NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments • Hacker News Board

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#171

Post by jccalhoun » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 7:38 PM UTC

latj wrote: post #156

showerst wrote: post #17

I see comment moderation as one of the 'unsolved problems' left in this generation of the web. When I worked at Foreign Policy we worked hard to integrate new commenting tools and encourage power users, but we were just buried by the threats, spam, and low-value noise. Web technology scales, journalism scales (poorly, but a relatively small publication can pull big traffic), but right now there's just no substitute f…

Yes, I think using FB login pretty much solves the problem as it is today. Take a look at civilbeat.com a regional news site by Pierre Omidyar (The Intercept). I'm fairly certain they only allowed comments via FB login for years. It meant a lot fewer comments than they would have gotten but they were all legit. Now it looks like they allow FB, Twitter, or local auth. But the comments are still mostly ok. Maybe they a…

I'm not sold on it because a lot of newspaper web sites use facebook comments and any topic about politics, race, or gender seem to be full of people making hateful comments.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#172

Post by overcast » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 7:38 PM UTC

frankc wrote: post #59

I propose the following system for commenting on news sites: -comment period open for 3 days after publication -comments are not published until the end of the comment period, then all published at once -you can submit 1 comment per article only After the comments are published, then a voting/ranking system is enabled for automatic sorting, but nothing is deleted except for spam This eliminates any back and forth arg…

I like it.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#173

Post by jccalhoun » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 7:42 PM UTC

I always liked slashdot's comment system back in the day. It allowed you to adjust what you saw and how many points a "funny" post got vs how many an "informative" one got and then set a point threshold based on that.

Since then they seem to have eliminated that level of customization so either it wasn't working or they just didn't see it as worth reimplimenting when they moved away from their old code base.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#174

Post by 205guy » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 7:44 PM UTC

frankc wrote: post #59

I propose the following system for commenting on news sites: -comment period open for 3 days after publication -comments are not published until the end of the comment period, then all published at once -you can submit 1 comment per article only After the comments are published, then a voting/ranking system is enabled for automatic sorting, but nothing is deleted except for spam This eliminates any back and forth arg…

I really like this. When I think about the most interesting comments, they are the ones where a reader adds something to the article, whether an anecdote, a correction, an educated opinion, etc. This system preserves that and removes the mud slinging. It also preserves the page views, as people are encouraged to return and read--perhaps with some "remind-me" mechanism.

I could see other permutations of his idea as well: you can only reply to the article, once you view the comments, it no longer accepts a comment from you; keep comments open but delay comments by one or two days--allows slow back and forth, not flame wars. Or allow replies, but only one comment per user. There are a lot of mechanisms to explore here.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#175

Post by mbreese » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 7:47 PM UTC

jccalhoun wrote: post #173

I always liked slashdot's comment system back in the day. It allowed you to adjust what you saw and how many points a "funny" post got vs how many an "informative" one got and then set a point threshold based on that. Since then they seem to have eliminated that level of customization so either it wasn't working or they just didn't see it as worth reimplimenting when they moved away from their old code base.

And it wasn't just that - it was the complex system of meta-moderation. How you moderated posts was also scored.

One downside was that it could lead to a complete hive mind where your karma was dependent upon how much you thought like others.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#176

Post by gr3yh47 » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 7:50 PM UTC

overcast wrote: post #170

This is an interesting move, and a topic I've been discussing with friends. I've stopped using sites like Reddit, because the comment sections are just toxic. I've gone as far as installing Chrome extensions that make comment sections disappear from popular sites like YouTube. It's too easy to get drawn into the negativity, and I'm completely over it. "Social Networking" has reached it's low point as far as I'm conce…

>Hacker News is about the only civil place I'm capable of contributing to a discussion to at this point.

the interesting thing about this is that HN comment system seems to discourage dialogue - i.e. you are not notified when someone replies to your comment. It seems to be more geared towards comment-it-and-forget-it.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#177

Post by e40 » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 7:51 PM UTC

overcast wrote: post #170

This is an interesting move, and a topic I've been discussing with friends. I've stopped using sites like Reddit, because the comment sections are just toxic. I've gone as far as installing Chrome extensions that make comment sections disappear from popular sites like YouTube. It's too easy to get drawn into the negativity, and I'm completely over it. "Social Networking" has reached it's low point as far as I'm conce…

It depends on the subreddit. There are many where civil conversation is the norm. r/politics and places like that are horrible. Just remove them from your default set.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#178

Post by overcast » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 7:52 PM UTC

gr3yh47 wrote: post #176

overcast wrote: post #170

This is an interesting move, and a topic I've been discussing with friends. I've stopped using sites like Reddit, because the comment sections are just toxic. I've gone as far as installing Chrome extensions that make comment sections disappear from popular sites like YouTube. It's too easy to get drawn into the negativity, and I'm completely over it. "Social Networking" has reached it's low point as far as I'm conce…

>Hacker News is about the only civil place I'm capable of contributing to a discussion to at this point. the interesting thing about this is that HN comment system seems to discourage dialogue - i.e. you are not notified when someone replies to your comment. It seems to be more geared towards comment-it-and-forget-it.

I think it's prohibitive enough to not allow things to spiral out of control in some crummy argument. I feel it's more of a peer review system. State your comment on what you've read/seen, and move onto the next thing. Which honestly is fine with me.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#179

Post by e40 » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 7:53 PM UTC

gr3yh47 wrote: post #176

overcast wrote: post #170

This is an interesting move, and a topic I've been discussing with friends. I've stopped using sites like Reddit, because the comment sections are just toxic. I've gone as far as installing Chrome extensions that make comment sections disappear from popular sites like YouTube. It's too easy to get drawn into the negativity, and I'm completely over it. "Social Networking" has reached it's low point as far as I'm conce…

>Hacker News is about the only civil place I'm capable of contributing to a discussion to at this point. the interesting thing about this is that HN comment system seems to discourage dialogue - i.e. you are not notified when someone replies to your comment. It seems to be more geared towards comment-it-and-forget-it.

Yes, and this has always bothered me. There's a chrome extension (Hacker News Enhancement Suite, broken at the moment due to recent HN changes) that made it easier to see your own comments. Since I no longer use the extension, I rarely check for replies. Bums me out.

Re: NPR Website to Get Rid of Comments

#180

Post by r0muald » Wed, Aug 17, 2016, 7:53 PM UTC

justinlardinois wrote: post #140

omginternets wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your thoughts on incentivizing constructive comments? I've seen publishers (The Guardian, if memory serves) select thoughtful comments and re-print them as micro-articles in their own right. This seems to solve part of the problem by setting an established, if not mostly-objective, standard for comment quality: journalistic publication standards. As such, bias and opinion is welcome, provided that it's analy…

> What are your thoughts on incentivizing constructive comments? I've seen publishers (The Guardian, if memory serves) select thoughtful comments and re-print them as micro-articles in their own right. I don't think you're correctly identifying the problem. In my experience, the problem with comments, especially on news sites, is a glut of bad comments, rather than a lack of good comments. This solution doesn't disin…

The solution to bad comments is deleting them before they are even visible to other users. Deleting aggressively, as is done in certain subreddits (r/science) may seem offensive towards naive users who just want to add their "2 c" to the discussion, but it's the only effective AND honest strategy: if your comment adds little of interest, it's worth nothing. The bar should be very high, the more popular the website the higher the required quality. But in the end I think NPR are making the right choice. Comments on websites are not a constitutional right, after all.