami 12y ago
    The cycling group of subreddits was pretty good in my experience
  - mixmax 12y ago
    Here are some of the better subreddits in my opinion: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskCulinary/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskCulinary/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/ http://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub/ http://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub/ http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/ http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/ http://www.reddit.com/r/lectures/ http://www.reddit.com/r/lectures/ (not so much the comments but more the content)
  - freshyill 12y ago
instakill 12y ago
This is going to be quite an important ruling. Libel laws are different in every country but this could be quite an influential precedent for many future rulings. It may very well have a large impact for a lot of websites with both comments and user-generated content. If websites choose to enforce a system whereby commenters have to sign up with their verified personal details, many people may be put off and conversation rates could dwindle. This in turn may reduce traffic and said websites may suffer from it. Some websites may choose to forgo commenting systems altogether because they may be too strapped to enforce such a system, or they may be risk-averse and wouldn't want to have their necks out anymore after this ruling. A big problem is that a slander lawsuit may hit any time and the only things you can do to prevent it is to moderate the hell out of your UGC. That may not be feasible though. Business insurance against this kind of scenario is crazy expensive and as a business cost may be unrealistic to most. One of the people that co-run a decently sized e-commerce store in South Africa told me once that one's best bet is to have enough money on hand for a lawyer because the insurance will cripple you. Over at http://www.mybema.com http://www.mybema.com I've played around with many ways around this sort of issue. Right now, negative consumer reviews cannot be seen if you visit the site. Only the category of the review can be seen. In fact you can only see the review if you sign up and subscribe to the author. However I doubt that provides any sort of defense because legally slander is slander once another party is exposed to it. Alas, my pondering continues... I don't know about EU or the states but in South Africa there have been rulings like the one in the article where the plaintiffs had their cases thrown out because it would be unreasonable for the media owners to moderate every comment made. What do the other UGC platform owners on here think? How do you manage these kinds of scenarios?
- stinkytaco 12y ago
  My local paper (a paper in a smallish Midwestern city) did forgo commenting systems and doesn't seem to have suffered for it. In fact, I think it makes reading the online version of the paper better. Their argument was more about quality, at least publically. The comments were a cesspool of backbiting and misinformed readers using the medium to make themselves heard and the paper basically said: "If you've got an opinion you want published and are willing to put your name to it, you can send us a letter and we will consider it for the op-ed page." I frankly think this was a mature way to approach the issue.
fivedogit 12y ago
While working on WORDS for Chrome (http://www.words4chrome.com http://www.words4chrome.com, soft-launch 6+8=14), I've done a lot of thinking about the problems with web comments. In short, it's two things: 1. The Clean Slate Effect - the ability to go from site to site being horrible everywhere, no centralized consequence mechanisms 2. The Too Much Trouble Effect - Creating a new account and giving up your email address yet again sucks. How long will the comment last? Will it be searchable? Does it use your real name? Whenever comments are Too Much Trouble, only crazies leave them. WORDS doesn't have any comments in it yet and I'm still tinkering and testing getting ready for launch, but I'd appreciate your opinions on it.
bkfh 12y ago
Coincidentally, me and my friend are working on making online comments smarter and overall simpler by providing a feedback structure. See more here: http://www.orat.io http://www.orat.io Bloggers can embed orat.io Comments on their blog by simply adding two lines of code or using the WordPress plugin. Any feedback to this highly appreciated!
jcromartie 12y ago
I find it fascinating that people feel entitled to comment sections. There is genuine outrage when sites remove their comments sections. When anybody can publish a URL commenting on another URL, the web is working exactly as it should. The missing piece is a meta-comment system (maybe some microformat) that lets you know when someone else is explicitly commenting on your URL. Let's say I post a YouTube video (and there is no comment section), and someone else writes about it on their Tumblr using a format using an anchor tag with a rel=comment or something. Then the meta-comment service (where I have registered my YouTube channel and the Tumblr user has registered their blog) notifies me that this person has commented on my video. I could publish a reply on Tumblr to their original Tumblr post, and they would similarly be notified. A page on the meta-comment service or a little JS widget could even show the comment reply tree across sites.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  I remember encountering something like this when playing around with my Wordpress blog: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback Any idea why it didn't find adoption on a wider scale?
  - jcromartie 12y ago
    I think that a protocol or standard is part of the solution, but it really needs a service (or any number of them) to track the whole graph of replies.
    - stuki 12y ago
      The kind of aggressive court interference talked about in the article, will (or at least should) be the catalyst to make that happen. Anonymous comments really ought to be hosted anonymously and in a distributed fashion, preventing them from being taken down or "used against you." The "fire in a crowded theater" supposed exception, is simply not relevant wrt internet comments.
  - djur 12y ago
    Two reasons come to mind, one historical and one practical: First, the pingback implementation in WordPress was one of the more common vectors of WordPress' endless parade of security vulnerabilities. I remember years ago it was common practice to disable pingbacks (or even rip out the code) as a security precaution. Second, pingbacks direct readers away from the site. This is good for readers and the online community as a whole, but bad for online publications which want to use comments as an "engagement" tool.
0verc00ked 12y ago
I can't help but notice a market opportunity evolving out of the need to moderate comments. I imagine a service where sites could hire cheap, proven moderators - and pay based on the number of comments needing review. Two-sided marketplaces are undeniably extremely hard to build, but seeing as this is a huge problem and something tons of websites need, maybe it could be successful in this case. Anyone know of anything out there like this/think this could work? I guess there's MTurk.
- krapp 12y ago
  The only problem I can see with this is any site popular enough to need regular moderators could probably get away with offering moderation for free to their members, just for the cachet of being mods. Most of the rest of the possible cases (small personal blogs and forums, which may cost nothing or almost nothing for their owners) probably wouldn't be willing or able to afford the fees, or want to give privileges to some random person on the internet. Professional sites like online newspapers and businesses will want to farm it off on an intern or someone in house. It seems to me that it would certainly be a difficult thing to make money at but if you can establish a reputation then it could potentially work. Although then in a few years everyone will be complaining about how this service is crushing free speech across the internet.
graycat 12y ago
Looks like the author of the OP should look at HN.
alelefant 12y ago
The author writes: "The borderless nature of the web means it can be hard to avoid the ranting bigots and creeps we would ordinarily shun in the real world." While I understand his point, I believe this is one of the great things about online communities. I think many people are too quick to shun those who we disagree with (I know I'm guilty of this). I think there can be a lot to learn from those we vehemently disagree with.
Falkon1313 12y ago
The problem is that a ruling like that does nothing to address the actual issues and instead punishes only the one party who did nothing wrong. (A) is incompetent at managing their own reputation, (B) chooses not to communicate in a civil manner, (C) is incapable of forming their own opinion, so reacts negatively to (A) based on (B)s comment, and the one that gets punished for it all is (D).
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tom_jones 12y ago
Maybe an answer would be to allow anonymity on the web but only as a legally registered pseudonym. The only way this legally registered pseudonym can be revealed is in legal action against a comment on conviction. That way people can have the right to anonymity so long as they stay within the law.
- wyager 12y ago
  >The only way this legally registered pseudonym can be revealed is in legal action against a comment on conviction. So they would convict you before they knew who you actually were? Awesome. No need to defend myself, I guess! How about instead, we respect the concept of free speech, and allow people to say whatever ridiculous shit they want without threatening to imprison them if they say something that makes us uncomfortable. > That way people can have the right to anonymity so long as they stay within the law. What does that even mean? If the system is designed with the express purpose of allowing the law to punish you for something you said, it's not anonymous.
djur 12y ago
I'm curious if there's any research supporting the claim that requiring real names increases the quality of comments. In my anecdotal experience, most sites that require real names (or Facebook logins) tend to have just a handful of comments, most of them banal. With Facebook comments in particular, there's no sense of community -- just disconnected statements. And some of the most hideous, abusive remarks I've seen online have been under someone's real name and next to a picture of their face. At this point, the image of a nice-looking older person cuddling their grandkid next to a racist all-caps rant has become so commonplace that it no longer shocks me.
WalterBright 12y ago
> frequently ferociously uninhibited comment sections And that's what's great about free speech!
tim333 12y ago
It's a bit of a worrying precedent. The test case was fairly trivial with a £270 fine for users calling a company that was about to plow their road “fucking shitheads.” But establish the law and you risk having folks like the Koch brothers sue you for $1m because someone on your site has called them or one of their organisations dishonest or some such.
jds375 12y ago
An interesting solution to troll comments would be auto-detection via Machine Learning. For a class final some friends and I wrote an algorithm (neural networks and SVM's) to detect intentionally deceptive comments on hotel-review sites. It worked with about 82% accuracy. I'd imagine something very similar could be done with troll comments.
001sky 12y ago
Last year, for example, Popular Science, a 141-year-old American magazine, took the radical decision to banish comments from its website. Its editors argued that internet comments at the bottom of an article, particularly anonymous ones, were undermining the integrity of science and led to a culture of aggression and mockery." Sometimes ill-conceived pretension warrants "agression and mockery"--and sometimes scientists can be among the worst offenders.
tabcantab 12y ago
It's not difficult to use machine learning to do a good job of moderating comments automatically. A general method has been patented since 2001: http://www.google.com/patents/US7200606 http://www.google.com/patents/US7200606

59 points by 1337biz 12y ago

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

"Bad behaviour online is so common that it has generated its own typology of abuse. “Flaming” is to engage in a deeply personal and angry war of words across an online discussion." So common? Does this journalist have no knowledge of Usenet? It's not common, it's older than most websites these days. To suggest Flaming and Trolling are unique to comments is false. They predate comments by years.

was_hellbanned 12y ago
I think it's safe to say that modern Web commenting utterly dwarfs the entire history of Usenet posting, making the latter pretty much irrelevant except as a historical note. Look at the article's definition of trolling. They use "troll" as a codeword for "asshole". Real trolling is an art. You put some bait on a hook and see who bites.

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paulgb 12y ago

If you hit the paywall this link should work https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=aZSAU9qoLcqa8AGP44GYAQ&url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/9c0cf256-e197-11e3-b7c4-00144feabdc0.html&cd=1&ved=0CCcQqQIwAA&usg=AFQjCNGBGX3UZdRomoTQBLQ2nh5BYkn1_g https://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&ei=aZSAU9qoL...

octoploid 12y ago
This can also be automated with a simple script: // ==UserScript== // @name FT Free articles Hack // @namespace // @description redirect FT to content via google // @include http://*.ft.com/* // @include http://www.google.co.uk/url?* // ==/UserScript== var s = window.location.href; if (s.indexOf('google')>0){ var mylink = document.getElementsByTagName("a"); mylink[0].click(); } else{ if (s.indexOf(',Authorised=false')>0){ var t = s.substring(s.indexOf('s/')+4,s.indexOf(',')); var y = "http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2F"; var z = ".html"; window.location.href = y+t+z; } if (s.indexOf('registration')>0 && s.indexOf('location')>0 ){ var y = "http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&url="; var z = s.substring(s.indexOf('location=')+9,s.indexOf('&referer')); window.location.href = y+z; } }

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amr 12y ago

Good discussions online happen in established communities, something news websites don't know how to build.

privong 12y ago
In support of your statement, see the recent discussion on why online communities decay: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7790755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7790755

noir_lord 12y ago

I read the front pages of a bunch of different newspaper websites (thedailymail, guardian, mirror etc) as it's interesting to see what they are all focussing on. I use adblock to block the comments sections on each as I find them just completely useless (I also do the same on youtube and a few other sites).

deleted 12y ago
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DanAndersen 12y ago
Along those lines, I recommend a Chrome extension called "Shut Up" [0] which hides most sites' comments by default. I have it allow comments for a few sites like HN but most of the time I know I'm not missing much. [0] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shut-up/oklfoejikkmejobodofaimigojomlfim?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/shut-up/oklfoejikk...
- pyre 12y ago
  What would be the point of hiding comments on HN, where the entire point is the comments?
  - DanAndersen 12y ago
    Hence why I enable comments on HN. But most sites are mostly article+comments and in those cases the comments are often pointless.
    - pyre 12y ago
      Is it just using some sort of heuristic to determine the comments? I was thinking that that might have 'rules' for each site individually, which would make no sense for HN (because why bother for a site where the comments are the whole point).

JacobAldridge 12y ago

I certainly see a distinction between Comments and Conversations, and probably spent many years online struggling with online interactivity features before I realised it. I honestly see little value in the former, which seems to be the prevailing mode on news sites, in facebook groups etc. Opinions being like assholes (ie, everyone has at least one), I suppose I must be grateful so many people choose to share theirs in a location where I will never inadvertently bump into it. Conversations, however! Where people will read my response (and I theirs), and possibly provide feedback, support, constructive criticism, or some other form of dialogue (from the latin meaning "two assholes"[1]) - when that's underway, I don't miss pre-internet days at all. [1] Citation needed.

insky 12y ago
They are pretty much the same thing though. A comment on something like a news story page, is a conversation with the author about the article pretty much. Conversations that take place without threading are tricky to follow without additional tools. I'd prefer ontopic comments. Interesting conversation can errupt from interactions though. My biggest issue with online comments is that there are just too many. cap amount of posts, or cap posts by author? Some people hang around the comment sections and just can't help but post. And some just repeat what others have already said and bring nothing new. But I'm not surprised that people haven't waded and read through every comment before they comment. My local online newspaper has the same small collection of people regurgating their predictable opinions on pretty much every article posted, and it's very tiresome, and puts off other people commenting. They are a negative and contrary bunch. I understand the want to hang out in a particular internet locale (I do it on two forums, my online haunts), but people could do with holding themselves back. On one forum I'm a member I've postend about 400 comments, and I could probably boil that down to about 5 themes. If I had time it would be worth me whittling them all down. Less is sometimes more.

hkmurakami 12y ago

It seems that quality dialogue amongst users happens in communities where the people have a decent amount in common. (The more civilized reedit forums are smaller, niche places, and places like hn or gaming forums are similar). Are news sites simply too broad in audience to ever get past this, perhaps?

mixmax 12y ago

The problem isn't bad comments - it's the publishers that don't understand the medium. The article is a great example of how most newspapers and old publishing houses are barking up the wrong tree. It talks about using real names, court decisions and expecting people to read and comply with guidelines. That's simply not how the Internet works. I see plenty of examples of excellent comment sections - often better than the article. HN is an example, some of the subreddits I'm subscribed to another. Interestingly I have never seen an old media outlet that has mastered comments. The problem is that old media (or at least the people at the top) don't understand how to solve this problem because it involves a heavy dose of technology. I've never heard terms such as hell-banning, karma and vote-ring detection in a discussion by old media houses. Heck, many of them haven't even mastered threaded comments yet. It's a problem that can be solved by a savvy combination of technology and psychology, but the old publishing houses seem to be clueless about both.

thenmar 12y ago
Which subreddits are you talking about? (out of curiosity, since my experience with reddit, even with smaller subreddits, is almost entirely negative)
- hkmurakami 12y ago
  The cycling group of subreddits was pretty good in my experience
- mixmax 12y ago
  Here are some of the better subreddits in my opinion: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskCulinary/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskCulinary/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/ http://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/ http://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub/ http://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub/ http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/ http://www.reddit.com/r/TrueReddit/ http://www.reddit.com/r/lectures/ http://www.reddit.com/r/lectures/ (not so much the comments but more the content)
- freshyill 12y ago

instakill 12y ago

This is going to be quite an important ruling. Libel laws are different in every country but this could be quite an influential precedent for many future rulings. It may very well have a large impact for a lot of websites with both comments and user-generated content. If websites choose to enforce a system whereby commenters have to sign up with their verified personal details, many people may be put off and conversation rates could dwindle. This in turn may reduce traffic and said websites may suffer from it. Some websites may choose to forgo commenting systems altogether because they may be too strapped to enforce such a system, or they may be risk-averse and wouldn't want to have their necks out anymore after this ruling. A big problem is that a slander lawsuit may hit any time and the only things you can do to prevent it is to moderate the hell out of your UGC. That may not be feasible though. Business insurance against this kind of scenario is crazy expensive and as a business cost may be unrealistic to most. One of the people that co-run a decently sized e-commerce store in South Africa told me once that one's best bet is to have enough money on hand for a lawyer because the insurance will cripple you. Over at http://www.mybema.com http://www.mybema.com I've played around with many ways around this sort of issue. Right now, negative consumer reviews cannot be seen if you visit the site. Only the category of the review can be seen. In fact you can only see the review if you sign up and subscribe to the author. However I doubt that provides any sort of defense because legally slander is slander once another party is exposed to it. Alas, my pondering continues... I don't know about EU or the states but in South Africa there have been rulings like the one in the article where the plaintiffs had their cases thrown out because it would be unreasonable for the media owners to moderate every comment made. What do the other UGC platform owners on here think? How do you manage these kinds of scenarios?

stinkytaco 12y ago
My local paper (a paper in a smallish Midwestern city) did forgo commenting systems and doesn't seem to have suffered for it. In fact, I think it makes reading the online version of the paper better. Their argument was more about quality, at least publically. The comments were a cesspool of backbiting and misinformed readers using the medium to make themselves heard and the paper basically said: "If you've got an opinion you want published and are willing to put your name to it, you can send us a letter and we will consider it for the op-ed page." I frankly think this was a mature way to approach the issue.

fivedogit 12y ago

While working on WORDS for Chrome (http://www.words4chrome.com http://www.words4chrome.com, soft-launch 6+8=14), I've done a lot of thinking about the problems with web comments. In short, it's two things: 1. The Clean Slate Effect - the ability to go from site to site being horrible everywhere, no centralized consequence mechanisms 2. The Too Much Trouble Effect - Creating a new account and giving up your email address yet again sucks. How long will the comment last? Will it be searchable? Does it use your real name? Whenever comments are Too Much Trouble, only crazies leave them. WORDS doesn't have any comments in it yet and I'm still tinkering and testing getting ready for launch, but I'd appreciate your opinions on it.

bkfh 12y ago

Coincidentally, me and my friend are working on making online comments smarter and overall simpler by providing a feedback structure. See more here: http://www.orat.io http://www.orat.io Bloggers can embed orat.io Comments on their blog by simply adding two lines of code or using the WordPress plugin. Any feedback to this highly appreciated!

jcromartie 12y ago

I find it fascinating that people feel entitled to comment sections. There is genuine outrage when sites remove their comments sections. When anybody can publish a URL commenting on another URL, the web is working exactly as it should. The missing piece is a meta-comment system (maybe some microformat) that lets you know when someone else is explicitly commenting on your URL. Let's say I post a YouTube video (and there is no comment section), and someone else writes about it on their Tumblr using a format using an anchor tag with a rel=comment or something. Then the meta-comment service (where I have registered my YouTube channel and the Tumblr user has registered their blog) notifies me that this person has commented on my video. I could publish a reply on Tumblr to their original Tumblr post, and they would similarly be notified. A page on the meta-comment service or a little JS widget could even show the comment reply tree across sites.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
I remember encountering something like this when playing around with my Wordpress blog: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback Any idea why it didn't find adoption on a wider scale?
- jcromartie 12y ago
  I think that a protocol or standard is part of the solution, but it really needs a service (or any number of them) to track the whole graph of replies.
  - stuki 12y ago
    The kind of aggressive court interference talked about in the article, will (or at least should) be the catalyst to make that happen. Anonymous comments really ought to be hosted anonymously and in a distributed fashion, preventing them from being taken down or "used against you." The "fire in a crowded theater" supposed exception, is simply not relevant wrt internet comments.
- djur 12y ago
  Two reasons come to mind, one historical and one practical: First, the pingback implementation in WordPress was one of the more common vectors of WordPress' endless parade of security vulnerabilities. I remember years ago it was common practice to disable pingbacks (or even rip out the code) as a security precaution. Second, pingbacks direct readers away from the site. This is good for readers and the online community as a whole, but bad for online publications which want to use comments as an "engagement" tool.

0verc00ked 12y ago

I can't help but notice a market opportunity evolving out of the need to moderate comments. I imagine a service where sites could hire cheap, proven moderators - and pay based on the number of comments needing review. Two-sided marketplaces are undeniably extremely hard to build, but seeing as this is a huge problem and something tons of websites need, maybe it could be successful in this case. Anyone know of anything out there like this/think this could work? I guess there's MTurk.

krapp 12y ago
The only problem I can see with this is any site popular enough to need regular moderators could probably get away with offering moderation for free to their members, just for the cachet of being mods. Most of the rest of the possible cases (small personal blogs and forums, which may cost nothing or almost nothing for their owners) probably wouldn't be willing or able to afford the fees, or want to give privileges to some random person on the internet. Professional sites like online newspapers and businesses will want to farm it off on an intern or someone in house. It seems to me that it would certainly be a difficult thing to make money at but if you can establish a reputation then it could potentially work. Although then in a few years everyone will be complaining about how this service is crushing free speech across the internet.

graycat 12y ago

Looks like the author of the OP should look at HN.

alelefant 12y ago

The author writes: "The borderless nature of the web means it can be hard to avoid the ranting bigots and creeps we would ordinarily shun in the real world." While I understand his point, I believe this is one of the great things about online communities. I think many people are too quick to shun those who we disagree with (I know I'm guilty of this). I think there can be a lot to learn from those we vehemently disagree with.

Falkon1313 12y ago

The problem is that a ruling like that does nothing to address the actual issues and instead punishes only the one party who did nothing wrong. (A) is incompetent at managing their own reputation, (B) chooses not to communicate in a civil manner, (C) is incapable of forming their own opinion, so reacts negatively to (A) based on (B)s comment, and the one that gets punished for it all is (D).

deleted 12y ago

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tom_jones 12y ago

Maybe an answer would be to allow anonymity on the web but only as a legally registered pseudonym. The only way this legally registered pseudonym can be revealed is in legal action against a comment on conviction. That way people can have the right to anonymity so long as they stay within the law.

wyager 12y ago
>The only way this legally registered pseudonym can be revealed is in legal action against a comment on conviction. So they would convict you before they knew who you actually were? Awesome. No need to defend myself, I guess! How about instead, we respect the concept of free speech, and allow people to say whatever ridiculous shit they want without threatening to imprison them if they say something that makes us uncomfortable. > That way people can have the right to anonymity so long as they stay within the law. What does that even mean? If the system is designed with the express purpose of allowing the law to punish you for something you said, it's not anonymous.

djur 12y ago

I'm curious if there's any research supporting the claim that requiring real names increases the quality of comments. In my anecdotal experience, most sites that require real names (or Facebook logins) tend to have just a handful of comments, most of them banal. With Facebook comments in particular, there's no sense of community -- just disconnected statements. And some of the most hideous, abusive remarks I've seen online have been under someone's real name and next to a picture of their face. At this point, the image of a nice-looking older person cuddling their grandkid next to a racist all-caps rant has become so commonplace that it no longer shocks me.

WalterBright 12y ago

> frequently ferociously uninhibited comment sections And that's what's great about free speech!

tim333 12y ago

It's a bit of a worrying precedent. The test case was fairly trivial with a £270 fine for users calling a company that was about to plow their road “fucking shitheads.” But establish the law and you risk having folks like the Koch brothers sue you for $1m because someone on your site has called them or one of their organisations dishonest or some such.

jds375 12y ago

An interesting solution to troll comments would be auto-detection via Machine Learning. For a class final some friends and I wrote an algorithm (neural networks and SVM's) to detect intentionally deceptive comments on hotel-review sites. It worked with about 82% accuracy. I'd imagine something very similar could be done with troll comments.

001sky 12y ago

Last year, for example, Popular Science, a 141-year-old American magazine, took the radical decision to banish comments from its website. Its editors argued that internet comments at the bottom of an article, particularly anonymous ones, were undermining the integrity of science and led to a culture of aggression and mockery." Sometimes ill-conceived pretension warrants "agression and mockery"--and sometimes scientists can be among the worst offenders.

tabcantab 12y ago

It's not difficult to use machine learning to do a good job of moderating comments automatically. A general method has been patented since 2001: http://www.google.com/patents/US7200606 http://www.google.com/patents/US7200606